Thinking-Christianly

The age in which we live celebrates the greatness and glory of man. It delights in technology, builds its hopes on the power of education, and insists that the future is determined by the plans we carry out. I admit that this attitude influences me more than I would wish. Like many other focused leaders, I tend to see the future as something largely shaped by my efforts, my passion, my pursuit of personal, professional, and church goals.

From a certain perspective it looks as if the future of our lives, our churches, and our culture are determined by the choices we make and nothing else. At first it looks as if everything exists in a cause and effect relationship that rests on our choices. In an age of self-help and self-improvement books and seminars, it’s so easy in daily thinking to shift into this ‘soft’ determinism that makes us lords of our lives.

If we view life in a superficial way, we’ll resist asking questions like: Where did the universe come from? Is there a purpose in life greater than affluence and personal peace? Why do I make moral judgments every day? Is there more to existence than ten or eleven decades of life on a broken planet? It’s easier to stay immersed in the day-to-day busyness of life, even for Christians, and to avoid the queries that point beyond us.

For many today God has disappeared. In our time this is not so much a theological rejection of God as it is a refusal to consider him relevant. He disappears under the glitz and glamour of the media. He becomes quietly irrelevant to our pursuit of the good life and the things others chase.

This condition is reflected in Job 21:14-15, which states, “Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain by praying to him?’”

We may not consciously hear ourselves saying these words, but our behavior, our inattention, our frenetic engagement in our personal agendas, our preoccupation with the pressures of the moment marginalize God to the point of invisibility. For those who don’t have a living relationship with Christ this is simply a way of life. It was at one time for me. But for those who profess to be Christ followers, it is a tremendous tragedy. In either case, the results are sad. This mentality leaves us alone. It limits us to our puny resources. It detaches us from the eternal grace and meaning that we were created to taste with a God who is not invisible.

If there ever was an age to dazzle the eyes it is our age. We are exposed to multi-colored images of people and things. The glut of images and tangible products tax our ability to decipher them. There is no end of newer, flashy, better, quicker, and more feature-packed goods available. Can you even name a third of the cereals for sale in the supermarket? How many different kinds of pens can you find at Wal-Mart? How many different models of cell phones do you or your friends use? Can you name one of the five tallest buildings in the world today?

The belongings someone below today’s poverty line owns would have been riches in the depression. The possessions of a middle class American family would have been viewed as wonderful extravagances a generation ago. It reflects Ecclesiastes 1:8, which notes “The eye never has enough of seeing.” The captivating power of the things we see and touch in our modern world prove this proverb to be true in a whole new way.

This focus on the brilliant and remarkable things that surround us and clamor for our attention can be deadly to the soul. The magnetic appeal slowly convinces us that such stuff is more important than other things. It’s the fiber of life. It’s part of what it means to be a winner or demonstrate your value to others. And it subtly shifts the focus from what’s important to what’s trivial.

Paul reminds us that God’s reality is the inverse of what we see in our culture. In 2 Corinthians 4:18 the Bible states, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is seen is eternal.” It turns out that the most permanent stuff we can know in life cannot be seen. It’s not of this world. Neither is it subject to decay or improvement. What is unseen? In the previous verse it is an eternal glory that is more enduring than our earthly bodies. I suspect Paul has in mind the character of God and the virtues that make him who he is. On a smaller scale, it’s perhaps the fruit of the Spirit reproduced in those who follow him. It’s the divine remaking of regenerated humans into his likeness reflected in qualities like love, compassion, grace, and courage. In these unseen things that are part of God’s perfection that we are invited to stand in true awe. As they become the benchmarks of our life and the hallmarks of our character, they draw us to a hope that will not fade with the next car model or be damaged by the next ferocious storm.

To fix our eyes on the unseen is not to dwell on the mystical of Eastern religions. It’s to lovingly pursue the God who sent his Son for us, who meets us with his grace and invites us to a loyalty that will not betray us in the end. May God grant those who seek him the power to detach our hearts and minds from that which is fleeting so that we can pursue the best.

It’s difficult to know how to help others when they are going through tough times. Often we want to do what we can to fix their problem, but many afflictions in life are beyond our repair. We cannot reverse death, motivate rebellious children, perform medical miracles, pay enormous bills, offer employment, or reverse unloving attitudes. There is a frustrating sense of impotence when a person with a caring heart meets a person suffering in affliction.

That frustration can often produce strange responses. We may talk and over-talk to try to find some words to say that make sense. We sometimes toss out platitudes like “God is good” or “You’ll get over it.” or “Time will heal.” The book of Job is largely the story of three friends who tried to comfort Job in his affliction, but who didn’t help much. They basically told Job that his suffering was because of his sinfulness, and that if he would repent, everything would be great.

They were partly right. A good deal of our suffering does flow from our sinfulness—our stupidity, stubbornness, poor choices, selfishness, and disobedience. Wrong choices sometimes bring real pain into our lives. But they were also partly wrong—for some of our affliction is a byproduct of living in a fallen world. And even suffering is something God can use for his purposes. (See Genesis 50:20.)

What I often forget when I think of the failure of Job’s friends is that they started out with a good compassionate response. Job 1:11 stats that they “met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him.” They started out to show real compassion and care. And what did they do? Verses 12-13 tells us that they wept, tore their robes, put dust on their heads, and sat with him seven days in silence.

Though our cultural displays of sorrow might be different, the first steps Job’s friends take make a lot of sense. They showed compassion through their presence, their attention to his hardship, their expressions of grief, and their humble listening. Not a bad model for us to follow when we feel that same sense of powerlessness, but want to somehow be used of God to lift someone’s spirit.

As we look around at the moral erosion of our culture, it’s tempting to discover some kind of process or mechanism that will restore health to the values of the church and the nation. This natural yearning tends to produce a desire for what many would describe as a spiritual revival.

I would be the first to delight in seeing such a thing. It would be thrilling to see the members of the modern church embrace the comprehensive truth of the Bible. It would be exciting to watch the grace and truth of Jesus’ teaching lived out by those who profess to know him. It would be refreshing to watch the followers of Christ be more concerned about his reputation and honor than their own. It would be amazing to watch the authentic practice of Christianity muzzle many of the objections modern society raises against it.

Unfortunately, this desire tends to create an artificial means to achieve the goal. The classic picture is a sign on a church which reads something like, “Revival Wednesday Night.” Is it something we schedule, like a trip to the dentist? Others look at prayer as a silver bullet that will produce a revival.

Some approaches are less bold. You may have heard the unfounded generalization, “Every revival has been preceded by a massive emphasis on prayer!” There are two problems with this statement. The first is that it is not historically true. If you define what constitutes a revival in self-serving terms and exclude anything that does not fit your prayer paradigm, you might ‘prove’ your conclusion to be true. But we don’t have enough empirical evidence to make that conclusion. Some of God’s people are always earnestly seeking him in prayer. God sometimes graciously cultivates a spirit of earnest humility and repentance among his followers. To posit that the latter is conditioned on the former is to broad of a generalization. This leads to the second problem with this assertion. It presumes that revival is ultimately based on the behavior of men (in prayer) rather than the grace of God. Through prayer we have the power to initiate this gracious renewal. This approach is too anthropocentric for me.

Is our attitude toward God irrelevant when it comes to revival? It seems to be a factor, but not in the cause-and-effect way some contend. For example, Nehemiah’s generation enjoyed a spiritual awakening that was a result of God’s mercy. But they took initiative that played some role in God’s sovereign plan. Nehemiah 9:3 states, “They stood where they were and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day, and spend another quarter in confession and in worshiping the Lord their God.” Was this one assembly the turning point for the nation? Probably not. But it reflected an attitude and a willingness to seek God. They had been humbled by three deportations and the devastation of their land. And they were willing to turn to him.

As I look at texts like this one, I discover that the bottom line is that I need God. When I’m wise enough to recognize that need, humbly seek him and yield my will to his, I’ll be moving in a healthy direction. Whether that is part of a divine move in many hearts simultaneously is up to God. Perhaps it’s best to seek God rather than to seek revival. Jesus promised that when we seek God we will find what we seek. Whether revival happens as well is his prerogative.

Recently I had the opportunity to sit across the table from a religious individual who reflected a common method of validating truth. I’ll call the person Roger.

He reads extensively and enjoys everything from parts of the Bible to the obscure and convoluted teachings of Deepak Chopra, who tries to recast Jesus as an ascended master in his work The Third Jesus. I asked Roger how he determines which of the conflicting ideas in this smorgasbord of thoughts are true. How does he determine which of the concepts are eternal gems and which ones ought to be discarded?

Roger claimed that the way he measures whether something is true or not is by his feelings. If he feels that the idea is true (through some kind of internal subjective feeling), then it must be true.

Roger has probably never studied postmodernism, but he’s adopted its epistemology. He has come to believe that he is his own god and has the supernatural innate ability to decree that one thing is true and another is not. Roger added that he has no right to judge another person, but when I pointed out that I disagreed with his methodology, he defended it as though his approach was objectively correct. (This pseudo-humility seldom works in practice.)

I asked Roger what he might say to a Nazi who claimed that Jews and Blacks were vermin and should be eradicated from the human race. What would he do if that person based his views on the fact that in the mind of the Nazi these convictions were deeply held and felt right?

Roger returned to the idea that he had no right to judge, but would not agree when I suggested that the decision to fight Hitler’s evil must therefore be wrong since the Third Reich is entitled to its own moral system provided that it is sincerely held.

Because we do not live in a utopian world, there will be conflicts. Clerks will ring up your sale improperly. (This happened to me yesterday.) Mates will debate vacation plans. Office workers will generate documents with grammar and spelling errors. Doctors will disagree about treatment plans for complex illnesses. Parents will compete about which house a couple visits on Christmas day.

When feelings become the ground of truth there is no way to deal with conflicting values. If my feelings decree what is right and wrong, I will be tempted to either retreat into absolute passivism or I will attempt to coerce others to adopt my values. Passivity neither satisfies nor lasts long. How long can anyone go without making any assessment of the world around them? Conversations are full of opinions, assessments, and complaints. Coercion, on the other hand, leads only to bullying and tyranny.

The trump card of “feeling” turns out to be a joker in the end. It does not validate anything as being true, and it is a totally unworkable epistemological approach in the real world where we are forced to deal with differences on an hourly basis.

I’ve been pondering the significance of the 10 Commandments as I prepare in preaching the last sermon about them this Sunday. On reflection, it seems as if there are two common responses to the 10 Commandments in our culture today.

Perhaps the most common response is one of rejection—or at least benign neglect of them. Our postmodern thinking tends to toss out any value that holds itself as an absolute. We conjure up a thousand imaginary exceptions and then pretend that the moral principle can’t be universal and most certainly does not apply to us. (As has been pointed out by many, the premise “There are no absolutes.” is in itself an absolute, and therefore self-contradictory.)

The best that can be said to those who reject the 10 Commandments out of hand is that such a decision is premature and quite unworkable. Listen to the language of these same people as they critique the culture around them and make suggestions for improvement. You will invariably notice that they will apply some of these principles (especially of the last 6 commands) in their critique. The kind of society we were designed to hunger for requires the application of these ideals in order to satisfy what C. S. Lewis described as the moral motion within us. The terminology of the expectations may change, but the essence does not. Rejecting these commands leads to moral and social chaos. We subtly replace them with similar oracles of our own design in the end.

The other response to the 10 Commandments is pride. We look at the list and celebrate our ability to meet or exceed these expectations. We can celebrate that we are not guilty of homicide. We congratulate ourselves that we have evolved beyond ancient people and do not bow down to idols representing water, fire, or fertility. We compare ourselves favorably to a John Edwards or a Kenneth Lay of Enron. This tendency for self-adulation can infect a moralist like Benjamin Franklin who made a list of sins he was eradicating from his life. Or it can touch any garden variety Christian who sees in the 10 Commandments a badge of honor to his own righteousness. We become like the man in Mark 10:20 who approached Jesus asking about eternal life. Jesus mentioned five of the 10 commandments, and the man claimed to have kept them since he was a boy. In his mind, they measured his achievement.

Of the two responses—rejection and pride—the second is perhaps the worst. I fear it is all too common among Christians. It puts us in a place where we turn the 10 Commandments upside down. They are not trophies of our righteousness. They are indictments against us for our unrighteousness. When understood properly, especially in light of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, they are witness to our failure, our lack of godliness, and our disobedient spirit.

Properly understood, the 10 Commandments lead to contrition, not celebration. They stand together as one small mirror in scripture in which I see my rationalization, my moral corruption, my self-centeredness, and my resistance to the rule of God in my life. They remind me of my just condemnation before a holy God. They magnify the infinite distance between me and the perfection of the designer and sustainer of the universe. They cast me deep into the shadows where the light of Christ becomes a blinding invader to my personal darkness. They point me to the grace and mercy I need daily in order to have any hope to see life and behold God.

The 10 Commandments ultimately point to Jesus Christ and his cross. They remind me that I bring nothing to God of moral value. They persuade me of the absolute necessity of relying only on the substitutionary death of Christ as the ground of my standing before God. They rebuke me whenever I approach God in any spirit other than humility and contrition. They encourage me to deeper devotion to the Christ who offers a reconciliation I cannot manufacture myself.

The opening of the Beijing Olympics made many references to the ancient history of China. According to the English commentary, many of the images were anchored in the harmony and unity of the universe. These ideas were rooted in Buddhism. On the surface, such ideas seem idealistic and utopian, but they are built on a world view that diminishes the significance of everything.

Both Buddhism and Hinduism share a pantheistic world view.  Pantheism teaches that all is god and god is all. It tries to bring everything together. It contends that all opposites are simply parts of a universal whole. That sounds attractive until you get to the details. If the pantheistic view is right, there is no ultimate difference between evil and good. To love your neighbor and eat your neighbor are ultimately part of the same choice. Morality has no lasting significance, because all choices ultimately merge into a kind of cosmic soup that embraces everything.

G. K. Chesterton described it this way: “The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.”

It’s no surprise that the People’s Republic of China points to the pantheistic history of the country. Pantheism does not have the moral power to challenges the choices of a totalitarian regime. Because all choices of people or nations will be assimilated into an ultimate unity, the need to cry out for justice and work for social righteousness is greatly reduced, if not eliminated. This is not to argue that pantheistic religions produce totalitarian rulers. They simply lack the moral authority to stand against them.

In today’s vernacular language, people often ascribe events to chance. It might result in getting a parking spot close to the door of a superstore. It’s the reason behind buying the single iPod on the shelf that was defective. It’s what accounts for the nail in the tire on the way home. Sometimes we describe such events as luck—either good or bad.

Strictly speaking, chance does not have the power to account for such things. David Hume was no friend of Christianity. But he said of chance, “Chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power which has anywhere a being.” Because chance is not an entity, it has no power to cause something to happen.

One might argue that if you flip a coin, the odds are 50-50 that it will turn up heads on any particular toss. That is true. But it’s a description of how reality usually functions because of the shape of a two-sided object and the physical principles that act on it like gravity. The mathematical probability is descriptive and not prescriptive. It doesn’t cause something to happen. And even in this case it does not force you to get heads on the third flip of a coin. Every event has a cause, whether we fully understand it or not.

When we try to substitute chance for God, we are trading a nothing for a something. We may argue that we don’t know why certain things happened because of a lack of information, but to posit chance as the answer to our agnosticism is to make a leap of faith about the power of a nothing to account for things in the world.

Hang around evangelical Christians for a season. Listen to our prayers. You’ll quickly discover that we tend to ask Jesus to meet us in our sufferings and afflictions. But if you listen carefully, you’ll discover that the difficulties we focus on are likely to be the result of living in a broken world.

Our bodies don’t always work the way we want, and we pray for health. Companies downsize or restructure, and we face tough decisions and sometimes a new job search. Children move into the teen years and beyond and make poor life choices with significant repercussions. These circumstances, and others like them, become the focus of our intercessory prayer. They are the burdens that we carry and the stress that we bring before Christ. Arthritis, fender benders, and sassy kids are part of the consequence of the fall. I fear that we have elevated such afflictions to a more prominent place than they deserve.

I would not say that such trials and tribulations should be excluded from prayer. God is concerned about all of our lives and he can be glorified when prayers of faith invite him into the whole of our lives.

But I’m struck by the fact that most of the affliction in the New Testament that prompts prayer does not emerge from the normal brokenness of life. Much of the suffering mentioned in the New Testament relates to the additional burden of presenting Christ to a world in rebellion. It’s the affliction that can be averted by silence or retreat into spiritual passivity.

Consider 2 Corinthians 1:5, for example: “For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” The afflictions here are the byproduct of a witness of words and actions that produce a backlash. It’s declaring the uniqueness and supremacy of Christ. It’s challenging the pluralism of our time. It’s speaking in favor of the ethical and moral values of God as reflected in the Bible.

When I ask myself how often I suffer in this way, the answer is, “Very little.” We are not called to be obnoxious, but we are called to a supreme loyalty to Christ that will not put us in favor with the world.

I don’t enjoy suffering of any kind more than most. But I wonder if the kind of suffering we often focus on in our conversations and our prayers is in a different class than the kind we might experience more often if we lived lives of courageous faith.

Religious people in all ages are eager to hear God speak. We seem to have an insatiable appetite for a fresh word from God. And there is no lack of teachers, preachers, advisors, and analysts who will speak into the contemporary culture on behalf of God.

Conclusions may seem logical, but if they are not firmly grounded in God’s revelation they are faulty. Take the words of the field commander of Assyria to Hezekiah for example. In 2 Kings 18 Hezekiah paid the Assyrians tribute, but that did not satisfy their appetite for wealth or territory. They conquered Samaria and proceeded southward to the fortified cities of Judah, which also fell. Hezekiah resisted surrendering Jerusalem, the last stronghold of Judah. The field commander wrote to him, “The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.”

On the surface, that message seemed authentic. God had promised that disloyalty to him would result in foreign powers conquering the promised land. The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen because of their unfaithfulness. And God had allowed many of the fortified cities of Judah to be conquered as well. (In 586 BC the kingdom would be conquered as an act of divine judgment on his people.) Much of the evidence pointed to the likelihood that God may have indeed instructed this commander to come and conquer Jerusalem.

But when we read the subsequent chapters we discover that it was God’s will to deliver the city and destroy this army. In 2 Kings 19:35 we read of the divine destruction of 185,000 soldiers in one night.

This account reminds me that it’s important to have a healthy dose of skepticism when someone claims, “The Lord told me…” In despair some conclude that the world may end in the next year, and that God has placed us at the end of history. Other voices triumphantly proclaim that the church is on the edge of the greatest resurgence in the history of the world. Either may be true. The truth is that we don’t know. We are called to be faithful in the moment, not fully knowing the timetable of God’s global plan.

To examine contemporary society in light of the historic revelation of God in scripture is a good thing. But many of the messages we hear today take on an air of authority that makes them equal to scripture itself. Deductions are passed off as eternal truth. Personal conclusions are marketed as indestructible revelation. Arrogance and certainty transform personal speculation into a divine edict. Pomposity trumps humility. And sometimes even well-meaning Christians claim to know the mind of God about the events of the moment in a way that was only accessible to Old Testament prophets.

There is nothing wrong with speaking into the contemporary culture. This blog itself seeks to analyze modern thought in light of the revelation of the Bible and inform our thinking with the values and priorities that permeate Scripture. My objection is with the arrogance that accompanies much discussion, whether secular or Christian. We can speak authoritatively of God’s character and of his truth. But let’s be cautious about infusing our speculation about what God is doing in this slice of history with the status of a divine decree. When our predictions prove false, those around us may discredit Christianity, concluding it is a religion for fools rather than the repository of unsearchable riches for those who would trust Jesus.