Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Evolution, Theology, and Respect

    In my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel, I comment that God respects us:

    • God Respects You
      Some of my more theologically inclined friends may be questioning this one, but God created humanity a little bit less than God (Psalm 8:4), and he allows human beings to make their own choices and plot their own course. He tries to communicate, but he doesn’t force communication.

    What I mean here by respect is that God allows us choices, but God also respects those choices. We often assume that God can do anything, and in His infinity, that is likely close to true. But when operating in finite space and time, God has to meet priorities. So the question is, what is God’s highest priority? Is it our safety and comfort? If it is, he should make the world “child-safe” so that we cannot injure ourselves or one another. On the other hand, suppose God valued our intelligence and independent decision making more than our comfort. In that case, he would have to allow our decisions to be independent, to leave us to live with the results of our decisions. Every act taken to make us safer involves a constraint on our decision making or on respecting the consequences of those decisions.

    It’s interesting that in responses to my book, two things have predominated. First, many have told me that they appreciate the book, but that they question (or are disturbed by) my support of evolution. Second, folks are interested in an expansion of my views on salvation and what it means, and this is a key element of that second point. The two points are related. In the process of salvation, God respects human choices, and in the process of biological evolution, God respects the freedom of his creation.

    This principle is expressed in Galatians 6:7, “. . . you reap whatever you sow” (NRSV). A great deal more theology is built on the earlier chapters of Galatians, but it is instructive to note that Paul ends his epistles generally by discussing the life of the Spirit–the change in life that is to take place in a follower of Jesus. When he does this, he makes it very clear that our choices and our actions are critical. I believe this principle of sowing and reaping applies on a much wider basis than we usually assume, and in fact applies even in issues of salvation.

    For those who track “Henry’s heresies” I go past Arminian in my view of salvation and am at least semi-pelagian, if not fully pelagian in my theology. Since that’s a certified heresy, so to speak, you now have a clear case over which to make such an accusation. 🙂 Specifically, I believe that salvation is dependent on a free choice to put one’s trust in God, and that the resulting salvation includes, as something that is essential and not optional, a change or spiritual restoration in the individual. Thus people can make good choices and bad choices and that God respects those choices by allowing the results of such choice.

    Would freedom truly be freedom if there were no consequences of actions, either positive or negative? I’m honestly not sure of the answer to that question. I am certain that freedom would be quite meaningless. Yet frequently the Christian theology of prayer seems to imply that God should alleviate or eliminate the results of our own choices. This can go even further when people pray that a hurricane be turned aside from them, or that it simply be completely dispersed. But such dangerous weather patterns are actually a positive part of the environment, though they are terribly inconvenient for us. (For more of my views on prayer see The Hand of God, The Hand of God: Miracles, and The Hand of God: Prayer.)

    So what does all of this have to do with evolution? It is very common for Christian advocates of evolution to indicate that evolutionary thinking does not make any difference to theology, that a Christian can accept evolutionary theory without it having any impact on faith. Depending on one’s starting point, that may or may not be true. Young earth creationists, for example, assume an early “good” state, that they believe is described in Genesis, in which there was no death and sin. They assume that all death entered the world with sin. In order to accept evolutionary theory, they would have to change that view. One might decide that spiritual death entered the world along with sin, but that physical death happened all along.

    This is one issue on which old earth creationists face the same problem as do theistic evolutionists, with one difference. Old earth creationists would have to explain why God would use a progressive form of special creation in which so much death was required, when death is not actually part of the creation process. What is the purpose of life, death, and major extinction events, if repeated interventions on God’s part are nonetheless required to produce new categories of creatures.

    But there are two issues that stand out. Inefficiency in creation via evolution and the extreme violence of the process, as animal eats animal. I’m obviously not the first to notice this.

    There, indeed, those who flatter themselves with the notion of reading the purposes of the Creator in his works ought in consistency to have seen grounds for inferences from which they have shrunk. If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals. They have been lavishly fitted out with the instruments necessary for that purpose; their strongest instincts impel them to it and many of them seem to have been constructed incapable of supporting themselves by any other food. — John Stuart Mill, On Nature

    In addition, I have heard this particular objection in many private conversations. What does it say about God if he used such a violent method to produce diversity? Well, in my view, the evidence is in, and biological evolution, variation + natural selection, is the means by which he chose to diversify life. From the point of view of theology, the question is simply to ask what this reality means.

    Young earth creationists can defend against this charge of violence by saying that God created things good, but that they have been messed up by sin. Thus they hope to avoid the problem. God does things well, but they have been corrupted. I would like young earth creationists to construct a model of an “ecology” in which nothing dies and no creature eats another one. They could follow that up by constructing a world in which there actually was choice, but nobody every made a less than optimal one. (I think the latter is possible, but suspect the world would be pretty boring.)

    Even if we don’t find it troubling that animals devour one another, what about people? When human beings are involved we call it the “problem of evil.” The focus of this question is often the holocaust, though human history provides plenty of examples of human beings oppressing, torturing, and killing one another. I find it interesting that it is difficult for some people to stomach the notion of myriads of animals killing one another over millions of years, yet somehow manage to deal with the number of people who have killed one another in the world’s history. One explanation is that God is doing this for a demonstration to the universe (presumably people on other worlds) about the nastiness of sin, but one would have to wonder just how dense the “universe” is if it takes this long to figure out that there’s a problem. I think there actually is some light in the “demonstration to the universe” view, but I think we need to go a bit further.

    As I suggested before, while we may call God “good,” we need to reexamine our understanding of God’s priorities. It seems pretty clear to me that God’s priority on the preservation of physical life is a bit lower than ours. If God chose to diversify life by having creatures compete for limited resources, then he made it necessary that the results of various actions of the creatures, and numerous random factors, be negative and even fatal. The freedom of creation is more important than its comfort. Now in this latter case “freedom” doesn’t mean the same thing as in conscious choices, but the same principle is involved. Action produces reaction. Choices, conscious or not, have consequences.

    Thus to me the fact that God chose natural selection as the guiding force in diversifying life suggests that God puts a high priority on freedom, and that he does not choose to alter reality for our comfort or to protect us from the results of our own choices, or from more or less random factors such as destructive weather or earthquakes.

    This adds a division to miracles, as I discuss in my Hand of God essays (see links above). God likes the natural laws by which he manages the universe. We should not expect miracles to alter that reality for our convenience, nor should we expect them to be necessary to alter the processes of nature or the production of life. The key miracle, apart from existence itself, is that God reaches out to communicate with us. I would also expect that such communication would not be forceful; that God would not intervene to directly alter our minds and understanding.

    Let me add a note here. In any basic course in the Philosophy of Religion, students are presented with the problem of evil. God is omnipotent, God is good, yet there is evil. If God is good, one would assume that he would want to eliminate evil. If he omnipotent, he should be able to eliminate it. So what’s the solution? The professor will tell you that there is no way to deal with the problem without dealing with at least one of the legs of the triad. You can say God is not omnipotent, and so is unable to eliminate evil. You can say “good” means something other than what we commonly mean by it. Finally, we could decide that evil is not really so bad after all. In a sense, I have done all three here. First, I’ve suggested that God must have an order of priorities when acting in a finite realm; that limits omnipotence. He can’t create a world in which the results of creatures’ decisions are respected, and yet also make certain that everyone is comfortable. Second, “God is good” does not necessarily mean that God wants every small animal, or even every person to live a comfortable life. Third, by looking at the positive effects of hurricanes (and I’ve experienced a number of these lately!) I’ve questioned whether evil is really evil.

    In this system the answer to the question of why the holocaust took place is that evil people made evil choices and took evil actions, and that apathetic people made ineffective choices and did not prevent those evil actions. There were either an insufficient number of good people, or they also made choices that did not effectively stop the evil actions. The solution, therefore, is for people to learn to make better choices. If God solves this problem, he will do so by communication, but the choices and the actions will remain with people. Taking the “reaping what you sow” principle seriously means that we can’t assume that God will come and solve our problems for us. God is expecting us to take responsible action ourselves.

    Thus evolution shows to us a God who allows freedom in his creation. It’s not a safe universe, but it is an interesting one.

  • Resistance to Evolutionary Theory Confirmed!

    Just two posts ago I commented on the resistance to evolutionary theory and what I think are the actual reasons for it. Today I came across a blog that truly confirms everything I said from the other side. The blog is called The Sheep’s Crib. In a post titled EVOLUTION: Croco-fish can’t crack Chritian commitment!. In this post you will find the attitude I discussed expressed and defended from the Bible.

    Now anyone who has read my series on creation and evolution, and particularly my post Creation, Evolution, and Genesis 1-11, will know that I disagree with that blogger’s point of view on what these scriptures actually mean. I don’t believe theistic evolutionists are denying the faith. But he does, and he is bold enough to admit it and to proclaim that he simply won’t do that. His stance reminds me of the position of Dr. Kurt Wise, author of Faith, Form, and Time who admits that there is much evidence for evolution, but then states that for him the Bible is primary, and thus we must study until we discover the truth. I disagree with him, but that’s an honest position.

    I not only disagree with both those positions, but I deplore their approach, while accepting and commending their integrity in holding to their position. This contrasts with the folks who try to claim that the evidence does not exist, or is not what it clearly is. But what all of these groups share in common is a rejection of the evidence based on a prior religious commitment.

    I hold, on the contrary, that the physical evidence is part of God’s word or communication to us, and that we must listen to everything God has said in every way.

  • Literary Criticism

    To conclude the content part of my series on Biblical criticism, I want to discuss literary criticism. Much of the practice of literary criticism is similar to genre and to a lesser extent canonical criticism.

    Essentially, literary criticism involves forgetting about the historical and theological aspects and simply reading the Bible as literature. One can even read portions as different types of literature. For those who are primarily concerned with extracting propositional truth from the Bible, this may not seem like a very useful activity, but as with any literary study, it can be a very powerful and useful experience for the student.

    This process does not require you to decide that the Bible is untrue, or that it does not contain theological or historical information. It merely means that you look at it in a different way. In many cases this will help you see more clearly the historical message, even though this is the goal.

    Consider Samuel and Kings, for example. These four books tell the story of Israel from the end of the time of the judges through the Babylonian exile, a time period of around 500 years. One approach, and indeed the most common approach, is to study the text and its sources in order to find the maximum amount of historical information possible. Alternatively we ask the question of what theological lessons the author is trying to portray through these events? But the literary critic would ask questions about the overall plot and various subplots, and look at the characterization of the various kings. Why does the author emphasize the kings that he does? What is the literary purpose of the Elijah and Elisha story cycles? Who are the characters and what can we discover about them?

    In the Psalms, this approach can be especially effective. Here again the actual genre of the text is more important. In Samuel-Kings we disregard the actual genre, a sort of historiography, and look at it in terms appropriate to a work of fiction. In Psalms, we are looking at poetry, and can study each Psalm as poetry while looking for the genre (more in the sense in which that term is used in form criticism). Here the questions are form and structure and the simple art of the poetry. (See my paper on Psalm 104.)

    Literary criticism is a large topic, and would require much more than a blog entry, so I’m going to err on the side of brevity–a very uncommon error for me!–and stop with these few very general remarks.

    I will be following this with a series of posts applying critical methods to Isaiah 24-27. I think this is a very interesting passage to use as a test case, and I expect to post several entries on it. Because these are demonstration passages for the critical methodologies I have been discussing here, I will post these on this blog rather than my new Participatory Bible Study Blog, where I’m currently discussing the New Testament book of Hebrews.

  • Witness without being a Pest

    Over on Philosoraptor, Carol Roper has an open letter to theists entitled Sick and Tired of God Talk. Carol talks about how tired she is of various standard questions from theists, general theists who want to convert her, and in this country one would assume mostly Christian theists. Carol is an adamant atheist, and she finds these people and their words and behavior annoying.

    I’ve been planning to write a response to this essay for more than a year, if I remember correctly, but I haven’t gotten around to it. My response is not directed at Carol. After all, she knows what annoys her and what doesn’t, and I’m not about to try to tell her what’s what. But reading her article suggested some things that Christians do that I think are quite annoying and also counterproductive.

    There seems to be a divide between some Christians who want to push themselves on everyone in a frantic race to convert and bring into church membership as many people as possible. “Jesus is coming back,” they think, “and he’s going to accidentally fry a bunch of people if I don’t get busy.” The answer, they seem to think, is to work on the statistics as fast as possible. Going door to door or randomly down the street and confronting people with what they think is the gospel is the only way they can see to really get into action and catch all those people before they go to hell. Their level of panic is matched on the other side by people who are quite apathetic. To hear them, Christianity is a dirty secret that one ought to keep as quiet as possible. Jesus may be returning, but he’ll have to deal personally with the people, because these folks aren’t going to do anything.

    The first group supports their behavior by claiming that the gospel does offend people, and if they share the Good News with someone and they become offended, it’s not their problem. They gave the warning! But the question is, is it the gospel message that’s offending people, or is it you and your behavior? Studies have shown that people who are persuaded to accept Jesus as their savior by means of manipulative monologue generally do not stay in the church, while those who enter the church through a relationship with an individual Christian normally do stay. (My copy is loaned out right now, but you can find extensive discussion of this issue in Faith-Sharing, by Fox & Morris.)

    I mention this because I think it shows that the frantic, manipulative method of witnessing is ineffective, even when measured by numbers. I don’t think measuring by numbers is the appropriate way for a Christian to measure witnessing. A witness is about being obedient to God. The fruit of that may show in your challenge to others to behave better, to help others more, or to think more seriously about spiritual issues. You may never see any fruit that you can hang on your church wall, so to speak. Fruit is God’s measuring stick, not yours. If we remembered this as Christians, we would cause far fewer problems.

    The usual excuse is simply that we are commanded to be witnesses and to make disciples, so how can we stop? I am absolutely not telling anyone to stop witnessing. In fact, I don’t think you can stop. If you are a Christian, you are a witness. The question is what kind of witness you are going to be.

    I’m also not saying that everyone on the street or knocking on a door is a pest. There are many legitimate reasons to do this sort of thing. If you are truly there to help, that’s one thing. If you are there to teach them your theology, that’s another.

    A person who is so apathetic that most people don’t know of they are a Christian at all sends the message that Christianity is a sort of sideline that has a very low priority in their life. Christians are, to borrow the words of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “mostly harmless,” but they also aren’t much good for antything.

    A person who is frantic, and portrays panic, while bumbiling ineffectually from person to person sends the message that Christianity is a group of people in a panic, afraid that the world will end. Not only that, they have a God who is not really prepared for the end. These Christians portray their faith as something that is actually dangerous to the world, as they live their lives contrary to the command of Jesus, as though the world would end at any moment. Ecology? Who cares? Jesus is coming. Social Security headed for bankruptcy? Don’t worry! Jesus will come before I need it!

    So how does one manage to witness without being a pest?

    Start by living your faith. Christianity worships God as creator and upholder of all that is (Hebrews 1:1-3), and also as a God who offers unearned favor to humanity, so much so as to cross the gap between infinity and the finite in Jesus Christ, who showed to us what God was like. We needn’t be in a panic.

    Love your neighbor. This does not mean to sneak your way into your neighbor’s heart so you can convert him. It means that you build relationships because you love and value people. People will know if you are insincere. If you live up to your Christian principles and don’t make your Christianity either a secret or a wall between you and your friend, you are being a witness.

    Learn to speak other spiritual languages. By this I mean to learn to talk about topics of interest in terms that the other person understands. Even as a Christian I am offended when a politician uses his or her faith as lever to get my support. I don’t know the sincerity of those faith claims. But if a candidate, of any faith or none at all, has lived according to certain principles, that is something I can understand and test. In communicating with a non-Christian, for example, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) is probably not the best question to ask. But if you think that your Christian principles are also good principles, perhaps you can find a way to express those good ideas other than by claiming they are divine commands. You are not denying Jesus just because you argue for his moral principles based on something other than the fact that he gave them as commands.

    Learn the basis for your faith. This may not be the same as the basis for my faith. What brought you to your position of faith? Are you confident of that? Your personal testimony is more important than any amount of logical argument. If you are not an apologist by nature or training, you don’t have to behave like one. (An apologist is one who answers questions about the Christian faith professionally.) When people ask, answer for yourself. That’s not waffling. That’s just talking about what you know.

    Wait for questions. If you live a life that is a good witness, inevitably people will ask something about your beliefs. That is your opportunity to answer. But remember it is not your opportunity to manipulate them. You believe that your Christian experience is a good thing, and it’s natural for you to want to share. When someone asks that means they want you to share. Then is when it’s fine.

    Don’t resort to force. Many Christians today are trying to get the government to do their job for them. By this I mean by advocating state-sponsored, teacher led prayer in public schools, public displays of religious documents such as the Ten Commandments, introduction of intelligent design into the schools, and radical action against abortion and abortion clinics. I think all of those things demonstrate that we don’t really believe in the power of the gospel shared with the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives. We think we need to use force in society just as we sometimes use manipulative language and behavior in our personal witness. Be a witness. Then let God do his part.

    Think about it this way. You might be a pest, rather than a witness if:

    • You knock on doors belonging to people you don’t know, but can’t name your own next door neighbors
    • You know all the details of soteriology*, but don’t know where to get help for a homeless person
    • You think salvation is equivalent to joining your church congregation
    • You talk to people you despise so you can “save” them, and yet continue to despise them
    • You’re sure your relationship with Jesus makes you more special than everybody else
    • The only language you know how to speak is “church-ese”
    • You set a mental timer counting down until you will break off a friendship if the stubborn jerk doesn’t accept Jesus
    • You can’t carry on any conversation that isn’t about your religion
    • You try to befriend someone only because you think you can get him to attend church

    *If you have to ask what that is, you’re probably a pretty reasonable person to talk to!

  • Does Integrity make you a Wuss?

    DaveScot over on Uncommon Descent thinks that having integrity and good judgment makes one a wuss. Of course, unless he also has the guts and integrity already displayed by the folks over on Telic Thoughts, he’ll have to come up with something to say, and I suppose this is as good, or as bad as anything. Let’s just say that one lie leads to another, and DaveScot is busily digging himself in deeper and deeper.

    And note that the folks over at Telic Thoughts are not endorsing Dr. Pianka’s ecological ideas. Like many other people they are simply noting that he did not call for release of a nasty virus or desire the killing of 90% of the world’s population. His other ideas remain to be discussed. In fact, most posters on this topic have distanced themselves from some of Dr. Pianka’s ideas, while still challenging the false accusations.

    DaveScot’s reaction to the decision by the folks at Telic Thoughts? “Gag me with a spoon.”

    Keep it up DaveScot. Your credibility can’t get any lower, but perhaps this additional confirmation will keep someone, somewhere, from forgetting about your behavior.

  • Kudos to Telic Thoughts

    Telic Thoughts has issued a very forthright statement and retraction regarding certain comments they made about Dr. Eric Pianka. Since I had linked to them as one of my sources in my entry Christians and Defamation, I think it is important that I take note of this retraction and the very good intentions (and may I call it good advice?) that they offer: “The next time the media circulates an accusation that has the potential to do serious real-world harm to a person’s reputation, we promise to treat such accounts with extreme skepticism and caution” (A Promise). Good work!

    Incidentally, I agree that Dr. Pianka’s actual comments are extreme, and themselves require serious scrutiny, something I’ll leave to those more qualified than I in the field. I would be pleased to see these ideas examined and discussed dispassionately. Perhaps that can happen once the furor over the original false accusations has died down.

  • New Bible Study Blog

    I’m creating a separate blog as I start to post Bible studies online. Threads from Henry’s Web is a place for me to post general commentary and background information on religion functioning in the world. As I got ready to start blogging through the book of Hebrews, I started to believe that it would be better to separate that kind of posts from my general posting here. The audiences are very different. Those who read this blog especially for material on Christianity and the creation vs evolution controversy will rarely be all that concerned with my exegesis of a particular Biblical book. (Some may be interested when I blog on Revelation, as I expect to do in a few months. I’ll post a notice here.)

    So let me introduce Participatory Bible Study Blog on my domain hneufeld.com. I have already posted the first introductory entry there, and will start getting into the meat of the book this weekend.

    I expect to continue to blog here about as much as ever. I’m simply moving another piece of my offline work online. This material will be made available to my upcoming face-to-face class on the book of Hebrews, and indeed people who comment may expect that some of my students will read their notes.

  • Home and Church Education

    As intelligent design (ID) propnents complain about censorship and freedom of speech, one thing is being ignored: They are getting their message out to the public, and any scientist who wishes to examine their data, should they care to provide some, can acquire the material should they desire to do so. In addition, high school students do not get all of their information in the classroom, nor should they. There are many other opportunities for us, as parents, to educate our children in things that are not part of the high school curriculum.

    I think that claims that ID materials are being censored are particularly empty. In this time in which internet publication is incredibly easy, it is practically impossible to keep an idea quiet. Acceptance is another matter. What the ID proponents crave is the opportunity to say, “See, we’ve been published in a peer reviewed journal.” It is unlikely that if the reviewers for a particular journal determine that an article is not sound enough to be published, the readers of that journal are going to be interested in it. After all, the journal has its customers as well, and if they are not presented with material that interests them, they will read something else. Thus creationists of various stripes create their own “peer reviewed” journals, that are read by those who are interested in such things. But the information is available to any scientist who finds it interesting.

    So it’s not that there is no way to make the information public that is the problem. The issue is really simply whether the high school students of the nation should be made a captive audience for ID. ID proponents are going to say, at this point, that right now these same students are a captive audience for Darwinism, but that is not accurate. They are a captive audience for science, whatever is the current consensus body of knowledge that represents. What every other new idea has had to do in order to get into the textbooks is to demonstrate through the scientific process that it is truly science, and to become the consensus view, it has to convince the key thinkers in the appropriate field that it (a proposed theory) represents the best explanation. ID propoents want to dodge this part of the process.

    But then there are those who, for religious reasons, believe that evolutionary theory is wrong, and they want it replaced with something. For the moment they are kind of united on the plan of getting their collective foot in the door, but be assured that once that is accomplished, there will be plenty of differences of opinion over just what variety of creationism should be taught. But I believe that these parents have a right, to a certain extent, to raise their children as they see fit. The limits of that right, in my view, involve avoiding abuse, and failing to prepare their children to live in the real world. I’d even go very far in allowing parents to determine to educate their children in ways I might find very counterproductive, though I do see a state interest in setting some standard of education. Within those limits, however, parents have many options, including home schooling, private schools, and supplementary materials provided at home or at church.

    The fact is that these ideas are not suppressed at all. They simply fall outside of certain boundaries for discussion at certain places and times. We don’t expect the psychology teacher to discuss horticulture in class (except, of course, as therapy!), and we don’t expect the science teacher to discuss religion. This is very similar to the frequent arguments about prayer in school. I hear parents complain regularly that their children can’t pray in school. But that’s not really the problem. The problem is that their children are not directed in prayer by teachers or staff, or that prayer is not officially mandated or provided for. The children can, and do pray. What the parents need to do is teach their own children how to pray, and how to lead prayers, and the young folks can meet as much as they want. I think that’s a much better idea than asking the school to teach children.

    The same thing applies to things that are not taught in science class, but we think our children ought to hear. I have some suggestions:

    1. Turn the TV off one night and spend some time talking to your children about your faith and how it relates to science. If you think the earth was created in one literal week, tell them. Explain your reasons. If you don’t know much about the subject, get one of the many books on your particular view of creation and learn.
    2. Provide your child with books that support your viewpoint. (I recommend having someone read materials on all sides, and then critically examine them. That will probably require you to get involved again.)
    3. Ask your church education department, to offer a seminar, Sunday School series, Wednesday night program, or series of sermons on origins. It’s your church, and you and your fellow believers will get to decide what the content should be. As you might have guessed, I think such teaching should talk about all views that Christians hold on origins, but that’s just my view. (I offer just such a seminar for churches.) Now we’re talking about your church.
    4. Regularly communicate with your children about your faith and theirs, and let them express themselves on what they have heard at school and elsewhere. Get involved with their education, whether they are in public, private, or home school.
    5. Encourage your church to have a substantive Sunday School program for various ages, so that children can learn about their faith and how it relates to the world. There’s no reason for young people to be shocked when they get to college because they find out the world is so different from what they are used to at church. I have frequently encountered young adults who feel that their pastors and Sunday School teachers lied to them. (It is more likely that those individuals simply didn’t know, although I have heard pastors justify withholding facts from their congregation.)
    6. Make your home a place where learning is an expected part of life. Books, computers, and opportunities to learn about the physical world should be plentiful. Let them know that questions are good.

    You will do much more to build your children’s faith by these means than by any amount of political activity to include religious materials in public school.

  • Christians and Defamation

    One who covers up hatred by lying,
    And one who spreads defamation is stupid.     — Proverbs 10:18
    (my translation, but try any version you like)

    I’m often interested in the portions of the Bible that some Christians think they must follow, and what portions many Christians think they can avoid. For example, right now many conservative Christians seem to think they are more bound by Leviticus 18:22 (you shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination) than they are by Leviticus 19:34 (The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you).

    But when it gets down to lying, slander, and defamation of character, it seems that the Biblical mandate is pretty clear. Christians definitely should not be engaged in slander or defamation. But how far can one go in “misunderstanding,” shall we say, and still fall within the bounds of Christian behavior?

    There is just such a defamation going on right now, defamation of the character of Dr. Erik Pianka. I’m not breaking this news. I’m going to provide you with some blog entries so you can research it for yourself. These blog entries contain both opinion on the topic, but also links to other sources of information so you can research this for yourself. I would simply note that the accusations made against Dr. Pianka are of such a nature that any reasonable person should question them, and should research very carefully before making such accusations or repeating them. This is a very clear case from the Christian biblical point of view of slander.

    Let me just list some sources:

  • Some of my Best Friends are Atheists

    . . . but I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one.

    You can replace “atheists” with any of a number of groups, and that’s a saying that underlines a manipulative approach to human relationships. There’s exploitation on the one hand because such friendships are often solely for the purpose of getting something out of the “friend.” On the other side there is exploitation because the person is using the claim of friendship with members of the group to get social points with someone else.

    Ed Brayton has picked up a column by John Allen Paulos (Who’s Counting: Distrusting Atheists), where Paulos notes, in part:

    Atheists are seen by many Americans (especially conservative Christians) as alien and are, in the words of sociologist Penny Edgell, the study’s lead researcher, “a glaring exception to the rule of increasing tolerance over the last 30 years.”

    Ed notes:

    There isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that atheists are any different from theists in terms of unethical or anti-social behavior . . .

    And of course Ed is quite right about this.

    But for many Christians, it is necessary to conclude that atheists are immoral and generally reprehensible because they reject the very core belief of our faith, and do so, as many of us see it, contrary to overwhelming evidence. How could it be possible that someone has been presented with overwhelming evidence for the existence and sovereignty of God and still rejects God absolutely? Is it possible that such a person could be anything but morally depraved?

    In case you think I’m making this attitude up, let me first refer to the common Bible texts: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1, NRSV). That one pretty much covers it. Then there’s Paul’s statement, “20Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened” (Romans 1:20-21, NRSV). So there it is! They reject the overwhelming evidence and therefore become totally depraved morally, and thus one really oughtn’t to want one’s daughter to marry one.

    Based on these scriptures some Christians have justified despising those who do not believe, and basing their relationships with them solely on the desire to convert and reform them. Before I respond to that, let me take a moment to discuss the background of those scriptures.

    In the case of Psalm 14:1, the passage comes form a time when a philosophical atheism was hardly an option. Everybody believed in some god or another, and the idea of believing in no gods at all, simply because one couldn’t find evidence for the gods was not a live option. I would guess there might have been some folks who abandoned a belief in any real sense, but they were not so numerous as to occasion much comment. The basic charge of atheism, in the ancient world, normally meant that one was rejecting the gods of a culture, and the consequent moral system that the culture lived by. Early Christians were called atheists. Why? Not because they had formed a philosophical conclusion that there was no deity, but because they rejected the deities that undergirded the Roman system of government. (As an aside, let me note that use of this text as an argument for the existence of God is quite useless. You use the fact that a book that your opponent does not accept calls him a fool. That would only matter if he already accepted the book as authoritative.)

    It’s very hard for some people to transfer Christian ethical principles into a secular society, because so much of the Biblical literature was written in a culture that assumed one religious and cultural framework. In a secular society, we generally agree to follow a set of laws and principles that we can agree upon irrespective of our particular religious viewpoint, and we allow the spiritual decisions and thus sometimes the reasons for adhering to those principles, to be an individual matter. Christian reconstructionists run hard against this tradition in America, trying to restore something like the Old Testament covenant, only with the United States as “God’s country” inhabited by “God’s people” and blessed as we obey “God’s laws.” They are a group that should frighten Americans from all across the spectrum. That’s not how we do it.

    And that’s not how Jesus advocated doing it. His commands were clearly designed to allow his followers to exist peacefully in a world that did not accept their value system. In fact, it was their goal to stand contrary to the surrounding value system, but to do so peacefully, and not as political revolutionaries. The Christian mode of revolution was individual, that is, the conversion or changing of people one at a time through living as the “salt of the earth.” “Christian” reconstructionism thus is not Christian at all, at least assuming that part of Christianity is following Jesus of Nazereth. But some of those attitudes have crept through into the daily activities of Christians who don’t accept Christian reconstructionism. These include the idea that our nation is cursed because of toleration of homosexuality. This is an insidious invasion into our general thinking of the idea of Christian reconstructionism. It results from belief, conscious or unconscious, that blessing or curse is a national thing, and is upheld by behavior according to the covenant with God. But there is no evidence that God has made any kind of covenant with the United States of America, or that God wanted to make any such covenant.

    In Paul’s case in Romans, we need to be aware of the flow of Paul’s argument. Romans 1 is so commonly taught alone that often Christians are not aware of the overall flow of the argument. Paul is building his case that all of humanity is in need of salvation. In Romans 1 he says that the gentiles have fallen into sin. In Romans 2 he adds to this that the Jews have also fallen into sin. Each has enough revelation, according to him, to understand who God is, but neither has successfully lived it out. Note thus that Paul’s intention here is not to single out those who don’t believe from those who do; rather, it’s to point out that believers and unbelievers have both fallen short. Romans 3 then continues by saying that thus we are all in need of the grace of Jesus. One should be careful using a small portion of an argument that Paul uses to place believers and unbelievers on common ground in order to demonstrate that unbelievers are, in fact, more reprehensible. For those who will point out that Paul is talking about Jewish believers, let me simply note that Paul does not argue that those who believe in Jesus are morally superior, but rather than those who believe in Jesus receive grace in spite of the fact that they do fail. But that’s a whole other topic.

    So neither of these common texts really point to what some modern Christians use them for. But now let me step out on the ice a bit, because some of my best friends are atheists, and I’ve had some interesting conversations about that fact. There are really two groups that have produced conversations of this nature. First, atheists and agnostics, and second, the local Unitarian-Universalist congregation. I feel free to mention these conversations because I’ve discussed them with members of both groups.

    First, there is surprise that I get along with such people. Just reverse the statement, and add a good bit of shock in the tone: “Some of your best friends are atheists!” That’s about got it. The point being that it is very surprising to them that I can enjoy myself in the company of such unbelievers. But the second reaction is one of great sympathy in that I am called to witness to atheists and agnostics. Now I believe that a Chrsitian is always witnessing. It’s just unfortunate that so many of us feel that we must witness by talking when shutting up would be so much better. So yes, I am a witness of one person, myself, who is a Christian. That witness will be either good or bad. But nonetheless, I note the tones of sympathy that I get, the offers of special prayers, and the desire that I report back when I’m “finished.” There is a hidden assumption here that my interaction with atheist, agnostic, or Unitarian-Universalist friends is a episode that needs to be completed and then reported on.

    There’s the hidden assumption as well that my purpose must be to change these people into something else, and thus my friendships are strategic. Now my friendship with members of the Unitarian-Universalist church has resulted in numerous opportunities to speak there (see my sermon Fences: Mending or Rending, from September 11, 2005), but the question of my motivation remains. You see, for me, this is simply another group of people, wonderful people in fact, with whom I can share some thoughts that I hope will help them on their journey. I’m not there to convert them. I do appreciate prayers, but I would ask people to pray that I will be a good example of a follower of Jesus Christ, not that I will change some other group of people. Change in them is their personal choice.

    I have found, however, that this attitude is very hard to convey to other Christians. That’s the problem. Do we, as Christians, make such an assumption that it is our job to fix other people that we have difficulty entering into non-manipulative relationships with those not of our faith? I know many Christians who do think as I do, and many who are less conscious of it than I am. I’m made very conscious of it because every time I go speak anywhere there are people praying for me. I want them to pray for me. I ask them to pray for me. But the atmosphere is a bit different when I’m going to speak to a group that is not Christians.

    Jesus was known for associating with those that the religious folks didn’t approve of. He was criticized for it. It didn’t seem to stop him. If you asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” do you think he would include atheists? Could you retell the story of the good Samaritan and have an atheist be the one who rendered aid? Whether you can do that or not will tell a great deal about how much of the “Jesus attitude” you’ve absorbed.