Thinking-Christianly

I was in a conversation the other day with someone who wanted an outcome to go their way regardless of what scripture mandates. “There is no right and no wrong,” they said. (In the wider scope of life I understand they believe in some of the key absolutes of scripture.) But when following God began to restrict a choice in a place where their desires were strong, this person desperately wanted to be sure that God would not infringe on their choice.

It’s easy to let our desires rule and to look for some way to squeeze God’s approval into the choices of life. I find myself justifying purchases of things I don’t really need, looking for ways to leverage them in some kind of “service” to God. Maybe I can buy that Garmin GPS and loan it to a visiting missionary who needs to visit supporters in my community?

While it’s true that God does not speak specifically into every decision of life, there are times when his guidelines are clear and we tend to ignore them.

An incident in 1 Kings illustrates our tendency to look for “new” truth that fits our desires.

In 1 Kings chapter 13, a prophet is sent to Jeroboam who God put in charge of the 10 tribes of Israel. The prophet, only identified as the “man of God” tells Jeroboam that because he constructed a religious system of his own to compete with the authentic worship at the temple in Jerusalem, his kingdom will fall.

Jeroboam invites the prophet to linger for a meal and receive a gift. But the prophet refuses because God forbid him to do that. (Verse 9) On his return, another man comes to him claiming to be a prophet with new revelation. He’s told it is now OK to eat with this man instead of returning home. The “man of God” yields to the invitation. He buys into the lie.

To the surprise of both, the “man of God” and his host, God speaks judgment on the “man of God” because he did not stick to the original revelation. His life is cut short before he returns home. I’m startled by the severity of God in this case. But the warning is clear. When God speaks, he means what he says and does not contradict himself.

Many spokesmen offer alternate explanations of eternal truths. They promise us that we can accommodate our ethics, morality, sexual orientation, or financial practices to the culture without spiritual repercussions. They encourage us that in God’s grace we can follow our natural desires and enjoy God at the same time. These voices, which come from the church as well as the culture, are appealing because they link to our inclinations. But in the end we will discover that God does not contradict himself and that the narrow way of his truth is the only way to life.

My friend Ken passed along page A7 from the July 3, 1008 Wall Street Journal. The led story reported on a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The article focused on the question of how one attains eternal life.

The article, “Churches’ Fine Line on Salvation,” examined the percentage of adults in various faith groups that believed that many religions can lead to eternal life. This issue is similar to, but not identical with, universalism. Strictly speaking, universalists contend that the entire race will experience deliverance after death. The article did not address the scope of this salvation, but the method. It looked at the notion that many religions with different formulas will bring their adherents to some kind of state of eternal bliss.

Though Robert Wuthnow, director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University labeled the study as flawed due to a 24% response rate, the data reflects a trend seen elsewhere in evangelicalism.

One group the Pew survey measured were those who described themselves as evangelicals. Though this self-identification may not be as precise as I might wish, the response is still illuminating. 57% of those who identify themselves as evangelicals agreed with the statement, “many religions can lead to eternal life.” The writers of the articles wonder if some interpreted the word religions as denominations. Some no doubt did. But even if 1 in 20 did, over half of the evangelical community in this survey would go on record as denying exclusivity to orthodox evangelicalism.

The classical Christian position is that belief in the person and teachings of Christ is essential for acquiring eternal life. If this survey reflects the modern evangelical mind—even poorly—it points to the fact that the core non-negotiable doctrine of historic Christianity as defined by the early church and the Reformation is now optional in the minds of many.

This trend reflects the accommodation of the church to the culture. If it continues, it will result in the implosion of Christianity as we know it. Whenever the core teachings of the New Testament have been set aside for other agendas, the church has lost its voice, its mission, and its purpose in the world. God has always preserved a remnant that has been willing to speak truth to a resistant world, but widespread conformity to the culture and its values makes the church a spiritual eunuch. It cannot reproduce the supernatural and otherworldly qualities that reflect the power and character of the God of the Bible.

A recent story reports that on July 8, 2008 Bradley Fowler sued Zondervan for $60 Million dollars because they printed a bible in which 1 Corinthians 6:9 includes homosexuals as those who will not inherit eternal life. Mr. Fowler contents that this has resulted in pain, suffering, and emotional injury.

In Dallas, Commissioner John Wiley Price demanded an apology from Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield for concluding that Central Collections had “become a black hole.” Mr. Price insisted that terms like black hole, angel food cake, and devil’s food cake are racist.

What these two incidents have in common is a desire to purge our communication from certain words in order to achieve a social agenda. Intent does not matter. History does not matter. And evidently, reason does not matter.

The problems with these arguments are significant. Mr. Fowler must somehow deny the fact that that first century Greek included words to describe homosexual behavior and that these words were used by the New Testament writers.

Mr. Price assumes that the use of the word black or white always alludes to skin color. He would have us ignore the etymology of words and phrases. What would he do with blacksmith, which refers to the layer of oxides that forms on the surface of the metal during heating? How would he deal with a black tie dinner? Would he call someone on a Blackberry? Is a metal racist if it is white hot? How would he describe colors of the squares on a chessboard that we now call black and white? How would he describe the blacklisting of some in Hollywood in 1947 because of suspected ties to Communism?

When ideas can no longer be discussed rationally, the attack often shifts to language. Words or phrases are forbidden in order to silence discussion or further a private agenda. Though these examples are extreme and not substantive in themselves, they reflect a kind of thinking that can cripple the discussion of moral and theological issues of significance. When the normal use of words is overridden by such agendas, the ability to communicate and discourse about issues of truth is jeopardized. Let’s hope these incidents are anomalies and not a harbinger of things to come.

The Old Testament contains many stories of geographical conquest. The story of the exodus is sometimes viewed as record of how Jewish exiles from Egypt took advantage of the poor and unsuspecting inhabitants in the land of Canaan. They had the power, might and military leaders to conquer their weaker neighbors. It’s one more picture of mercenary aggression not unlike the victories of Napoleon, Genghis Kahn, Mohammed, or Minamoto no Yoritomo in Japan.

But the unfolding history of the world is more than competition for land and natural resources, driven by the ego of leaders. A secularized view of ancient history errs in removing God from the equation. It forgets that he judges the acts of men and nations and responds to their choices.

In Deuteronomy 9, Moses is giving his farewell address to the second generation of the Jews in exile. Their parents have died during the last 40 years and they are about to enter Canaan, which will be their new home. Moses is not going with them.

Many of those in the audience felt that they somehow merited this new homeland, that this was God’s reward to them because of their exemplary behavior. In verse 5 Moses destroys this arrogant assumption. The text says, “It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations.” To make sure that they get the message, it’s repeated in the following verse.

The seven people groups who inhabited this region were accountable to God. The sovereign Lord of all mankind has expectations of men and nations, and moves in history in response to their choices. God monitored the response of these nation states for 400 years (Genesis 15:16) and the cultures had moved so far from him that it was time to act. Though this coincided with his promises to the descendants of Abraham, he wanted them to know that it was not on the basis of their moral excellence that this land would be theirs. The current occupants had forfeited their place because of their unrighteousness.

In an age where we explain history in terms of impersonal factors colliding on a global chessboard, we forget that nations rise and fall in relation to their standing before God. We tend to think like Nebuchadnezzar before God humbled him. We can drift into a deistic faith where God is smaller than the politicians and the military leaders, and watches history unfold from the sidelines. We sometimes grow weary with the patience of God in the face of evil. (Why didn’t he end the Third Reich in its infancy?) We also can attribute our success to our own superiority—as the Jews here were tempted to do. And life becomes a bit more tenuous, a bit more frightening.

The Bible offers a different view. Men and nations are accountable to him. He follows his timetable and his plan, and responds to trust and obedience with favor, but defiance with judgment. Even though we may not understand the way he weaves together the themes of justice and mercy, the biblical text leaves no doubt that we are accountable to him. That is perhaps the most relevant lesson we can learn from his rule over history.

The book of Enoch was not considered to be part of the canon by the Jews in Old Testament times, or by the New Testament writers. Some would argue that the book must be biblical since it is quoted in the New Testament. But this is a logical fallacy. When a biblical writer quotes a non-biblical source, that quotation does automatically elevate the source to the level of divine scripture. 

For example, in Acts 17:28, Paul takes the quote, “For in him we live and move and have our being,” from Aratus’s Phaenomena 5. He quotes this to make a point to his Athenian audience. Another example is Titus 1:12, where Paul quotes a line from Epimenides (6th-5th century B.C.) who was held in honor on Create as a poet, prophet, and religious reformer. The Old Testament also refers to documents that are not part of scripture but were useful for the compiler of books like Kings, Chronicles, and Samuel. 

Jude 14 refers to a quotation made by antidiluvian (before the flood) patriarch Enoch. We do not have the Book of Enoch in any extant (existing) translation around the first century when Jude was written. Most copies of the Book of Enoch are from the medieval period. Many commentators believe that the quote in Jude comes from oral tradition that was accessible in the first century. 

Another logical fallacy critics sometimes fall into when describing this book and others is that it was “left out” of the canon. This is a common argument for those who would put the 2nd and 3rd Century Gnostic gospels in the canon. But the Gnostic writings came much later than the other documents in the New Testament canon and these Gnostic works were rejected from the beginning by contemporaries like Origen. That statement that a book was “left out” also assumes it was in there in the first place. That is circular reasoning. It assumes what needs to be proven. (It’s like wondering why the BMW on the street was left out of my garage. It was never mine in the first place, but belonged to my neighbor.) 

See Mark D. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels and Norman Geisler From God to Us: How We Got Our Bible.    

Recent books challenging Christianity and religion in general, are known more for the abrasiveness of their language than by the force of their arguments. Works by Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins consistently use ad hominem arguments and invective to support their contentions.

Ravi Zacharias is among those who are responding to these publications. His book End of Reason is a brief response to Sam Harris’ End of Faith.

Zacharias is strongest when he is pointing out the weakness in Harris’ arguments about Hinduism and other non-Christian philosophies. Having been raised in India, and thoroughly versed in the primary sources of both Hinduism and Buddhism, Zacharias demonstrates that Harris either misunderstands or deliberately misrepresents these belief systems that he assails.

Zacharias is also persuasive when he examines the logic of Harris’ argument. For example, in order for Harris to blast the Christians who at one time embraced slavery, Harris must contend that slavery is wrong. That may be his personal preference, but what is the ground that would require others besides Harris to that same definition of morality? If the argument is based on what is socially acceptable rather than what is absolute (which is part of a Christian world view), then what prevents someone from arguing against Harris that slavery was once socially acceptable—even by Aristotle—and may be again some day.

Zacharias is a writer who loves to tell poignant stories. These add a flavor to the book that Christians may appreciate, but in some way they detract from the analysis of the key points Harris raises and the flaws in his thinking. The introduction by Lee Strobel was more combative than I would have wished, and did not offer the objectivity I would have liked to see if I were giving this book to a skeptic.

At just over 100 pages, the End of Reason is a quick read and will give you insights into the logical fallacies that characterized Harris’ work.

Grace is a wonderful gift from God. It offers us hope that we can be reconciled with God despite our inability to match the moral perfection that is part of God’s character. Grace empowers God to extend to us favor despite what we deserve. It’s a dimension of the character of the God of the Bible that distinguishes him from man-made deities.

Grace itself is not problematic, but our use of the concept often is. I’ve often interacted with Christians who are living in disobedience or indifference to God’s commands, who believe that God will bless them regardless because of his grace. (I’ve defended my own stubbornness on the same grounds at times.) When we justify our own defiance this way, we pretend that grace handcuffs God in a way that he is obligated to bless us no matter what. This kind of faulty reasoning creates the illusion that we can give lip service to God as we refuse to submit to his lordship over our lives.

Titus 2:11-14 offers a link between the wonderful grace of God and how the reality of that grace is to shape our behavior. As Paul writes to Titus, he pictures grace as a teacher. He reminds us that there are several lessons that grace wants to teach us about how we live under God’s rule and mercy. Note what the text tells us:

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.  It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope– the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,  who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” (NIV)

Scripture links the correct understanding of grace with moral choices. It requires that we say “No” to some things. It calls us to develop self-control through the power of the spirit. It summons us to live godly lives. It invites us to cultivate an eagerness to do good.

Grace, correctly understood, can never be an excuse for indifference or do-as-you-please living. It’s a gift that directs us to something more substantial, more holy, and more worthy of the one whose death offers us undeserved reconciliation with a perfect God.