No Need to Choose Between Doctrine and Love

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Matt

“Doctrine divides” became a popular refrain in Theological Liberalism, and its popularity continues as this heresy is rebranded as the “Emergent Church.” The idea is basically that when people believe different things about the world, it gets in the way of fellowship and creates a division between them. This is true after a fashion. However, being that I am a Christian rather than a Theological Liberal, I am compelled to put it differently: When a person disbelieves the truth, it creates a division between him and those who do believe the truth. This more precise formulation makes it clear that doctrine as such does not divide. Only false doctrine divides. Unfortunately, “doctrine divides” is itself a false doctrine—a teaching that contradicts what Christ taught on the subject.

But what is the appeal of such a doctrine? What does it bring to the table besides alliteration? Usually, the division brought about by doctrine is seen as inhibiting love. For some people, this is simply because division gets in the way of banding together to help the less fortunate (this was a big thrust of Theological Liberalism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.) However, as modernism gives way to postmodernism and Theological Liberalism becomes less about the benevolent plans of a centralized organization and more about subjective hyper-individualistic experience, doctrine’s supposed infringement upon love takes a different form. It has become essential rather than circumstantial. Division doesn’t just inhibit organized efforts to love, but is increasingly seen as being, itself, unloving.

Many people have taken up the idea that unconditional love means unconditional acceptance. Accordingly, doctrine and its standards of truth and falsehood inhibit acceptance and therefore love. They then conclude that doctrine is unimportant at best and hurtful at worst. This is reasonable in its own way. It follows a simple modus ponens:

1) If absolute love means absolute acceptance, then doctrine is harmful.
2) Absolute love does mean absolute acceptance.
3) Therefore doctrine is harmful.

It’s important to remember, however, that one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens. It’s just as logical to say:

1) If unconditional love means unconditional acceptance, then doctrine is harmful.
2) Doctrine is not harmful.
3) Therefore unconditional love does not mean unconditional acceptance.

So how do we choose between these two equally logical arguments? Well, we decide which of the conflicting premises is better supported. It’s “Doctrine is not harmful” vs “Absolute love means absolute acceptance.”

If one were to consult the Bible on the subject, it would be an open-and-shut case. Jesus couldn’t have been clearer about the danger of false teachers and the necessity of his Church teaching what he himself taught. Of course, if someone is already shying away from doctrine, he probably doesn’t particularly care what the Bible says on the subject. Thankfully, our reason comes to the same conclusion. As I indicated at the beginning of this post, “doctrine divides” is, itself, a doctrine. After all, a doctrine is nothing more than “a particular principle, position, or policy taught or advocated.” So even the “doctrine divides” crowd recognizes the beneficial importance of doctrine—they just pursue it absentmindedly instead of deliberately, and it shows in the quality of what they produce. Reason’s verdict, it seems, is just as open-and-shut as Scripture’s.

But what shall we make of the idea that absolute love means absolute acceptance? Once again, a Biblical consultation makes the answer very plain. Scripture is all about God’s perfect love for humanity, but it’s very clear that God does not accept every behavior, every belief, or even every person. Jesus was abundantly clear about narrow roads leading to Life and broad paths leading to Hell. But again, for those who disregard Scripture, reason still has something to say.

Absolute love does not mean absolute acceptance for a very simple reason: it is better to give than to receive. This is a Biblical principle, but its current popularity is generally due to the way it coincides with the imagination of the post-Christian West. Theological Liberals generally sees the Bible as a loose collection of documents written by a diverse crowd among whom the only real connection is an attempt to make sense of their various religious experiences. It can therefore be disregarded whenever our own religious experiences say “no” but held onto whenever the two coincide. For most, the two do coincide in the case of “it is better to give than to receive.”

So how does this apply to love and acceptance? Acceptance is all about receipt. Love, on the other hand, is all about giving. Accordingly, an all-loving God gives all of Himself to the world. However, this does not mean he must accept that which stands in the way of that giving. Sinful humanity is opposed to God; faithlessness rejects His gifts. As a result, those who do not believe remain condemned. This is not due to any deficiency in God’s love. It is only due to our own rejection of what was given.

As C.S. Lewis noted, when most people say “God is love,” they really mean “Love is god.” Despite how similar they sound, there is a world of difference. According to the former, there is a wonderful thing called love. We see glimmers of it in our lives, but as through a mirror dimly. We do not practice or recognize love as we should. In God, however, we encounter love as it truly is because God is love. On the other hand, when we mean “Love is god,” we still notice that there is a wonderful thing called love that we see glimmers of in our lives. However, we then elevate this thing from our own experience above all others and treat it as a god.

When we take this route, we make an idol of our own pitiful efforts at love and end up with all sorts of erroneous ideas about God because we are building Him in our own image. If we then take Biblical doctrine and consider it unloving, the only standard we are comparing it to is our own invention. At this point, our complaints about God and His teachings amount to nothing more than, “these teachings must not be God’s, because if I were God, I would teach something different.” It is hard to overstate how impoverished this experiential view of love is. It is far better to receive our ideas about love from the doctrines of One who is, Himself, Love than to box Him in by our own misconceived doctrines.

Posted in Apologetics, Ethics, Theological Liberalism, Theology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Cons of College

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Matt

There was a great disturbance on Facebook last week when thousands of feminists suddenly cried out in terror, but were anything but silent. They were responding to a blog post (originally) called 6 Reasons to NOT Send Your Daughter to College. The charges were predictable (“misogynistic,” “barefoot and pregnant,” “oppression,” etc.) and unfortunately, it seems that most people were too busy freaking out to actually consider anything it said. Accordingly, I’d like to do so here.

A few notes before we begin:

First, college is too often assumed to be essential to life—that it’s part of the way to become a good American or a even good human being. Too many people fail to ask whether they should attend, and simply go to rack up a debt they can never pay or discharge with nothing to show for it but a piece of paper, some fond memories, and rudimentary knowledge of a subject that seemed interesting to them when they started. Before embarking on any endeavor that could end that way, it would be wise to figure out the pros and cons. Middle-class Americans have been all about listing the pros of college for the last 50 years, but it seems most people are shocked by even the prospect that cons worth considering might exist. If one were to take “6 Reasons” as a list of reasons that a woman should never attend college, it would be rather dubious. However, if one takes them as entries in a much-needed list of cons, one is on much better footing. Whatever the author might have intended, that’s how I intend to take them.

Second, it’s a shame that this needs to be pointed out so often, but men and women are different in important ways. It is entirely appropriate and helpful for a young man and a young woman to have differences on their lists of pros and cons. There are certain vocations for which college is not all that helpful (and may even be detrimental at the same time). The two that top this list are wife and mother. While not all women are called to these responsibilities, very many are and exactly zero men are. These vocations have been looked own on quite a bit (especially wife) but they are among the few that are absolutely essential to the continuation of civilized humanity. Women who are not certain that they are not called to these vocations would do well to carefully consider the costs and benefits of college, and their list will look different than any man’s. Accordingly, it is pure foolishness to condemn the blog post as misogynistic and exclude it from conversation simply because it addressed daughters.

Now onto the list itself:

  1. “She will attract the wrong types of men.”
    I thought I knew where this one was going when I read the title; never have I been so wrong. Rather than warn against the various alpha-male bad boys that are likely to use and discard her, the author warns against gamma-male nice guys looking for a new mother figure to mooch off of. While it’s true that this too is the wrong type of man, I can’t agree that this is a significant concern. She may attract their attention, but it seems unlikely that they’ll attract hers unless they’re artists or musicians.Still, there are wrong types of men that will attract her attention in college, and she would need to be wary of them. This can be mitigated to a certain degree by deliberately distancing oneself from the wider campus culture, but it is a con worth addressing.

  2. “She will be in a near occasion of sin”
    We should flee temptation even if it alters our career-path? While the world may consider this to be madness, to the Christian, this should be an incredibly important point. Christians talk a good game about purity, but at the same time, we tend to think it legalistic to take precautions against it. We tell our kids not to have sex outside of marriage but think it’s A-OK for them to spend copious amounts of time secluded with an attractive member of the opposite sex in order to explore their mutual romantic feelings. This is no less true for college.College culture is incredibly unchaste and must be approached with extreme caution. Again, deliberately distancing oneself from the wider campus culture can be helpful (e.g., living off-campus with parents or relatives, maintaining regular involvement in church and family activities, etc.) But proximity is always dangerous, some level of it is unavoidable if she chooses to attend, and she will be told by nearly everyone she meets there (students, professors, and administrators alike) that she’s crippling herself by not diving right in.

  3. “She will not learn to be a wife and mother”
    This is certainly true, but the way its framed, it’s not terribly compelling. That’s not what anyone goes to college for. It’s true that career-preparation does have the side-effect of devaluing homemaking, but I think it’s an error to see college primarily as career-prep in the first place.I think the more pertinent questions on this subject are 1) to what extent going to college will interfere with the ordinary ways of learning how to be a wife and mother (i.e., instruction from trustworthy wives and mothers) and 2) whether a future wife and mother would gain enough from however many years of college to justify the cost—not just money, but also losing the most fertile years of her life.

  4. “The cost of a degree is becoming more difficult to recoup”
    This is a good thing for everyone considering college to know, and we don’t normally hear it. To the contrary, a few years back, I actually had a professor who argued that going into debt for a philosophy PhD was economically advantageous. It’s a good thing he didn’t teach economics. Year-by-year, the price of college is going up and the benefits are plummeting. But this is especially true for prospective wives and mothers. Student loan debt is entirely capable of forcing women away from their children and into jobs they hate.

  5. “You don’t have anything to prove to the world”
    Another good point on this one. Feminists stuck in an anti-1950’s mentality see college education as a kind of merit badge. A friend of mine who grew up in that generation but never attended college occasionally indicates that she sees herself as stupid because of it. To the contrary, however, she has been in adult Sunday School classes that I’ve taught, and she is definitely among the sharpest students I’ve had. It just goes to show that being well-educated is far more valuable than being well-degreed. Ironically enough, college is not always the best way to become educated.

  6. “It could be a near occasion of sin for the parents”
    This one mostly has to do with the cost of college encouraging contraception as a way to save money. Now, I’m not part of the Church of Rome, and I do not see contraception as inherently sinful. Nevertheless, I do think that most of the use to which contraception is put is sinful. To put it briefly, if we think that our daughters would be better off having her college education than having her brothers and sisters… what does that say about our priorities?

  7. “She will regret it”
    I think this is more of a summary of the rest, but it’s quite true that some women are becoming more comfortable with admitting that college was a mistake despite the stigma of doing so. It’s hard for modern youth to think of themselves as adults and horrifying to think of themselves as middle-aged or older (a side-effect of sequestering them with people their own age for decades on end). But these times do come, and contrary to popular belief, they do not signal that life is no longer worth living. It can’t hurt to remind them to think further ahead than a few years.

Posted in Chastity, Christian Youth, Culture, Feminism | Leave a comment

Children are not Postmodernists

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Matt

“Is my dead dog in heaven?

The question showed up on a list of seven difficult questions posed to the list’s author by her children, and the answer is instructive about the fate of postmodern views of religion when they encounter reality.  The author explains:

We do not subscribe to a specific religion in our house, but we have always believed in leaving room for our kids to find their own paths to God—or not. Our answers to God-related questions have always started with, “Many people believe…”

We figure whatever they grow up believing, as long as it doesn’t harm others, will be fine with us. And above all, we don’t want them thinking that any other people’s beliefs are wrong.

That seems to be the standard line for postmodern parents when religious questions come up, and I suppose it’s fair enough from that perspective. What’s curious, however, is how she answers the original question. The author goes on to explain that “If I’m being honest, my heart is committed to the fluffy-clouds, no-pain, no-sadness version of the afterlife. I imagine my Grandma Lu opening her arms to the soul of my 23 year-old nephew, who passed away three years ago. I imagine them both free of any sort of pain.” This too is standard fare for the spiritual but not religious—fluffy ideas that soothe the wounds we receive when we encounter the bleak reality of death. She continues to describe what her imagination shows her about other loved ones as well as her dog, and on that basis she tells her child, “Yes. I think so.”

It’s quite curious that she doesn’t give her child a list of the various things many people believe on the subject, as she ordinarily does. The other conspicuous absence is the principle that she had indicated was “above all:” that they never think any other beliefs are wrong. Instead, it’s a fairly clear “yes.” Sure, “I think so” is added as a postscript, but that’s an “I think so” from the greatest and most trustworthy authority any 5-year-old knows. Her knowingly make-believe narrative is delivered as more-or-less definitive.

Why the disconnect between postmodern ideals and the concreteness of the answer? I think it’s because even a 5-year-old can recognize the difference between true hope and false hope. If a parent were to answer her child with the bare observation that “some people believe your dog is in heaven,” nary a child would be satisfied. The game would also be up if she were to answer, “Yes, I think so. But never think anyone is wrong if they say your dog has ceased to exist and is simply rotting in the ground.” Even a child recognizes that both halves of a contradiction can’t be true. Even a child knows what it means if he must not think that a fact is wrong.

If even a 5-year-old could recognize the false hope in such answers about a dead pet, then what can these answers offer adults when applied to dead loved ones? If we want to know anything about the afterlife, our best resource is not our imagination; it’s the Man who actually died and actually came back to life a few days later.

Posted in Spiritual But Not Religious | Leave a comment

Jesus Needs to Man Up

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Matt

It seems that Family Life has taken it upon themselves to provide a list of 40 no-no’s to Christian husbands. Some of these new Thou Shalt Not’s are Biblical common sense; others are challenges that men should strive for; some of them are just plain bad advice; and some of them are lies that deny God’s Word. Topping the list of this last category is #27: “Stop telling your wife that she is supposed to ‘submit’ to you. If she is not following you, that means you’re not leading her as Christ loves the church.” Both the imperative in the first sentence and the declarative in the second are worth looking at.

First the imperative: “Stop telling your wife that she is supposed to ‘submit’ to you.” We’ll ignore the scare quotes around “submit” for the time-being.  On one hand, it is highly questionable how useful it is for a husband to tell his rebellious wife that God has instructed her to submit. After all, if he has to say it, then saying it won’t do any more good than any of the other things he’s said that she has disregarded. On top of that, issuing instructions that he knows will not be carried out tends to undermine his own authority over time. And yet, many modern American husbands are in a bit of predicament. They’re the last ones who should be speaking this particular word of God to their wives, and yet no one else is doing so—in many cases, it really has come down to the last person on the list.

The first people should be pastors, for it’s their vocation to preach the whole counsel of God. But how often has this particular counsel crossed the lips of an American pastor? When I studied at seminary, one of my classes spoke of God’s design for marriage, and these complimentary roles of husband and wife: to love sacrificially and to submit, respectively. The professor told us that we can stray from this design in two ways: a domineering and abusive husband on one hand and a rebellious wife on the other. The former error received a great deal of attention and condemnation; little was said about the latter, except an acknowledgment of its existence. I contacted the professor privately with my concerns, and, to his credit, he acknowledged the criticism and provided some balance in a subsequent class. Nevertheless, its discouraging to think that the whole counsel of God needs to be specifically asked for, and that many future pastors probably went through the lesson without anyone asking and therefore without balance.

Indeed, while I’ve never heard it from the pulpit at all, the only time I’ve heard it addressed in a Bible study that I wasn’t leading was to say that “yes, women should submit, but a man has to love as Christ loved” followed by about 10 minutes of instruction on how men should be doing this but are not—much of which amounted to “loving your wife means doing what she wants and never making her upset.” Of course, the practical effect of this approach is to completely invert submission. While this unbalanced treatment might be expected in a Middle-Eastern country in which headship is routinely abused, it is utterly irresponsible in the West where submission is generally seen as a dirty word and a wife’s rebellion is enshrined as both a right and a duty.

The second people who should deliver God’s instruction are the older women of the church, as Paul instructs in Titus 2:3-5. Here too, we encounter a problem. We have reached point in American history in which the older women are the very baby-boomers who sought to abandon this instruction en masse in the first place. It would seem that they have little knowledge of the subject and just as little inclination to train younger women. In many (perhaps most) cases, they are more likely to instruct women to follow their hearts and not be a doormat than to pass on anything God has actually instructed.

The next group on the list are simply brothers and sisters in the faith who admonish and encourage one another in their struggles to live their callings. Here, we do find the occasional voice reminding wives of their God-given responsibilities. Unfortunately, these voices are still fairly rare, socially distant, and are often drowned out by the multitude of voices attempting, one way or another, to redefine submission as some form of not-submission (e.g. mutual respect) and headship as some form of not-headship (e.g. “spiritual” headship.) Furthermore, these voices are easily dismissed because they are outside the American mainstream even in churches, and though they have ample Scriptural support, they are without any substantial pastoral support.

It is only then, when all these other avenues have failed, that we reach the husband—not because he has less responsibility for his wife’s instruction than any of these others or because his authority does not extend to delivering the message, but because his delivery of this message will always look self-serving, even when it is not. And yet, however it may come off, the husband is often the only one willing to deliver God’s message at all.

Now we return to the declarative part of this advice: “If she is not following you, that means you’re not leading her as Christ loves the church.” In other words, “Your wife will naturally submit to you as soon as you start doing an adequate job of leading her; It’s you’re fault that she’s not following God’s instruction. She is excused and you are to blame.” This sentiment seems to come up whenever the topic of submission is discussed. After all, when we are discussing God’s design in marriage, we are talking of something which He called “very good.” Naturally, we would expect it to be of mutual benefit to all involved, and while exploring why this is so is beyond the scope of this blog post, it most certainly is so. Accordingly, in the context of defending God’s Word on this subject, it is entirely appropriate to point out that women seek out this kind of male authority and naturally want to submit to it. For in this context, we mean “naturally” as “according to God’s design in creation.”

All of this changes, however, when the context becomes disobedience to God’s instructions. In this context, “naturally” means “according to our sinful nature,” for that is the only part of our nature that seeks to disregard God’s word. But in this context, submission to proper authority immediately ceases to be something that women do “naturally.” Consider ancient Israel. Was their constant rebellion against God’s authority because God wasn’t leading them well enough? When most of the 5000 men (along with the uncounted women and children among them) who Jesus miraculously fed abandoned him shortly thereafter (John 6), was this because Christ wasn’t loving them as well as Christ loved them? Perhaps the Pharisees’ problem was also that they were just insufficiently loved by Christ. I’ve heard the rhetorical question asked, “What woman wouldn’t want to submit to a man who loves her like Christ loved her?” But like so many rhetorical questions, this one has an unexpected answer: a sinful and rebellious woman. According to the same apostle who wrote about submission, this means all people, women included (Romans 3:10-18). But much of the American church refuses to call a spade a spade in the case of submission. Instead, they blame the husband and tell him to man up.

Paul did not add any conditionals to his instructions to husbands and wives in Ephesians. It’s not, “wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord if they love you as Christ loved the church,” nor is it the other way around for husbands. Indeed, the moment one makes these instructions conditional, they become utterly meaningless. There are no husbands who love their wives as well as Christ loves the church. There are no wives who submit to their husbands as the church ought to submit to Christ. If these are the conditions, then the instructions might as well have never been delivered. But they are delivered and are not conditional. Indeed, Peter makes this explicit in his first epistle when he instructs wives to be subject to their husbands even if they do not obey the word (1 Peter 3:1). The only thing conditions do is to send husbands and wives on a hunt for sin in their spouses in order to excuse their own disobedience.

The Church needs to stop being a party to this madness by returning to its responsibility to teach the whole counsel of God. The feminist rebellion of the last century has brought unprecedented death and misery, and it is shameful that churches have played along with it for so long.

Posted in Feminism, The Modern Church | 1 Comment

Religious Freedom in New Mexico

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Matt

Despite the frequent but dubious suggestions that forcing people to call gay relationships “marriage” won’t hurt anyone, it’s already coming at the expense of religious freedom. You’ve no doubt heard of the Christian photographers in New Mexico who refused to help commemorate a homosexual relationship and the court ruling that forces such participation in the future. I’ve heard a number of arguments from Christians indicating that this ruling does no real harm, and so I’d like to take a moment to offer some counter-arguments.

  1. This ruling does not violate anyone’s religious freedom because it only refers to business dealings in the public sphere. Business dealings in the public sphere are religiously neutral.

    Response: A plurality of gods always requires an additional god that is exalted higher than any of the others to help manage disputes among them. When religious freedom is framed as a pluralistic religious neutrality, it always results in the abolition of real religious freedom for whomever does not worship the chief god of the state. The reason for this is simple: religious neutrality is an incoherent concept.

    Whether you go with Luther, who described a “god” as where we ultimately look to for goodness, or Tillich on the liberal side who described a “god” as an ultimate concern that trumped all others, or even colloquial language in which we describe unwavering devotion to a regular task as “religious,” the common denominator is that a person’s god (whatever form that takes) reigns over everything else. To say to such a god that he may not tread on some particular ground is to deny its divinity altogether by subjecting it to something of even more importance—a higher god. When the state tries to create religion-free zones for the sake of peace, order, equality, or what-have-you, it is anything but religion-free; it is, in fact, imposing its own religion on those involved at the expense of theirs.

  2. This ruling does not violate anyone’s religious freedom because Christians approach financial dealings as businessmen and business-women rather than as Chrisitians.

    Response: It’s certainly true that we approach different tasks according to our different vocations. Accordingly, we approach our public business services as business people. The problem comes in with that additional phrase, “rather than as Christians,” which sets up a false dichotomy between the two. For while our vocations are distinct, they are also unified in the single person who possesses them both. In other words, we do not cease to be Christians as we carry out our other vocations.

    This should be obvious simply from all the instructions God gives Christians regarding financial transactions that would qualify as “public” in the way most people use the term. Even liberals love many of those verses. If we are supposed to conduct business “as business people rather than as Christians,” then these instructions would literally be nonsense.

  3. This ruling does not violate anyone’s religious freedom because Christianity does not actually prohibit Christians from assisting in the commemoration of wickedness.

    Response: Given that God has specifically warned against those who call evil good and good evil, I find this to be a dubious proposition. Still, the practicality of day-to-day life does introduce difficult questions of how exactly one should deal with these kinds of situations. I am open to different answers to these questions; I think it’s a matter best relegated to our own Biblically-informed good judgment. God hasn’t given us a precise flowchart for living, after all.

    However, it is precisely because I am open to different answers that I must contend for the freedoms of those who give either answer. After all, if I were to say what this argument seems to imply, “Christianity doesn’t forbid such actions, therefore requiring them doesn’t violate religious liberty,” all I would really be saying is “my own religious liberties aren’t at stake, therefore the government can violate away.” As they say, “I didn’t speak up when they came for ______…” I’m sure everyone knows how that story ends.

  4. It’s worth this violation of religious freedom so that you won’t be discriminated against yourself. For example, should an unbeliever be allowed to refuse to photograph a Christian wedding?

    Response: If we are to invoke the Golden Rule on this matter, I would have to conclude from its application that I would absolutely not want an unbeliever to be forced to help commemorate and celebrate a Christian marriage. What if this unbeliever is a feminist, as most Americans are? Do I really want some poor feminist photographer to be forced to help commemorate a woman promising (among other things) to submit to a man as unto God for the rest of her natural life? That’s a remarkably offensive notion to many people, and I have no wish to force their participation in it.

  5. It’s worth this violation of religious freedom because allowing business owners to refuse service in such cases would take us back to the days of Jim Crow.

    Response: Yes, racism is bad, mmm’kay? But some ways of combating it bear to high of a price tag. It is true that some civil rights legislation forbids businesses from turning away customers that belong to certain protected groups simply because they belong to said groups. I contend that the price of such laws is too high. Freedom of association and freedom of speech have already been sacrificed on their altar–now freedom of religion joins them. Perhaps it is time to find a way to help oppressed neighbors that doesn’t involve taking away the freedoms of all groups of Americans.

  6. Religious freedom must be violated in such cases because no one has the right to contribute to systematic discrimination against a particular group.

    Response: Once we strip away the overheated rhetoric, this argument is revealed to be a paper tiger. First, let’s get rid of “systematic.” Unless there is some parent company or secret Council of Bigots directing these photographers, then the word doesn’t apply. A moral opinion shared amongst a modest minority does not a “system” make. Second, “discrimination” has become a very loaded term, so let’s call it what it really is in this case: denial of services. Finally, there’s no need for this “group” stuff. Group identities of this kind are constantly shifting and used primarily for cheap and short-sighted political & rhetorical leverage, so I don’t think they belong in our laws.

    The only question that remains is whether American business-people should be allowed to deny services to people with whom they do not want to do business. It’s remarkably easy to answer “yes” to this.

  7. Religious freedom must be violated in order to guard against a Christian-dominated society in which some people will find no businesses that will be willing to serve them.

    Response: This is the kind of argument I would expect to hear from aliens visiting earth for the first time in centuries. Has it happened in the past? Yes. Does it look likely to happen in America anytime soon? No. Describing this possibility as merely “remote” would be far too generous. The Moral Majority is no longer in any way a majority, and it was secular humanist politicians who recently tried (and failed) to break an American business merely because they were tangentially associated with some other people who thought homosexuality was wrong. Contrary to the popular stereotype, it seems that liberals rather than conservatives are the ones stuck in the past—specifically, a largely mythologized 1950’s.

    There is a very remote possibility of such a thing occurring sometime in the future, but fearing this amounts to a phobia. Attempting to preclude every remote possibility of harm and inconvenience to anyone is synonymous with tyranny.

We must learn to understand religious liberty in a way that doesn’t rely on incoherent notions of religiously neutral social zones. Failing that, religious freedom will be lost altogether. As Christians continue to lose the freedoms we have historically enjoyed in America, we’ll need to decide whether to do homage to the government’s god in exchange for citizenship. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, those of us who thought that, in America, Christians had found our place in the world may realize that the world was simply finding its place in us.

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment

Atheism Caused By Genetics

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Matt

I don’t like cilantro. It’s not merely a matter of personal taste, either. I’m one of about 20% of Americans who lack a certain enzyme in our saliva, the result of which is that the popular herb tastes like soap to us. I come across articles about this from time to time, and naturally, they’re always framed so that this particular distaste for cilantro comes off as an abnormality in need of an explanation. This is entirely appropriate: not because the enzyme is missing rather than present, but because having the enzyme is statistically normal. Most people have it, and only a modest minority lack it. If cilantro were generally disliked and about 20% of people had an unusual enzyme that made it taste good to them, these articles would, no doubt, be framed in the opposite way.

It’s curious what happens when the subject of these genetic explanation stories changes from herbs to religion. I came across yet another article the other day seeking to explain religious belief on the basis of genetics.

“Science has shown us clearly that one level of belief in God and overall spirituality is shaped not only by a mix of family environment and upbringing–which is not surprising–but also by our genes. Twin studies conducted around the world in the U.S., the Netherlands and Australia as well as ours in the U.K. show a 40 to 50 percent genetic component to belief in God.”

There’s not much I can say about the merits of the studies themselves since I didn’t read them. The article itself doesn’t make a good case, but that’s par-for-the-course in popular reporting of scientific studies. What struck me as curious about this article and the others like it is how they are almost always framed. It is always religious belief that is in need of an explanation; it is always that “faith is caused by our genes” or “belief in God has a genetic component.” I have yet to come across an article that says, “atheism is, in part, caused by one’s genetic background.”

The reason this is peculiar is that, statistically speaking, atheism is the abnormality. It’s always been a relatively small minority of humans who do not believe in any kind of God or gods. Nevertheless, I’ve never seen an article explain that, for example, one of the reasons atheists do not believe is that they lack a genetic background that enables them to experience spirituality. It would not only be just as fair to describe the results of this study in these terms, but it would be expected due to the weight of human experience falling mostly on the religious side. And yet, the usual framing is analogous to saying “although cilantro tastes like soap to many people, science has clearly shown us that some people possess an enzyme that makes its flavor pleasant.” Such a statement is just as accurate as the usual framing—but it would be strange to encounter it very often given the weight of human experience.

Whether belief or lack of belief in God has a genetic component is immaterial to whether these beliefs are true or false. Likewise, if these studies are accurate (and that is a significant “if”), then it is just as accurate to say that belief is (partially) caused by genetics as it is to say that unbelief is (partially) caused by genetics. Communication requires that it be framed some way, after all. Nevertheless, our framing often reveals our personal biases, and this ubiquitous frame suggests a ubiquitous bias behind it as well.

Posted in Atheism, Science | 1 Comment

A Most Peculiar Animal

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Matt

Though philosophy is usually considered a more high-brow, ivory-tower kind of discipline, it is something everybody practices, whether they do so intentionally or not. Accordingly, philosophies that start out among the elites in the academy always have a way of filtering down into popular culture—even if their formulations become a bit rough in the transition.

One of these is the idea that humans are just another kind of animal. We have some capabilities (e.g. analytical thought) in greater quantity than other animals, while some of our other capabilities (e.g. sight or strength) are markedly inferior to those of other species. The upshot is that while our technical specs might be different in quantity, there is no qualitative difference. Many philosophers contend that the peculiarly human concerns about notions of “higher” things like morality, truth, or beauty are merely the dressing up of the same concerns any animals have. Logical Positivists, for example, contended that when a man says “it’s wrong to murder,” all he really means is “don’t kill me!” Though he seems to be referring to something outside of himself when he says “wrong,” it’s merely a sublimated expression of his own personal desire not to be killed—a desire shared by nearly any animal. Critical Theorists likewise made it their business to reduce what had been considered objective considerations to the mere subjective preference of a particular species.

Though both of these movements are more-or-less defunct a century later, bits and pieces of their thought have nevertheless become commonplace in the public consciousness—even in arenas that are often known for their vacuousness, such as pop music.

Of course, pop music being what it is, these ideas most often find their expression when it comes to sex. The popular refrain of the 90’s, “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel,” is probably the most obvious example, but it might be more beneficial to look at a song with a bit more narrative. In It’s Only Natural by Better than Ezra, the song’s narrative voice tells a story about a woman who abandons that voice’s bed in shame when she hears her father’s approach. The voice then chides her for this behavior in the chorus: “Don’t fight it if it feels good / You hide it, but you never should / Don’t listen to the voices in your head / What are you and me but monkeys in a tree? / It’s only natural.” Like many 20th century philosophers, the message is that the higher concepts of things like chastity, purity, and sexual morality that most of human civilization has recognized can (and indeed should) be abandoned for the sake of pleasure. After all, humans are just another kind of monkey, and monkeys do not concern themselves with sexual morality. They simply do what feels good.

Anyone who ponders this suggestion should eventually notice a rather glaring peculiarity. In the view of the narrative voice of the song, humans are apparently the only species of monkey that have to be convinced to act like monkeys. After all, I have never heard of any evidence to suggest that a monkey’s ‘monkeyness’ is purely the result of a social movement among simians. Monkeys may not concern themselves with sexual morality, but this is hardly because some monkeys convinced the others to set aside their outdated rules!

Perhaps the suggestion that sex is only natural for us humans is true. Nevertheless, even based on the song itself, this is not the end of the story, for shame at having illicit sex is also only natural for us humans. Indeed, shame in general is so natural to us that the narrative voice of the song basically shames the young woman into not feeling ashamed! Though the song tries to communicate a message of “follow your heart” in order to be free of our society’s restrictive inhibitions, it does so by adding different inhibitions. In essence, it advises ignoring the heart just as much as it advocates following it. It has to, for the woman’s heart is in conflict with itself. This is the ultimate problem with following your heart—your heart is full of all sorts of contradictory feelings and inclinations. It is fundamentally incapable of guiding itself. Many suggest that this is solved by following only the strongest of our heart’s inclinations. But paradoxically, putting all of your feelings into a cage-match in which the sole victor guides our behavior would be more accurately characterized as not following your heart, for far more is repressed and rejected than is followed.

Thankfully, even if you only consider alt-rock bands from the 90’s, there is more sophisticated music out there. I have, for example, been a fan of Toad the Wet Sprocket for decades now (writing that just made me feel remarkably old.) As songwriters, their topical interests have always been broader than pop music’s usual selection (the last girl, the current girl, or the next girl). So when they sing about us being mere animals in a bonus track for their forthcoming album (I received an advance download for Kickstarting it), their interest is less about sex than it is about a broader humanism.

At its core, Friendly Fire tries to be an expression of human unity. It categorizes intra-human ideological conflict as “friendly fire;” the idea being that in hurting one another, we’re only hurting ourselves. But instead of learning this, we choose to “believe” instead. Thus, the song also includes humanism’s usual anti-religious overtones: “Get up off your knees / Don’t bow your head anymore / Raise your voice to sing / One song true enough for us all.” Religion is seen as a divisive element responsible for much of the “friendly fire” of human conflict. It makes us see enemies where there are none because no religion is true enough for everyone

The new basis for unity that the song suggests is that we’re all beautiful animals. We all come from the earth (not the sky) and there is therefore no real separation or difference between us. But is this song really true enough for us all?

As the song implies by calling us animals, that we all come from the earth removes not only the separation between humans and other humans, but the separation between humans and animals as well. This does cut us off from the ideologies that divide us, for animals have no ideologies. However, that’s not all it does. It also inadvertently cuts us off from the ideologies that unite us, for animals have no ideologies. Animals don’t need to find a song true enough for them all, nor do they have any concept of themselves as beautiful. They neither have nor need any epiphanies about biological or evolutionary relationships to modify their behavior, and unity is not generally a big concern.

Being a part of nature, on its own, does not provide any basis for unity. Nature has, after all, has been quite accurately described as “red of tooth and claw.” Though the chorus reiterates that you “can’t trade one life for another,” many animals survive their environments only because they do precisely that. This is normal for animals. One might try and sublimate this into an inspiring story of the circle of life or the beautiful fragility of ecosystems as many species live and die in a delicate balance, but all that does is sublimate violence and death. It may label that violence as friendly fire, but it removes the stigma of the label—we are left without any basis for thinking that friendly fire is actually a bad thing.

The insurmountable problem with seeking unity on these terms is not found in a departure from human nature, but in an indelible part of it. Intrinsic to human life is judgment—the very thing that discerns good from bad and right from wrong. Whether it’s a woman judging illicit sex to be shameful, a man judging feelings of shame to be shameful, a priest judging an unbeliever as an infidel, or a humanist judging a priest as divisive, humans always judge. Every plea from postmodernism that judgment be abandoned is accompanied by judgments about why this ought to be so. Every progressive band that seeks peace does so because they judge peace to be good and conflict to be bad. Every liberal who chides someone about “forcing” his morality on others is nevertheless “forcing” his morality on others, for chiding is an act of moral judgment. Despite their best efforts, humans cannot escape judgment or the making of judgments, and yet the very act of judgment is fundamentally divisive.

This is where secular humanism falls apart, for if we must judge, we must have a basis on which to judge. “Unity is good and division is bad because _______.” The blank must be filled in. Humanity itself cannot be this basis, for this is the same humanity that rapes, murders, pillages, and lies. Neither can humans invent this basis, for we all seek to invent different ones and would need something uninvented to help us choose between them. In short, human unity can only exist when we all acknowledge a common foundation.

Secular humanism needs a foundation external to humanity, and yet it cannot admit to one’s existence without abandoning the “secular” modifier. If no religion is true enough for everyone, then humanism isn’t true enough for anyone. Our bare similarities with animals simply will not do.

The only coherent forms of humanism are the religious forms—the ones that can view human nature as something good that has been given from outside and which ought to be conformed to. It is only on such a basis that we can distinguish human nature in the sense of “what we observe humans doing” from human nature in the sense of “what humans ought to be.” And yet, this is an aspect of human nature (in both senses) that is entirely alien to other animals.

Indeed, as an animal, humans are so peculiar that one wonders whether “animal” is really a helpful category to place us in. It seems rather like saying that a Ferrari is a peculiar kind of bicycle.

Posted in Culture, Humanism, Natural Law | 2 Comments

Faithless Feedback

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Matt

How do non-Christians feel about “being on the receiving end of the efforts of Christian evangelicals to convert them?” Or, putting it in Christian language, “how do unbelievers feel about having heard a Gospel that they didn’t believe?” I think the rephrase reveals some of the problems inherent in John Shore’s forthcoming attempt to revamp Christian evangelism based on responses to this question.

Perhaps most obviously, it takes a marketing approach towards a message that is, from the beginning, a self-proclaimed stumbling block and foolishness to those who haven’t believed it. But even from a marketing perspective, he seems to be working from a skewed sample. While he has no shortage of comments from perturbed non-Christians, he might have also asked Christian converts how they feel about having heard the Gospel from Christians before they came to believe. After all, it might be wise to have both sides of the story before trying to get one side to stop what they’re doing. That said, there are a few lessons to be learned from the comments that Shore posted, though I doubt they were the ones he intended.

First a disclaimer: It is not my intention here to discount any and every criticism of the ways in which Christians try to reach unbelievers. While Peter instructs us to always be able to give a reason for the hope that we have, he also tells us to provide it with gentleness and respect—two qualities that sinners (Christian or otherwise) tend to struggle with. Likewise, there have long been anti-intellectual and anti-doctrinal trends in American Christianity that ultimately confuse and obscure the proclamation of the Gospel. I would certainly recommend that every Christian learn their faith well and develop the rhetorical skills to communicate it to the best of his or her ability. That said, I don’t think Shore’s collection of comments are terribly helpful in that regard. I find that they reveal more about the unbeliever than about the evangelist.

One such revelation is that many of these unbelievers have absolutely no idea what Jesus actually taught. “Separatism” is the very thing Jesus warned against? Jesus taught a version of “loving one another” that precludes teaching them Christianity? The Law is Jesus’ core message? One wonders exactly where their views on Jesus come from. Are they talking about the same Jesus who said he came to bring the sword and divide mother from daughter, and so forth? (Matthew 10:34-35) The same Jesus who told his followers to make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching? (Matthew 28:19) The same Jesus who taught that his ministry was all about his death, resurrection, and the forgiveness of sins? (Luke 24:44-47) Some of these responders were quick to affirm that they have no problem with Jesus—just with Christians. It begins to look like this is only because they don’t have the foggiest idea what Jesus actually taught.

Perhaps their ignorance is understandable since they don’t follow Christ. What is less understandable is this: Though they may not know anything about Christ’s teachings, they are not at all shy about correcting Christ’s followers on the subject. Despite their ignorance, there were quite a few statements that Christians “need to go back to their Bibles, and take a closer look at Jesus.” To be fair, many so-called Christians are just as ignorant about what Jesus teaches as these unbelievers. Well, that much is a problem that Christians can and should solve. But when it comes to evangelism, there’s not so much we can do about the apparently invincible ignorance of our unbelieving audience.

The other revelation from these comments is the excessive sensitivity they belie. One writes, “The main thing that baffles and angers me about Christians is how they can understand so little about human nature that when, in their fervor to convert another person, they tell that person (as they inevitably do, in one way or another), ‘You’re bad, and wrong, and evil,’ they actually expect that person to agree with them. It pretty much guarantees that virtually the only people Christians can ever realistically hope to convert are those with tragically low self-esteem.” Read that again. Now, “one way or another” pretty much rules out the Christian’s rhetoric as the core problem between this unbeliever and his evangelist. The core problem is the scandal of sin. “How can these Christians actually believe this absurdity that there might actually be something wrong with me?” There is no way of dressing up Jesus’ statements that this is precisely the case without excising his teaching altogether. The Pharisees couldn’t believe or accept that they were sick and in need of a physician. Neither, apparently, can many American unbelievers.

Far more revealing is how often Christ’s recognition of humanity’s sinfulness (a teaching of which Christians are only the messenger) is interpreted as “hate.” Now, there’s no question that this is an unpleasant diagnosis to hear. In addition, one might disagree with the accuracy of the diagnosis without being considered overly sensitive. But calling it “hate?” Telling a person that they have cancer isn’t hateful. Neither is telling a person that they stand condemned before God. Christians aren’t the ones making that judgment—God is. A newspaper isn’t “hating” a criminal when it reports that they have been found guilty in a court of law. Neither are Christians when they explain God’s Law and His judgment on those who have broken it.

What does all this mean for Christians’ approach to evangelism? Not too much. Invincible ignorance and hyper-sensitivity are character flaws in the hearer, not in the messenger. Once again, good rhetoric is—unsurprisingly—good. Those with the aptitude for it should pursue it with diligence. It can’t hurt to clearly frame our message as what Jesus teaches. Neither can it hurt to be clear that the Gospel isn’t a new law that we must obey lest we go to Hell. However, these things are not a panacea that cures another person’s faults. Jesus warned us that the world hated him and will hate us because of him. While it is true that the world may sometimes also hate Christians because we’re jerks, we possess no ability to remove their hatred altogether.

Only the Holy Spirit can overcome these issues, and He does so through the very delivery of His scandalous message. Ours is simply to deliver. We should always deliver it with gentleness and respect. Likewise, those Christians who are at all thoughtful and articulate should not be less thoughtful and articulate when they speak about their religion. Neither should those who are kind cease to be kind when they speak about their religion. The Holy Spirit will, no doubt, work through that very kindness and articulation. But He has promised to always be in and with the message without ever telling us that he works proportionately with our rhetorical skill.

Our own popularity is immaterial to our task. Spread the Gospel. Tell it well rather than poorly. But don’t think that reception hinges on your skill and sensitivity.

Posted in Spiritual But Not Religious, The Modern Church, Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment

Why Millennials Leave, and What to Do About It

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Matt

There are two temptations a Christian encounters whenever he reads about why young people are leaving the church. The first is to seek to transform the church into whatever young people want it to be in order to retain them. This, of course, always becomes an abandonment of both the Gospel and the Great Commission. The second temptation, however, is to dismiss the analysis entirely in order to avoid the first temptation. We can learn from these studies. But in order to do so, we must read them through the lens of Scripture.

Consider, for example, this analysis by Rachel Held Evans who, like myself, was born with one foot in generation-x and one foot in generation-y. To get the obvious out of the way, an orthodox Christian cannot pursue her vision of transforming the church into an advocacy group for liberal political goals like the affirmation of sodomy and the promotion of environmentalism under the Christianized moniker of “creation care.” Regardless of what one thinks liberal politics as such, the church’s function, according to Scripture, is instead to baptize and teach what Jesus taught. Nevertheless, assuming her analysis is accurate, there are several ways in which her conclusions can still be useful to a congregation that follows Christ rather than fashionable politics.

Perhaps the most obvious is as an aid to resisting temptations that we should be resisting anyway. For example, many congregations, scared of the increasing number of gray heads they see on Sundays, feel compelled to throw out beautiful liturgy, hymns, and ceremonies, in favor of music and atmosphere that those same gray-haired baby-boomers believe millennials will think is just “groovy.” Like many others, Ms. Evans has found that, if anything, the church-marketing strategies of the past few decades hurt rather than help millennial attendance. We have been marketed to more than any previous generation, and we simply do not like it. It’s true enough that contemporary worship would be ill-advised even if it really drew a crowd, but knowing that it doesn’t still makes it easier to reject.

The second low-hanging fruit is when the analysis reveals that youth are looking for something that we’re supposed to be providing anyway, but are not. The fact is, sometimes the church neglects its God-given responsibilities, and sometimes that neglect happens to drive people away. Consider Ms. Evans’ finding that “millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.” We absolutely should be doing this already. As I wrote in As Though It Were Actually True:

Too often, Christians deal with doubt in an improper way. …We often tell ourselves or even others “you just need to have faith” as though faith were something that we work towards rather than something God gives us. Too often, we… try to suppress feelings of doubt without ever dealing with the fact of doubt. It is true enough that a Christian should not doubt God, but simply advising her to “stop it” does not cure doubt anymore than it does sin. Humans have a God-given need for truth and understanding. Ignoring those needs by suppressing doubt makes about as much sense as ignoring hunger or thirst in hopes that it will simply go away.

Rigorous teaching is usually accompanied by students who ask and wrestle with difficult questions. We should find the same thing in the Church. Hard questions are not something we should be afraid of; rather, as Peter tells us, “Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” When someone comes back from college having heard that the New Testament is an unreliable copy of a copy of a copy, we shouldn’t just command them to have faith; we should show them how the manuscript evidence proves otherwise. Our intellect should not be divorced from our religion.

Finally, there are the more difficult subjects. “We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.” “We want a truce between science and faith.” “young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between … compassion and holiness.” These may very well be accurate statements about young evangelicals. However, the Church’s raison d’etre is to teach what Christ taught—even those unpopular teachings about creation, sodomy, and sin. For example, while we should certainly welcome LGBT people to the forgiveness we share in Christ, we can hardly expect them to feel welcome when we teach that same-sex liaisons are an abomination. And yet we must teach exactly that because that is what Christ taught. Theistic evolution may be the quick and easy way out of the faith/science conflict, but it’s contrary to what Christ taught, and so we must avoid it.

What then shall we do with such findings? Even if the easy prescriptions must be cast aside, we can still use the findings to indicate where we need to teach apologetics. Is there a conflict between Christianity and science? Let’s teach them where that conflict comes from, the flaws in the scientific method, and the evidence for a young Earth. Are the youth perplexed as to why fornication is forbidden? Let’s teach them about God’s holistic design for men, women, and sex. Do they think they have to choose between compassion and holiness? Let’s teach them to discern the difference between true compassion and mere sentimentalism, for only the latter is at odds with holiness. In short, let us prepare our youth to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” Then we can send them out into battle without fearing for their souls. We may not be able to abandon the field when it comes to undesirable conflict, but we can at least teach them how to prevail on it.

Posted in Apologetics, Christian Youth, The Modern Church | Leave a comment

The Rise of the Superstitious Left

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Matt

I happened across a rather strange headline today: The Rise of the Religious Left: Religious Progressives Will Soon Outnumber Conservatives. I found this puzzling given the current trends in American religion. I generally think of the religious left as the mainline protestant denominations (along with liberal members of the church of Rome), but I don’t think of them as growing. In fact, liberal denominations are still emptying out and dying a fairly brisk pace, and so any growth of a religious left must be occurring elsewhere. Accordingly, I took a closer look at the study to see exactly what they meant by “religious” progressives. It turns out that their criteria for distinguishing liberalism from conservativism on their “theological orientation scale” is threefold: “belief in personal vs. impersonal God, belief in literal vs. non-literal interpretation of the Bible, and a preservationist vs. adaptive view of religious tradition” with conservatives holding the former positions and liberals the latter.

How shall we parse this criteria? The primary difference between a personal or impersonal God is whether this God reveals and communicates himself to us or whether we experience it in some other way such as our feelings or in patterns we observe in nature and society. Of course, we would have to exclude observed patterns that would require personal attributes like intelligence, and so this belief in an impersonal God can narrowed down to your typical American mysticism. Here we find things like the Western new-age appropriation of Karma (basically reduced to “what goes around comes around”) or the more vapid contemporary versions of “God is love” (which, as C.S. Lewis points out, generally means “love is God”–that there is divine significance to human affection.)

What are we to make of the second criterion: reading the Bible“literally?” Though undoubtedly a religious conservative by most reckoning, I myself don’t always read the bible literally—I read, for example, the Psalms as poetry and Revelation as highly symbolic apocalyptic literature even as I read the Gospels as literal historical narrative. Nevertheless, I think most people would say that I read it all literally simply because I believe it is all identical with God’s word and therefore inerrant. In other words, Americans don’t use the word “literally” literally when it comes to how we read the Bible. People generally say that a person reads the Bible literally merely if he thinks it’s actually true. Because this was a survey of the general population, we must go with this more colloquial understanding of the word. So according to this criteria, the liberally oriented religious folk are identified by rejecting the idea that the Bible is actually true. They believe it may contain nuggets of wisdom from God and is therefore worth perusing, but they must extract these nuggets from the rest of it according to their own sensibilities—whatever those may be.

The third criterion of “preservationist vs. adaptive” with respect to tradition is simpler. It mainly has to do with whether we are more likely to receive what our forebears hand over to us and pass it on, or whether we use it as inspiration for religious views that are primarily products of our own minds, feelings, experiences, and circumstances. Once again, religious liberals follow the latter path which is focused on internal, subjective religiosity rather than any standard outside of themselves. Calls of “doctrine divides” and “deeds not creeds” find themselves at home here.

I believe all of these traits of “liberally oriented theology” add up to the contemporary notion of people who are “spiritual but not religious.” They do not belong to any of the dying liberal denominations, but still think about theological matters. They have a vague consciousness of divine activity and meaning in life, but perceive that activity with minimal input from external sources. Think of it as old protestant liberalism without any of the academic rigor, history, or traditions: basically a matter of whether they attach a certain divine significance to their feelings and experiences, perhaps based on a few tidbits they may have heard about God at some point in their lives. As it turns out, there was already a word for this growing segment of the population long before “spiritual but not religious” came on the scene: Superstitious.

According to dictionary.com, superstition is “a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like” as well as “any blindly accepted belief or notion.” I think this sums up “spiritual but not religious” very well. Even old protestant liberalism, which I’ve called out for being wrong & even heretical, doesn’t quite fall to the level of superstition. Though their theologians proceed from numerous false assumptions and their academics rely on terrible methodology, their beliefs and notions are still based on (poor) reasons and (false) knowledge. Likewise, people may consider conservative Christians to be wrong, but though our faith is a gift of God, our positions are well-supported by reasons and evidence that are complimentary to that faith and that have been handed down to us by our fathers in the faith. For better or worse, we have an external standard on which our beliefs are based.

The irreligiously spiritual, on the other hand, pretty much make it up as they go. For example, they may proclaim that God accepts homosexuality because they have a gay friend and feel sympathy for lesbians they knew who were picked on in school. Now, any non-religious person might give homosexuality a thumbs-up on that basis, but there is no reason at all to attach any divine significance to that thumbs-up. The irreligiously spiritual, however do attach such significance (and the corresponding “ominous significance” to any contrary position), and they do so without any reason beyond their own liver shivers. The irreligiously spiritual may believe that God really wants them to save the planet. However, they believe that simply because they think the planet needs saving. Again, any non-religious person might share that goal, and they might have good or bad reasons for doing so—that part of it isn’t superstition. The superstition of the irreligiously spiritual is found in that they attach divine significance to their enthusiasms without any objective word from God on the subject. They are superstitious, not because they are liberals, but because of they are spiritual liberals.

If this is the growing trend in American spirituality, we are not looking at a growth in the religious left, but the superstitious left. They may call this “progressive” if they like, but while Christians being outnumbered by superstitious pagans may be new to older Americans today, it’s hardly new to the Church or to the world. The renewed use of superstition as a vehicle for political power indicates that there are dark days ahead, but nothing that Christ hasn’t carried His Church through before.

Posted in Culture, Spiritual But Not Religious, Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment