Sawing Off the Branch You're Sitting On

It is no secret that many, if not most of the movers and shakers in the Academy would just as soon Christianity disappeared into the night, and the more quietly the better. Many of them attribute the growing ills of society to the poisonous influence of Christianity and other religions. Just ask Richard Dawkins and his fellow monks of the “New Atheism.”

I have just one question:  the prominence of Christianity in the fabric of society has been sharply decreasing for much of the last fifty or sixty years, so why are our problems increasing? It seems like we should be darn near a utopia now.

Like a Man Among Grasshoppers

Tonight, Professor of Philosophy Dan Bonevac spoke on the topic of John Calvin’s philosophy to a group of grad students with whom I am involved. He showed how Calvin developed a dual philosophy on the nature of humanity, one based on how we were created pre-Fall, and one to describe how we are different post-Fall.

One of the characteristics of his post-Fall philosophy is that humanity’s ability to discern accurately vertical attributes (those about God) were all but destroyed, and those that are horizontal (interactions between humans and between us and Creation) were twisted, weakened, and diminished. To the extent we can make any good choices, it is solely due to the grace from God, perhaps through the concept of common grace, like the rain or other blessings that all can enjoy whether they know God or not (although the common grace aspect was not discussed explicitly).

As I sat listening to the talk on this topic, the picture came to my mind of fallen humanity as the stubble of a mown hayfield with God having the stature of a Himalayan mountain. I started thinking then of how our understanding of morality is so limited and how easily we can find ourselves in moral conundrums where godly people can logically and scripturally come to very different, and even opposite conclusions (i.e.—pacifist versus just war theorist versus some other variation).

Which is Responsible for More Evil, the Church or Atheism?

The last several days have been inspired by comments on the Greta Christina blog post that inspired February’s “Unlikely Bedfellows” post here on TSR. In some of her responses to readers’ comments, she discusses various arguments for and against both faith and atheism. While I passionately disagree with much of what she says and supports, I respect her stated desire to have rational discussion on the merits of different worldviews.

She takes issue with certain classic Christian arguments about atheism, such as more evil has been committed by atheists than the Church, and responds that it is the other way around.

As I thought about the topic, I realized it is a pathetic argument from either direction.

Holiness versus Legalism

If you’ve been reading TSR for very long at all, one of the themes I often come to is that of God’s holiness, goodness, and righteousness, and how they are surprisingly dynamic, unpredictable and even in some ways, wild. I also explored the idea that God interacts with humanity as a single organism, growing to maturity as a race, not just with individuals. Under this paradigm, the Old Testament, with its Mosaic Law, is essentially God’s version of “don’t play in the street,” “don’t stick things in the electrical socket,” “clean your room,” “don’t color on the walls,” “eat your vegetables,” “mind your manners, please, thank you,” and so on.

I proposed that Christ’s incarnation and the birth of the church was in some ways, our bar mitzvah, or ‘coming of age.’ The rules are lessened and independence increased. This has lead to a wide range of approaches by Christians, from those that largely ignore the Old Testament and the Law to those who largely follow its dictates, well, ok, religiously.

I am currently following a reading plan that will allow me to read the entire Bible in a year. (I’ve done this sort of thing several times over the years, and this is the second year in a row in recent history.) It is good for me because I do get to read the whole thing, and it helps me be disciplined to do so daily. Currently, I am in Leviticus, the third book of the Mosaic Law, and where most of the minutiae are given. So it has been interesting to read it in light of the above perspectives.

Much of the Law we now know is for their protection—the dietary restrictions, the health and safety rules about various diseases and unhealthy situations, and so on. It led to the Jews being healthier, safer, and therefore easier to prosper. Other laws are moral, but even there, most are meant as protection from threats that would not be obvious to people back then. Then there are the ceremonial laws on how to do sacrifices, what the priests’ tasks were, and so on. I know that many of them functioned to keep them aware of their sin nature and the need for a redeemer. As such, they point to Christ’s coming and Redemption (one of the other major TSR themes). Fine.

But there are still some doozies. I know many of those are given with reasons along the lines of ‘because I am a holy God,’ so I conclude that they created a hyper awareness in some way that as God’s people, the Jews were to be different than the other nations, to be separate, called to something higher, even if they didn’t make much sense. There are other laws that I simply don’t get. Why is it that a woman is unclean for a week after giving birth to a boy, but two weeks after a girl?

The idea of uncleanness after birth makes some amount of sense—it gives the woman a chance to heal up before her husband has sex with her again—being told that he’ll be ceremonially unclean if he does, when you live in a deeply religious society like that, and that you’ll have to sacrifice the finest in your flock to atone for it, can be a good motivator to keep the hormones in check for a few days. I also suspect there is something deeper than merely giving the mother a break during a stressful and busy time, but I haven’t studied what that might be.

However, why the gender difference? Given that there are so many GOOD reasons for most of the other laws, leads me to conclude there must be one here too. I just don’t get it. Similarly, most sacrifices must be a male, but some are specified to be a female. Why? The males I interpret to point to Christ, so what about the females? Again, I am fully confident that it is far from arbitrary, and I look forward to learning someday. (Maybe you know and can educate us all—leave a comment!)

So, what? As Christians, we have been given freedom to live in a relationship with God in and through Christ. He calls us friends, and His bride. Yet, that is not done in a vacuum, but in the very context of the Law that Christ fulfilled on the cross. The purpose of the Law was to train us in God’s character, just as our parents raised us in a certain way as children, so that when we have the freedom to act, we do so within the context of our upbringing. If we individually are not taught those ways, then it is difficult to live in a manner consistent with God’s character.

Thus, learning and studying and understanding the Law is a healthy thing for those free from it by the blood of Christ. On the other hand, hopefully we have moved past the stage where we need to be reminded not to write on the walls or clean up our room, and we have the maturity and collective wisdom to apply those principles in a more sophisticated way to other problems and issues that arise in our new-found freedom.

But we cannot apply knowledge and wisdom we do not have.

SDG

Hard Questions

A reader commented on last week’s post about ‘American Foreign Policy and Islam’ with “Ummmm....ouch?” I emailed her for clarification. Essentially, she was acknowledging the truth of the idea that the truth does hurt sometimes. Our conversation resulted in the following thoughts.

There were some squishy spots for me as I wrote that post. I want to believe that we usually do the right thing as a nation. I am convinced we do a better job than most other super powers in history, but not as good as we would like. It is strange that no matter how paradisaical a human institution is, there is a dark underbelly to it that supports and sustains the alabaster beneficence. That's one reason why we long for heaven, because we cannot create it here.

The more difficult question is--the people that do the work in the underbelly do things that most people find reprehensible. Are they bad people? Are they good people doing bad things for the greater good? Does that last question even make sense morally? Should we support a system that requires those choices be made? When the actions of these people are brought to light, how do we and, separately, how should we, handle them? Are they heroes, or villains, or something in-between--servants who carry out disagreeable work and made the mistake of allowing their work to be seen by the wrong people? At what point do they bear moral responsibility of their actions and at what point are they given a pass for following orders? Where should the buck stop? Especially in a nation "of the people, by the people and for the people."

What do we as a people need to sacrifice in order to have a morally consistent government? Are we willing to give those things up? It is easy to get outraged, for example, when a group of soldiers torture a prisoner, but is it justifiable to prevent further attacks? What if you found out YOU were the one who would have been killed had that attack been done? Does that change your view of torture? If it does, how do you respond to those who would have been safe anyway when they condemn the soldiers who saved your life? How do we even define torture?

I'm not asking or grilling you--these are what float through my head. I picked torture as a flashpoint issue more than as a personal one, but pick your favorite abuse of power or morality. I don't have an answer for these questions. I believe I am fairly wise for my age, but many of these are beyond me. This is why we need to let God be judge.

What guidance do we see from Scripture? Off the top of my head, Paul explains that government wields the sword by God's authority, so some things are 'ok' for government that aren't ok for individuals, apparently. Jesus and John the Baptist did not condemn soldiers for their profession, and mostly gave them restrictions on abusing their authority over civilians. When we look at the warfare in the Bible, we see Israel using spies, covert operations, and many different things at which we squirm today. Does that make those actions right? In some cases, God told them to. In others, there is no comment, for or against, so it is hard to discern.

Let’s raise the stakes even higher. God is judged by us humans for a large number of things we view as atrocities. A short list:

·         The Indonesian tidal wave that killed hundreds of thousands

·         The Haitian earthquake 1 year ago

·         Disease

·         Killing His own Son on a cross

·         Asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, then condemning people who do it as pagans, saying, “Such things never even occurred to me.”

·         Putting Job through hell on earth, destroying his wealth, killing his 10 grown children all at once and giving him disease, all as some sort of celestial bet with Satan. Yeah, sure, he gave it all back to Job including 10 new kids, but that doesn’t help the first ten all that much.

·         Commanding the Hebrews as they invade Canaan to kill every human, even women, infants, children and the old. (and even in some cases, the livestock!)

·         And so on.

Ultimately, God's moral perfection is more real, wilder, and not as clean cut as we would like it. Once again, He blows our expectations out of the water. We equate goodness with naïveté, with niceness, and so on, and God is anything but. As Western Christians, we seem to spend a lot of time defending strange actions and words by God to non-believers. Maybe we should spend that time trying to understand why He does them and conform our image to His rather than His to ours.

Then Job replied to the LORD:

“I know that you can do all things;

no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.’

My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I despise myself

and repent in dust and ashes.”

                                                Job 42:1-6

“He is not a tame Lion.”

                                C.S. Lewis

SDG

The Hard Face of Reality

Jury duty lasted about 2-1/2 hours. After checking in to receive my juror number, we sat. An hour? An eternity? Finally we were lined up by number and moved into the courtroom in small groups to sit where a card had our number.

Just as the last of us came and the judge began to greet us, the defense attorney came up and whispered in his ear. The judge turned back to us, finished greeting us then sent us back into the hallway, where we sat. A half-hour? An epoch?

We were called to line up again, and then told to sit back down. A few minutes later we were told to go back in and sit anywhere. The numbered cards were gone. The judge told us that apparently the defendant, when he saw around 70 faces preparing to hear his case (selling a small amount of coke to an undercover officer), he realized this was for real, and it was better to make a deal. He’s in jail now.

The judge continued. There was another case on the docket and we were going to be selected and sit for that one since we were still there—a guy did an armed home invasion at his ex-wife’s. He got cold feet and made a deal. He’s in prison.

The judge said the docket was cleared for jury trials for the day. Thanks for your service.

It’s ironic how often folks think they can get off, until it’s time for the trial. We don’t think our sins are that serious, until we come face to face with the judge. Then we throw ourselves at the mercy of the court, hoping to reduce how much of our shadows are exposed.

There is an objective standard of right and wrong that is outside of our perceptions. How can we help our students perceive that, for their own sakes?

SDG