Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 8)

We have talked so far about what postmodernism is, what it is good and true about it as well as what is false in it, and how Christianity must respond to those places in the culture that clash with the truth. Is the discussion ended? No. To think that discussion is over when we have raised the problems and then dispensed answers like pills to be swallowed is to misunderstand the issue. Why? There are postmodern Christians.
No, I have not just written an oxymoron. So far we have been talking about postmodernism as something that is “out there,” but that is only one part of it. It is not only something “out there,” but it is something that is also within us. It is the story we have been soaked in and it has soaked into us.
The interaction between Christianity and culture is not such that the gospel pushes out the cultural values in the territory it enters like an invading army pushes out a rebel army in a war. We do not become blank slates and then become Christians; we are still products of our own culture. Instead the gospel redeems and renews whatever it touches, and the task for Christians is for the good in culture to be renewed and that which is false to be redeemed.
Because that is the way Christianity interacts with culture there will be postmodern Christians – people thoroughly influenced by postmodernism, yet deeply committed to Christianity. People influenced by postmodernism will begin to ask unique questions about their faith and understand it in different ways. Parts of Christianity will rub against the grain of postmodern sensibilities; while there will be deep agreement in other areas. There will be a temptation to shave off the rough edges in those places where there is friction.
This is where the challenge comes in. Christianity must be relevant to every culture it is in. By that I mean it must find a way to speak the truth of the gospel in a way that is winsome and understandable to every culture it enters. In other words, there are ways in which Christianity is changeable. However, the gospel is a constellation of truths which are timeless, which means that there are also ways in which Christianity is unchangeable. It is certainly true that you can change Christianity until it is no longer Christianity and adapt the gospel until the gospel is lost.
The central question postmodern Christians must find a Biblical answer to is this: Where is the line drawn by which we can know what is changeable about Christianity and what is unchangeable? The dangers of irrelevancy and the loss of the gospel lurk on either side.
So our discussion of postmodernism and Christianity must shift to the issues that are arising as people are trying to answer this question...

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 7)

Our culture’s conclusions on morality flow naturally from its conclusions about authority and truth. If there is nothing above us, morality is up for grabs. Morality is a matter of personal choice. Our culture has adopted this view of morality on such a deep level it has even affected the meanings of words. "Tolerance" has come to mean “accepting me as I am and condoning my choices.” Tolerance no longer leaves room for disagreement; if you think someone’s choices are wrong you are being intolerant. It is implied now that "right" means “right for me.” The idea of “right” no longer carries exclusivity with it. You and I can both be “right” even if we are talking about mutually exclusive things. The word "judgment" has become synonymous with condemnation, something which our culture hates. There is no longer a sense that judgment means “determining right from wrong,” but now the word only has a negative meaning. When the subtle shifts in the meaning of the words are complete some of the battle is already lost.
Look at one of the biggest no-no's in our culture: asserting one way is true over another. This should be an alarming thing! This means that I can do whatever seems right to me no matter how destructive it is and the thing that ruffles more feathers is someone else saying to me “you are wrong and you need to change”. Such a statement is seen as arrogant, narrow-minded, and offensive, especially when it is a Christian speaking. The frightening thing about this is that when the Bible speaks of people lost in the deepest wickedness the phrase that comes up over and over is “and each one did what seemed right in his own eyes.” The Bible doesn’t reserve this statement for utopias of harmony and love, but for a culture which is poised to devour itself. The Bible says that human soul is such that unrestrained freedom in the area of morality always ends in immorality which, in turn, always ends in destruction, but our culture has raised this phrase up above us and waved it like a banner.
Our culture needs truth in the area of morality; it needs God-given standards of right and wrong. God did not throw darts at a board labeled “human behavior” to decide what sin was. Right and wrong are not arbitrary. Righteousness leads to flourishing. Sin destroys whatever it touches. This is because right is that which is consistent with who God is and the nature of the universe he has designed. Wrong is that which is against God's nature and therefore is against the design of the very fabric of the universe, for he made something that is consistent with himself. God’s commandments are good, and we were made for them. Only in holiness do we find our joy.
The role of the Christian in a culture such as ours is to hold out truth in the area of morals in the way we speak and in the way we act. We must not fall into the traps of our culture in the way it uses language. The culture says that it is not possible to judge without condemnation or label anything “wrong” without ugliness. However, Christians should be both more loving in their interactions with people they disagree with as well as better able to judge rightly what is true and false in their lives. We ought to live in such a way that makes the Biblical world view in the area of morality attractive to those who do not share it. What a wonderful thing if those on the outside could look at Christians and say “I do not share their morals, but they have treated me with such kindness and respect that I feel a great affection for them nonetheless.” Woefully, when people speak of Christian morality it is often the opposite of that statement.
It is a difficult thing to be both more loving and a truer judge, not compromising on the call to hold both grace and truth out to our world. Yet, that is exactly what we see in the life of Jesus, and that is exactly the calling which is before us. If the Christian capitulates to the cultures views on morality in order to reduce the tension of disagreement he or she is unfaithful to the gospel, our role is nil, and society is the worse for it. Instead, if the Christian lives as Jesus did there will be flourishing, as we show what it means to live under the Lordship of Christ in a fallen, morally confused world.

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 6)

There is a problem with truth. The problem is that we are subjective and finite beings, which our postmodern culture rightly recognizes. By “subjective” I mean that it is difficult to think clearly and without bias. Everything we know is shaped by who we are (where we were raised, our parent’s values, our education, our will and emotions, etc.). For example, I would say my closest friends know me very well, but there is a sense in which each of them sees me through a veil made of their own expectations, wishes, preconceptions, and experiences, leading them to come away with slightly different pictures of me. By “finite” I mean that our ability to know is limited in quantity and quality. We are not omniscient, nor do we have the ability to be so. As Paul said, we “see through a mirror darkly”. For example, take the question “Can we know God?” There always must be disclaimers given when saying “yes” to that question. God is infinite and we are not, so always what we know of God will only be a small piece, and there will simply be some things which will be beyond us. Even the largest and clearest treatises on God will still have a last page, and there will always be places between the first and last page where the answer simply points toward a mystery that cannot be fully ironed out into words.

There are two things to do with the problem of our subjectivity and our finiteness.
1. Despair of knowledge
2. Humility of knowledge.

Postmodernism has largely taken the first option. It takes our subjectivity and finiteness as a given and then draws the conclusion that certain knowledge is impossible. It builds a bridge of uncertainty that ends in the abyss of the death of absolute truth. Then postmodernism bids people to cross that bridge, painting this as the only logical path to take given our human limitations.
But this is one place that the Christian cannot follow our culture, for the Christian the problem of truth must lead to a humility of knowledge. By this I mean that the Christian must acknowledge the difficulties inherent in the process of knowing anything, but not mistake difficulty for impossibility. Despite our subjectivity and finiteness we are still able to have confidence in what we know. I believe that this is the position of the Bible on the subject of truth, and it is the logical position given the nature of God.
What do I mean by that? Though we are subjective, God is not. Though we often see in shades of grey, God sees in black and white, discerning truth from falsehood and judging between the two. Where we see “as through a mirror darkly,” there is a God in the universe who sees all things clearly, and, as Francis Schaeffer has said, “He has spoken”. This is the foundation for our own knowledge. We do not live in a universe where truth is spinning head over heels in a maelstrom of uncertainty. There is solid ground. What is needed in light of this reality is not to give up on truth in despair, but to set feet on that solid ground. Because you cannot see the sun for the clouds does not mean the sun does not shine above them. God’s truth still reigns in the universe he made, though our vision of it is clouded and our understanding is often confused.
As for our finiteness, to cite Schaeffer again, we can know things truly without having to know them fully. Yes, we are finite beings and total knowledge is beyond us, but total knowledge is not asked of us, nor should that make us despair of knowing anything at all with certainty. Think of the example from above: my friends do not have to know every facet of my soul to be able to say true things about me. It’s said that extremes prove the point, so to take an extreme example: think again about the question of whether we can know God truly or not. It is one thing to say our finiteness does not lead us to despair in friendship or even math or science, but is that still true if we talk about knowing God, an infinite being who is utterly beyond even our best thoughts of him? God seems to think so. The Bible itself is an example of God speaking to his people, telling them true things about himself. The Bible proclaims that knowledge of God is not only possible, but it is exactly what God desires of us, so he has communicated to us in language that we can understand so that we might know him and worship him in truth.
In this light despair becomes even lesser of an option. Because God exists there is hope that truth exists, and because he is such a God that he desires that we know him truly there is hope that we might understand and believe those truths. The Christian must hold out these truths to a postmodern culture without arrogance or presumption, but in humility. The Christian realizes that sin even affects our ability to know and see what is true, but this does not lead us to back away from God’s truth. We must say what God has said, and we must say it as he said it, in a way that is understandable, relevant, and winsome to our generation.

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 5)

Martin Luther said, “We can preach the gospel with the loudest voice and in the clearest manner, but if we are not preaching the gospel at the point where it is currently under attack, we are not preaching at all.” This means that the places where truth is under attack in our culture must be challenged. So the question is how can we respond to those areas where our postmodern culture is saying something different than the gospel?
The church should not be only a voice of condemnation toward the culture, for to divorce the gospel from the love inherent in its message is to corrupt the gospel. But likewise, the church should not be simply condoning the culture’s misconceptions about reality as if it were not possible to come to wrong conclusions or the need to believe the truth was not an urgent one. Of course it is urgent. It is life and death, and the church must find a way to hold out the truth to whatever culture it is in. There must be a response, or else, as Luther said, we have not preached the gospel at all.
What is the response in the three areas of Authority, Truth, and Morality? I want to try and devote a little bit more space to each one of these separately, starting with authority.

Authority:
I saw a t-shirt in Wal-Mart the other day that said, “Your rules don’t apply to me.” It was meant to be glib, but if you think about that phrase as representative of the voice of our culture toward all authority it becomes a very sad phrase. I got a fresh view of this while reading a biography of Jonathon Edwards, a preacher who lived at the height of Puritan New England. Life for Edwards was an ordered chain of authority that extended into every area of life, marriage and the family, the church, the government, etc. Children were raised to value submission to this authority structure; it was the air they breathed. Sermons were preached about the value of obeying the “fathers” meaning not only the Heavenly Father, but also earthly fathers which God had placed in positions of authority. Today we breathe a different air. As I read the biography I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if you transplanted a preacher from that time to our time and put him on TV (perhaps Oprah…). He would probably be viewed as narrow-minded, oppressive, and offensive. Best case: he would not have a rapt audience for long. Worst case: the audience would start throwing chairs (maybe not on Oprah). Either way, the values of that time would rub abrasively against the grain of the hearts of his hearers.
We have shaken our shoulders free of such an ironclad authority structure, and it is anathema to us. Our feelings of earthly authorities are mirror images of our feelings for heavenly authority. In such an environment the idea of a God who rules is an offense. We find a God who is willing to serve us more palatable than a God before whom we must bow. This is a starting point for the conversation between Christianity and our culture. You cannot tell someone to obey the Bible if they do not see the Bible as an authority in their lives. Each individual must see God’s claim on them before they will bow to Him.
The Christian response to this message of the culture must be to tell the truth about the human situation. There is an authority above us, and our happiness is not found in bucking it, but in bowing to it. We did not create ourselves, nor are we products of an accident, but we were made by a Someone larger than ourselves who knows our names. Every individual on this planet has the common origin of a Creator which we must relate to as creations. Not only is God the creator, however, but he is the savior. Christianity says that God gave himself for our redemption, a word which means “to buy back.” The story goes like this: we were made, we fell, and Christ's blood bought us back. We are doubly His, as 1 Corinthians says, “You are not your own, for you were bought at a price.”
We would think of ourselves as above every authority where our own lives are concerned, but this is not the reality of the human situation. Our place is to live under the Lordship of Christ, the one who has made us and redeemed us. I do not say this to diminish humanity or say we are nothing. We are not nothing. We are made in God’s image and he had endowed us with dignity, but it is the dignity of occupying our rightful place, one of bowing before God. It is the glory of humanity to occupy that place and our happiness lies in doing so faithfully.
If Christianity is going to be faithful in holding out the gospel to this generation then it must live and speak in such a way that shows that authority is not a dirty word. This will be a place of tension and of contrast with the culture and there will be great pressure to deemphasize the gospel at this point, but if we do that then we "have not preached the gospel at all." Rather, the Christian must declare that there is a God and that to him belongs all authority, as well as demonstrate in a winsome way what a life lived under the Lordship of Christ really looks like.

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 4)

A couple years ago I was at a lecture given by Jerram Barrs at the Rochester L’abri Conference (Labri.org). The notes I took have been helpful to me in writing this series (as have his lectures in “Apologetics and Outreach,” a class he teaches at Covenant Seminary). In the lecture, Professor Barrs divided history into three categories: premodern, modern, and postmodern. He spent time talking about the dominant ideas in each period and he insisted that as Christians we must learn to search out the glories in every new thing we encounter. One of my favorite bands, Over the Rhine, says the same thing in one of its songs: “I look for redemption in everyone/… there is so much untouched beauty/ the light, the dark both running through me.” Postmodernism, just like every other thing that comes out of humanity, has both light and darkness running through it. It can be a difficult thing to see the light at times, but we must learn to. To only see the darkness is an easy error to fall into, but it is one that forgets that we are made in the image of God and that image is indelible; it cannot be erased. We bear the stamp of our Creator and so it follows that everything we make will retain traces of the One who made us. Postmodernism is no different. As we are each individually mixed bags, so to speak, so are the cultures we create.

For example, modernism set up human reason as the ultimate source of final answers to reality. It placed reason on the altar in place of God, putting its hope for redemption on the broken, scarred shoulders of Humanity. Postmodernism appropriately tore down that idol. It diminished humanity’s confidence in its power to come to all the answers it needs by its own strength, insisting that our reason is clouded and our strength is limited. Postmodernism rightly said that clear, objective thinking is difficult because our knowledge is influenced by subjective factors and often prejudiced.

Postmodernism allows for greater diversity, as it respects the contributions each culture has to make. The postmodern mindset would not give rise to something like colonialism, for example. Colonialism was born out of the mindset that said one culture could be greater than another and the best thing for the lesser culture was to convert to the greater. Postmodernism seeks more to give voice to every culture, recognizing that there are things of value in every perspective and fearing the arrogance of a single culture believing that it contains all truth.

Postmodernism is realistic. It recognizes that things in this world are broken and bent and corrupted. It challenges modernisms unrealistic optimism, which said that Progress would soon carry humanity forward and our troubles would slowly erase themselves as we outgrew them. This is not so. At its worst postmodernism can embrace this sad fact too much and dip into despair, but at its best it simply takes a more realistic view of human selfishness and brokenness and rightly insists that humanity is far too hurt to simply heal itself.

It also challenges the idea that humanity’s needs are supplied by only the material, and says that there is an inescapable need for the spiritual. We are not only complex machines; man is a spiritual being. We are not objects. God has “set eternity within our hearts” and because of this we have spiritual needs. Modernism pulled the ceiling down low of the head of mankind, saying that it could find all the answers it needs without turning to the mystical and spiritual. This is false. Postmodernism tore holes in that low ceiling and said that humanity must look upwards to something outside itself.

It is a mistake to think that postmodernism (or anything humans create) is “all bad” or “all good”. Far too often people fall into one category or the other and postmodernism becomes synonymous with all evil and ugly things and is a blight on our society, or becomes the savior which will correct the sins of past generations and lead us toward a better future. This is foolish. Only Christ can save human culture and until He does all culture will have “both light and darkness running through it”. As Christians our goal should be to foster that which is good while at the same time responding to that which is bad in a way that is winsome and changes the culture for the better.

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 3)

Q: How do I know postmodernism when I see it? What are its distinctives?


I don’t think the full answer to that question fits on a one-page blog, but something can still be said. Here is description of a few things in the postmodern family tree:


Authority:
Jerram Barrs said, “The most widely held view on anything in the United States is that ‘I have the RIGHT to control my own destiny; to think what I want to think.’” There is deep value in our culture for independence. It is one of the glories of our culture. However, the flip side of that coin is a deep cynicism of authority and a fierce defense of our independence, even when it is harmful to us.
Authority is a dirty word in a postmodern culture. It is a coin that has a diminishing value. The individual has a transcendent power; he is an authority to himself. The idea that the individual is bounded by things greater than himself is an idea that, at best, our generation does not understand, and, at worst, infuriates a postmodern culture.
I was watching a Mizzou football game recently (Nebraska was getting trounced, so the announcers started filling up the air time with some interesting banter) and the announcer told a story about how the coaching strategy of Mizzou has changed in recent years to involve students more in coaching decisions. He said something like “Gone are the days of ‘Yes, sir’ ‘No, sir’. Now the students want to be involved.” This should not be a surprise to anyone who knows the culture they live in. The football players, like the rest of us, are products of a culture which does not bow easily.

Truth:
Modernism understood truth as black and white; something which, ultimately, could be clearly understood. It believed in the power of reason to have access to those truths… not that it would always be easy, but it was possible. Or to put it in an image: picture two ropes, one that represents truth and the other that represents our ability to know. Modernism tied those two ropes together. Postmodernism, however, has tried to untie that knot and throw the two ropes as far away from each other as it can.
Postmodernism says that we are too shaped by subjective factors (where we grew up, what our parents taught us, our own biases and tastes and agendas, etc.) to be able to see things clearly. It is like smearing mud on a window and then expecting to be able to see out through it. We can never escape this subjectivity; it is part of the human condition. Thus there is always, in everything we try to know, interference involved in the process to the degree that postmodernism says we cannot know anything with certainty.


Morality:
What postmodernism has concluded about morality flows out of its conclusions about authority and truth. If there is nothing above us, then morality is up for grabs. If we cannot understand things with certainty even if there was an authority above us, then we must run on our best moral guesses, and one person’s guess does not have authority over anyone else’s. Morally, each person is an island.
I remember a conversation with a friend in which he said that he would correct his children’s choices about their lives while they lived in his house, but he would never dream of doing that with another person. It was a horrifying thought to him to think that he could look at another person’s life and say what in it was good and what was bad. It was the most unloving thing you could do.
Judgment and condemnation are dirty words in a postmodern culture. The great evil is not falsehood, but judgment. The great good is not truth, but harmony.


This is by no means a complete rendering of postmodernism. I chose these three things because they are three places where our culture contrasts sharply with Christianity. I don’t want to paint the picture of postmodernism as being all bad, however. There is both good and bad in every one of us and so it follows that the cultures we create are streaked with both light and dark also. In the next post I hope to point out some of these strengths of postmodernism as well as talk about how Christianity must respond to those places where postmodernism runs false.

The Playboy Philosophy and the Church

Lately I have been reading a draft of a biography of Hugh Hefner by a colleague of mine, Steve Watts. You may have seen an interview with Steve about the book on the front page of the Columbia Tribune earlier this month. Steve’s biography is brilliant at locating Hefner in American popular culture from the 1950s to the present (some of you watch the reality show, “The Girls Next Door,” I know you do).

Hefner’s “Playboy Philosophy,” which he began formulating in the 1950s, consists of two main threads: sexual liberation, as Hefner calls it, and avid consumerism. From the start, his goal has been to challenge “the two greatest guilts our society has: materialism and sex,” he told an interviewer in the 1960s. Hefner became, in the words of journalist Tom Wolfe, the “Consumer King.” Beginning with its first issue his magazine counseled young men on how to choose sports cars, imported liquor, fine clothes, fancy hi-fi stereos and cool apartments. The good life was all about affluence, leisure and self-fulfillment. The sexual revolution was just part of the package.

Critics outside the church saw the connection between sex and conspicuous consumption clearly, often accusing Hefner of “promoting a shallow, retrograde consumerism,” as Watts writes. They denounced Hefner for stripping life of love, honor, compassion and sacrifice in favor of “a dilettante’s passing acquaintance with the superficialities of good literature, music, food, and romance,” writes Watts. The good life was really nothing more than a vacuous and empty form of “consumerism run amok” in which “glossy sex” was only the “teaser.”

Hefner has consistently maintained that his main enemy is religious Puritanism, which he believes has long dominated American society. Early on he “decided the whole idea of God, heaven, and hell was pure fancy.” In response, he created a substitute religion centered on pleasure seeking. “Thou shalt not wear double-breasted suits, Thou shalt not drive a Dodge, Thou shalt not eat Velveeta Cheese,” became his new commandments, quipped one observer.

In this light the church’s response to Hefner is curious. While a relatively small number of Unitarians and theology professors welcomed the Playboy Philosophy beginning in the 1950s, evangelicals almost universally condemned it, but only in part. Their criticism of Hefner focused almost exclusively on his promotion of the sexual revolution, while more or less agreeing with his consumerism. What they bought differed, but this was largely a matter of taste. Instead of sports cars evangelicals bought station wagons, frost free refrigerators instead of imported scotch. I have talked with Steve at some length about this and the pattern seems quite clear. Evangelicals criticized Hefner’s sexual revolution as shallow, vain and ultimately destructive, but refrained from applying the same analysis to his consumerism. Like Hefner, evangelicals have almost uniformly celebrated post World War II American affluence with little reservation. In the end, the only difference between the good life and the godly life seems to be the sex. Is that right?

John Wesley, the 18th century founder of the Methodist movement had a saying he often repeated to his followers: Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can. He almost as frequently lamented that while Methodists were pretty good at the first, they were not so good at the second and downright terrible at the third. Hefner would not be disappointed.

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 2)

About four years ago I was sitting in a Bible study on postmodernism, wondering why I was there. The leader of the Bible study was trying to help us understand what postmodernism was and how it affected our culture. I wrote a note on a piece of paper and passed it to the guy sitting next to me (I was very mature at the time…). Of course the leader saw it and called on the guy I handed it to to read the note out loud so everyone else could hear what I had to say. The note said something like this: “I think we all agree that postmodernism does not exist. Why are we here?” The ironic things about that comment are: 1. I was very wrong and it took a couple years to really understand what we were talking about that night and 2. It was a very postmodern thing to write.
My problem was this: I didn’t understand what postmodernism meant and I didn’t understand how deeply affected by it our culture (and therefore myself too, as I am a product of my culture) is. My guess is there were some people who read the last post and had a similar reaction to the one I had that night four years ago, so this post is an attempt to begin to shed some light on the issue. (Disclaimer: the emphasis here is on the word begin…like a Reader’s Digest version of postmodernism.)


Q: What is culture?

There are many ways to define culture, but for our purposes it can be defined as a people’s view of reality. People of a similar culture will have similar answers to questions like: What is right and wrong? What is taboo and what is praiseworthy? What is the good life? What is the meaning of life? What offends me about the world? The questions cover every inch of life, not just the big picture ones I listed here. Culture affects everything from your view of God to what you will eat on Mondays.
Think of questions like: Why do people in the south dress up for football games? Why are iPods so popular? Why do people who hunt watch more Nascar than people who drink lattes? Why don’t the French use ice in their drinks? Why will you lose your license for going 15 over in Scandinavia and speeding is almost expected in America? All these are questions about culture.


Q: So what is postmodernism?

Culture changes; it is not fixed. There are movements in culture. Imagine you are sitting in a stadium and 70,000 people are chanting something, then one loud section of fans starts chanting something else and that new chant spreads until the whole stadium has now taken it up. Culture is like that, except instead of a chant the thing that is spreading is a worldview
Sometimes a worldview is so thoroughly spread through a culture it has definable boundaries; it gets a name, an “ism”. You can say things about it like “Modernism is such and such a way” or “Those people are Modernists and so they probably believe such and such a thing”.
Sometimes the new chant that arises is a reaction to the one that it is replacing. Modernism becomes postmodernism. For example: where modernism sought certainty in a black and white world, postmodernism is more comfortable with mystery and paints a picture of a grey world, in which black and white certainties are not so easy to find. Where modernism was largely overly optimistic, postmodernisms answers are streaked with pessimism, etc.


Q: How do I know postmodernism when I see it? What are its distinctives?

Stay tuned…

Postmodernism and Christianity (Part 1)

I read a book recently called "by demonstration: God" by Wade Bradshaw. In it, Bradshaw writes about the way our culture has become increasingly postmodern as reflected in the students who come to L'abri. A little background might be helpful here as to what L'abri is. Suffice it to say that it is a study center where students can come from every corner of the world and stay from a day to the whole of a three month term, studying whatever they choose and seeking the answers to their questions in the truth of Christianity. Because of this, at any given time there is a random sampling of the questions the culture is asking represented in the students who come to L'abri. L’abri, therefore, often has its finger on the pulse of the ever-changing landscape of our culture, making Bradshaw’s insights carry a lot of weight as he talks about his many years at L’abri and how postmodernism has affected the students.

Let me give an example from the book. Bradshaw has seen a shift in what students want to talk about in conversations; where once conversations would center around “ideas” now they are much more likely to center on “experience”. There is a distrust of knowledge that is seen as abstract, theoretical, or heady. Students are not interested in ideas that do not seem directly connected to their actual experience of life. On the other hand, knowledge which is personal, experiential, or rises out of their own or others’ stories finds fertile ground and eager ears. For example, the question “What do you think about how Christianity should interact with the culture it is in?” (…the question I want to begin to raise in this post) might lead to dead, awkward silence around the lunch table. Whereas, the question, “Who is a hero of yours and why are they heroic?” might lead to a conversation that runs for hours and the lunch table has to be set for dinner before everyone is done talking.

One of the themes of the book is the idea that as the culture of the students coming to L’abri changes, so too must L’abri change to continue to hold out the truth of Christianity to the culture it finds itself in. Think of it this way: if a missionary was sent overseas to a country with a radically different culture than his own, wouldn’t his first task be to learn about that culture he finds himself in? What is its language? What does it love? What are its taboos? How does it think? What does it fear and hate? What do its people want most deeply and what do they treasure most highly? What pieces of the truth does it retains, and what pieces has it abandoned? That is the challenge that Bradshaw writes about: how to hold out the ancient, beautiful truths of Christianity to a generation that is quite different than the one before it?

This is not a challenge unique only to L’abri; it is one that faces us all. Anyone who would speak of the truth of the gospel today speaks to a radically postmodern audience. That culture has affected what they value, as well as how they think, communicate, converse, love, believe, and trust. Just like a missionary freshly arrived in a new country, we must learn the culture of the people we are speaking to. What does it mean to be a part of a postmodern culture? We must find the answer to that question and call people to belief in the gospel in a language they can understand, and challenge their own unique ways they are tempted to turn away from the truth. If we do not we will be as effective as a missionary walking around rural China speaking English.

In the following posts I want to take a short survey of what culture is generally and what the landscape of our culture today is specifically. Then ask the questions: "How is the Christian community to be salt and light to this culture today?" and "What are the dangers and challenges inherent in the process of becoming a good missionary to our culture?"

A (Borrowed) Christmas Reflection

Take a moment to consider this short excerpt from Francis Schaeffer's sermon, "What Difference Has Looking Made?" The sermon is an extended reflection on the experience of the shepherds to whom the angels appeared at the birth of Jesus, as well as what that experience has to teach us:

Doctrinal clarity matters a great deal; but Luke does not allow his Gospel
to end merely with a proper emphasis on the necessity of the great doctrinal
truths, and our study should not end there either. Before his ascension Jesus
told the disciples "that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
his name among all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (Luke 24:47). Orthodox
doctrine must be proclaimed.

When the shepherds had seen the baby Jesus, "they made known abroad the
saying which was told them concerning this child" (Luke 2:17). Just as the
shepherds' proclamation was spontaneous, carrying out Jesus' final instructions
should be natural to us. If we really believe the truth of the gospel, we should
voluntarily declare it. The spontaneity of telling part of the Christmas
story.

Yet it is intriguing that the telling is not the final emphasis. The
next to the last verse of the Gospel of Luke tells us that the disciples
"worshiped him" (Luke 24:52). The doctrinal reality and the telling of it are
never allowed to stand alone; in tremendous balance with it exists worship,
personal relationship.

The same thing was true in Bethlehem, in this case with the wise men
and the baby Jesus, for "they fell down, and worshiped him" (Matt. 2:11). They
did not only bring frankincense and myrrh; they really worshiped.

But even worship is not the end of the matter. After Christ's
resurrection and ascension the disciples "returned to Jerusalem with great joy"
(Luke 24:52). Joy is part of this, too. Certainly the shepherds were glad. the
angel had said to them, "Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great
joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of
David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:10, 11).

This does not mean a stupid kind of happiness or a sick smile, nor does
it mean there are no tears or that things in this world are not as bad as God
says they are. This joy is connected with the reality of our knowledge of who
Jesus is, our relationship with Him and our worship of Him.

Imagine you are a shepherd on the hillside, and when the heavenly host
appears you are not to be afraid; you are to have joy.

It is the same with all the teaching of the Gospel which flows from the
event when the shepherds saw and heard the angels, when they ran down the hill
and looked upon Jesus. And at the end of Luke's gospel, while not despising the
doctrine or the telling of it, the central thing is worshiping the Lord--not
coldly, but with joy. It is tremendous that the closing of the gospel of Luke
fits so perfectly with the second chapter: "I bring you good tidings of great
joy." "And they worshiped him…with great joy." (Francis Schaeffer, "What
Difference Has Looking Made?" in No
Little People).

From all of us here at Every Square Inch: have a merry and blessed Christmas!

What's So Great About Christianity? Part 5

In case you've joined this in the middle of the series and don't feel like reading parts 1-4, let me catch you up. The past few years has seen a rise in what some have called a "New Atheism." Of course atheism isn't new in the sense that it has just arrived on the scene of American culture. What's new about "New Atheism" is its aggressive nature. Dawkins, Dennet, Harris, and Hitchens, among others, are unwilling to peaceably co-exist with religious believers of any stripe. Instead they endeavor to rid the world of religious faith and the corresponding belief in the supernatural. Why? Because they believe that religion is the enemy of reason and progress. And they are not alone. Consider this quote from a 2004 article written by Robert Reich the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton.

The great conflict of the 21st century may be between the West and terrorism. But terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The underlying battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernist fanatics; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe blind allegiance to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is no more than preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe that truth is revealed solely through scripture and religious dogma, and those who rely primarily on science, reason, and logic. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism is not the only danger we face.

Many competent authors have responded from a theistic/Christian perspective. In this series of posts I am working my way through one of those books-Dinesh D'souza's What's So Great About Christianity.

Section 4 The Argument From Design

Chapter 11 A Universe With A Beginning: God And The Astronomers

Thesis: The current thinking of the best astronomers is that the universe had a beginning. Commonly referred to as "The Big Bang," the universe was flung into existence by a great explosion of energy and light. It is well documented that many scientists are uncomfortable with that explanation, not because the evidence doesn't warrant it, but because it demands a creator. If everything that has a beginning has a cause (and of course it does), then the physical universe had a non-physical or spiritual cause.

Key Quotes: "Arno Penzias, who won the Nobel prize for his discovery of the cosmic background radiation that corroborated the Big Bang, said, 'The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole.'"

"Astronomer Robert Jastrow puts it even more vividly. 'For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.'"

Chapter 12 A Designer Planet: Man's Special Place In Creation

Thesis: The latest scientific research shows that contrary to past opinion, the universe is specifically designed for human life. We human beings aren't an accident. D'Souza gives three possible responses: Lucky Us, Multiple Universes, and the Designer Universe. "Lucky Us" proponents suggest that it is an incredible coincidence that the universe is made just right for human life. "Multiple Universes" proponents suggest that there are many universes in existence and that human life is bound to flourish in one of them. If one rejects the first two options as requiring too much faith to believe, he or she is left with a universe that is just right for human life because it was designed by a Designer who had us in mind. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Kind of like Genesis 1.

Key Quote: "Astronomer Lee Smolin imagines God as a kind of master technician who is sitting at a control panel with a set of dials in front of Him. One dial sets the mass of the proton, another the charge of the electron, a third the gravitational constant, and so on. God spins the dials randomly. What, Smolin asks, is the probability that this random spinning would result in a universe with stars and planets and [human] life? 'The probability,' he answers, 'is incredibly small.' How small? Smolin's estimate is one chance in ten to the power of 229."

Chapter 13 Paley Was Right: Evolution And the Argument From Design

Thesis: In this chapter D'Souza differentiates between the theory of evolution which he affirms and Darwinism which he rejects. The former is a scientific theory and the latter is a philosophical assumption that denies God. According to the author, evolution explains how physical life developed but it cannot explain how life began, why human beings have a consciousness different from the animals, and morality. The chapter concludes with the point that evolution requires an intelligent designer.

Key Quote: "Christians should not be afraid of the evolution debate, because there is nothing about it that threatens their faith. The Christian position is that God is the creator of the universe and everything in it, and the evolution debate is about how some of these changes came about...My own view is that Christians and other religious believers should embrace evolution while resisting Darwinism."

Chapter 14 The Genesis Problem: The Methodological Atheism of Science

Thesis: Scientists love to present themselves as reasonable people who go wherever the evidence leads them and only where it leads them. However as one digs a deeper, he finds that scientists are just like everyone else in that they have biases and world views that shape how they interpret the evidence. D'Souza gives several examples of scientists who admit that their atheism isn't so much a conclusion based on overwhelming evidence as much as it is a premise that they start with. A premise that they refuse to change regardless of the evidence against it.

Key Quote: "Biologist Francis Crick admits that his commitment to materialism and his hostility to religion motivated him to enter his field. 'I went into science because of these religious reasons, there's no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs.' Then Crick sought to show that those things have a purely material foundation. In the same vein, physicist Steven Weinberg confesses that the hope that science will liberate people from religion 'is one of the things that in fact has driven me in my life.'"

My Thoughts: I will keep these brief since this post has already gotten a bit long. When I became a Christian during college, I was influenced by fellow Christians that taught young earth creationism and that evolution was the great Satan. Over the past few years, I've come to see things differently. No longer a young earth guy, I find myself open to the Intelligent Design movement as well as evolution as explained by D'Souza. Before you jump on that and begin to doubt the genuineness of my faith, you might want to read his argument for yourself. In addition, you will want to read The Language of God by Francis Collins. I'm not saying that either will convince you that evolution is true, but they might convince you that there is no necessary contradiction between evolution (not Darwinism) and Genesis.

Religion in the Public Square-Part 3

Continuing the discussion of religion’s place in the public square by taking a closer look at Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech:

In previous posts, I’ve alternately noted both positive and negative elements in Romney’s comments. This time, I’d like to point out a section that actually contains a bit of both. In a paragraph that no doubt drew increased attention from many, Romney stated the following:

Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world. There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

No doubt the most arresting feature of this quotation for many orthodox Christians is Romney’s assertion that Christ is the “son of God and the savior of mankind.” And even with the subsequent admission that his “church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths,” that statement is certainly worth a deeper discussion regarding the differences between Mormon and biblical Christian doctrine.

But since the idea in these posts is to discuss religion in the public square more generally, it’s actually the latter part of this paragraph that I’d like to discuss more fully at the moment.

In the final sentence, Romney rightly points out the simple but still often-overlooked fact that religious tolerance is anything but tolerance if it is “reserved only for faiths with which we agree.” This statement is commendable for its straightforward assertion of an important truth: tolerance is something that we exercise toward people and beliefs with whom we disagree, and sometimes significantly so.

In other words, tolerating a particular religion refers to the willingness to let those with beliefs one deems to be inadequate or even erroneous freely practice their religion under the law.

What tolerance need not imply—despite the best efforts of our politically correct culture to cloud the issue—is approval or endorsement, or that it is somehow wrong to debate the relative merits of differing beliefs. Therefore, while I would cheerily endorse (on biblical grounds, no less) the right of, say, a Mormon like Mitt Romney to freely practice his faith in this country, I would steadfastly maintain that he holds many of his beliefs in error and welcome the opportunity to discuss and support that position. No doubt many Mormons who similarly question my theological convictions would appreciate the opportunity to do the same. This kind of debate is not only completely appropriate, but it should be welcomed in a free and pluralistic society.

Given all of this, it therefore seems curiously inconsistent for Romney also to suggest in the same paragraph that each religion’s distinctive beliefs “are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance.” This is clearly a false dichotomy. Actually, religious beliefs with which we sincerely disagree are tests of our tolerance precisely because we find them to be worthy of criticism.

So then, should we shy away from supporting responsible religious liberty in the United States? Absolutely not. But neither should we feel it necessary to treat all religious beliefs as possessing equal merit, or immune to respectful criticism in either private discourse or the public square.

KJOY or NPR?

I’ve been driving a lot lately, as part of my job, and I’ve had a lot of time to sample the local radio stations. One station, with the call letters KJOY* is, as you might expect, a Christian station. Like most radio stations, they sing their jingle about once every 3 minutes or so. (An aside—for some reason, those jingle are apparently an international industry standard. The Barcelona radio stations sing their call letters to the same tune, with the same voices. It’s spooky.) But KJOY always accompanies its call letters with the phrase, “positive and uplifting KJOY! Programming that's safe and encouraging for the whole family!”

Every time I hear that phrase, I cringe. On one hand, I can see the value of having a place on the dial that believers can go to listen to teaching and the Word during the week, and I do understand the attraction that a “safe” station could have for parents. But there's something about the phrase, and the mentality it suggests, that bothers me.

I tune into the Christian station and hear platitudes and “uplifting” sermonettes. I turn to NPR, and I hear some of the best thinkers in the nation wrestling with the most difficult, most pressing issues of our day. As believers, shouldn't we be wrestling alongside the rest of our country? Shouldn't we add our Spirit-led voices to these difficult debates? It's not that there's no value in what is being said on the Christian stations, but the “safe programming” often seems to me like a retreat from the issues that the world is thinking about.

Where are the Jeremiahs and Isaiahs, the prophets who called the people of God to account for the actions of their country and problems of their countrymen?

The rest of the nation is wrestling through the tough issues of a broken world, and every time I switch back to “KJOY,” I can't help but think that we have locked ourselves away in a “positive and uplifting” closet on the Titanic while the grownups try to figure out what to do with the sinking boat. We don't stone the prophets these days, but we're certainly not going to give them any airspace.

*not the actual call letters--my purpose is not point a finger at one specific station, but at a type of station, and the mindset behind it.

‘Tis the Season to Wrap...

If Abraham Kuyper is right…if there is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, “This is mine! This belongs to me!”…then certainly it makes sense for me to include a post about my favorite appetizer recipe. God gave us the good gift of food and the good gift of friends in which to share food. I’m especially reminded of this around Christmas time, when we always have to bring some appetizer to a party. So, I’d like to share with you one of my new favorite recipes. It freezes and reheats really well, so I usually double it and save half for later. Enjoy and Happy (of course, moderate) Christmas Eating!

Asian Lettuce Wraps
Servings: 8 appetizer servings; 4 main dish servings

Ingredients:
16 Boston Bibb or butter lettuce leaves
1 pound lean ground chicken (can substitute ground turkey or beef)
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
2 tablespoon soy sauce (or more to taste)
1/2 cup hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger (or pickled ginger is fine)
2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
Asian chile pepper sauce or any hot sauce (to taste)
1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 cup shredded carrots (or more, if desired)
1 cup shredded cabbage (or more, if desired)
4 teaspoons Asian (dark) sesame oil

Directions:

Rinse whole lettuce leaves and pat dry, being careful not tear them. Set aside.

In a large skillet or pot over medium-high heat, brown the ground chicken in 1 tablespoon of oil, stirring often. Drain, and set aside to cool. Sautee the yellow onion in the same pan over medium heat until tender, stirring frequently. Add the garlic, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, ginger, rice wine vinegar, and chile pepper sauce to the onions, stir, and let simmer 1-2 minutes. Stir in chopped water chestnuts, green onions, shredded carrots, shredded cabbage, browned meat and sesame oil, and continue cooking until the onions, carrots, and cabbage just begin to wilt, about 3-4 minutes.

To serve, allow each person to spoon a portion of the meat mixture into a lettuce leaf. Wrap the lettuce around the meat like a burrito, prepare to get messy, and enjoy!

Religion in the Public Square-Part 2

In my last post, I mentioned that Mitt Romney’s recent “Faith in America” speech represents a very prominent attempt to discuss the place of religion in the public square. And as such, it serves as an excellent catalyst for further reflection on the issues.

I also promised to highlight one of the sections of the speech that I found somewhat problematic, namely:

There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution.

This paragraph sparks several thoughts:

To begin with, Romney’s phrasing here is curious. He states, “there are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines.” Taken by itself, that sounds like there is a huge demand by the voters and/or the press for each candidate to become a professional theologian, tasked to educate those interested on the distinguishing beliefs of his or her faith. That would surely be a silly demand.

But of course this isn’t the issue. What people actually want to know is simply whether a given candidate believes in the particular doctrines of his or her professed faith, not whether they can clearly articulate them to others. (As an aside: I’m not sure whether Romney is expressing himself poorly here or trying to confuse the issue. The first possibility would make his comment honest but irrelevant, the second amounts to a frustrating and reprehensible strategy.)

This kind of inquiry, by the way, is completely reasonable. Why? Because what an individual believes affects the way he or she will govern. Consider a rather extreme, but illustrative example. What if a proponent of radical Islam were to run for office in this country, one who was sympathetic to the idea of jihad against those who didn’t share his faith? Would his religious belief be relevant in choosing whether to elect him to office in a nation often targeted by Islamic terrorists? Of course it would. All of us naturally and rightly assume that a person’s beliefs have a significant bearing on his or her actions.

I have little doubt that Romney is very aware of the above point, but it appears that he would still rather avoid talking about his foundational beliefs. I say that because of the next sentence of the quoted paragraph, where he argues that to scrutinize a candidate’s religious beliefs “would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution.”

Two observations are in order. First, while Romney seems to be suggesting that it’s out of bounds to examine the doctrines of his faith, in the very same speech he says this:

They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it's more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers. I will be true to them and to my beliefs.

Unless I’m missing something, the argument appears to be this: he will stand by his religious beliefs and will endeavor to live by them—which presumably means he will govern in light of them to some measure—but it remains somehow inappropriate to examine them with respect to judging his qualifications as a candidate. This seems to be a rather glaring inconsistency.

Secondly, Romney’s premise is invalid. While admittedly not a constitutional scholar, I don’t see how anyone can argue subjecting any candidate’s personal religious beliefs to examination by the voters is a violation of the Constitution. Yes, Article VI, section three reads as follows: “…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” But the prohibition in question is directed toward the authority of the state, not the judgment of voters.

Therefore, the government is rightly prohibited from barring a candidate from running or serving in an office on the basis of his or her religious beliefs. But for reasons already suggested above, it would be ludicrous to suggest the Constitution is here prohibiting individual voters from weighing a candidate’s religious beliefs in determining how to vote.

Since Romney, like nearly every presidential candidate from both parties, continually attempts to position himself as a friend of religious voters, I’m again willing to bet that he has a firm grasp upon this reality. But one can’t argue that religious belief are basically off limits on the one hand and then position oneself as the right choice for religious voters on the other.

Let me close this post by noting that it is by no means my intention to suggest it would be necessarily wrong for orthodox Christians to vote for Romney, or any other candidate that professes religious beliefs different from their own. I don’t think that would be a thoughtful, biblically informed perspective at all. But I do want to argue strongly that we should not—in fact we cannot—ever suggest candidates’ personal religious beliefs (or non-religious beliefs for that matter) are irrelevant to deciding their fitness for office. The next election in which Americans do that will be the first such contest this nation has ever seen.

Religion in the Public Square

Over the last few days, I’ve been mulling over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent speech regarding his Mormon faith. Though one of Romney’s main goals was obviously to address the relationship of his beliefs to the way in which he would potentially govern as president, the speech also serves as a broader commentary on the place of religion in the public square. And since it probably amounts to the most prominent address on this topic by a front-line candidate in quite some time, I think it’s worth our careful reflection as Christians (read the full speech here).

After closely reading the text of the speech more than once, my own estimation of its contents is somewhat mixed. At times, I thought Romney was particularly cogent, offering insight that certainly advances the national discussion. In other instances, his stated views struck me as in need of further articulation or nuance at best, and incoherent or suspect at worst.

As an example of the positive, consider this excerpt:

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Here Romney correctly alludes to a fact that atheists/secularists often fail either to understand or acknowledge. Despite their incredulity toward religious belief, unbelieving individuals and institutions often become as creedal or dogmatic as those they oppose. In effect they become adherents of their own atheistic religion, replacing God with everything from a blind and mechanistic universe to humanity itself and doggedly affirming various points of “doctrine.” These range from the idea that humanity is inevitably progressing toward some kind of Utopian perfection to the belief that the scientific method is our only reliable means to access truth.

This in turn raises an important question: why should these particular belief systems be considered inherently better than more traditional religious beliefs at contributing to the public good? After all, there is ample evidence that governments and/or societies that marginalize or even attempt to eradicate religious belief are by no means more likely to promote genuine human flourishing—witness the atrocities of several atheistic totalitarian regimes arising in the last century. No, those that discount or oppose religion are just as susceptible to prejudice and oppression as their believing counterparts.

For this reason and a host of others, religious truth claims are not to be limited to private discussions of beliefs and values, but vigorously examined and discussed in the public square and for the public good.

My next post on this subject will discuss a portion of Romney’s speech that is—in my judgment at least—less laudable.

What's So Great About Christianity? Part 4

Section 3 Christianity and Science

Thesis: D'Souza spends three chapters arguing that the great conflict between science and Christianity is a gross exaggeration of the historical evidence. Listening to the New Atheists, one would think that science is built on evidence and Christianity built on faith. That science has prospered where Christianity hasn't. That throughout history church leaders have persecuted scientists keeping them from their important work.

A look at the historical record reveals that modern science flourished in Christian nations and that many of the first (and best) scientists were devoted believers. Contrary to popular atheistic propaganda, Galileo was never charged with heresy or tortured in an attempt to get him to recant his scientific discoveries.

Key Quote: Indeed, historians are virtually unanimous in holding that the whole science versus religion story is a nineteenth-century fabrication.

My Thoughts: I recently read an interesting article in the New York Times that dovetails nicely with these chapters. Written by Paul Davies, a scientist at Arizona State University, it argues that science depends on faith much like religion does. He argues that scientists demonstrate faith in an ordered, rational universe--a fact that they cannot explain but absolutely depend on. Unlike most other religions, Christianity teaches that the universe is ordered. That's one of the main reasons that science has thrived in Christian countries. It's Christianity that forms the basis for scientific advancement.

What Does The Bible Say About Work?

This is an excellent article about how Christians should approach their work.

The Path of More

A few months ago, my husband and I moved out of the small apartment we had been living in since we got married to a much larger duplex across town. In many ways we feel incredibly blessed by our new location and the deal we got on our rent. We’re near friends and have quite a bit more space (including a garage, which our poor cars are thankful for after years of exposure to Missouri weather.)

Isn’t it tragically funny, though, how the human heart is never content, never satiated? What a voracious appetite I have for MORE. I'm especially reminded of this inherent tendency around Christmas time, when all of a sudden I need so many MORE things than I ever realized. But, back to our new place...Instead of being thankful for what God has provided for our family, I often find myself looking around thinking, “if only we had a headboard and new mattress for our bed,” "if only we had a nice yard," “if only we had a house that we owned”…then…then I’d be content. I look at what others around me have and thoughts creep in like, “why don’t we have what they have?” Or, “If I could have what their family has…then…then I’d be content.”

What a sickness this MORE way of thinking so quickly becomes—one that leads to jealousy, discontentment, self-pity, complaining, worry, and despair. I hate my MORE path! God hates my MORE path! Yet, I jump right on it again and again. It’s my default mode, my home base, my Easy Button. What then would God have me do when I turn to my MORE mindset? Here are a few things I've been learning...

1) Remember where the MORE path leads. Ultimately, it can lead to our spiritual destruction.

1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

2) Repent of the MORE way of thinking. Confess my sin to God and ask for His forgiveness. (Psalm 51 is a great example of repentance.)

3) Cultivate a heart of thankfulness that celebrates (instead of worships) God’s good gifts.

1 Timothy 4:4, “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving….”

4) Remember that my true and lasting satisfaction lies in God alone, not in MORE of anything else.

Proverbs 19:23, “The fear of the LORD leads to life: Then one rests content, untouched by trouble.”

Isaiah 58:11 “And the LORD will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail."

Hebrews 13:5, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’”

When I begin to see and obey God in these ways, the MORE addiction begins to lose its hold. For a brief time my “then…then I’d be content” turns into “now…now I am content.” Lord, I pray that you’d help us all continually seek MORE of You and that our “thens” would turn to “nows.”

To further ponder this topic, you might want to check out a great sermon by John Piper entitled “Battling the Unbelief of Covetousness."

More on The Golden Compass

Dave has already very capably posted on the controversy surrounding the upcoming release of The Golden Compass, which is the first movie adaptation of atheist/agnostic Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy. Along similar lines, I thought it might be helpful to draw attention to another excellent commentary on the same subject—especially since the movie’s release is set for this weekend.

Jeffery Overstreet is movie critic for Christianity Today and the author of Through a Screen Darkly: Looking Closer at Beauty, Truth, and Evil in the Movies. In this article, he gives some of the soundest and sanest advice for how Christians should approach these books/films that I’ve yet seen. Overstreet’s work here provides an excellent example of wise and measured Christian engagement with popular art and ideas that are in opposition to biblical faith. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, even if you’re not particularly interested in The Golden Compass itself. I can’t recommend it enough.

All These People Agree With The Bible?

It isn’t often that a Christian finds their world view supported by an indie rock band, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and a New York Times columnist. And yet it is difficult for anyone to deny the universal sinfulness of human beings.

In 1986, Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the persecuted around the world. His most well known book is Night which the The New York Times calls “A slim volume of terrifying power.” The book is Wiesel’s personal account of the evil that he encountered in Germany’s concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Being subjected to the horrors of human cruelty, it is in the camps that he lost his faith in God.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. (Night, 34)

Although there are plenty of reminders of the evil that human beings are capable of, even the most hardened can still be surprised. On April 19, 2006, Thomas Friedman, the Foreign Affairs Columnist for the New York Times, was interviewed by James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly on the Charlie Rose Show. Friedman, a supporter of the Iraq war and a critic of its execution, was asked what mistakes he made, if any, when he offered his support to the plan to oust Sadaam Hussein. His answer was startling. Friedman, a well traveled, historically aware man if there ever was one, replied that he wrongly underestimated the depravity of those who would send suicide bombers into funerals and cut off the heads of innocent civilians.

It seems that Friedman is not alone. Many people get lulled into believing the 21st century dogma that we are all essentially good people and that our sinfulness is more of a product of our environment than our nature. Sure, we affirm that evil is real and dangerous but it remains distant and far off – something other people do. Simply put: there is a severe disconnect between the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves.

Enter the Flaming Lips, the indie rock band whose latest full CD release is At War With the Mystics. Known for their outrageous lyrics, startling videos, and circus like concerts, one of the Lips most downloaded songs off the new album is The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song. The lyrics make the universal personal.

The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song

If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch
Would you do it?
If you could make everybody poor just so you could be rich
Would you do it?
If you could watch everybody work while you just lay on your back
Would you do it?
If you could take all the love without giving any back
Would you do it?
And so we cannot know ourselves or what we'd really do...

With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?

If you could make your own money and then give it to everybody
Would you do it?
If you knew all the answers and could give it to the masses
Would you do it?
No no no no no no are you crazy?
It's a very dangerous thing to do exactly what you want
Because you cannot know yourself or what you'd really do

With all your power
With all your power
With all your power

The truth is that sin isn’t someone else’s problem. It’s our problem. The same sins that we rightly find repulsive when we see them in others are in our own heart. Are we honest enough with God and ourselves to admit that?

Any explanation of human beings that doesn’t satisfactorily explain this corruption must be rejected as naïve and incomplete. Say what you might, the Bible explains the evil we see in the world as well as in ourselves.

Back to Elie Wiesel’s story. The thing that I most respect is his honesty. He confesses that he too “didn’t pass the test.” In his account we see the ways that the Jews, the victims, mistreated each other. Will we be as honest?

Where does this discussion about our own sinfulness lead us? It should lead us to the cross.

In perhaps the most well known passage in the book, Wiesel recounts how the prisoners were made to watch the hanging of a child. As each man was forced to walk by and look at him at close range he heard a man behind him ask…

“For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…”

Now I don’t want to pretend that I know what the author meant. Perhaps, Wiesel was saying that his God was dying as a result of what he was seeing. If so, he isn’t alone. Many people leave their faith because they are unable to reconcile their view of God with their experience in the world.

But I can’t read those words without thinking of Jesus who “became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” The Christian answer isn’t to deny evil or to minimize its brutal effects. The Bible simply points to Jesus and says that on the cross he bore our sins, he became sin for us, he took the wrath of God that we deserved upon himself, he paid the penalty for sin. And not just the sins of others. He died for my sin. My pride, my gossip, my anger, my selfishness, my greed—the wrath I deserved for these sins and countless more was poured out on Jesus.

College Football as a Means of Grace

It’s true. God really does use college football as a way to dispense grace into my life. In fact, this can happen in a lot of ways (my wife occasionally urges me to write a post about them, having once charitably listened to my extended argument for the genuine value of sports). For now, however, I’ll limit myself to saying that God sometimes graciously uses sports—and most recently college football—in a way that I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen.

To give you a little background: for as long as I can remember, I’ve been a serious Mizzou football fan. I chafed at the fact that, while I grew up in Missouri, my hometown was located only 10 minutes or so from the Nebraska border. That meant an endless stream of Cornhusker football talk from the Omaha TV stations. I didn’t want to hear about the (almost always dominant) Huskers. I was starved for news about my Tigers.

Of course, for most of my life, news about the Tigers was mostly disappointing. I’ve suffered through a number of three or four win seasons, always with the groundless (in retrospect) hope that next year would be better.

I won’t even go into the Kicked Ball and the Fifth Down.

(Except to point out that, in the case of the latter, Charles Johnson, Colorado’s QB, failed to get into the end zone even on fifth down for crying out loud! But I digress….)

Needless to say, Mizzou’s gradual resurgence over the last few years has brought me a lot of satisfaction. And it’s been even better since Shay Roush and I have been able to witness things unfold somewhat firsthand in our role as team chaplains. Standing in an endzone after the Tigers’ win over Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City a couple of weekends ago, drinking in the scene of players and coaches celebrating in front of thousands of jubilant Mizzou fans, tears literally came to my eyes.

So you can imagine my disappointment after last week’s loss to Oklahoma in the Big 12 championship game. Newly minted at the nation’s top ranked team and only 30 minutes away from playing for the national championship (the game was tied 14-14 at half), it seemed like the Tigers’ season was the stuff of destiny. When the dust settled, however, the Sooners had prevailed 38-17.

And the pain only got worse the next day, when the Tigers failed to receive an invitation to play in a prestigious Bowl Championship Series bowl game. Adding insult to injury was the fact that both Kansas and Illinois did receive bids for those coveted games, despite the fact that Mizzou beat both on neutral fields and remained the higher ranked team in the polls.

So now the moral of the story.

Honestly, if someone would have offered me in August the opportunity for Mizzou to win the Big 12 North Division, play in the conference championship game, compile a 11-2 record, and receive an invitation to the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s day, I would have said something like, “How much do you want and where do I sign?” But jump ahead three months to the morning after the Oklahoma game and I find the fan in me seriously disappointed.

Mizzou football has therefore become yet another vivid illustration of my wretched tendency to always want more than I’ve been given. If I’m truthful with myself, I know that even a national championship wouldn’t satisfy me completely. I’d just want another the next year, and the year after that, and so on.

The same thing is true in virtually every area of my life. I want everything from more material wealth to crispier French fries in my drive through meal. But if I got those things, I’d want even more of the same, or I’d shift my discontent to something else. There’s always people who need to get a better understanding of what an impressive person I am, or traffic lights that don’t change when they should (i.e., when I want them to), etc., etc. You get the idea.

And so, at the end of the day, Mizzou football is another way for God to remind me that there is really only one thing—or rather person—who will meet my deepest need and desire, only one person who will satisfy me completely and without fail: him. To know the God of the universe as a loving Father, to be united with his Son, to be able to rest on his promises, to be secure in the hope that he provides, to have access to the power that flung creation into existence—that is to be rich beyond any imagining. Having grasped this fact far better than I do, Paul can therefore write, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Phillipians 4:13).

May that become more and more descriptive of all our lives. And for those of you with Cotton Bowl tickets, I’ll see you there!

National Geographic's Error

In April 2006, National Geographic published an article claiming new evidence about Jesus from the gospel of Judas. Having gotten a hold of the ancient text, the magazine hired specialists to translate the letter. At the time they reported that the newly discovered document cast Judas in a way that is a odds with the canonical gospels. Here's an excerpt...

Biblical accounts suggest that Jesus foresaw and allowed Judas's betrayal.

As told in the New Testament Gospels, Judas betrayed Jesus for "30 pieces of silver," identifying him with a kiss in front of Roman soldiers. Later the guilt-ridden Judas returns the bribe and commits suicide, according to the Bible.

The Gospel of Judas, however, gives a very different account.

The text begins by announcing that it is the "secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover."

It goes on to describe Judas as Jesus' closest friend, someone who understands Christ's true message and is singled out for special status among Jesus' disciples.

In the key passage Jesus tells Judas, "'you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.'"

Kasser, the translation-project leader, offers an interpretation: "Jesus says it is necessary for someone to free him finally from his human body, and he prefers that this liberation be done by a friend rather than by an enemy.

"So he asks Judas, who is his friend, to sell him out, to betray him. It's treason to the general public, but between Jesus and Judas it's not treachery."

In Saturday's New York Times, April DeConick, professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University wrote a stinging editorial exposing shoddy work in the translation.

Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” — in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”

Likewise, Judas is not set apart “for” the holy generation, as the National Geographic translation says, he is separated “from” it. He does not receive the mysteries of the kingdom because “it is possible for him to go there.” He receives them because Jesus tells him that he can’t go there, and Jesus doesn’t want Judas to betray him out of ignorance. Jesus wants him informed, so that the demonic Judas can suffer all that he deserves.

Perhaps the most egregious mistake I found was a single alteration made to the original Coptic. According to the National Geographic translation, Judas’s ascent to the holy generation would be cursed. But it’s clear from the transcription that the scholars altered the Coptic original, which eliminated a negative from the original sentence. In fact, the original states that Judas will “not ascend to the holy generation.” To its credit, National Geographic has acknowledged this mistake, albeit far too late to change the public misconception.

What could account for this unprofessional work? The professor speculates...

How could these serious mistakes have been made? Were they genuine errors or was something more deliberate going on? This is the question of the hour, and I do not have a satisfactory answer....

That said, I think the big problem is that National Geographic wanted an exclusive. So it required its scholars to sign nondisclosure statements, to not discuss the text with other experts before publication. The best scholarship is done when life-sized photos of each page of a new manuscript are published before a translation, allowing experts worldwide to share information as they independently work through the text.

So it seems that in an attempt to gain a scoop, the National Geographic may have done sloppy work and unnecessarily impugned the reliability of the gospels. Now that this has come to light, will the magazine publicize their mistake with the same enthusiasm they did the original story?

Who Forgives An Atheist?

How does an atheist respond when they know that they have done something morally wrong? Ian McEwan, the author of many well known (and in my opinion very good) books, was confronted with that question during a recent interview in the New York Times. Here is a short excerpt...

Q: Your novel “Atonement” — the story of Briony Tallis, a novelist who tells a lie in her girlhood and hurts her older sister in a way for which she can never atone — has been made into a film...It seems to me that the impulse to atone is a religious one, and yet you are a self-declared atheist.

A: Yes, I am an atheist, and probably Briony is, too. Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It’s a little easier if you’ve got a god to forgive you. (complete interview)

Atheists have a very difficult time consistently living out their own beliefs. All of this is made very clear by McEwan's answer to the question. A few observations along that line...

1. How does an atheist like McEwan explain "conscience"? Although there are many varieties of atheists, most are materialists meaning that they believe that physical matter is the only reality. If that's true, then how does one account for a guilty conscience? If conscience is nothing more than chemicals and other physical processes, then it can be safely ignored. But that's exactly the problem. McEwan and his character can't ignore their own guilt.

2. How does an atheist come to the conclusion that anything is morally wrong in the first place? There is no need to rehearse the moral argument for the existence of God since it is so widespread. (If you are unfamiliar with it and are interested in doing some reading, there is no better place to look than Lewis' Mere Christianity.) And yet regardless of how well known the moral argument is, I find it surprising to see how many atheists seem unable to avoid running afoul of it. The only conclusion that I can draw is that the atheist cannot live consistently with their own world view that necessarily teaches that there are no moral absolutes.

3. When the atheist knows they have violated their own moral conscience, what do they do with that? How do they reconcile with a God they deny exists? How do they reconcile with themselves when they deny that they are spiritual beings?

Of course all of this is very sad when you think about it. Biblical Christianity offers an explanation to what every atheist (and every person) experiences in their life. Made in the image of God, human beings are both physical and spiritual beings. Sin is breaking God's eternal law and necessarily brings guilt. And God stands ready to forgive sinners, cleanse their conscience, and reconcile them to himself.

Let's don't look down smugly on atheists. After all if God hadn't opened our eyes, we would be blind to spiritual truth as well. Instead, let's pray that God would intervene in the life of McEwan (and others like him) and bring him to faith in Jesus.