Chief of Sinners?

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Matt

Human pride can be a funny thing.  We routinely make ourselves out to be better than we truly are by whitewashing our sins and character flaws.  Of course the realization that things like pride and self-righteousness are also sinful leads to some bizarre kinds of prideful behavior.  In communities where humility is stressed, you will find people who are visibly proud of their humility.  In the Church, where we hear pride-crushing statements like “the last will be first” and “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves”, our pride often tries to subsume these statements in an effort to preserve itself.  As a result, it’s not uncommon for Christians to actually brag about being last in various respects and to make expressions of what wretched sinners they are into a mark of superiority.  This, of course, is a false humility rather than the genuine article.

So what then do we make of the long tradition of Christians taking Paul’s own label of “chief of sinners” and self-applying it?  It seems strange that those of us who have lead relatively tame lives by worldly standards would take on the label of a man who systematically hunted down and killed Christians.  Is it arrogance and false humility to to describe our own mundane sins as being worse than even the worst mass murderers?

It certainly can be, and it often is.  One of the most frequent mistakes you will see in modern churches is the equalizing of all sins–as though God’s justice has absolutely no sense of proportion. Now, it’s true that anyone who keeps the entire law except for one point is guilty of all.  However, this is an academic point.  While there was one and only one Man who kept the entire law, there was never a man who kept the entire law except for one tiny point.  Adam might have erred in listening to his wife instead of God, but it wasn’t long before he was hiding from God, lying to Him, and blaming Him for his own misdeeds.  Cain might have become jealous, but it was not long before that jealousy turned to murder.  Sin’s nature is to completely corrupt and destroy–it does not know half-measures or how to leave any parts of our lives untouched.

It is also true that even sins that are small in our own eyes are damnable in God’s.  As Christ taught us, “You have heard that it was said to those of old,  ‘you shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘you fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:21-22).  But we must not forget that Christ also told Chorazin and Bethsaida that it would be more bearable at the final judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for them and that it would be more tolerable for Sodom than for Capernaum (Matthew 11:21-24).  We therefore cannot conclude from Matthew that all sins are equally bad and will receive equal punishment from God.  And so we cannot conclude that we’re all in a first-place tie for the coveted title of “Chief of Sinners.”  These attempts at equalization have more to do with the Enlightenment’s idealization of equality than with anything God taught us in Scripture.

All that said, however, there is an entirely legitimate sense in which we can call ourselves the chief of sinners:  there should never be a single person whose sins we understand so well as our own.  By the aid of the Holy Spirit, in our rare moments of honesty, we can recognize our own depths of depravity to an extent that we simply cannot perceive in an another.  This is the sense we find in Augustine’s famous story about stealing pears.  As a youth, Augustine and a group of friends stole a large amount of inferior pears from a neighbor’s property when they had plenty of better fruit of their own.  They did not even enjoy the pears, simply taking a few bites and throwing the rest away.  Oddly enough, it is with this story of mere petty theft that Augustine highlights his own depravity.  Augustine was not trying to say that petty theft was just as bad as murder or adultery.  Nor was he trying to elevate himself by degrading himself.  He did, however, recognize the bankruptcy of his own motives for that theft in a way that he never could for any given murderer or adulterer.  On reflection, he realized that he did not steal because he was hungry or because there was anything good and wonderful about what he stole.  He committed theft only to revel in the misdeed itself–to enjoy placing himself in charge at the expense of God and neighbor.

There was no pretense left about trying to do the right thing or merely being inept at pursuing some higher good.  Even the murderer might have been acting out of desperation or a sense of justice.  Even the adulterer might have been ineptly trying to make the object of his passion happy.  We can speculate on such motives, but can never really know them unless we are, in fact, murderers and adulterers in the strict sense of the words.  If we are honest, however, we can be much more intimate with our own motivations.  We can make educated guesses about the character and depravity of others, but we can only really know ourselves in this regard.  Augustine’s judgement, and the judgment on those Christians who humbly see themselves as the chief of sinners is not a judgment on the severity of acts of sin or on the harm that such acts cause–it’s a judgment on our own character.  This character stands alone as chief of sinners because ours is the only character of which we can make such a precise judgment.  When the person in the pew behind me makes the same judgment about himself, it is none of my concern for we are each speaking without a common frame of reference.

It is paradoxical to try to puff ourselves up by maximizing our sinfulness, but there are no depths to which our sinful nature will not stoop to preserve itself.  So rather than turning confession into a competition by trying to make yourself anything or trying to end the competition by saying we’re all winners/losers, simply be who you are:  a poor miserable sinner redeemed by Christ.  Our standing among all the other sinners out there should not be our concern one way or another.  Ranking ourselves as equally bad is still an attempt to rank ourselves.

Posted in Law, Theology | Leave a comment

Sanctification is not the Think System

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Matt

Let’s begin by making one thing clear.  Some Christian communities apply a great deal of pressure on their members to take up the impossible task of making themselves more Christlike.  The gospel of self-improvement, of course, is not the Gospel at all.  We are not made better through improving our adherence to the Law.  Rather, Christ frees us from the curse of the law by declaring us holy and Himself transforms us into His image.  He sanctifies us.  This sanctification is a gift we receive, not an obligation that we must carry out.  Making ourselves Christlike leads to nothing but error and self-righteousness.

That said, we also need to consider the other side (and yes, there really is one).  The theology held by such communities is rightly opposed by faithful Christians.  Unfortunately, it seems that much of this opposition is falling into the perennial human weakness of avoiding one error so strenuously that they embrace a different error.  In The Music Man, con artist Harold Hill, who sold instruments to River City, lowered their practical cost by offering a solution to all the hard work required to actually learn to play an instrument.  By using his “Think System,” all a budding musician allegedly needs to do is think about good music, and it will happen on its own.  You don’t need experienced teachers; you don’t need practice; you just need a desire to play good music and an imagination.  Needless to say, it didn’t exactly work out that way (though the parents were indeed happy just to see their children “playing” in the end).

Unfortunately, it seems that we have a similar system in many churches when we are told things like this:

  • You don’t have to try to do good works–they flow naturally from faith.
  • If you’re making an effort at being good, you’re enslaving yourself to the Law; let the Gospel set you free from this burden.
  • Let yourself be nourished by Word and Sacrament and good works will just take care of themselves.
  • Actually trying to be Christlike leads to self-righteousness and should be avoided.

The best lies (or the most damaging poorly phrased truths) always contain a strong dose of essential truth:  Good works do flow naturally and spontaneously from faith.  We are free from the burden of the Law.  It is only through Word and Sacrament that we are nourished and sustained in this work-creating faith.  We don’t make ourselves Christlike–Christ makes us Christlike.  And indeed, working to be good can lead to self-righteousness.

But here’s the problem: “spontaneously” does not mean “without effort” for a creature whose God-given nature is to work.  Naturally does not mean “without instruction” for a creature whose God-given nature is to learn.  The sanctified life is not a semi-human life that excludes all sorts of basic steps of living.  This pernicious error creeps in among those essential truths when human effort is not merely displaced from a false role as causal agent, but hermetically sealed off from this new life altogether.  Those caught up in this error take the theology that provides us with the proper understanding of real life and instead use it to supplant real life.  Our spiritual development does happen naturally apart from our accomplishments, but being constantly told to reject any conscious participation in this very development turns a divine blessing into a painful and muddled experience.

Many Christians whose faith motivates them to try and be better at loving God and serving their neighbors find themselves ill-prepared for the task because their churches have neglected to regularly teach the whole counsel of God.  When they subsequently ask for preparation and instruction from their church, they are often slapped down with accusations of believing in works-righteousness and told to simply attend on Sundays and forget about anything else.  I’ve even heard pastors complain about it being impious for their flocks to desire anything more than showing up on Sunday for the Sacrament.  When these Christians study on their own and eventually try to pass on what they’ve learned to similarly confused brothers and sisters, they are sometimes accused of being busybodies who are trying to reign in those “wicked” neighbors who they secretly look down upon.

The problem lies here:  Many well-intentioned Christians suggest that because good works flow spontaneously from faith, they necessarily require no effort–that we are not just passive recipients of sanctification, but inert recipients.  This, they hope, will keep our own works safely away from our salvation where they do not belong.  In reality, however, sanctification does end up involving my own real effort–not because my efforts are achieving sanctification, but because my efforts (along with the rest of the real me) are what is being sanctified by God.  Humans are creatures that try.  When Christ sanctifies us, he therefore sanctifies our trying, and so we try to do good.  Humans are creatures that learn.  When Christ sanctifies us, he sanctifies our learning, and so we learn to do good.  Humans are creatures that want.  When Christ sanctifies us, he therefore sanctifies our wanting, and so we want to do good.  Humans are self-disciplined creatures.  When Christ sanctifies us, he therefore sanctifies our self-discipline as well, and so we discipline ourselves to do good.

We do these things because we already are being sanctified.  We therefore fall into a theological error when we think our trying and learning and wanting and self-discipline are responsible for our sanctification.  When we do this, we deny Grace and misinterpret our lives to our own destruction.  However, we likewise fall into error when we assume that anyone who is visibly trying and learning and wanting and disciplining themselves to do good is wallowing in works-righteousness.  We do a disservice by reflexively turning our noses up at those pastors, teachers, and laity who actually admonish their brothers and sisters to be imitators of Christ.  We harm our neighbors when we immediately cast suspicion on Christians who ask their churches for training in doing good.  They are not asking anything of their pastors that Christ does not already require of them (see, for example, Titus 2-3).  The apostles were not afraid to admonish Christians towards good works.  Neither should we be.  Telling someone to make themselves Christlike is wrong.  Instructing and exhorting them to be imitators of Christ is part of the very Word through which we are sanctified.

Posted in Lutheranism, Sanctification, Theological Pietism, Theology | 2 Comments

You got religion in my Jesus! You got Jesus in my religion!

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Matt

Another excellent video from Rev. Fisk, addressing a pro-jesus/anti-religion video that’s making the rounds.

People who claim to love Jesus but hate organized religion and the institutional  church must keep their faith shallow and ignorant for the simple reason that Jesus explicitly organized a religion and instituted the Church.  Dismiss him altogether if you like, but Jesus didn’t leave you the option of accepting him but not Christianity.

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

Tales from Flyover Country

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Matt

Since I am one of Iowa’s newest residents, I suppose I should finally comment on professor of journalism Stephen Bloom’s screed against my poor benighted state.  In a nutshell, he takes about 6000 colorful words to argue that Iowans shouldn’t have such a prominent role in selecting presidential candidates because we’re all corn-shucking crackers who don’t represent the beautiful mosaic of American diversity.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read both the original article and Iowahawk’s pitch-perfect satire of it.  But the long and short of it is that the way Professor Bloom revels in Iowan stereotypes manages to fulfill just about every stereotype of elitist left-coast professors.  As Mollie Hemmingway put it, “This reads like a parody of what conservatives claim journalism professors and journalists think about them. Except that, you know, it’s not a parody.”

This is old news, but it seems that Professor Bloom was on NBC last week defending himself against criticism from the hordes of dangerous Jesus-freaks that surround him.  It’s worth watching simply to see him continue to expertly play the part.  He takes the classic elitist professor stance of claiming that everybody is upset because he’s too hardcore for them to handle–which pretty much makes him the Charlie Sheen of academia.  Unlike most Iowans, he’s not on meth, but he is on a drug.  It’s called Stephen-freaking-Bloom!  Or maybe it’s just tenure; I don’t know.

Of course, it’s all an act.  In order to maintain his elitist persona he has to begin by expressing surprise that anyone could be such a simpleton as to be upset over what he wrote.  Then towards the middle of the interview he realizes that he doesn’t want to look naive, so he tells Willie Geist that he knew he was stepping into a dangerous situation when he wrote it.  And, of course, he indicated elsewhere that he’s “sorry” people are offended, but in the same breath tells us that causing offense is the point of journalism (it’s not).  So I guess he’s both sorry he’s a journalism professor and surprised that he’s successful at journalism?  <tangent>In academia, art has been all about causing offense for a long time.  I guess journalism is now too.  How long until the day comes when causing offense is the only knowledge college graduates have?  I’m glad I graduated before computer science and economics are all about offending.</tangent>

In any case, it seems fairly clear that Bloom’s screed against Iowa is about Iowa only in pretense.  His stilted version of the state is merely a foil by which he attempts to establish his own social standing.  At the end of the day, elitists only write about themselves–nothing else interests them.

Posted in Culture | 2 Comments

Suffering or Settling?

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Matt

The suffering and persecution of Christians for the sake of Christ and the Gospel is a recurring theme throughout the New Testament.  God gave no pretense that the Christian life is one of worldly success but one of glory in suffering.  Most Christians find comfort in this when they suffer for treasuring the Gospel, and American Lutherans tend to remember this particularly when suffering the consequences of holding onto sound Biblical doctrine.  We’re often told that our churches would be more successful and our people happier if we would just give up certain divisive doctrines (e.g., Law & Gospel, closed communion, ordaining only men, etc), replace hymns that bear deep theological meaning with fluffy pop songs, and otherwise make the Church like the world so that the world will be comfortable there.  When commenting on Galatians 6:14 (“Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucifed to me, and I to the world”), Luther wrote:

“Our boasting increases and is confirmed by two facts: (1) that we are sure that we have the pure and divine doctrine, (2) that our cross of suffering is the suffering of Christ. When the world persecutes and slays us, therefore, we do not have any reason to complain and lament, but only to rejoice and exult” (AE 27:133).

When I first read this, I began to wonder whether we sometimes try to pit the first of Luther’s points against the second for our own sake. Do we use our consciousness of having sound doctrine in order to avoid suffering at the hands of the world rather than glorying in it?

We know that suffering comes because the devil and the world do not tolerate sound doctrine, but does this fact always fill the appropriate place in our thinking? We are often proud to make our stand for the truth and to proclaim it to those in the wrong—and rightly so.  But what do we do when they argue with us? Too often we simply content ourselves with the observation that people just don’t like sound doctrine and walk away. We know people only listen to what they want to hear anyway, so we remove ourselves from the painful situation.  Why try harder to persuade?  We might as well make our point as bluntly as possible and get it over with.  At this point, our proud stand for pure doctrine has become the mere sorry-for-ourselves complaints and laments that Scripture tells us to avoid. It becomes a wall that protects our pure Lutheran enclave from having to genuinely engage the heretics and heterodox themselves.

Attempting to persuade is more painful because it forces us to take the other side seriously enough to try and understand it. If we were to take falsehood seriously, we might discover legitimate grievances against the way we handle our pure doctrine. Take Rick Warren, for example. I am admittedly among those who are quick to laugh at him and dismiss his books as shallow and unsound. However, do we seriously ask ourselves why our brothers and sisters see so little purpose in their own lives that they are willing to run to Warren’s books in order to find it? Lutherans have a rich doctrine of vocation; why do so few of our laity actually understand it or apply it to their lives? Chalking up the popularity of books like Warren’s to hatred for sound doctrine tempts us to caricature our opponents. People are that sinful but not that simple. Nobody walks around like a cartoon villain scheming on how to destroy sound doctrine. They embrace it because they think they are seeking something valuable. It may be that our brothers and sisters are seeking because we have failed to provide. We do not always put our doctrine into our neighbor’s service.

We pick up Luther’s confidant bluster in denouncing his opponents, but sometimes forget what it was born out of. As he writes earlier in his Galatians commentary:

“What I have believed and taught since the beginning of our cause about justification, about the sacraments, and about all the other articles of Christian doctrine I still believe and profess today, except with greater certainty; for it has deepened through study, practice, and experience, as well as through great and frequent temptations.” (AE 27:106)

Luther did not ignore or dismiss the opposition until he had truly engaged them for a long time. Even then, we might not want to imitate Luther when he did ignore and dismiss.

Stating sound doctrine is relatively easy. Persuading our neighbors of its truth and putting it into their service is difficult and often painful. Nevertheless, we need to reach out to them—not through hokey evangelism programs and silly gimmicks but through really engaging the trials brought to our door. As Luther writes, “We do not choose these stigmata because of some sweet devotion, nor do we enjoy suffering. But because the world and Satan inflict them on us against our will, on account of Christ, we are compelled to endure them” (AE 27:144).

Rejoicing in suffering is a paradox which I admittedly do not understand. Nevertheless, understanding won’t come by avoiding the suffering and removing the paradox. To glory in the battle, we need to remain there even when it hurts–and actually try to fight.

Posted in Lutheranism, The Modern Church, Theology | Leave a comment

Out with the Old

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Matt

When the New Year comes upon us, many people like to leave behind the past in favor of a fresh start.  Accordingly, I’d like to take this opportunity to discard some of the old & outdated beliefs & traditions that certain so-called Christians bitterly cling to in spite of all mankind has learned.

Of Episcopalian bishops past & present, John Shelby Spong has perhaps been the most open about not actually believing that Christianity is true.  Every once in awhile, he gets wheeled out of storage and people pretend that the Old Protestant Liberalism he espouses is actually new and cutting edge scholarship that no one has ever heard before.  You don’t have to read too many comments on that link before you find people living under rocks who think his views are new and refreshing–one of which might have been true about a century ago.

And so, in “honor” of Spong’s latest atrocity, which simultaneously offends both faith and reason, I’d like to offer my own take:  The 3 Biggest Misconceptions Among Old Protestant Liberals.

Most Old Protestant Liberals (OPLs) assume the Bible isn’t historical.

In fact, they think it’s a combination of lies and embellishment.  You’d think Spong would be able to recognize lies and embellishment when he sees them, considering how adept at them he is.  For example, he claims that “every biblical scholar recognizes [the Bible doesn’t accurately reflect history].”    On the other hand, I personally know quite a few who recognize no such thing.  He also claims that Mark’s crucifixion account isn’t based on eyewitness testimony despite the fact that it specifically identifies eyewitnesses (“There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome”  Mark 15:40).  To say the least, I am less than impressed by his “scholarship.”

As for his argument, much is made of the complexity of Jesus’ tale growing in proportion to the chronological order of the Gospels.  This, we are told, proves that these were an evolving story rather than an historical account.  Of course, one needs to remember how OPLs determine the chronological order of the Gospels:  They assume their accounts are factually erroneous and must have evolved over time, then put them in order of least to most complex.  This is a textbook case of circular reasoning.  In the same vein, they date them later than 70 A.D. because they assume Jesus’ prediction of Jerusalem’s destruction couldn’t possibly have been a prediction, so it must have been written down afterwards.  In the end, higher critical scholars don’t “prove” this alleged evolution/embellishment so much as they assume it as the entire basis for their scholarship, then make a living by providing new speculative theories consistent with those assumptions.

Much can be said on the historicity of the Gospels, but then, I have already done that.  For now, suffice to say that there is plenty of evidence that these books are accurate historical accounts.  Unfortunately, OPLs tend to desperately hold onto to their traditional beliefs despite the evidence.


Most OPLs assume that the One True God must be in consistent agreement with OPLs

When most of us read the Bible, it doesn’t take us very long to find something we don’t like.  It might condemn behavior we enjoy.  It might make us uncomfortable.  It might subvert our dearest values.  In some cases, it might describe horrible events which some people pretend were intended to be moral lessons (nobody ever thought the Flood was an example for us to follow, but for some reason, OPLs always think the execution of the Amalekites was supposed to be.)  But how do we handle such uncomfortable items?  According to the OPL tradition, because such things violate their standards of morality–something a good God could never do–the Bible cannot possibly be the Word of said God.  Their condemnation is quite sharp, although where exactly they find a standard by which they feel comfortable judging God is usually a bit fuzzier.

I suppose many OPLs try to make their standard “human values.”   Of course, they’re not on board with the honor killings and religious intolerance of the Middle East.  They’re not on board with the racism and social castes of the Far East.  They’re not on board with the violent tribalism of Africa.  And they’re certainly not on board with the treatment of women anywhere except what they imagine Europe will look like after just a few more decades of hard work by feminists.  It would seem that “human values” are merely those values held by OPLs–yet another tired retread of the white man’s burden.  Oh, they certainly love all the peoples of the world–but only because they assume they will all eventually progress to the august heights that they themselves have trod.  In other words, these narrow-minded and judgmental moralists make their own tiny slice of Western thought the standard against which all other times and cultures must be judged.  So why not place themselves over God Himself as well?

Most OPLs assume that Biblical truth isn’t complex enough to be static.

You can see this in his claims about the Bible’s message evolving over time–from a very simple obey-or-else to a very simple love-your-neighbor.  It is, of course, a rather silly conclusion.  A simple reading of Scripture will show that God doesn’t evolve nearly so much from the authoritarian OT brute to the squishy NT god of love as OPLs like to think.  Already in the third chapter of Genesis, God is cursing the Earth and condemning mankind to death for eating the wrong fruit, but is simultaneously covering their nakedness, putting them on His own side against the one who deceived them, and promising them victory.  And even in the more “progressive” New Testament, the same Jesus who shows his love by dying to atone for mankind’s sin is also found saying things like this:

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:  Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.  And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:  Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9:43-48 — some verses are just better in KJV)

The OPL assumption of simplicity is just another conceit of modern scholars.  For example:  Do you know why higher critical scholars conclude that the first five books of the Bible have different authors?  Because sometimes God is referred to as “Elohim,” a generic word that means “God,” and other times He’s referred to using the personal name, “Yahweh.”    Ancient people, after all, could never be so complex as to use two whole words for the same thing, so the parts with “Yahweh” and the parts with “Elohim” must have at least two different authors who refer to two different gods.  Seriously–that’s what they argue.  They go on to add more authors because some parts are concerned with morality, some parts with ceremonial worship, some parts with civic law, etc.  And no simplistic ancient person could possibly have more than one concern to write about.  Seriously–they argue that.  As for the New Testament, the second verse is the same as the first.  For example, when one of Paul’s epistles has different vocabulary and sentence structure than another (you know, the exact same things that change according to audience & venue in everything I write) it must mean they had different authors.  Such primitives could not possibly adapt the same message to different audiences using different language, after all.  When Spong talks about Biblical scholarship and “our best research” as if it’s something lofty, that’s all he means.

At the end of the day, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, God has always been more nuanced and less simplistic & squishy than OPLs would like Him to be.  Their issue with the Bible is merely the same issue they have with the God who authored it:  He is not them, and this they cannot stand.  And so, in 2012, let’s move past this old albatross hanging around our collective neck and forsake these retirement-home bishops and ancient unbelieving academics desperately clinging to their tenure.  Old Protestant Liberalism is a fad whose time has ended;  it’s time for some progress.

Posted in Apologetics, Theological Liberalism | 1 Comment

Tim Tebow & Theological Pietism

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Matt

For those of you who, like myself, don’t follow football,  Tim Tebow is a quarterback for the Denver Broncos who is drawing a great deal of contempt from football fans because of his overt expressions of his Christian faith.  He has, for example, written “John 3:16” in his eye black, apparently gives thanks on his knees after touchdowns, and so forth.  Much of this contempt comes from a hatred of Christ & Christianity, but while this feature of the story has drawn most of the commentary, it is par for the course in this world.  As they say, it is not news when a dog bites a man, but is news when a man bites a dog.  The ‘man bites dog’ facet that I keep seeing is the contempt Tebow draws from Christians–particularly from my fellow confessional Lutherans, of which I am quite ashamed.

Some Lutherans have merely made an ethical argument that Tebow’s expressions are inappropriate on the football field by using the doctrine of vocation.  In short, we glorify God in our various callings by performing those callings well, not by overt acts of Christian piety.  Accordingly, many claim that pious actions have absolutely no place on the football field because they do not belong to the vocation of football player.  The case for this is extremely weak, in my opinion.  After all, Tebow has many vocations (football player, son, role-model, citizen, missionary, etc), and it is the same Tebow who holds each of them.  There is therefore personal unity between them.  We should not expect an airtight separation between these vocations any more than we should expect one between Christ’s human and divine natures.  Let me put it this way:  If Tebow were playing on his Mom’s birthday and wrote “Mom” beneath his eyes, I doubt any of these people would be complaining that he was letting his vocation of son interfere with his vocation of football player.  Nevertheless, weak as the complaints have been, it’s legitimate to question the appropriateness of certain behavior (so long as we stick around to hear answers).

What truly disappoints me are the many “theological” complaints in comments from Lutherans on Gene Veith’s blog post on the subject.  They complain about Tebow’s alleged belief in a theology of glory because, for example, he doesn’t spend equal time giving thanks for misfortune as for good fortune, or perhaps because he gives thanks for victory rather than the tools for acheiving victory, or other such rubbish.  I give no quotes in order to name no names, but if you peruse the comments over there, you’ll find plenty of examples by the time you’ve gotten through the first two dozen posts or so.

The critique therefore purports to be about his theology, but conspicuously absent from the critique are any references to any confessions he has made.  I’ve see only one short excerpt from an interview where he explains his actions (in the 42nd comment on the thread), but this was only to indicate that it sheds little or no light on the subject.  They critique his beliefs and confession without any reference to his beliefs or confession!  On what then is the critique based?  On his failure to uphold certain behavioral standards.  The given standards, I should note, are either not found in Scripture at all or have never been upheld by any man but Christ Himself.

In short, most of those Lutherans engaging in this critique are self-righteously judging his theology because he has not properly expressed it through deeds required by men.  He is being condemned by these Christians because he publicly gave thanks without first completing the proper theological paperwork.  Make no mistake:  this is rank pietism, plain and simple.  The fact that the Tebow critique is driven by theological rather than moral concerns is irrelevant.  Confessional Lutherans, who vigorously and zealously condemn pietism at every opportunity, should, of all people, be among the first who are on guard against such things.  And yet, here I see too many of them wallowing in their own smug self-righteousness–tearing down a brother to highlight their own theological superiority.  Somehow, they have managed to out-pharisee the pharisees they seek to condemn.

Many secularists are good at self-righteously condemning a man for stumbling in his pursuit of doing good.  Many American Evangelicals have made an art out of self-righteously condemning a man for failing to live up to what they see as their own august level of goodness.  But sadly, it seems to take a Lutheran to self-righteously condemn a man for actually doing something good.

——————————–

1. The theology of glory centers around God giving out good fortune to those he favors and misfortune to those he does not.  They are typically paired with means of currying favor with God (such as through overt acts of piety).  The theology of the cross, in contrast, notes that to His beloved Son, favored above all others, God gave the cup of suffering and death for the sake of those who hate Him.  In truth, fortune & divine favor are often either completely uncorrelated, or correlated in ways we humans simply do not understand.

2.Pietism is an outgrowth of 17th century Lutheranism which sought to cultivate an inner godliness that flowed out into their works.  While (all other things being equal) this is a noble goal, they ultimately focused on their own works so much that they forgot the Gospel.  The standards by which faith and salvation were discerned became behavioral rubrics invented by the Christians rather than trust in the cross.  What is more, because different people invented different rubrics, churches began breaking down into self-righteous cliques of “real” Christians surrounded by “fake” Christians.

Posted in Lutheranism, Theological Pietism | Leave a comment

Rick Perry’s Not Afraid to Talk About His Faith… Whatever It Is

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Matt

I try not to deal with straight-up politics on this blog, and I don’t think the upcoming election will be good for what ails us as a nation regardless of who runs/wins.  I happened to see this Perry commercial this morning, though, and couldn’t help but comment.

It amuses me that a message specifically intended to emphasize the importance of faith and Perry’s fearlessness in talking about it has virtually no detail on what his faith is actually in.  The only real proposition in there is that Perry thinks “we all need God’s help.”  Not to overstate its banality, but there are some atheists who could agree with that statement.  Frankly, I don’t think most “liberals” would have a problem using that phrase themselves, much less hearing it from someone.

There’s a difference between confessing your faith and confessing to having faith.

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Doing Unto Others: Misunderstanding the Golden Rule

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Matt

Though it is highly controversial to publicly point to Christ’s teaching on things like divorce when indicating how we ought to live, “the golden rule” seems fair game for conservative & liberal, Christian & secularist alike.  In a sense, this is hardly surprising.  The golden rule can and has been espoused apart from Christ’s instruction, and it’s a common element of many ethical systems.  At the same time, however, it is amazing that such a ubiquitous ethical concept is so frequently misunderstood–a fact that might also contribute to it’s uncontroversial nature.

J. Budziszewski pegged the problem perfectly in The Revenge of Conscience.  There are any number of people who attempt to understand “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as though it actually said, “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.”  The former teaches us to treat others well by hijacking what comes far more naturally to us–treating ourselves well.  The latter, however, is simply a mechanism for relinquishing all responsibility for our behavior onto the desires of another.  It matters not whether what we do is right, only whether it makes somebody else happy.  Of course, the practical reality of competing desires among different people means we decide on our own which desires we actually submit to.  Unsurprisingly, our choices are usually self-serving.  In the end, “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them” is merely license to do whatever we want as long as we have an accomplice.  Should we support legalized abortion?  Well, millions of women want them, so I guess we’d better.  Should I care for my sick grandfather?  Well, he says he doesn’t want to be a bother and I don’t want to be bothered, so I guess I’d better not.  Is it okay to fornicate with my girlfriend?  Well, we both want to, so I guess it’s fine.  Misunderstood this way, the golden rule becomes a convenient justification for nearly any course of action at all, and a useful tool to advance nearly any ideology.

It’s an easy mistake to make because so many of us presume utilitarianism to be the proper basis for ethics–the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people.  In such a framework, “what you would have them do unto you” merely means “what you want.”  And if you want others to do what you want, then the golden rule means you should, in turn, do what they want.  The problem is that even a cursory reading of Christ’s teachings surrounding the golden rule preclude this.  In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), which contains the golden rule, Jesus spends far more time teaching how to judge what is good.  He condemns lust & divorce, tells us how we should fast and pray, tells us not to worry about food & clothing, and so forth.  In short, he tells us all about what we ought to want.  How then can we take the golden rule to mean acceding to wants of others which may or may not have any basis in how we ought to want?  At the end of the day, Jesus and his disciples were most certainly not utilitarians.

We all desire both good things and bad things–often at the same time.  Our good judgment helps us to avoid sinful indulgence by discerning the difference.  Indeed, many of Christ’s teachings instruct us on how to make such judgments well.  When we misunderstand the golden rule, we don’t just try to put ourselves in another person’s circumstances–we try to put ourselves in their mind, character, and preferences to such an extent that we are not putting ourselves anywhere at all.  This is not what we are called to do.  The golden rule is intended to improve our judgment on how to treat others, not replace that judgment with a poll of what they want.  And so, because we would not have others indulge us in our sins, we should not indulge others in theirs, even if that’s what they want.  Because we would have our needs met before our wants, we should help meet the needs of others.  It’s an unfortunate condition to want what’s bad for us.  But because that is our condition much of the time, we must seek do good to others as well as we can–not just cater to their wants.

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The Cost of Healthcare

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Matt

As the economy worsens and the costs of health-care continue to rise, the confident assertions from academics and politicians that (with party X’s plan) everyone will get everything they need have dried up and discussions have shifted from whether health care should be rationed to how it should be rationed.  As such, we need to be increasingly vigilant against calls to devalue human life as a means to that end.  This piece on CNN, for example, is a classic example of allowing a perfectly reasonable observation about the absurdity of our practices to become an incredibly dangerous reduction of life to mere mechanics.  To sum it up as briefly as possible, enormous and unbearable costs are being paid for extraordinary lengths taken to stave off imminent and inevitable deaths.  Many proponents of  “futile care theory” suggest we sacrifice the elderly on the altar of utilitarianism to alleviate these costs.  To his credit, the author resists this temptation; to his detriment, he merely seeks to swap victims.

On one hand, I completely understand not wanting to go to bizarre lengths to cheat death for another week.  It is undignified and unseemly to desperately cling to life as though it is the most important thing in the world.  Since such behavior is not good in the first place, it would hardly be appropriate to pursue as part of public policy.  This is the reasonable observation.  On the other hand, I can by no means advocate the underlying conclusion that life isn’t worth fighting for or sacrificing for when that life is sick, suffering, or soon to be extinguished–to demand the public proclamation that some people are simply unworthy of the life they possess.  If we cannot disentangle these two conclusions, perhaps we need to re-evaluate the assumptions that tie them together–for example, the idea that health care is the burden of society at large rather than of family and friends.

When a person or a family is responsible for one who needs help, they can help them as much as God has enabled them to do so.  Those with means can pursue those extraordinary treatments they find valuable.  Those without means can, in the last days of life, provide the comfort and palliative care recommended by the article without any guilt.  Either way, they can carry out the vocations that are given to them to the best of their means & ability.  There will be tragedies, but nothing to demand that people cause tragedies.  Furthermore, when tragedies do occur, their reach is only to the family involved.

Government responsibility, however, is different from family responsibility–it is, by necessity, generic in nature.  Practicality demands that it work on the level of categories rather than individuals and with resources that are limited not only by simple magnitude, but in that every dollar spent on one category is taken away from another.  Accordingly, government must deny those resources to some of those categories.  When the burden of caring for the sick is placed on society at large, the vocation of governing absolutely demands asking whether life of a particular sort is really worthy of the resources expended to keep it alive–the cost, after all, is ultimately always in other lives.  It’s a horrible question to ask, and inasmuch as it depends on  us, we should not be putting ourselves in a position where we have to.  It forces those involved in government to do that which does earn them guilt–condemning people to death because their lives simply aren’t valuable enough to bother with.  This is one of the primary reasons medicine shouldn’t be socialized.  Not because government is evil or incompetent but because it is government.

Furthermore, when worthiness must be measured, criteria must be established.  As the article points out, age is a poor criterion to use for when life becomes unworthy of life.  But is the author’s answer any better?  “The capacity to recover and return to a meaningful life is the proper criterion.”  This sounds good initially, but goes off the rails as soon as you get into the nitty-gritty of nailing down what “meaningful” means.  The author’s examples basically come down to personal happiness and societal contribution–whether the patient and those around him will enjoy the life that is saved.  But this is exceptionally narrow.  Historically speaking, few of the wise have held that enjoyment is the sum-total of a life.  As the Apostle Paul put it, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  My example is Christian, but the Christian worldview is hardly the only one which has recognized meaning in suffering.  While it is surely an error to seek out suffering as the ascetics do (as though life does not offer us enough on its own), it is just as much an error to assume that our suffering is less meaningful than our enjoyment.  If suffering is not meaningless or even if it is not necessarily meaningless, then categorically refusing life-extending treatment to a person who has nothing but suffering to look forward to is cruel.  We reduce them to an animal who cannot gain character, knowledge, wisdom, or anything else through suffering.

I am not suggesting a more refined criteria for “futile care” that leverages the value of suffering into the equation.  I am suggesting that the value of life is not mathematical at all–it cannot be reduced to the contents of a flowchart, no matter how complicated that flowchart might be.  Expanding the flowchart only expands the scope of life on which one must past cruel judgment–the author, for example, certainly wastes no time to expanding the refusal of care from the old to the young and from the sick to the injured.  This is why judging whether particular kinds of life are worthy has never lead humanity to anything other than grand atrocity.  No matter how wise or informed one is, such a judgment can never be made with wisdom.  If a particular course of action would demand that we make such judgments, then the wise would seek out a different course of action altogether.

There is no denying that our health care system is in a dire state that one way or another cannot continue.  That doesn’t mean we can’t make it worse or allow even a justified fear to drive us to a greater evil.

Posted in End of Life, Ethics, Politics | Leave a comment