Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Jesus Is Not on Your Side

    I’ve been watching the responses to Bill O’Reilly’s book Killing Jesus. Note that I said I was following the responses. I haven’t read the book and don’t intend to. I can’t stand listening to its author and I don’t feel any obligation to subject myself to reading his words. My attitude parallels Allan Bevere’s.

    I used to object to folks who would mention a book if they didn’t intend to read it. Now with the amount of reading material stacked on my desk, not to mention the amount I could stack there, I have to make choices. So this is a response to responses, not to the book.

    I truly enjoyed Christopher Skinner’s review. He’s very right to deplore the use of Jesus to pursue a right wing political agenda, or even a generally “American” political agenda. Our culture isn’t in line with Jesus, no matter how much we may talk about being a Christian nation.

    But now it’s time to annoy my liberal readers. Jesus doesn’t line up with liberal political views either. He lived in a world in which our political philosophies did not exist and would not have been functional. Being a businessman in Palestine of the 1st century wasn’t like being a businessman now. Nor was being a philanthropist. Or a teacher. Or an itinerant preacher.

    I don’t mean to say that we cannot look to Jesus and the principles he lived and taught to guide our political decisions. What I mean is that Jesus didn’t tell us just what to decide about how we put loving our brothers and sisters into practice outside the church. (He had a great deal to say about putting it into practice inside, though we ignore most of that.)

    Conservatives are criticized for trying to kill programs that benefit the poor. Liberals are criticized for being generous–with other people’s money (taxes). Conservatives believe that charity should be more private. Liberals believe that only the government can truly collect sufficient resources to deal with problems.

    Those are issues of political philosophy, and they are ones Jesus didn’t discuss. They just weren’t issues in his time. His audiences in Galilee weren’t going to be voting yes or no on ballots about how much to spend on education or support for poor children. Those simply weren’t options.

    There are many issues to discuss when we look at involvement by Christians in politics. I’m only focusing on one here. We tend to allege moral failure when we disagree with the means.

    For example, I might look at someone who opposes government paid health insurance, and decide that they don’t really care whether or not people get adequate health care. How can they oppose a program that will pay for adequate health care for poor people? I’m outraged! I believe they are sub-Christian, possibly sub-human! They want infants to die of preventable illnesses. They want mothers do die from inadequate pre-natal care. They want the elderly to die of cancer because they are unable to pay for the proper treatment.

    But if I take the time to talk to one of those people, I might find that they desire no such results. They may simply believe that the government will do poorly in distributing health care, that people will die because of the failures of government rather than the failures of private  providers. Whether they are right or wrong, they care just as much.

    And the accusations can be reversed. The failure, wherever it may be, is in being so certain that one’s method is correct, that one cannot imagine disagreement except through moral failure. My approach to solving the problems of health care provision and distribution are so right that the only way one can disagree is to be morally degenerate.

    And one can find morally degenerate people. I was behind a man in the Walmart shopping line who was using WIC to get food. It turned out it was for his grandchildren. He spent his time speaking ill of his son-in-law, a useless bum according to him, and his daughter, who lacked to good sense to say “no” to the proposal of marriage and then proceeded to produce children who would have to be on WIC. Aside from the stereotype that it’s bums who get WIC, His attitude (and his willingness to inform the line, stunk. And I do consider the possibility that he was so embarrassed to be using WIC that he had to find an excuse, but I still think that’s a stinky attitude.

    But there are people who might oppose the program who would be ready to pull money from their own pockets to pay for food for someone in need. It’s not their motivations that liberals should question. It’s the method.

    Jesus didn’t tell us what methods would work in our various modern societies. He left that to us to figure out. We’ll do it much better if we quit assigning either Christian or anti-Christian attitudes to the methods people believe will (or will not) work.

  • The SDA Chaplain of the Senate

    The Adventist review has a taste of Barry Black’s testimony, which makes excellent reading (HT: Dave Black Online).

    As an ex-Seventh-day Adventist I find his story very interesting. In his career, he was fighting not just racial but also religious discrimination. Some people thought he shouldn’t be in his positions because he was black. Others thought his faith was a problem. His story is well worth reading.

    I want to reiterate a few things I’ve said (perhaps too often) about being an ex-SDA. If you’re currently an SDA and you’re thinking of moving to another denomination, check your reasons. If, like me, you find your beliefs incompatible with your denomination, I consider it completely appropriate for you to find an organization you can support more wholeheartedly. In fact, I find it inappropriate for you to remain at that point!

    There are several things to avoid, however:

    1. Leaving the SDA, or any church, because of personal issues with people. Those will be with you no matter what organization you join.
    2. Being dishonest with yourself about your reasons for leaving. Often point #1 leads people to claim some other reason, perhaps without even realizing it. You’re going to find people problems in all organization that have people. I don’t like the people of the United Methodist Church better than I did those of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. What I like is that I am more free to carry out ministry in the UMC, and that I also find its doctrinal positions much closer to, though not identical with, mine.
    3. Living with a legacy of hate. People leave denominations or even local church congregations angry. That’s not good for you. You’re not sticking it to your former church by remaining angry. You’re sticking it to yourself.
    4. Don’t live your life as an ex. I call myself ex-SDA when I need to talk about the SDA church and my relation to it. I don’t think of myself that way on a regular basis. I’m a Christian who is now a member of a United Methodist congregation. I used to be a Christian who was a member of a Seventh-day Adventist congregation. Whatever any of the members of these congregations may think of me, I consider them all brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m not some sort of paragon of virtue who experiences no anger or resentment. I just do my best by God’s grace to confess it and leave it behind. I don’t enjoy being called an apostate, but I’m not going to let it define me or my attitude(s).
    5. Always go to, not away from. Find the place where you will be able to be what the Lord wants you to be and serve as the Lord wants you to serve. Then go there. The physical journey is the same, but spiritually it is a much different thing.

    These are just my recommendations. They were brought to mind by the story of Chaplain Black’s colleague who told him to change denominations as a career thing. I am impressed, though not surprised, by Chaplain Black’s response. He was absolutely right to stick with his convictions. I believe God honored him for that. I’m thankful for his testimony.

  • Will Tithers Have Medical Expenses?

    Pat Robertson puts his foot in his mouth so frequently that it almost seems unfair to go after him for it, but in this case he makes the type of statement that simply must be corrected. I know quite a number of people who would be susceptible to what he says here, and then would be disappointed, and possibly blame themselves, when they continued to have health expenses despite their tithing. Now Right Wing Watch might have taken this out of context (though I don’t know what the context would be), but those few sentences are very damaging.

    I’ve heard this type of thing much more regarding financial affairs. Pastors and teachers say that if you tithe you won’t have financial difficulties, won’t go bankrupt, or will even become wealthy. All the while real people pay tithes and nonetheless struggle.

    Here’s an extract from a book my company recently published (note that the first sentence is presented as an argument to be refuted by what follows):

    9781938434129sGod has significantly blessed those who have faithfully tithed. This blessing demonstrates that tithing is his method for giving in the current period.

    In fact, some ministries have offered to give “refunds” if after a certain period (like ninety days) they are not in a better financial situation after giving tithing a try. Other preachers have stated that no one ever has financial trouble if they are tithing. I’ve even heard one preacher say that no one has ever gone bankrupt while tithing!

    Has anyone who faithfully tithed gone bankrupt? Absolutely! There are many news stories on the internet explaining how certain individuals have gone bankrupt while tithing. While the situation of Evander Holyfield might seem like the exception, the reality is that so many have had this issue of going bankrupt while tithing that the federal government has been wrestling with how to adjudicate this situation. President Clinton signed the Religious Liberty and Charitable Donation Protection Act in 1998 to allow those who are bankrupt to continue tithing. But a 2005 law overturned that decision: the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. The fact that the federal government has had to monitor this so much demonstrates that this is not a rare situation. To give my own “anecdotal argument,” I’ve had a friend who was giving about 18 percent of his income, and his financial situation continued to deteriorate more and more. Finally, in order to go to seminary, he filed for bankruptcy. He declared how good God was in taking care of him, but really the federal government bailed him out. (David A. Croteau, Tithing After the Cross, [Gonzalez, FL: Energion Publications, 2013], 51-52, italics mine)

    Neither David Croteau nor I are arguing against giving or generosity. Rather it is the manipulation of people for purposes of getting them to give money. We should certainly discuss issues of stewardship in the church, and not just of money but also time and ability. But we must be careful not to force or manipulate. Certainly we must never make obviously false and hurtful claims.

  • Confessional School vs. Freedom to Explore

    Peter Enns’ post, “If They Only Knew What I Thought” struck a chord with me and at the same time called up one of my concerns, or perhaps I should say areas of conflict.

    I lived through this growing up as a Seventh-day Adventist and being educated in Seventh-day Adventist schools. In fact, I made a significant transition twice, once when I moved from schools in the self-supporting movement to those in mainstream adventism, and then out of the Seventh-day Adventist. Most evangelicals I’ve discussed this with have been quite supportive of my move. To many of them I moved from at least marginal heresy to a more orthodox form of Christianity.

    But the same type of issues came up as I tried to decide what to do with my life after graduate school (at Andrews University, an SDA school), as I hear from evangelicals who go to secular schools. There were certain elements of my belief system that had changed, and others that I was still exploring. Could I be a Seventh-day Adventist? Could I be a Seventh-day Adventist teacher? I remember one professor saying to me during this period, “You don’t have to teach everything you know.” He was someone I respected, and still do. Yet I didn’t like his answer.

    But what do you do when you not only see the boundaries of the permissible playing field looming, but think that perhaps you have crossed them? Is it right to continue to be a member of an organization you do not fully support? Is it right to teach for such an organization? Can you conceal what you actually believe in order to stay within the boundaries permitted?

    We hear two sides of this conflict. The first is from people like me who have experienced changes in their understanding of scripture and doctrine, and feel the need of freedom to explore and to follow truth as they see it. We also feel the need to be honest with others. On the other side we have those institutional guardians who want to keep the faith pure. The former see the latter as barriers to truth, real spirituality, and scholarship. The latter view the former as persons who don’t fully care for the safety of the souls who gather in the pews.

    I have a certain empathy with both sides. I recall a conversation with my uncle, Don F. Neufeld, associate editor at the time of the Review and Herald, of the SDA Bible Commentary, and editor of the SDA Bible Dictionary. Several of the issues I had (and still have) with SDA theology, and even with much evangelical theology, came up. In some cases he agreed with me against the common SDA position. In others, he didn’t. But he suggested to me a certain pastoral concern, a sensitivity to the people he served, and I was to serve. He told me how carefully he wrote at times, leaving the door open to exploration while not cutting the people off at the knees. Theology didn’t occur in a vacuum, according to him, it was something we did in service of God’s people.

    While I couldn’t follow his advice at the time, and imagine I still would fail, I do understand what he’s talking about. A church community has to have some form of definition, and that definition will involve beliefs that are acceptable and ones that are not. If there are to be such institutions as confessional seminaries, schools operated by a religious community to support their needs and their people, there are going to be boundaries to the playing field.

    If this were a matter of social clubs or of businesses, it would be easier. If you find yourself outside the boundaries of one, move to another. Such a solution can still work for someone who is raised as an Arminian, for example, and becomes Calvinist. I’ve known a few of those (and the reverse) and they usually just end up moving from one denomination to another to solve their problem. I think we would have little difficulty suggesting that someone who can no longer consider themselves Christian would do best to teach in a secular institution. Yes, this is not complete academic freedom. But it is also not deception. If the institution is operated by the Roman Catholic church, it is likely to have certain positions. If it’s Seventh-day Adventist it will have a different core perspective. (If it’s Methodist, of course, it will be whatever it turns out to be!)

    My prayer would be that we set those boundaries as far out as we possibly can, to allow those who study and teach in church-related academic institutions to explore and challenge as much as possible. I think truth thrives in an atmosphere where it is challenged. Stupidity does not. For both those reasons challenge is good. But at the same time I would hope that all of us in our various churches would be prepared to gently help and encourage those who might need to find somewhere else to go.

    I’ve managed to handle the “apostate” label before from those SDAs who see nothing but a rebellion against God that could get me out of the SDA church. I think most of them should be delighted that I left. I wouldn’t be making their lives easy from the inside. Perhaps a better approach would be to encourage someone to try their walk with God in another community. Don’t do this with the “left foot of fellowship.” Be welcoming, but at the same time don’t condemn the move to find someplace else. Encourage the exploration of other traditions.

    There’s always going to be a tension between the need of the community to have cohesion and the need of scholars to explore. I believe that tension can be constructive rather than destructive.

    (And as a final commercial, let me recommend a book I publish, Crossing the Street by Bob LaRochelle. Bob grew up Roman Catholic, was ordained a deacon, and is now a minister in the United Church of Christ. No, he’s not telling all Catholics to follow him. Rather, he’s encouraging us to look across to other faith traditions, learn, and feel the freedom to explore.)

  • Adrian Warnock – Evolutionary Spectrum

    I always find it interesting when Adrian Warnock produces a spectrum on some topic. I almost always disagree with some point on the spectrum, but the exercise is worthwhile. After all, if I produce a spectrum, there will doubtless be people who disagree at some point.

    This time Adrian has produced a spectrum on beliefs regarding evolution. I think it generally covers the ground. At the same time, I think it skips over the majority of theistic evolutionists.

    The reason may seem subtle, but I think it’s important. Adrian divides the theistic evolutionists between “passive” and “active” equating the latter with intelligent design. I have a couple of problems with that. First, I think natural laws are an expression of God’s will. That a law continues unchanged, or a process functions and finishes (if finishing is appropriate) does not mean that God is less active than when (or if) there is some sort of intervention. Thus God is not less active when he designs a process that works without active intervention than he is with something that requires him to step in from time to time.

    Secondly, I think there is a problem with the concepts of intervention, active, and passive. God is. God is infinite (or something close enough we can’t tell the difference). In any case, in terms of interacting with the universe, God doesn’t have to prioritize. He isn’t less active one place than another. So the idea of God being active or passive is an effect of human perception. A process that continues consistently does not appear to require action by God, while one that varies or changes direction is more likely to seem to require such intervention.

    Resurrection seems interventionist. Birth and death seems natural. To us.

    The evolution of a new life-form seems “special” and perhaps to require intervention. The continued life of a single creature does not. To us.

    I just don’t think there’s a real difference from God’s point of view, insofar as one can catch God’s point of view (not very far, I fear). My breath stops without God (Psalm 104:29-30). Gravity stops without God. When all of this works, it appears not to require God’s intervention.

    I’m probably writing this too quickly (it’s Sunday morning), to be clear, but my point is simply that God is active whether the process he is using operates consistently and without identified points of intervention or whether (as in intelligent design) there are points at which God intervenes in some special way.

    Otherwise, I love the spectrum. I’m glad Adrian included the ruin and restoration folks, who are often forgotten. I’m also glad he distinguished some nuances such as young earth/old universe, and “the earth is young but appears old” vs. “the earth is young and would appear that way if you got the science right.” (My descriptions, not Adrian’s.)

     

  • Fervent Prayer and Praying in the Spirit

    Dave Black provides an extract from his forthcoming book on the Seven Marks of a New Testament Church. In it, he refers to praying in the Spirit, noting that some exegetes say this refers to praying in tongues. He doesn’t deny that possibility but says it is broader than that.

    While I believe that praying in tongues is praying in the Spirit, “praying in the Spirit” is not a category of prayer, in that one might pray “in” and “out” of the Spirit in some way. Rather, it describes something that should be a characteristic of all prayer. There are those who elevate or diminish praying in tongues. On the one hand nobody, even the person praying, necessarily knows what a prayer in tongues is about. Is it not better that people hear the prayer? On the other hand, prayer in the Spirit is most definitely not under the conscious control of the one praying. Is it not better to be fully under the control of the Spirit of God?

    Actually prayer, and any spiritual discipline can be verbal or non-verbal. I find I hear most from the Lord when I’m reading Scripture. But often it is not the words, or at least not consciously the words, that bring peace or direction. Sometimes I just study and come to some decision or other that I needed to. Sometimes I merely feel my anxiety relieved, even though I may not have been reading. This morning I was helped to a place of peace (I was worrying about something I had no business worrying about) while reading Leviticus 23 in Hebrew. I cannot think of anything in that text that related to my situation.

    I would suggest that bringing the words of one’s prayer, when those words are spoken aloud and consciously, under the power of the Spirit is more difficult. It is definitely worth doing. But you won’t do it yourself. You can only hope and wait for the Holy Spirit to do it. And obey when He does!

  • Letting the Holy Spirit Teach

    I’ve been meditating a bit on letting the Holy Spirit be the teacher. There’s an interesting corollary to letting the Holy Spirit teach—letting other people learn.

    You see, what we often want to do is to “let” the Holy Spirit teach other people what we already know, and what we think they need to learn. If they don’t learn that fast enough, or heaven help them, if they don’t ever learn what we know, we’re likely to start questioning which spirit they’re listening to. Letting the Holy Spirit teach involves not just trusting God, but also trusting other people to be able to hear from God. I think we frequently trust the Holy Spirit just so long as he doesn’t slip his leash. By which, of course, we mean that he has failed to keep other people in the proper order as we see it.

    So I’m going to tell a story. This happened in 1999 just before I married Jody. I traveled to England with Perry Dalton and a fairly stellar group of speakers. (I’ll name Perry, but not try to list all the others.) We were to offer pastors’ conferences at a number of Methodist churches. I was very easily the least famous person on the team, and I didn’t figure I’d be doing all that much talking. Yes, there was the moment of pride when I told myself I had plenty of notes to use in speaking and I’d love to use them, but I reconciled myself to just going along. That wasn’t hard. After all, I was going to spend three weeks traveling all over England and Wales. What’s not to enjoy? Just for fun, I should mention that not a few of our friends suggested that I was getting cold feet about the upcoming wedding and had fled to Europe! But I came back, and Jody and I are coming up on our 14th anniversary this November.

    The first conference—and no, I don’t remember the name of the town—was quite a rousing event as I remember it, though my expectations about not speaking were fully realized. Until, that is, it was time for the closing meeting of the evening. Now those who read this and know Perry will be unsurprised at this. As the singing finished for the final meeting Perry comes up to me and says, “Get ready. You’re going to wrap this thing up.” Getting ready involved something like 30 seconds. So I got up and wrapped things up. I don’t remember a thing I said, and I believe I can safely say that nobody else does either.

    Then I closed with a prayer exercise I use. I invite people to begin in silence and listen for the Holy Spirit to direct them to somebody else in the room they should pray for. This exercise tends to scare conference leaders. They’re afraid of the chaos that might result, the crazy things people might do. And this fear is not unfounded. We’ve all encountered crazy people doing crazy things and blaming it all on the Holy Spirit. “God told me,” is often an excuse for the worst sort of silliness and abuse. On the other hand, I’ve done this many, many times, and have never regretted it.

    It went well that time as well. People prayed for one another. There were the inevitable questions for me from people who are concerned about the rules. What if the Holy Spirit tells two people to pray for the same person? What if I’m supposed to pray for more than one person? What if I’m supposed to sit in my seat and pray for everyone?

    Then it was over. Nothing spectacular.

    As we were about to close, an elderly gentleman asked to give a testimony. (Knowing Perry, he may have been calling for testimonies. I don’t really remember.) The gentleman was grinning from ear to ear. He was fairly bubbling with joy and excitement. Then he started to talk.

    He pointed to the first speaker. “I was reluctant to come here this morning,” he said, “but I did. I listened to your presentation, and I just about left. It did nothing for me.”

    He pointed to the second and told him that his had done nothing for him either. He was so joyful, however, that nobody could really take offense. He said at lunch time, he had almost decided not to return to the conference. He went through the list of afternoon speakers and said the same thing about each one.

    Then he said, pointing to me, “And you, young man, yours was all just rubbish to me too. It did nothing for me. But then you called for prayer. I was certain nothing was going to happen. I had a particular thing I wanted to hear about from the Lord, and I was sure this was going to be a failure. Then I felt someone put his hand on my shoulder and start to pray. It was my own pastor! I was disappointed. But then he started to pray, and I heard precisely what I’d been waiting to hear all day today and for a long time. The Lord sent all of you here all the way from America just so my pastor could pray for me!”

    The question, of course, is whether those of us called to teach can handle having what we say called rubbish, and being sent on intercontinental flights so God can use other people to do his work.

    Or is there too much pride?

     

  • I Know Less about Prayer than I Used To

    Today I extracted a paragraph from David Alan Black’s blog (I have his blanket permission), just so I could comment on it. He notes:

    I often ask myself, How can I write anything about prayer? I’ve still got so much to learn about it!

    I am in sympathy with his comment. My wife and I have taught seminars about prayer, and we’ve both written about it as well, both on our blogs and in print. But the more I’ve taught about prayer, the more convinced I’ve become is that the most important thing to do is to unlearn things that I think I already know. Communion with God is not something that can be reduced to science. You won’t have a good prayer life because you follow a formula, however complex and all-encompassing that formula may be.

    This doesn’t mean that you never learn anything from others. I’ve learned many things from others about prayer. Yet in most cases, that learning has involved unlearning something else, removing the limits that I have placed on the way God can and will work.

    Abraham had a mighty interesting prayer life. He argued with God about Sodom. When asked to sacrifice his son, he didn’t argue with God, and I wonder if he was supposed to have done so. He tried to lie his way through various situations, and God worked with him despite that. Abraham, of course, had no concise printed guides to how to pray. Amazing how well that worked.

    I’ll keep teaching about prayer. I may even write more about it. But at the same time, I hope what we all do is clear away all the barriers we have to just getting in touch with God.

    I look forward to seeing Dave’s chapter on prayer. I know the furnace in which it is being forged, and I expect the Lord to do great things through Dave’s pen (and keyboard).

  • Syria: To Intervene or Not

    Religion News Service provides us with some comments by the experts on the ethics of intervening in Syria (HT: UM-Insight). Now I am neither a theologian nor an ethicist, so I wouldn’t claim to be able to parse all the issues in deciding whether an intervention is just.

    In fact, I find many of the comments by the experts substantially less than helpful. The final comments by Robert Parham of EthicsDaily.com.

    But even so my questions are simpler:

    1) Is it justified? Violence is so easy to justify based on someone else’s actions. In this case, innocent people have been killed. I don’t believe in initiating force, but I do believe one can use force to defend oneself or others. (Christians should consider deeply whether such action is justified on their own behalf or with the blessing of the church.)

    2) Will it be effective? In other words, will the situation that results be better than the situation in which one intervened? This is where I think that most attempts to justify violence fail. “He started it!” is a good playground excuse, even justification, for violence, but how often is the resulting situation actually better?

    I think it is on #2 that the Syrian mission fails. We may be able to make a point, but will Syria be a better place when we’re done? I simply don’t see how we can make Syria a better place through this action. We can justify it on the basis of saving innocent lives, presumably in the future, but what basis is there to believe that less people will be killed because we intervened?

    As an American, I will add one more question: Is it legal? President Obama is seeking the permission of congress though he has claimed, incorrectly in my view, that he doesn’t require that permission.  I think he does require such permission, but presidents have been eroding the war powers of congress, and congress has failed to defend their legal prerogatives. Are such legal issues important? I think they are. They allow us, as a nation, to take responsibility and make decisions. They limit the powers of the executive to make these unilateral decisions without adequate discussion. Now if congress will just ask, and duly consider, the ethical issues involved.

    I served in the United States Air Force. There were times when my government chose to go to war when I didn’t think there was justification. I expressed that view at the ballot box, and as an airman carried out my duties. I think the legal justification and procedure is extremely important. Our servicemen and women don’t (and in my view shouldn’t) make an ethical choice each time their government sends them into action. Those of us who are not in that position owe it to them to give thorough consideration to how justified and effective their actions will be before we risk their lives.

    In this case, I think there is good justification for action under my first question. I don’t think it’s possible for this intervention to actually be effective, i.e. to make the situation better. When I weigh my votes in the next election, I will count support for this action by my elected officials as a black mark against them.

    Note that I don’t think I’m expressing the Christian view. One can justifiably disagree, for example, if one simply thinks this can actually bring an end to the suffering. In the meantime, the church should be in the business of reconciliation, which I can support any time.

  • Welcoming Visitors

    Allan Bevere has some excellent notes. As someone who has visited many churches, and experienced just about all of what he describes, I can just say “Amen!” Don’t smother. Don’t ignore. Be helpful!