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.

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Ethics | Leave a comment

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

Which is Witch? Discerning Halloween

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Matt

As Halloween comes around once again, it has inspired the usual debate over whether it is appropriate for Christians to take part in such a distinctly pagan festival.  Inasmuch as Halloween celebrates communion with dark powers, Christians are obviously obligated to avoid it.  But to what extent does it still do so?  Is it OK to take part in these non-Christian traditions around us?

As I’ve written before, most debates regarding tradition end up being dominated by two opposite points of view that are each too shallow to grasp the issue.  One side argues that symbols have an absolute meaning that one cannot simply wish away while the others insist symbols are meaningless in themselves–they carry only the meanings that we, as individuals, choose to place in them.  When applied to Halloween, it usually goes something like this:  A) Halloween is a pagan holiday and it is wrong for Christians to ever celebrate it vs.  B)  Pagan roots don’t matter because contemporary Halloween is utterly harmless fun.

Both points of view are far too narrow to really grapple with symbols.  Each side is right in a way and wrong in a way.  After all, the meanings of symbols are fluid, and can be given by human action.  However, the meaning is nevertheless real and is very rarely intentionally given by us as individuals.  Consider the cross.  Before 33 A.D., wearing a decorative cross around one’s neck would be like wearing an electric chair.  The gravity of Christ’s atoning death, however, filled the symbol with new meaning that radically alters the way we understand the old.  No Christian would use it as a symbol merely of torture and death, but of redemption and atonement.  Of consider the swastika.  It has a history far more ancient than Nazism, but the gravity of what happened in Germany completely overshadows anything it symbolized before.  No Westerner would use it for it’s old meaning, and no amount of pleading that “it means something different for me personally” by a white man would change its current meaning.  The traditionalists are clearly wrong about a symbol’s meaning being absolute, but the other side is just as clearly wrong about symbols being meaningless without individual consent–we inherit the meaning, we do not usually get to create it ourselves.

Bringing this back to Halloween, we see two things.  First, the meaning of the holiday can change from its pagan roots, whether by a profound event or simply by the slow grinding of the years in a nation where witchcraft has been far on the periphery.  Second, it doesn’t just mean costumes & candy simply because that’s all we want it to mean.  So what does the holiday mean now?  Unfortunately, there is no flowchart or scientific process to answer this question definitively.  We are left to observe and discern.  Furthermore, the answer may be different from place to place and time to time.  Just like a swastika will have a different meaning in Germany than in India, Halloween may be different in your town than mine, and might be different in another decade.  At the very least, though, we can lay down some points to guide our considerations.

How is the holiday being used in your area?  Does the local high school have a popular Wiccan teacher who uses the holiday as an opportunity to promote her religion?  When you think on the Halloweens of the past few years, do you primarily remember the vandalism?  Are mystic religions that incorporate Halloween into their own spirituality common in your community?  In such cases, Christians would be well advised to not take part in the festivities.  On the other hand, if the celebration is primarily about carving silly faces in pumpkins, soliciting treats from neighbors, and dressing up as Luigi rather than Lucifer, it’s probably ok.

Does the celebration itself involve wrongdoing?  Despite cultural differences in their expression, right and wrong do have absolute touchpoints that we return to for guidance.  For example, one of the most important moral obligations Christians need to consider for Halloween is chastity.  Like most aspects of our culture, its celebration is becoming increasingly sexualized.  While a man can go into a store and choose from costumes like “doctor,” “policeman,” or “monk,” women get to choose from “sexy nurse,” “sexy policewoman,” or “sexy nun.”  Obviously, the latter are unchaste.  This places a disproportionate burden on women when obtaining an acceptable costume, but those are simply the challenges given to us, no matter how unfair they may be.  Likewise, other forms of celebration that involve destruction, gluttony, or other harm to our neighbors must be avoided.  Furthermore, if these things have become the main point of Halloween in your community, it would be wise to avoid even the appearance of evil by participating in an otherwise innocent way.

Does it bring out morbid fascinations in you or your children?  As the old saying goes, he who studies evil is studied by evil.  Is your participation in Halloween spurring a dangerous interest in the occult?  Do you find yourself excited mainly by those costumes which celebrate blood, gore, and death?  These are not interests that should be indulged.  Are your kids scaring people by shoving fake guts in people’s faces or do they just yell “boo” or put a spider on a pillow instead?  Some of these are more innocent than others, and it is your responsibility to discern which is which.

The real dangers in situations like these come when Christians become either too rigid or too shallow to prayerfully and thoughtfully consider whether there is danger or not.  We risk stifling Christian freedom and creativity by simply assuming that Halloween’s roots make it forever off-limits.  On the other hand, we risk corrupting ourselves and our children by blithely assuming it’s all fun and games so long are there aren’t orgies and human sacrifices at your own party.  So choose wisely when you consider whether to celebrate Halloween, but be sure to actually choose.  If we let the choice be made for us, we might not like where we end up.

Posted in Culture, Ethics, The Modern Church, Tradition | 1 Comment

Haters Gonna Hate? Claiming _____ are not Christians.

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Matt

Predictably, comments made by Rev. Robert Jeffress concerning Mitt Romney–specifically that Romney is a Mormon and therefore not a Christian–have inspired charges of that most severe and nebulous crime of the 21st century:  hate.  After all, Mormons have (recently) begun marketing themselves as just another Christian denomination.  Who is Rev. Jeffress or anyone else to tell them otherwise?  It’s clearly “discrimination” seeing as how it quite explicitly recognizes a difference between two things: Mormonism & Christianity.  Is not discrimination the core of “hate”?  Is it not then hateful to define Christianity in a way that excludes someone who claims the label?

In light of the accusations of hate being flung about like so much monkey dung, perhaps the better question for all of the professional hate-haters is this:  does saying it is hateful to define Christianity in an exclusive way actually define Christianity in an exclusive way?

Here is the thing:  Christians rightly deny that the followers of Jospeh Smith are Christians because they explicitly deny the core teachings of Christ.  They are, for example, polytheistic, claiming that God is one among what will ultimately be many, and that in time each Mormon patriarch will become a god as well.  Indeed, the Christ they follow is not the real God-man whom Christians worship.  He was not an eternal person of the Triune God, but was simply one of God’s multiple created sons who became a god himself.  Furthermore, Christianity is concerned with Christ receiving, in our stead, the punishment that each of us deserves for the evil we do and are (a free gift which we receive through faith).  Mormons, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with a progressive deification of each man which they achieve through right living.  Both a Mormon’s God and his relationship to that God are entirely different than a Christian’s.

As a Christian, I therefore perceive that these teachings are entirely contrary to my religion.  If I publicly recognize this by stating that Mormons are not Christians, what then are you saying if you respond by accusing me of hate?  You are saying that things like Trinitarian monotheism and a substitutionary atonement are most definitely not essential to Christianity.  They are, however, quite obviously essential to my religion, and you have no grounds to tell me otherwise.  You have therefore just defined Christianity exclusively.  By accusing me of hate, you have told me that I am not really a Christian.  As soon as your accusation left your lips, you just hoisted yourself on your own hateful petard.  You have, in fact, done the very thing which you have claimed is hateful– you were just being either ignorant or blatantly duplicitous when you did so.

Of course, the accuser might be both.  Consider, for example, this stunningly “hateful” piece on CNN.  He admits right out that he doesn’t know much about Mormon teaching and does nothing else to indicate that this statement was mere modesty, so ignorance is a given.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t take him very long to move on from quoting Jeffress’s “hate-filled language” to putting scare quotes around “Christian” when referring to those who actually believe what Christ taught about salvation being through Him alone.  Indeed, the entire remainder of the piece is about how Mormons are more Christian than Christians are.  The author seems quite comfortable sorting out the real Christians from the fake ones despite his ignorance.  Why then should he condemn others for doing the same thing–particularly when they might be more informed than he is?

In the end we all seem to agree that it’s both good and necessary to draw lines around Christianity.  So let’s dispense with the meaningless charges of hatred.  Instead, let’s actually look at Christ–who He is, what He did, what He taught us–and try to draw the lines well instead of poorly.

Posted in Apologetics, Heresy | 2 Comments

Let’s Remain Pure. Oops, We’re Having Sex!

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Matt

An upcoming article in Relevant magazine is making the blogosphere rounds already (e.g., CNN & First Thoughts).  It would seem that multiple studies are indicating that despite all efforts by the Church, most young Christians simply are not waiting until marriage.  This should be saddening, but it should not be particularly surprising.

The middle-class American coupling system has two basic imperatives:  1) Do not get married until you are established in a career (which itself must follow receipt of both a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree).  2)  In the meantime, one should date–spend copious amounts of time alone with members of the opposite sex selected primarily on the basis of physical attraction for the purposes of enjoying romantic feelings and having fun together.  Gee, I wonder what kind of fun they’ll have?  Christians should not be surprised that adding a third imperative, “don’t have sex until you’re married,” makes little difference in the outcome.  No matter how well it’s put or how many purity rings it’s accompanied by, it’s still like saying “run straight at that concrete wall without stopping” and then adding “but don’t hurt yourself.”  If it actually works, it’s a fluke.  In the same way, sheer willpower is simply no match for the entirety of one’s biology and culture when resisting sexual temptation.

Though this reality has lead the secular world to suggest that Biblical rules about sexuality are obsolete and should be discarded in the face of modern sexual culture, faithful Christians need to embrace the opposite conclusion:  modern sexual culture is obsolete and should be discarded in the face of Biblical rules about sexuality.

I’m not suggesting Christians spend more time complaining about sex on TV or condom distribution in school (not that these aren’t legitimate complaints).   I’m making the more radical suggestion that Christians need to start questioning the two basic coupling rules of American culture instead of teaching them to their children.  With respect to the first rule, the typical rite of K-12->college->career->marriage needs to be rearranged or rethought so that marriage can come earlier.  For example, given the increasingly shrinking return on investment provided by higher education, it seems increasingly foolish that it should be allowed to categorically delay marriage.  With respect to the second rule, dating has proven to be a very poor method of finding appropriate spouses.  Sexual chemistry is great, but it is not the only important feature of a lifelong marriage.  It also tends to hide those other features from sight.  Other cultures in history have had other coupling methods; perhaps we should begin looking at these and adapting them for our own use.

Rethinking our customs must go deeper than the typical practice of accepting our culture wholesale and then trying to slap a “no ding-ding before the wedding ring” sticker on the side of it.  The evidence is in; this approach has failed.  There is therefore no excuse for harming the next generation by perpetuating it.  This is no small task, but it is nevertheless the task given to us. The solution Paul provides to sexual temptation is marriage (1 Cor 7:2), so we ought to work to make marriage available to the tempted.

Here the objections begin to fly among those protestants who misunderstand Sola Scriptura:  “The Bible doesn’t tell us how to get married–only that premarital sex is wrong!  It’s legalistic to tell young men and women that they shouldn’t date or that they should get married sooner!”  It is true enough that the Bible doesn’t provide a flowchart for coupling.  Nevertheless, that doesn’t preclude us using our Biblically-informed brains to provide assistance for navigating this part of life.  Such navigation is what culture and tradition are for in the first place–they are tools to help us live life well.  Christians know (or at least should know) that living well entails living chastely and decently.  If our customs have become a hindrance to this end, then parents are morally obligated to reject them and attempt to provide better customs for their children.  Stubborn insistence on disproven methodology is pure foolishness–something that is explicitly condemned in Scripture (see, for example, pretty much the entire book of Proverbs).

There are any number of ways to appropriately couple.  Nevertheless, an infinitude of appropriate ways does not imply that no inappropriate ways exist.  Identifying and rejecting such ways is not legalism; it is wisdom–something I encourage Christian parents to both pray for and practice.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics | 2 Comments

When Science Isn’t the Best Method

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Matt

Although science does have it’s worshipers–those who see it as the absolute high point of existence from which all good things proceed–most people recognize it as one tool among many.  It has been extremely useful to humanity in many respects, and we would never want to discard it.  Nevertheless,  some tasks are quite simply beyond its capabilities.

Take, for example, everyday affairs like art or romance.  Common experience will show that these are not the results of science and science is not our guide in participating.  Those who try tend to be rather unsuccessful.  Neither poetry nor romantic love is cooked up in a laboratory by following a complicated formula.  Anyone who treats his loved one as mere matter and chemicals that follow certain laws has a relationship akin to that between two computers rather than two people.  Likewise, there is no scientific, step-by-step process to creating art.  The artistic merit of the Mona Lisa may be embodied in the arrangement of paint molecules on canvas, but it is not reducible to it.  One cannot simply replicate the results by following the same process the way the scientific method demands.  The common thread is that while science is quite effective at analyzing & describing mechanics and chemistry, not all of human experience is reducible to mechanics and chemistry.

The same thing holds true in more “high-minded” academic endeavors as well.  Take, for example, epistemology–the branch of philosophy which studies knowledge and how we know.  In the early 20th century, there was a philosophical movement called logical positivism which held that because science is the only place real knowledge is produced, the job of epistemology is merely to describe science.  The end result was a philosophy based on the idea that a statement is only meaningful if it can be empirically verified–if it can, in principle, be observed by our five senses.  At this point, logical positivism declared most other branches of philosophy obsolete.  In ethics, for example, right and wrong are not empirically verifiable, and so become meaningless terms.  What then is left for ethics to describe?  Logical positivists held that when a person says “it is wrong to murder,” all they are really saying is the imperative: “don’t murder me!”  They aren’t saying anything about murder per se, they are just giving a command.  Ethics, they held, should therefore be located in the study of the brain mechanics which cause people to want to not be murdered (psychology)–philosophy should be involved only inasmuch as it regulates the language that scientists use.

Understandably, logical positivism died a relatively quick death.  Most people are quite aware that “don’t murder me” is quite different from what they mean when they say “it is wrong to murder.”  All logical positivism proved was that science was completely incapable of accurately describing what they were saying.  Even in academia, the bastion of silly philosophies like this, logical positivism is pretty much over.  Although it still has its holdouts, most people recognize that it is incoherent and that incoherence is to be avoided.  By it’s own standard, the statement “a statement is only meaningful if it can be empirically verified” is not meaningful.  The very core of logical positivism cannot be empirically verified.

This isn’t to say that science couldn’t be somewhat helpful for issues like romance or ethics.  These things do, after all, involve people who themselves are mechanical and chemical.  Mechanics and chemistry, however, are not the whole of people.  To assert otherwise is to make a philosophical claim that is not only unverifiable by the same science in which all trust is allegedly placed, but also severely truncates human nature.

Another Application

This “limitedness” of science is also important for Christians to remember on issues that are more commonly considered its domain, such as the origins of life, the universe, and everything.  Science has quite vocally determined that the events recorded in Genesis are simply impossible to reconcile with the evidence.  Many Christians, in pursuit of the laudable goal of intellectual integrity, have therefore decided that Genesis cannot be read as history.  According to a recent NPR interview, this is increasingly common even among conservative Christians.  Their hermeneutic is determined by the conclusions of the scientific method, and they determine Genesis to be poetry or some other form of highly figurative literature.  But what if the scientific method is not the right tool for this particular job?

If you look at the petitions against intelligent design that have cropped up in academia, the cornerstone of the arguments is methodological naturalism.  Science is in the business of offering explanations for what we see around us.  Methodological naturalism is a rule that says these explanations can only be naturalistic in nature–they must consist only of mechanics which we empirically observe in the world around us.  In short, when offering a scientific explanation, one must act as though matter is all that there is.  This isn’t a completely useless rule:  it provides a check on superstition by protecting the study of mechanics from non-mechanical interference.

This makes good sense in operational science because scientists typically have no good reason to suspect that a poltergeist is interfering with their experiments.  However, this does not make good sense on the science of origins because we do have good reason to suspect that a deity was supernaturally involved in creation.  If a material state is actually the result of a supernatural act, science would be obligated to substitute a false naturalistic explanation for the true supernaturalistic explanation.  The method itself would ensure incorrect results.  If there were multiple such occurrences on a large scale, it would not take long for science to get very far off track in its explanation of the cosmos.  If Genesis gives a Christian no reason to think that God was repeatedly supernaturally involved in the creation of the world, he hasn’t simply determined that it uses figurative language, that it is poetry, or even that it is myth.  He has determined that it is false from top to bottom.  But even the nonreligious have reason to suspect supernatural intervention.  It is not uncommon for atheists to talk about the “illusion” of design in nature–that the world deceptively looks like it was designed.  Science cannot determine whether that appearance is truly deceptive or not–it can only assume that it is.

So what does that mean about discovering the truth about how the world came to be?  At the very least, it means we need a different method of investigation.  Someone more intelligent and creative than I might be able to come up with something satisfactory; but I am skeptical that it could offer the same consensus afforded to “water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.”  The process might even involve science in a substantial capacity, but science cannot be afforded the final word in the matter.  No matter how good of a hammer you have, it is not good at cleanly cutting a board in two.  If a carpenter who only uses his hammer declares that cleanly cut boards are impossible, nobody blames the hammer.  Furthermore, those who say the carpenter is in error are not necessarily anti-hammer and are not saying that the carpenter does not know how to use a hammer; they merely say the carpenter is being too narrow-minded to give a definitive answer on the subject of cleanly cut boards.  Likewise, science may be good and scientists may be good at it, but that does not mean they know how the world came to be.  Until such time as a better process is developed, I think the secular world needs to get used to being ignorant.

Posted in Apologetics, Science | 1 Comment