Thinking-Christianly

Deuteronomy looks back at the account where the Jews who followed Moses into the wilderness quickly became annoyed at eating manna. They longed for the foods of Egypt and wanted to recruit a leader to take them back rather than forward.

As I read that account I was struck by how easy it is to want to go back to the past. We become nostalgic about the good old days and the way things used to be. Collectibles remind us of the past. We can buy DVDs of almost any TV series produced in the last 50 years. As we age we sometimes reflect on what it was like when the world did not seem so dangerous, so crazy, or so complicated.

There is nothing wrong with revisiting great memories of the past. These are gifts God graciously gives us. But the desire to return to the past prevents us from tasting God’s power in the moment. God is not done showing his people signs of his faithfulness, his grace, his love, and his strength. He invites us in our fresh challenges to depend on him, draw close in prayer, find guidance from the word, and to move forward. Just as he had great things in store for the generation that stepped into the wilderness with Moses, so he has good things for us. That doesn’t mean life will be easy or fun or wonderful at every turn. But it does mean that we can move forward confident in the character and the purposes of God. And in that confidence we can face anything because of who God is.

A good friend of mine recently sent an email he thought I would be interested in. It contained a link to a nationally known Christian leader, now in his late 70′s, who was warning the Christian community about desolation and destruction that would include riots and turmoil in major U.S. cities.

This leader admitted that he did not know exactly when these events would take place, but he asserted that the Holy Spirit told him they would occur soon. He stated he had been giving similar warnings during the past decade, and encouraged people to stockpile food and toiletries.

Such a declaration has an appeal to the Christian community. It echoes some of the dire warnings given by the prophets of the Old Testament to backslidden Israel, Judah, and the surrounding kingdoms. It also rightly reminds us that God stands in judgment against all sin, whether ancient or modern, and that history will end with Christ’s vindication and his judgment upon those who reject him. (See John 12:48)

But such messages raise questions.

Why are such messages so different from the declarations of the disciples in the New Testament? When Peter preached at Pentecost, he focused on the truth that Jesus was the messiah whom they had rejected. He stressed the mission of Christ, not national judgment. Paul in Athens was grieved that the city was full of idols. He did not focus on the judgment that the Roman culture deserved, but on the unknown God who had graciously dealt with the problem of sin through sending Christ. Philip confronted the magician, Simon, but focused on the gospel of the kingdom rather than the day of judgment. Judgment is certainly a valid thread of the fabric of the New Testament message, but the greater focus is on the person of Christ.

How do these messages empower the church? Jesus calls his church to be ready for his imminent return by living for the kingdom and declaring the truth of his identity as the savior of the world. He does not call his people to brace themselves for disaster by stockpiling resources. He calls them to be the salt and light in whatever cultural decay they find themselves. Judgment (both personal and national) will be the consequence of rejecting the offer of life in Christ. While that part of the message must be included, it is the job of the church to exalt Christ and to be ready by continuing on in the mission Christ has given it.

Why is America in the bull’s-eye of God’s wrath? In my decades as a Christian, I’ve heard many speak of America as a nation that is under the wrath of God because of its evil. There is certainly much in this nation that offends a holy God. Despite all its flaws, the United States still has millions of individuals who do their best to love God, learn from his word, and reflect his character in their lives. If God were to measure rejection by the number of people who blatantly oppose his message, there are many other nations that would seem more likely candidates. Countries that glorified God in the Reformation are now ice cold to Christianity. Why not England, Ireland, or Germany? Other nations revel in their rejection of the Christian message and worship the state or other man-made deities. Some seek to persecute any in their borders who claim Christ as Lord. Why not China, Dubai, or North Korea?

I get nervous when America is depicted as the savior of the world or the Satan of the world because the focus remains on the United States as a pivotal player for good or evil. When I turn to scripture, the key players seem to be Israel (with its Old Testament mission to reflect Yahaeh to the world) or the church (with its mission to reflect Christ to the world). One wonders if the spiritual demonizing of America is a siritualized form of the criticism that the US is solely responsible for global warming, over-consumption, an inequitable distribution of wealth, global pollution, and other international ills.

It’s easy to proclaim a message of doom today. This fits in with the pessimism of the age and feels relevant. It blends in with a media that finds a new crisis every day and celebrates the powerless of the individual to live a life of hope and goodness in the face of overwhelming challenges. Over time, the drumbeat of doom does not motivate. It paralyzes. It frightens. It freezes people, even Christians. It breeds an anxiety and pessimism in which we see nothing bur foreboding circumstances all around us. The frankness of judgment is in the New Testament, but it has a different feel. Paul was no stranger to the corruption of the culture and the struggles of the church. But he still wrote extensively of joy in Philippians, even from prison.

The New Testament writers were realists. They knew that Christ would return one day to judge the world. They understood the fact that great evil invites divine retribution. They realized that evil actions, if not brought to the cross in humility and contrition, would be paid back with wrath. But they were relentless in proclaiming a message of hope and promise and healing through the work of Christ on the cross.

In a decaying culture it is tempting to drift toward a gospel of doom. While we are called to be blunt about the consequences of sin and the realities of damnation and hell, we must be sure that we depict the horrors of the wrath of God as a backdrop that showcases the work of Christ. He must be our primary message.

Jonah is an example of one who became so focused on the judgment that he lost sight of the message of hope. While he relished in the potential destruction of the Ninevites, God sent him to bring them into a restored relationship with himself. Even though God attempted to bring balance back to Jonah message, Jonah refused to change his attitude. The secular media has enough Jonahs to go around. Let’s be people who talk straight about the eternal consequences of sin, but who exalt and magnify the greatness and majesty of Jesus Christ.

In the last century there was significant speculation that the religion we call Christianity was basically a deviation of a movement started by the Essenes. That community spoke of a “Teacher of Righteousness” and looked forward to a messianic hope. They recoiled against the hypocrisy of the day and created an isolated community with their own customs and an extensive library. The Dead Sea Scrolls were apparently part of the religious records of this community.

On the surface, the parallels between the Essenes and the early Christian community could indicate a strong link between the two. But the content of the documents found at Qumran reveal the contrasts between the two groups. The Essenes called on their followers to hate their enemies. Jesus commanded his disciples to love them. The Essenes were legalistic about the observance of the Sabbath. Jesus was repeatedly criticized for breaking the Sabbath. Jesus attacked the reliance on purification laws and rituals. The Essenes strongly embraced them. The Essenes had no room in their thinking for women, outsiders, and others who were branded as ‘sinners.’ Jesus welcomed those who were regarded as outcasts and unclean—from lepers to women to tax collectors. The Essenes anticipated the advent of two messiahs. Christianity regards Jesus as the sole messiah.

The idea of Christianity as a faith built on extensive borrowing from other traditions of the time erodes its message because it paints Christianity as a conglomeration of ideas that were pieced together to form a mongrel religion. As attractive as that concept might be for people eager to discredit the claims of the New Testament, the evidence we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other archaeology related to the Essenes points in a different direction. The marked differences between other groups and the Christian teaching point to a uniqueness that cannot be dismissed.

The doctrine of hell is repulsive to the modern mind. Many would concur with Charles Darwin when he wrote, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine” (Autobiography, p. 87)

Few people celebrate the thought of loved ones existing in a place of darkness and discomfort. But our emotions do not define the limits of reality. We may not relish the picture of a majestic home ravaged by a flood, or a promising collegian murdered by a deranged gunman, but such things are real. The world is not always safe. People do evil things. Reality indeed includes things that we don’t like to think about. A doctrine should be considered damnable if it is false, not simply because it causes emotional pain to consider its implications.

The notion that hell is unjust implies some standard of absolute justice. If there is no standard, then there is no way to objectively speak of an unjust doctrine. It’s merely another way of saying, “I don’t like it.” If God exists and is just, he must punish sin.

The animosity toward this teaching also overlooks the fact that the loving God of the Bible does not force free creatures to believe in him contrary to their choice. He gives them the option of rejecting his revelation and choosing an eternity that is not ‘contaminated’ by his mercy, grace, kindness, purity, and holiness. The Bible does not depict a God who forces everyone to live in his presence on his terms in violation of their free choice. He offers to share his kingdom with us, but does not make us accept that offer.

Critics of scripture dislike Daniel because it contains predictive prophecies that are amazing accurate, ranging from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar starting in 605 B.C. to the Roman Empire, which began to exert its influence around 241 B.C. Verses like Daniel 2:7 depict events accurately that were hundreds in the future.

If critics are successful in dating Daniel in the year 170 B.C., the prophecies become history and the supernatural elements of the book no longer point to a God who orders future events.

Does the evidence support a late date for Daniel? A fragment of the book appears in the Dead Sea scrolls collection. This copy predates the arbitrary assignment to 170 B.C. Daniel is mentioned three times in the Book of Ezekiel, which is recognized as a 6^th century B.C. work. The Jewish Talmud attributes the book of Daniel to the historical person mentioned in Ezekiel.

For critics to be successful in their charge, they would have to demonstrate through archaeology or manuscript evidence that the Daniel of the 6^th century could not be the author of the book that goes by his title. Instead, they offer conjecture built on an anti-supernatural bias that accords with their presuppositions.

Replacing scholarship with speculation may further their agenda, but it is not good research.

Modern writers often describe situations and characters with massive amounts of words. They describe the scene, the thoughts and words of the main characters, and often a Freudian analysis of their feelings and emotions as well. This style of writing is like recording an event in God-mode, where we know virtually all that could be known about every dimension of a situation.

The New Testament, in comparison, looks relatively barren. The gospels do not have the depth of details we find in modern works, and certainly none of the psychoanalysis to which modern readers are accustomed. Many things that could have been said are omitted, and the result is a document that can feel unsatisfying to modern readers.

Instead of viewing the differences as flaws in the gospel accounts, these differences point to authenticity. They were written to a different time and different culture. The form that we call biography today did not follow our guidelines in the time of Christ. Many writings of that age focused on the last days of a person’s life and how he died. These were seen as the measurements of true character. It was common for such writings to skip over major parts of the subject’s life and focus on key events or speeches. What happened during childhood and what we might call the formative years was of little interest. The gospels fit well within this framework of Hellenistic biography. (See Mark D. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels, (Wheaton, Crossway Books, 2007, p. 84 ff.) The writer often sought to make moral statements from the life of the one they described. The gospels naturally reflect the style of their own time. To fault them for not fitting into the modern styles is to be naïve about the difference in writing over the centuries.

Another feature of the gospels that point to their authenticity is their brevity. Instead of going into great dramatic detail about the “how” of the crucifixion, John states, “Here they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.” (See John 19.18.) You can imagine how a modern writer would go into great detail about such a pivotal moment in the work of redemption. But John condenses it to what we translate as 18 words in English.

Other incidents in the gospels are also told in the most simple of terms. Mark 6:41 records Jesus’ feeding of 5,000 men by saying, “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up into heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves.” Modern accounts would have told us much more than this matter-of-fact statement. If Christians had come along centuries later and embellished the text, details might have been added. Such simplicity points to the authenticity of the texts of the New Testament. (In fact, one of the guidelines of textual criticism is that the shorter text is to be preferred—all other things being equal—over the longer text.) So the next time you read the gospel accounts and lament what is not said, take heart that such features of the gospel texts point to their trustworthiness as credible accounts of what God was doing through the ministry of Christ.

We live in an age where pollsters claim to be able to give us a snapshot of how Americans, or any sub-group of Americans feel about a certain issue or idea at any given moment. How many think the President is doing a good job? What is the attitude toward gun ownership? How many favor switching to and from daylight savings time?

I have doubts about the information retrieved through polls. In the first place, it requires no action. I can indicate what I like at the moment or how I feel. But that does not necessarily translate to what I will do. Polls are easy to take because the subject cannot fail. He or she can state whatever they want without any consequences. Some responders live in line with the values they express. Others do not. Assessing attitude has some value, but in this era of subjectivity, it is difficult to give a great deal of weight to such ‘soft’ responses. If you had taken a poll of the Israelites who saw Pharaoh’s army wiped out by God, most of them would have said that God can do anything. But days later when they have the opportunity to enter the promised land, they balk. Intention does not always translate into action.

When it comes to these polls in the religious community, another factor makes them less than prophetic. That is terminology. A friend recently alerted me to a Barna poll which indicated that a high percentage of Christians do not believe that either Satan or the Holy Spirit are actual beings. Many consider Satan, for example, to be a symbolic representation for evil. The same survey also reported that many who question the personhood of Satan also maintain that the Bible is accurate in what it teaches. In this case, some are affirming contradictory statements.

This particular poll also gave vague results because it classified anyone who self-identified as a ‘Christian’ the title of Christian. So if someone attends church once a decade or grew up in a home that had some nebulous attachment to a church the recipient regarded as Christian, they could include themselves as a “Christian.” They would be lumped together with someone who was a devoted follower of Christ. While this kind of classification process is common in polls, it raises questions about what the results actually say.

The problem of definition also crept up in Barna’s earlier polling about those who did not hold a Christian world view. His conclusions were based on an arbitrary definition of how someone must view certain truths that for Barna are essentials to a Christian world view. He was forced to define some non-negotiable elements of Christianity as central to a Christian world view. But someone could independently have arrived at a slightly different list and produced different results with the same population. I’m not suggesting that Barna (or other pollsters) tried to skew the results. He was forced by the process to set up some arbitrary parameters. And the assumptions that go into those parameters shape the results.

I’m not against polling the Christian and secular community about religious attitudes and values. My concern is that we do not use this information to construct the ultimate spiritual reality that surrounds us today. Such polls may give us glimpses of some of the religious and secular landscape, but it should not be the primary tool we use to understand the world around us.

There are choices in life to which you and I are morally indifferent. They do not have sufficient weight or importance for us to have an opinion or preference one way or another. For example, someone may wonder if it is better to work for an independent restaurant or a major chain. Assuming there are no ethical problems in either case, we may be apt to say, “Take your pick.”

Unfortunately, our culture tends to encourage moral neutrality in areas were morality is an issue. Lying is justified if it is the means to a desired goal. And so someone embellishes their resume in order to land a job for which they feel they are more than qualified. Or a mate lies about their whereabouts because they feel that their partner’s questions are intrusive and not worth answering honestly. This non-judgmental approach normally applies to one’s own choices more than those of another. I reserve the right to assert moral neutrality if I’m an employee and take home office supplies. But if I’m the employer in the scenario, my attitude will likely be different. So the application of morally neutral thinking tends to be a bit self-serving.

As a culture, we can apply that same thinking to God. It’s easy to picture him as morally neutral. Anything else would unfairly prejudice him against us because of factors beyond our control. It would certainly discredit him as a loving God in our eyes. Our modern definition of love does not include opposition, disfavor, and certainly not wrath. And all God is left to do in the presence of evil is to grieve and feel very sad.

This caricature of God as a morally passive, indifferent, or helpless being is the opposite of his self-revelation in scripture. It’s not the God who has acted in human history and displayed his character in real space and time. One summary statement that describes the true God concisely is Psalm 11:4-5, which says, “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne. He observes the sons of men; his eyes examine them. The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.”

God is not passive here. He is active and engaged. He has something to say. He takes sides and assesses the hearts of men. He hates people who are wicked or who love violence. Such behavior is an affront to his holy nature and obnoxious in his sight. He notices, he judges, and he will hold men and women accountable. Those are the forgotten realities that make the sacrifice of Christ meaningful. If God were morally neutral or disengaged, Jesus’ sacrifice would have been a huge waste. Ignoring God’s unchanging attitude toward the evil each of us play with may make us feel better, but it does not change the reality of what we incur when we make choices that offend his holiness.

Modern thought tends to portray Jesus as a man who was sincere, devoted to the Jewish faith and the God of the Old Testament, and one who embraced the return to a moral goodness that was missing in his time. He is typically viewed as a moral reformer who did not understand the strength of his enemies or the threat he posed to them. He made a mark, but died a martyr. In this portrayal he is one more solitary figure who stands up against the corruption and narrow-mindedness of his age and pays for his convictions with his life. This perspective casts Christ as a social or religious reformer, but not the savior of the world. That title was contrived after his death.

The picture of Jesus as a pious, but sometimes mistaken man falls far short of the evidence in the gospels. One of the places where Jesus made a statement that cannot fit into this secular reformer mold is in John 17. Christ is praying to God the Father. He speaks of the completion of the mission that has been entrusted to him. And in this context Christ says something that no sane apostle, prophet, or religious zealot would assert of himself. Christ prays, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. ” (See John 17:5.)

It’s a matter of fact kind of statement. Here Christ is not boasting or preaching. He is conversing with the Father. He asks the Father to glorify him. And the measure of that glory will be equal to the glory he had with the Father prior to creation. Jesus affirms that the world had a beginning. And he notes in passing that he possessed a glory that he shared with the Father prior to that time.

This is not a statement about reincarnation, which requires a previous material existence. It is not a statement about receiving praise from God for a job well done because it goes back in time before creation. This is an unselfconscious claim to deity. It removes Jesus from the list of prophets, spiritual leaders, and religious visionaries and places him in a category by himself.

This statement brings the reader of the documents face to face with Josh McDowell’s trilemma–Christ was either lying, deceived, or divine. No other choices fit the evidence. If either of the first two options is taken, than all that Jesus said is discredited. He cannot be viewed as good in any moral sense. He did not give us the option of viewing him as good man. He forces us to wrestle with his divinity because he is more than a prophet. He is the savior who came to reconcile men and women throughout the human race to God.

As the last post suggested, the concept of sin is being redefined by our culture. This occurs mostly in a passive way. As conversation about virtue, nobility, and moral goodness fades, the ethos of a culture changes. Moral excellence becomes an unworkable myth. The idea of striving for purity in thought, speech, and action begins to feel odd and impossible in the real world.

Polls survey the behavior of people in the real world and demonstrate that the most common behavior is more crude and more compromising than this artificial standard. It confuses “is” with “ought” and de-motivates those who might otherwise exert the extra effort to rise above the morality reflected in the pollster’s findings.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency within the Evangelical church to approach the topics of sin and righteousness along similar lines. We look at the statistics which purport to show the way most Christians behave in the world and adjust our standards accordingly. Clear lines of moral conduct that were once foundational to Christian virtue become Puritanical and out of date. We can be quick to label such guidelines as relics of the past or reflections of a legalism that should have no part in the thinking of 21st Century believers.

Defining sin in terms of the culture’s standards is like developing a love relationship with a snowman. Eventually you’ll be disappointed because there won’t be much left. It is sad when we in the evangelical community tend to do the same. Our standard may not be the culture, but the church. And even though the reflection of righteousness may be better in the church, it is still not the same image we have when we look to the God of the Bible.

Consider the clarity of a passage like Psalm 5:4-5: “You are not a God to takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.” There is a polarity in these words that helps us understand that sin and the character of God are at opposite ends of a moral spectrum. If it were not for the the opportunity to find grace and mercy in the work of Christ, our moral failure would banish us from his presence. It’s because of who he is and who we are not. We accommodate our thinking to evil. He does not. We compromise when we think it is in our best interest. He will not. This flows from the fact that God himself does not conform to some external standard of goodness. He is the standard of that goodness. It is anchored in his perfections and his nature.

Those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ need to be mindful of the trap of making the behavior of the church our standard. It draws us away from the character of God and invites a marginal compromise that will not produce the fruit that glorifies him best.