Thinking-Christianly

A writer to the Fargo Forum condemns Cal Thomas for referring to abortion as a “fetal holocaust.” Such a statement is labled “hateful language.”

The editorial writer’s presumption is that language should never be hateful. When applied to people, they have a valid point. But a culture that does not hate evil is one that allows evil to grow beyond measure.

One on-line dictionary defines holocaust as ”a mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.” That seems an apt depiction of the death of milliions of unborn children who have committed no evil worthy of death. The vast majority of them were regarded as inconvenient interruptions in the lives of those who favored their destruction over their birth.

Christians must show compassion for those whose clouded judgment lead them to the “solution” of abortion when faced with unwanted pregnancies. Even so, this solution is evil.

Callousness toward the unborn is certainly not the only evil that warrant hateful language. In Psalm 97:10, those who love the Lord are enjoined to hate evil. Amos 5:15 tells us to hate evil and love good. God hates robbery (Isaiah 61:8) and divorce (Malachi 2:16).

I’m not suggesting that we join those who thrive on invectives and delight in vulgarity and rancorous speech. We have lost more than enough civility in our time. Instead, we must publically stand with God and hate evil–both the social evils and the personal evils each of us struggle with that that defy his character. Silence is not an option.

Tyndale published a book about two individuals who attended churches–most of them mega-churches and wrote a running commentary on what they saw and experienced in the morning worship services. The book, Jim and Casper Go To Church, chronicles their visits.

Jim Henderson is a seasoned Christian who is convinced that the church doesn’t reach the culture well. Matt Casper is an avowed atheist who asks hard questions of the church and its practices.

The book is sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, and occasionally insightful. One failure of the book is that it nowhere examines a foundaitonal premise upon which it is built.

As the writers evaluate the Sunday worship services and their effectiveness in reaching out to unchurched people, they assume that the purpose of such services is to do that very thing. It reflects the “come to church on Sunday and be saved” mentality that was popular decades ago.

But what if the purpose of Sunday morning gatherings is not primarily evangelism–at least evangelism of those who are philosophical strangers to the church? What if the primary purpose is to train the believers to live consistent with the teachings of Christ so that their impact on others in the marketplace and neighborhood might be marked by orthodoxy and orthopraxy?

Though the seeker-driven model for Sunday worship flourishes, it is my no means the only approach–especially when viewed through the lens of history. Some of the churches Henderson and Casper evaluate do follow that model, and to some degree merit the criticism they write. But the many churches who have a different primary purpose in their Sunday morning meetings will by inference fail a test they are not even trying to take. Reaching the non-Christian may be part of their mission, but it’s not the core of their Sunday morning agenda.

Another philosophial problem with Jim and Casper Go To Church is that it presumes that the church should follow the rules of consumerism. If they market Jesus to the non-Christian properly, they will be effective. That means that everything they do should in some way accommodate the tastes, prejudices, preferences, and whims of that audience.

This conumerism is a far cry from the preaching of a Jeremiah or the attitude of Paul in engaging the Judaizers of his own day. The truth of the gospel grates against every culture and every naturalistic presupposition that autonomous men bring with them into worsihp settings.

I concur that the church often erects unintentional barriers in communicating with the unchurched. It may easily forget how to listen to those who come through its doors looking for truth. But Henderson’s and Casper’s commentary seems to point not only to the need to assess such barriers, but to mute the offense of the gospel as well.

Henderson’s contention that he will not know if his beliefs are true until he dies sounds like fideism. He seems to dismiss the evidence and logical proofs that can build a case that God exists. Belief in God is still a subjective thing.

I’m making my way through a book in which two authors act as “secret shoppers” at church. They chronicle their attendance at various churches (most of them nationaly known) and record their reactions.

One of the interesting themes in their commentary is the desire that ordinary people address them and listen to them in the most casual way. Many churches have trained greeters, but the impression these writers leave is that such programs fall short because those who are welcoming converse with visitors because they are expected to, not necessarily because they want to on the spur of the moment.

Our culture is hungry for simple authenticity and kindness. While people of faith fret and strategize about ways to build bridges between themselves and others, they overlook the fact that the simple qualities of genuine human interaction make a good start. I’ve certainly skipped that step myself.

Maybe it’s not as complicated as we sometimes make it out to be. We don’t have to be world class apologists to demonstrate that we care. But all the apologetics without caring rings hollow.

Today’s headlines featured a story from Honolulu about Matthew Higa, who tossed an infant from the Miller Street pedestrian overpass onto the highway below. Though the motives for such a heinous act are unknown, it reflects a growing erosion of dignity for beings created in the image of God.

In the history of our broken world, violence has always impacted the young and the helpless. But there is a randomness about modern violence toward people that puts it in a different category than many brutal acts of history. Herod destroyed male children in Bethlehem because their birthplace and tribal lineage made them potential kings. Hitler killed millions because of their ethnicity. The inhumane logic of such acts still followed a pattern. Much of what we see today doesn’t. It’s reflective of a reasoning that reduces the person to a zero, a thing, a depersonalized symbol perhaps.

2 Timothy 3:2-5 envisions a period in time when such depersonalized values will mark humanity. There is something chilling about incidents like today’s story that point in that direction.

Sadly, brutality and inhumanity are not new. They are a backdrop against which the virtues of Christian kindness, love and dignity stand out as increasingly rare gems. It underscores the fact that for Christians being pro-life is not confined to the abortion debate. It’s part of every choice we make in relationship to all who share the same humanity.

A recent editorial in a local paper describes the biblical account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of her husband Uriah. The editorialist then contends that God was “merely displeased” at these events. This, he asserts, proves that the Bible has a dark side and is a poor guide for personal behavior.

What can be said about these conclusions?

First, it’s important to distinguish between what the Bible records and what it prescribes. If a book is morally flawed because it accurately depicts evil behavior, then every good history book fails the test. Only sanitized history ignores the dark behavior of men. Accurate historical description of behavior (whether good or bad) is a mark of reliable history.

Secondly, the author ignores the horrific consequences that followed from David’s defiance of God. The kingdom crumbled within a generation. David’s family disintegrated. His immoral example contributed to a wholesale cultural defection that eventually led to civil war and the dissolution of the nation. David’s behavior may not have had the immediate consequences the editorialist would have imposed, but the historical record demonstrates God’s condemnation of these actions and the divine dictum about reaping what one sows.

Must one assume that God is obligated to match the consequences of sin to the editorialist’s preferences in order to vindicate God? What makes the punishment the editorialist might have chosen morally superior? Even on a human level, parents vary their discipline of children by seeking to respond in ways that are wise, but not mechanial. In this case, the response of God is not only misrepresented, but deemed inadequate. But on what basis?

A third issue arrises if the the editorialist concludes that the Bible is an insufficient standard for behavior. The writer himself uses some kind of standard against which the Bible is measured and fails. Where did that standard come from? How do you find a standard to measure things like the moral teaching of the Bible? Where did this golden ideal come from? Are not such guidelines merely personal opinions and preferences? Would that not make moral dialogue meaningless? Why consider  the editorialist’s perspective any more valid than that of a narcissist or cannibal?

Many of the sermons aired on televsion look more like experiments in marketing rather than carefully studied explainations of scripture. Such presentations focus on the individual, and methods of bringing fulfillment and satisfaction to his or her life. It’s self-improvement with God as your personal trainer and coach.

One of the consequences of obedience, faith, and godly living is often a dramatic improvement in our personal lives. But to make this the cornerstone of the Bible is to dethrone God and put ourselves squarely in the center of reality.

The sacrifice of Christ was not about self-improvement. It was a rescue for those who were antagonistic to God, enemies to him in their minds. It was the offer of a restored relationship to those who were totally incapable of improving themselves to a point of acceptance before God.

This modern twist on the gospel destroys worship because it makes God subservient to our goal of being smarter, healthier, addiction-free, and successful. He becomes a means to our end rather than the end of all things.

This inversion also cripples our service to him. We picture God as the one who begins his service to us on the cross, but continues it daily as he perfects us in this life to become the kind of affluent, well-rounded, admired people we hunger to be. This is a far cry from Paul’s view of himself as a “bondslave of Christ.”

The degree to which we buy into the self-improvement gospel is the degree to which our faith will remain infantile, oriented around ourselves, and incapable of glorifying the perfect and holy God who offers rescue through his mercy.

Critics of Christianity frequently object to those who contend for Christianity on the grounds that such Christians are motivated by fear. If one defends Christian thought in the area of sexual ethics, they must be afraid of homosexuals. If they make an argument in the arean of origins, they are afraid of evolution. If they seek to be persuasive in discussing world religions it’s assumed they are afraid of Islam of Hinduism.

The assumption that such arguments are grounded in fear portray the Christian as insecure, uncertain, and perhaps a bit naive. It’s a generalization that seeks to portray Christians as people who are simply compensating for thier own inadequacies. They are not engaged for truth’s sake. It’s a smokescreen to cover their own anxieties.

This tactic relieves the critic of Christianity from the burden of wrestling with the claims, the historical research, the manuscript evidence, and the logic of the Christian position. It uses a psychological model to dismiss the Christian worldview as a foolish attempt to deal with personal issues that result from not finding wholeness in secular thinking. If the Christian had the sense to understand life thorugh the eyes of secular materialism, then he or she would not have these phobias and need a faith to fix them.

Though this thinking is pervasive, it is self-condemning. One could equally argue that any tenant of secularism is motivated by fear, and therefore not worthy of a reasoned reply.

How much more productive to engage in exploring the facts of the claims rather than postulate about the mental problems of those who make them.