The Open Secret

I recently read The Open Secret by Lesslie Newbigin. I had the sense that I should disagree with his theology in some way, but I couldn’t find anything specific to disagree with. Here are a few quotations:

The church could have escaped persecution by the Roman Empire if it had been content to be treated as a cultus privatus—one of the many forms of personal religion. But it was not. Its affirmation that “Jesus is Lord” implied a public, universal claim that was bound eventually to clash with the cultus publicus of the empire. The Christian mission is thus to act out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 16–17

Our mission is to live out the truth of the central proclamation of Christianity. If Jesus is Lord, we must live like it—in every aspect of our lives. And if we do this honestly, we will find ourselves in conflict with the prevailing culture, but not necessarily in the ways that we might think.

It is not enough for the church to go on repeating in different cultural situations the same words and phrases. New ways have to be found of stating the essential Trinitarian faith, and for this the church in each new cultural situation has to go back to the original biblical sources of this faith in order to lay hold on it afresh in contemporary terms.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 27

Too many people treat the Bible as if it were a magical incantation—that simply repeating its words will transform others even if they do not understand their meaning. The work of theology is not done. Every Christian is a missionary. The truth of the gospel must be constantly redefined and communicated in original terms.

It has been said that the question of the Trinity is the one theological question that has been really settled. It would, I think, be nearer to the truth to say that the Nicene formula has been so devoutly hallowed that it is effectively put out of circulation. It has been treated like the talent that was buried for safekeeping rather than risked in the commerce of discussion.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 27

Christian theology is not reduced to organizing and cataloging what previous generations have determined. God does not change his nature, and the canon is closed. But it would be foolish to think that we have exhausted our understanding of the revelation we have received in the form of the Bible and that a few dead men from previous centuries have written such perfect descriptions of God and how he works with humans that there is nothing new to say.

The supreme parable, the supreme deed by which the reign of God is both revealed and hidden, is the cross.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 35

I don’t think we really understand what happened on the cross. I think we have systematized our descriptions of the atonement to the point that it is reduced to a cliché.

What is given here [Acts 1:8] (and this is vital for true missionary thinking) is not a command, but a promise. The presence of the Spirit will make them witnesses.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 58

When the Spirit came they were naturally witnesses. In other words, we should focus more on receiving the Spirit than on trying to be witnesses.

We can be assured that the mission of the church is not conducted, nor is its success measured, after the manner of a military operation or a sales campaign. The witness that confutes the world is not ours; it is that of one greater than ourselves who goes before us. Our task is simply to follow faithfully.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 62

This book should be required reading for every pastor and every denominational executive.

Our so-called eternal truths are the attempts we make at particular moments in the story to grasp and state how things are in terms of our experience at that point. They are all provisional and relative to time and place, as we recognize when as twentieth-century people we read the seventeenth-century language of the Westminster Confession.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 83

Touché.

The biblical story is not a separate story: it is part of the unbroken fabric of world history.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 88

I can live fully the life of a real person, part of the real world of society, history, and nature, and know that, because Christ is risen, my labor in the Lord is not futile.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 106

All of life is sacred. Everything we do should be done in the context of the Lordship of Jesus. We can worship God with our play as well as our work.

The church has to learn how to live by the grace that forgives but does not condone sin and under the judgment that exposes sin and yet keeps open the way of repentance.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 112

Too often the church condemns those who commit the sins we ourselves are not likely to commit and condones (or even celebrates) the sins that have worked their way into the culture of the church.

In no sense does the triumph of God’s reign seem to depend upon the growth of the church.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 125

Most pastors and Christians would think that this statement is a contradiction.

The place where the virus of legalism gets into the work of evangelism is the place where the evangelist presumes that he or she knows in advance and can tell the potential convert what the ethic content of conversion will be.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 136

Our efforts to call people to righteousness and holiness often result in a facsimile of righteousness and holiness that prevents the outbreak of the real thing.

When the light shines freely one cannot draw a line and say, “Here light stops and darkness begins.” But one can say and must say, “There is where the light shines; go toward it and your path will be clear; turn your back on it and you will go into deeper darkness.”
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 175

This is the difference between a bounded set and a centered set.

To invest the money with a view to a high rate of interest is to risk the capital. The church has often been afraid to do this, thinking that the faith once delivered to the saints is to be preserved inviolate and without the change of a comma. The mystery of the gospel is not entrusted to the church to be buried in the ground. It is entrusted to the church to be risked in the change and interchange of the spiritual commerce of humanity.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 189

When most Christians engage in a discussion with a person who has a different worldview, they “talk down” to that person and try to convince him or her to adopt the Christian worldview. If we are true seekers of the truth, we must be willing to accept whatever is shown to be the truth, even if it is different than what we already believe. If Christianity is true (and I believe it is), then we do not have to protect it from new scientific discoveries. We do not have to be afraid of challenges and criticisms of the gospel.

It is not our job to defend the gospel. Our responsibility is to proclaim and explain the gospel in words and in actions. We must acknowledge the possibility that we could be wrong about what we believe. If we don’t, then we don’t really believe that it is true. We are just trying to convince ourselves that it is true.

I don’t know if this is the best book that Newbigin has written, but it certainly is better than most of the contemporary books on ministry that I’ve read. It should be added to the list of essential reading for anyone who wants to understand missional ministry.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Prodigal Grace

Here’s another quotation from Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf:

God’s forgiveness is indiscriminate. That’s the bedrock conviction of the Christian faith. “One has died for all,” wrote the apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 5:14). That simple claim has immense implications. All means all, without exception. There are no people who are sufficiently good so that God doesn’t need to forgive them and Christ didn’t die for them. There are no people who are too wicked for God to forgive them and for Christ to die for them. And there are no people whom God, for some inscrutable reason, decided not to forgive.
Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, pp. 177–178

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Why I Hate Mardi Gras (repost)

(This is a repost of something I wrote last year.)

You would expect a pastor to say that he doesn’t like Mardi Gras.

But you might be surprised why I don’t like it.

Is it because of the excessive drinking? Not really. There are many other situations when people drink too much and hurt themselves and others because they are intoxicated. I’m not in favor of excessive drinking. But that’s not the reason I hate Mardi Gras.

Is it because of the nudity? Nope. There’s just as much nudity at Spring Break. (And I have to admit that it does appeal to my hormones.) Sure, women flashing their breasts in public is not a healthy expression of sexuality. God has a much better, and more fulfilling, way to express and satisfy sexual desires. But the nudity is not the reason I hate Mardi Gras.

Is it because of the debauchery? This is nothing unique to Mardi Gras. People engage in all sorts of self-destructive behavior every weekend. They have been duped into abusing God’s gift of sex for a few moments of titillation, when God wants us to enjoy a lifetime of intimacy and fulfillment (with a fair amount of pleasure in the bargain). No, sexual decadence is not why I hate Mardi Gras.

I hate Mardi Gras because it reinforces several lies of the Evil One.

• The lie that “holiness” is about deprivation.
• The lie that “holiness” is dull and boring.
• The lie that we have to give in to temptation so that we can resist temptation in the future.
• The lie that forgiveness is cheap.

That’s why I hate Mardi Gras. It’s not just “a little harmless fun.” It’s propaganda by the Enemy to keep people from finding the life that God wants them to enjoy.

It is one more way that the Enemy distracts people from being serious followers of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Drawing Lines

My denomination has membership commitments that are (at best) anachronistic. They draw a clear “line in the sand” defining who can and who cannot become members of any local church.

For the moment, I want to set aside the fact that this line is drawn in the wrong place.

I want to address, instead, the whole rational of lifestyle membership regulations. There is biblical warrant for a very limited number of lifestyle “concessions” (Acts 15:19–21). But they are clearly concessions, and there are only four of them.

Trying to define what serious discipleship looks like creates all sorts of cultural problems. These definitions, by nature, lag behind the rapidly-changing culture. By the time they are written, they are out of date.

They also tend to emphasize things that are not important and to overlook things that are important.

Leslie Newbigin points out the well-documented errors that western missionaries have made in this regard:

The place where the virus of legalism gets into the work of evangelism is the place where the evangelist presumes that he or she knows in advance and can tell the potential convert what the ethic content of conversion will be.
Leslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 136

Much as the act of measurement irrevocably alters a quantum event, the attempt to delineate rules, or even guidelines, imposes a time-bound and culture-bound reduction on the gospel.

We can see this clearly with groups like the Amish. But most evangelical Christians are different from them only in the degree to which their cultural regulations lag behind the current time.

But the real danger is much more serious. A detailed list of lifestyle regulations inevitably turns Christians into Pharisees. They had a list of activities which were forbidden on the Sabbath; we have a list of activities, associations and occupations that are forbidden for membership.

With such a list, we tend to focus on the periphery, thinking about what is allowed and what is forbidden. Our focus should not be on the periphery, but on the center, Jesus Christ. Again Newbigin has a good word:

When the light shines freely one cannot draw a line and say, “Here light stops and darkness begins.” But one can say and must say, “There is where the light shines; go toward it and your path will be clear; turn your back on it and you will go into deeper darkness.”
Leslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 175

These kinds of regulations actually discourage serious discipleship. Paul addressed this in Colossians 2:21, 23:

“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

They seem reasonable, but they have no real value in producing holiness.

These kinds of rules cause harm as Dallas Willard warns:

If in spiritual formation you focus on action alone, you will fall into the
deadliest of legalisms and you will kill other souls and die yourself. You will get a social conformity…. To focus on action alone is to fall into pharisaism of the worst kind and to kill the soul.
Dallas Willard, The Great Omission

But this is not an issue of balancing freedom with obligation. This is not an issue of how much we should accommodate to the host culture.

Paul was not sliding down some slippery slope. He was not “becoming liberal.” In the very next verse, he continues:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things…. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry…. You must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator…. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity…. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:1–2, 5, 8–10, 12–14, 17

When we give people a list of what they should do and what they should not do, we change the dynamic of discipleship. This does not mean that discipleship has no demands. It means just the opposite. Discipleship demands much more than simply keeping a list of rules.

Michael Frost could be talking about a rule-based approach to holiness:

This version of Christianity is a façade, a method for practitioners to appear like fine, upstanding citizens without allowing the claims and teachings of Jesus to bite hard in everyday life.
Michael Frost, Exiles

In its essence, discipleship is about developing character from the inside out. It is about the kind of people we are becoming.

Spiritual formation for the Christian is a Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self –our “spiritual” side—in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself. In the degree to which such a spiritual transformation to inner Christlikeness is successful, the outer life of the individual will become a natural expression or outflow of the character and teachings of Jesus.
Dallas Willard, Living A Transformed Life Adequate To Our Calling

Jesus said that anyone who wants to be a disciple must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow the example of Jesus. He said that true disciples are becoming the kind of people who naturally turn the other cheek. They are people who bless those who curse them.

Paul said that true disciples can be easily identified by their love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

But I’ve shifted this discussion from membership to discipleship. This is a shift that is often made unconsciously when arguing the question of membership commitments. An argument is made for what a mature Christian should look like (from the point of view of the person making the argument) and that is translated into membership requirements.

But is it reasonable to require of church members the characteristics of Christian maturity?

Do we allow only healthy people into hospitals? Do we enroll in college only students who already have a command of the subject for which they desire a degree? Do we leave our children at an orphanage until they can take on adult responsibilities in our families?

But somehow we think it is reasonable to expect maturity at birth when it comes to the spiritual life.

Some would argue that we shouldn’t just let anyone become a member of our churches. I agree. We should limit membership to baptized believers who are serious about following Christ.

There is no correlation between the nonconsumption of alcohol and the desire to be a serious disciple of Jesus. The same could be said regarding smoking.

Anytime an organization draws a line of required behaviors, those behaviors tend to clump on either side of the line. As a church, we shouldn’t be calling people to cross our lines. We should be calling people to become more and more like Jesus.

The early church didn’t have detailed membership requirements. Peter even had to revise his presumed requirements on the spot in the home of Cornelius (Acts 10:47). And while the early church had a few problems, there was a vitality and commitment that we rarely see today.

This does not mean that leaders should never label certain actions as sin. The truth is that we need more of this. But our membership rolls will become very short indeed if we only accept those who are free from any sin.

There are many arguments for supporting the status quo.

• We should submit to the authority of the church.
• We should respect the tradition from which we’ve developed.
• We should honor our spiritual “fathers.”
• We should limit our freedom so as not to offend the “weaker brothers.”

Quietly accepting the status quo is the easy position to take. But is it the right position to take?

A good friend once asked me, “Do you really want to be known as the person who made drinking permissible in the Wesleyan Church?” (His point was that we only get one legacy and that we need to choose it wisely.)

Framed in this way, the obvious answer is “No; I’d rather be known for something more important.”

But what about being known for calling the Wesleyan Church to be serious about true discipleship, about a compelling and powerful holiness that is a true work of God?

I think I could reply with a “Yes” to that.

Pastor Rod

“Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be”

L'ultimo Giorno

I'm spending my last day in Italy. Early tomorrow morning I leave for Chicago.

Right now it is sunny and 60 degrees. In Chicago it is ten degrees and snowing.

It will be good to get home, but I will miss my friends here and the nice weather.

I intend to get back to my regular schedule of frequent posts. I have one ready to post as soon as I get back and several ideas for other posts.

I wonder how long it will take my body to get used to the cold weather and my brain to get used to speaking English. Yesterday in one class (where I am supposed to be helping teach English), I was talking for a while when the teacher said, "Speak in English."

I find myself translating everything into Italian when I'm not thinking directly in Italian. That is not to say that I have achieved true fluency. I still have difficulty understanding every word that someone says when they are speaking at normal speed. But I usually understand enough to follow the conversation.

The students at the two middle schools have treated me like a celebrity. I told the mayor that I was coming back in 10 ten years to run for mayor myself.

This is my fourth time in Sicily. Altogether, I've spent more than three months here. I've started to understand this culture on a much deeper level. I will be making some posts in the near future about some of my observations.

For five weeks, I have been at the mercy of other people's schedules. I haven't driven a car. I've had limited Internet access. I've been to only one church service (and that was a special mass on a Saturday night to honor policemen who have died). I haven't played basketball or been to the gym. I haven't had a glass (of anything) with ice. I haven't seen my wife.

As you can imagine, I'm eager to get home.

But I also haven't shoveled snow. I haven't worn anything heavier than a light coat. I haven't eaten any overcooked pasta. I haven't seen a single McDonalds. I haven't had to buy a meal or much of anything else.

As you can imagine, it will be difficult to leave.

But it will be nice to get back home, to have my wireless Internet access and to take back control of the remote control to the TV.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Missional Marketing

What is the difference between a missional orientation and a seeker-sensitive orientation?

One significant difference is the motivation for adapting the message of the gospel to the culture.

First, let me make clear that we do not have the option of a culturally free expression of the gospel. The gospel is not “timeless principles.” It is an account of good news. It is a report about a specific event that happened in a specific place at a specific time. The story of the gospel is inextricably intertwined with culture.

But the gospel transcends culture. The Christian Scriptures can withstand translation into other languages and cultures. (It is radically different from the Quran in this regard.) In fact, the four accounts of the gospel in the Bible had already broken cultural barriers before they were even recorded.

We do not even have the actual words of Jesus. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, but his words are recorded in “street” Greek. Each writer sought to capture the sense of what Jesus said; he had no intention of being a human tape recorder.

Matthew tells his gospel in the framework of Hebrew culture. Mark recounts the same story in terms more at home in the wider Roman Empire. Luke seems to be working from a Greek foundation. John takes a different view entirely, focusing on the meaning of events in Jesus’ ministry.

Right from the start, there was never such a thing as a “Christian culture.”

In the past century or so, the Church has operated out of a culture that was distinct from the culture of its environment, but also different than the culture of the first Christians. This “Christian” culture was generally little different than the general culture, that is the general culture of a few decades before the current time.

Many western missionaries in that same period seemed to be as focused on instilling western culture as they were in proclaiming the gospel. It could be argued that they were unable to conceive of the gospel in any other terms than the prevailing (or dated) western culture.

Along came some mission-minded people who were culturally literate enough to see the foolishness of this strategy. People were rejecting the Church, and Jesus Christ, for reasons that had little to do with the essence of the gospel. They were rebelling against elements that had little or nothing to do with Christianity—even though these elements came from the culture of many Christians.

And so these pioneers removed the artificial, cultural barriers. This development is generally known as the seeker-sensitive movement.

But, as happens with any “adjustment,” there was an “over correction.”

In the effort to remove cultural barriers there was generated a momentum that tended to remove (or weaken) all barriers, even barriers inherent in the gospel itself.

Partly in reaction to this over correction, a significant part of the Church has taken a new direction. These people seek to proclaim the gospel in terms that challenge the “powers.” They make no effort to soften the offense of the gospel, but they are scrupulous to distance themselves from the offense of Christendom.

This movement often dismisses the previous movement as “mere marketing.”

And this charge has substance. The gospel has far too often been packaged and sold as another product in the marketplace. Success has often been defined in marketing terms. Not only were the methods taken from the world of business, but the measure of success was defined in “bottom-line” terms, even when the bottom line was “souls.”

But we need to be honest here. Marketing is inevitable. We are always marketing, either intentionally or unintentionally. “Non-marketing” is simply another form of marketing.

So the question is not whether we should market the gospel. But the question is what the message should be and how it should be communicated.

The missional movement seems to be at once counter-cultural and culturally sensitive.

The seeker-sensitive movement appeared to be motivated by a desire to remove barriers to make the gospel more accessible. The missional movement seems to be motivated by a desire to make the scandal of the cross more prominent by removing all cultural “noise” that might be confused with that offense.

But this is not as straightforward as it sounds. Even the prevailing explanations of the offense of the cross are usually loaded with ideas that have more to do with the Enlightenment than with the gospel.

This “offense” is usually explained in terms of personal sin and divine power.

But I would suggest that it runs much deeper than this. The real scandal of the cross is that Jesus won his victory in weakness and defeat.

As it is usually depicted, the cross is little more than bowing to a superior power. Even a tough guy like "Dirty Harry" Harry Callahan admits that “a man’s gotta know his limitations.” When we recognize that God is the sovereign, we give up our pretensions of being in control. But this is simply a wise “business” decision.

Too many people “come to Jesus” to enhance their lives: to win more football games, to make more money, to sell more widgets. Taking up our cross is no longer a radical submission; it is now a calculated investment.

What the gospel calls us to is something much more difficult. It calls us to trust in a Savior who could not “save himself.” It calls us to a life of power that is manifested only in weakness. It calls us to abandon ourselves to God’s story without any alternative “plot lines.”

Jesus is not the ultimate warrior. He is the outcast, the reject, the “fool.”

We are not called to “take prisoners” for Jesus. We are called to become prisoners for the gospel. The gospel is not just a different insider game. It is a complete rejection of all struggling for position and power.

This is the scandal of the cross.

It is not giving up bad habits. It is not changing the way we dress. It is not engaging in a program of moral improvement. The way of the cross may involve these things, but they are not the essence of that way.

At least that is what I think. What do you think?

Pastor Rod

“Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be”

ESL--English as a Second Language

I am in Sicily teaching English. Many people here and at home think I'm on vacation.

While I'm having a good time and meeting many old friends, I wouldn't call this a vaction. I teach every morning (except Sunday) in the local middle schools. (Hello to the students from Tisia D'Imera and Paolo Balsimo.) I start at 8:15 and go to 1:15.

Twice a week in the afternoon I go to one of the schools for a two-hour "conversation" with some of the more advanced students.

Three nights a week, from 9:30 to 11:00, (yes, that's in the evening) I teach a class for adults. The students range from people who know virtually no English to teachers of English and Greek. (This makes preaching to a diverse group on Sundays seem easy.)

In addition, I am giving a few private lessons.

As you might guess, I'm not getting much sleep. But I can sleep when I get home.

My reason for this post is not to complain about how hard I'm working. I came here to teach. I enjoy it, and some of the students seem to be benefitting from it.

But some of the students have no interest in learning English. Their parents don't speak English. Their friends don't speak English. They see no reason to invest the time and effort to do something as difficult as learning another language.

There also seems to be an attitude generated by the French teachers that English is not an important language. I've tried to combat this idea by explaining how many opportunities that English speakers have around the world which others don't.

One way I've tried to do this is by saying the following over and over again until someone figures it out or until I run out of time:

In my hand, I have a 1-Euro coin. The first person who comes to me and asks for the coin, in English, can have it.

When this is successful (about half the time), it usually takes at least 15-20 minutes. Some of these students are the equivalent of 8th-graders. They've been "studying" English for three or four years. Yet they cannot understand simple, slowly-spoken English.

Not only is the cultural environment unfriendly to learning English, but the classrooms are also hostile (to most any kind of learning).

The teachers try hard to teach, but they spend more than half their time trying to maintain order.

The rooms are constructed exclusively of hard materials (concrete and tile). The desks and chairs have metal legs. They make an annoyingly-loud noise when they are moved (even carefully). And the desks are tables for two. Two students sit shoulder to shoulder at the same desk. It doesn't take much imagination to see the potential for distractions.

And they never stop talking, at least not for long.

It reminds me of a Monty Python skit. The students make noise. The teacher trys to quiet them (sometimes by making an even louder noise). A few students yell, "Silenzio!" Evenutally there is quiet for a few moments.

Then the teacher resumes the lesson only for the process to repeat itself in a couple of minutes.

Some of the students are clearly bored. Some of them think that it is too hard to learn English, so they joke around and try to be "cool." Some of them have given up on learning at all.

But there are a few students that are truly interested in learning English. Unfortunately, they often get lost in the chaos.

So what's my point?

The world is filled with people who have no interest in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They invite people to commit the "unpardonable sin." They make fun of Christians who are hypocritical. They publish diatribes about the foolishness of believing in something you can't prove.

And many Christians spend their time and energy trying to answer these critics.

Of course, this needs to be done. But we must not focus our time and energy on these people. (I'm not advocating that we "write off" anyone.)

Instead, we must focus on the "good soil, those who are hungry for the truth. God is at work in the hearts of many people. (See 1 Kings 19.) We must be on the lookout for them, not the vocal critics. We must allow the Holy Spirit to use us to communicate God's love and grace to those who are desperate for it.

An intersting thing happens when the interested students start getting most of the attention. Some of the other students begin to develop an interest in learning themselves.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Friends of God

Nancy Pelosi's daughter has produced a film for HBO about "red-state evangelicals."

I can't speak for the documentary, but this report by Reuter's Hollywood correspondent Barry Garron reveals more about prevaiing attitudes in Hollywood than it does about Evangelicals.

Here's a quotation:

The parts of the film that were most troubling were not about abortion or gay marriage or even the incredibly pathetic attacks on evolution. Rather, it was the willingness of evangelicals, young and old, to accept as figurative and literal gospel anything and everything fed to them by authority figures. They appear as automatons, unable or unwilling to question the pronouncements of their leaders.

Mr. Garron gleefully announces that Pelosi's guide for much of the film was Ted Haggard. (The film was completed a week or so before the scandal broke.)

He continues:

Also difficult to watch were those who, despite having elected a born-again president and established giant radio and TV networks and a political power base second to none, still feel they are a persecuted minority. If Pelosi's intent is to show that evangelical faith suffocates reason, the point is well-made.

I think that the commentary on this article writes itself. However, his distorted views are not only the result of his own naiveté (read ignorance). They are also generated by the naiveté (ignorance) of many who call themselves after the name of Christ.

I'd be interested in your reaction to this article.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Free of Charge

When I read a book, I highlight passages that I want to keep in my collection of quotations. I nearly used up my yellow marker on Miroslav Volf's book, Free of Charge: Giving and forgiving in a culture stripped of grace.

I like some books because they make me think about deep theological issues. They challenge my assumptions and force me to look at reality in a fresh way. Other books have more practical value. They deal with the details of life. They make me look at myself in the light of God's truth.

Volf's book succeeds on both levels.

I can't possibly include all the quotes I'd like. (For one thing, the publisher would consider that a violation of the copyright law.) But here are just a few profound thoughts from this work:

No life worth living is possible without generosity.

If we see the God of Jesus Christ as a negotiator, we'll experience the law of Christ as an even heavier burden than the law of Moses.

On the cross, God is not setting up the terms of a contract that humans need to fulfill in order to get what they want. Neither is God saying, "I died for you, now you've got to do what I tell you."

To live well as a human being is to live in sync with who God is and how God acts.

God isn't wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.

The world is sinful. That's why God doesn't affirm it indiscriminately. God loves the world. That's why God doesn't punish it in justice. What does God do in this double bind? God forgives.

God doesn't make deals. God gives.

Volf reaffirms some of the things I've thought or felt but never articulated clearly. But he also challenges me in several points.

Out of context, some of these quotations seem to repeat familiar Christian "talking points." But this is a book free of cliche. And Volf expresses familiar truths in way that makes them seem like new discoveries.

Buy the book--and some highlighters.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be."

Objections 11–12

(The first post in this series of my responses to the pamphlet by Chaz Bufe called 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity. The text in blue is from Mr. Bufe’s pamphlet. I have used ellipses to show where I have condensed the original.)

11. Christianity has an exceedingly narrow, legalistic view of morality. Christianity not only reduces, for all practical purposes, the question of morality to that of sexual behavior, but by listing its prohibitions, it encourages an "everything not prohibited is permitted" mentality. So, for instance, medieval inquisitors tortured their victims, while at the same time they went to lengths to avoid spilling the blood of those they tortured—though they thought nothing of burning them alive.

I can understand why some might react to Christianity with the superficial opinion that it is narrow-minded and legalistic. There certainly have been many people throughout history who have used the label "Christian" who fit that description.

But a serious critique of Christianity must address what it actually teaches.

Here is objection 11 in list form:

• Christian morality is legalistic.
• It does not take into account the full range of real life.
• The only thing that Christian morality is really concerned about is sexual behavior.
• Christianity is a rule-based morality.
• There is inherent in Christianity a tendency to hypocrisy.

I want to take Mr. Bufe's objections seriously. But these kinds of statements make that difficult. There have been many people who call themselves Christians who have been legalistic and hypocritical. And there have also been some who have acted as if sexuality were an embarrassment to God.

But anyone who invests a minimal effort in understanding Christianity would know that these are abberations. They are, in fact, the opposite of what Jesus taught.

The church must take charges of hypocrisy seriously. But these tendencies are not inherent in Christianity. They are an expression of the human condition. They are an illustration of the truth of Christian teaching, that there is something fundamentally wrong with all humans, something that can only be corrected by the grace and power of God himself.

The first mistake here is to reduce Christianity to a system of morality.

Christianity is not a guide for better living. It is the instrument through which God transforms broken, twisted people into whole, authentic human beings. It is how God remakes us into the people we were created to be. When some behave in a way that inconsistent with truth and justice, it does not invalidate the Christian enterprise. It simply demonstrates how much it is needed.

Christianity is exactly the opposite of a rule-based morality. A careful reading of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) should make that clear. Christianity is more even than a principle-based morality. Christianity is a character-based morality.

The strategy of Christianity is to make people good and then to let them do what they want.

Anyone who sees loopholes in the requirements of Christianity completely misses the point. Jesus systematically closed all the loopholes in the Sermon on the Mount. He said that it is not enough to keep from killing others. Now we must also avoid wishing bad things to happen happen to them.

But even this is not a new system of moral guidelines. Jesus said that a bad tree can only produce bad fruit and that a good tree can only bear good fruit. The goal is to make the tree good and to let the fruit take care of itself. (And this is a job that can only be accomplished by divine power.)

12. Christianity encourages acceptance of real evils while focusing on imaginary evils. Organized Christianity is a skillful apologist for the status quo and all the evils that go along with it. It diverts attention from real problems by focusing attention on sexual issues, and when confronted with social evils such as poverty glibly dismisses them with platitudes such as, "The poor ye have always with you." When confronted with the problems of militarism and war, most Christians shrug and say, "That’s human nature. It’s always been that way, and it always will."

Again with the talk about sex. I wonder who it is that is obsessed about this topic. With the exception of his favorite objection, Mr. Bufe makes some valid points in this section.

Much of what he says is true. But even here we must distinguish between Christianity and Christendom.

Christendom is the conflagration of Christian teaching with human power and politics. And the official Church has been guilty of many of the things Mr. Bufe mentions. The Church has often become a champion of the status quo. But Christianity is at its heart, and has been from its inception, a revolutionary enterprise.

When the Church "sells out" to the "powers that be" it violates its charter and renounces its founder.

That's what I think. What do you think?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Sono molto occupato

Sorry I haven't been able to post more frequently. I've been very busy teaching. I'm teaching every morning (Mon-Sat) at the middle schools.

I'm also teaching three nights a week with a group of 30 adults. They range in ability from school teachers and physicians who understand English well to people who know virtually no English. It is difficult to keep the advanced students interested without losing the beginners.

My Italian continues to improve. I can use the correct verb forms. But I still talk slowly.

I'll try to respond to the comments soon. I have to go now.

Ciao,

Rod

Objections 8–10

Here’s the first in the series in my response to the pamphlet by Chaz Bufe called 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity.

(The text in blue is from Mr. Bufe’s pamphlet. I have used ellipses to show where I have condensed the original.)

8. Christianity is anti-intellectual, anti-scientific. For over a millennium Christianity arrested the development of science and scientific thinking. In Christendom, from the time of Augustine until the Renaissance, systematic investigation of the natural world was restricted to theological investigation—the interpretation of biblical passages, the gleaning of clues from the lives of the saints, etc.; there was no direct observation and interpretation of natural processes, because that was considered a useless pursuit, as all knowledge resided in scripture. The results of this are well known: scientific knowledge advanced hardly an inch in the over 1000 years from the rise of orthodox Christianity in the fourth century to the 1500s, and the populace was mired in the deepest squalor and ignorance, living in dire fear of the supernatural—believing in paranormal explanations for the most ordinary natural events…. When scientific investigation into the natural world resumed in the Renaissance—after a 1000-year-plus hiatus—organized Christianity did everything it could to stamp it out…. More lately, the Catholic Church and the more liberal Protestant congregations have realized that fighting against science is a losing battle, and they’ve taken to claiming that there is no contradiction between science and religion. This is disingenuous at best. As long as Christian sects continue to claim as fact—without offering a shred of evidence beyond the anecdotal—that physically impossible events occurred (or are still occurring), the conflict between science and religion will remain. That many churchmen and many scientists seem content to let this conflict lie doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist…. No matter how much fundamentalists might protest to the contrary, there is a world of difference between “faith” in scientific theories (produced using the scientific method, and subject to near-continual testing and scrutiny) and faith in the entirely unsupported myths recorded 3000 years ago by slave-holding goat herders.

While I will concede that many Christians are anti-intellectual, I would argue that Christianity (along with Judaism) formed the foundation for rise of science. The resistance to new discoveries during the Middle Ages was not a direct result of the teachings of Christianity. It was a result of the human drive to acquire and protect power. One could argue that the conversion of Constantine was not a postive development for the Church.

Dallas Willard has an interesting take on the conflict between science and religion. His position is that they will always find themselves in conflict. This is not because they cannot be reconciled, but because human nature causes science to relegate religion to the group of things that have nothing to do with what is real.

Mr. Bufe assumes that the correct definition of miracles is "physically impossible events." This "definition" contains several assumptions that could be labeled either arrogant or naive (or both).

• Reality is entirely described by what can be observed by the senses.
• If science cannot "operate" on something, it is not real.
• If the current level of scientific understanding cannot explain how an event could happen, it cannot happen.
• Science requires belief in materialism.

I wonder if Mr. Bufe is familiar with the unpredictable world of quantum physics. A world where

• things can suddenly appear out of nothing
• light can be a wave and a particle at the same time
• two subatomic can be connected in a mysterious manner known as quantum entanglement

It appears that faith is in the heart of the observer. It seems odd that scientists can produce scholarly articles about the entire universe being generated from a quantum vacuum, about the spontaneous generation of life from this gratuitous matter, and about multiplying universes that never interact and cannot be detected, and yet the idea that the universe could have been created by an eternally existing being is considered an "entirely unsupported myth" and dismissed out of hand as manifestly silly.

9. Christianity has a morbid, unhealthy preoccupation with sex. For centuries, Christianity has had an exceptionally unhealthy fixation on sex, to the exclusion of almost everything else (except power, money, and the infliction of cruelty). This stems from the numerous "thou shalt nots" relating to sex in the Bible. That the Ten Commandments contain a commandment forbidding the coveting of one’s neighbor’s wife, but do not even mention slavery, torture, or cruelty—which were abundantly common in the time the Commandments were written— speaks volumes about their writer’s preoccupation with sex (and women as property). Today, judging from the pronouncements of many Christian leaders, one would think that "morality" consists solely of what one does in one’s bedroom.

From my perspective, it is not the Bible or Christianity that has an unhealthy preoccupation with sex. In the biblical view sex is a significant aspect of human life to be enjoyed in a proper manner and protected from abuse and misuse. It is the modern view that seems to consider sex all important.

I will admit that the Church has its share of prudes. But the libertarian view has clearly been shown to be bankrupt. If something is valued, its use is generally restricted.

10. Christianity produces sexual misery. In addition to the misery produced by authoritarian Christian intrusions into the sex lives of non-Christians, Christianity produces great misery among its own adherents through its insistence that sex (except the very narrow variety it sanctions) is evil, against God’s law…. Given that human beings are by nature highly sexual beings, and that their urges very often do not fit into the only officially sanctioned Christian form of sexuality (monogamous, heterosexual marriage), it’s inevitable that those who attempt to follow Christian “morality” in this area are often miserable, as their strongest urges run smack dab into the wall of religious belief.

Who is the miserable person? Is it the one who enjoys the intimacy that can only flourish in a long-term exclusive relationship? Or is it the one who sleeps with a different person every night never finding intimacy?

Is happiness achieved by surrendering to every bodily urge? Is the potty-trained child somehow dimenished by his or her parents unable to enjoy true freedom?

I realize that these answers are incomplete. What would you add? What do you take issue with?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Sono in Italia

On Sunday afternoon, I left for Italy. I will be in Sicily for a few weeks. I am teaching English at a couple of middle schools in Termini Imerese. It is the Sister City for Elk Grove Village. I was here for a few weeks in 2005 doing the same thing.

I intend to continue my series on the Reasons to Abandon Christianity. But I will also include a few personal posts from time to time. I apologize in advance if I don't respond to your comments in a timely manner. It doesn't mean that I'm not interested in what you have to say.

I'm staying with some dear friends who treat me as part of their family. Their daughter is expecting a baby girl in April. I feel like an uncle.

The people here know how to enjoy good food, friendship and life in general. Every time I come here, I am convinced that we need to slow down in America. We spend too much time on things that are not terribly important.

Hospitality is an art form in Italy. Coincidentally, I'm reading a book by Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. I'll have to post some of his excellent comments about generosity and forgiveness.

There are few things that make me feel more truly human than when someone's face lights up in recognition and he or she comes toward me with a huge smile and outstretched arms. Hugging is good for the soul. These people value me just for being here, without me doing anything for them. We should all give this gift to the people in our lives.

I appreciate all of you who pay me the honor of caring about what I write here. I especially appreciate the double honor you grant me when you take the time to offer your own comments.

May God bless you and encourage you to share his love with those you meet today,

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Reasons Christianity is Bad 2

In my previous post I addressed the first three assertions by Chaz Bufe from his 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity.

(The text in blue is from Mr. Bufe’s pamphlet. I have used ellipses to show where I have condensed the original.)

4. Christianity is extremely egocentric…. Perhaps Christianity’s strongest appeal is its promise of eternal life. While there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim, most people are so terrified of death that they cling to this treacly promise insisting, like frightened children, that it must be true…. Another manifestation of the extreme egotism of Christianity is the belief that God is intimately concerned with picayune aspects of, and directly intervenes in, the lives of individuals…. Again, it’s very difficult to see anything spiritual in such egocentricity.

This one is difficult to deconstruct.

He seems to be saying that it is egotistical to think that God, if he really exists, is interested in the daily lives of individuals. And the hope for eternal life is nothing more that a selfish desire to avoid nonexistence. However, he also seems to believe (though he never really states this in so many words) that Christianity contributes to a low view of the individual because of the emphasis on morality.

Christianity does have a complex view of the importance and value of individual humans. In the first place, humans are created in the image of God. And each human has enormous value as a bearer of that image. However, we have also rebelled against God and have a serious flaw in our basic natures.

Some see this “fallen human nature” doctrine as anti-human. They believe it enslaves people and makes them susceptible to manipulation by “the church.”

As to Mr. Bufe’s stated point, it seems to be irrelevant. If Christianity is false, then it really doesn’t matter whether we can label its doctrines as egotistical. If they are true, then they may be surprising. But they can hardly be dismissed as egotistical. In other words, if Christianity is false, labeling its teachings egocentric is just “piling on.”

And here is the most important point. Calling Christianity egotistical in its basic assumptions is of no help in determining its validity. Either it is true or it is not.

5. Christianity breeds arrogance, a chosen-people mentality. It’s only natural that those who believe (or play act at believing) that they have a direct line to the Almighty would feel superior to others. This is so obvious that it needs little elaboration. A brief look at religious terminology confirms it. Christians have often called themselves "God’s people," "the chosen people," "the elect," "the righteous," etc., while nonbelievers have been labeled "heathens," "infidels," and "atheistic Communists" (as if atheism and Communism are intimately connected). This sets up a two-tiered division of humanity, in which "God’s people" feel superior to those who are not "God’s people."
That many competing religions with contradictory beliefs make the same claim seems not to matter at all to the members of the various sects that claim to be the only carriers of "the true faith." The carnage that results when two competing sects of "God’s people" collide—as in Ireland and Palestine—would be quite amusing but for the suffering it causes.

Yes, some Christians are arrogant. However, to the degree that they are arrogant they have demonstrated that they do not understand the basic teachings of Jesus. It could be argued that the cause of the arrogance is basic human nature rather than something inherent in Christianity itself.

At the heart of Christianity is an awareness that we all are “equal before God.” And followers of Jesus are called to love others and are warned not to think that they are superior.

There have certainly been many atrocities committed in the name of Christianity. But I would argue that these have always been done in spite of the teachings of Christianity, not because of them. This does not mean that Christians bear no responsibility for these actions. It simply means that Christianity itself is not to blame.

The reformers who have spoken out against these offenses have called people to a more faithful practice of Christian teaching, not an abandonment of it. This is profound. The answer is “more” Christianity not “less.”

6. Christianity breeds authoritarianism. Given that Christians claim to have the one true faith, to have a book that is the Word of God, and (in many cases) to receive guidance directly from God, they feel little or no compunction about using force and coercion to enforce "God’s Will" (which they, of course, interpret and understand). Given that they believe (or pretend) that they’re receiving orders from the Almighty (who would cast them into hell should they disobey), it’s little wonder that they feel no reluctance, and in fact are eager, to intrude into the most personal aspects of the lives of nonbelievers. This is most obvious today in the area of sex, with Christians attempting to deny women the right to abortion and to mandate near-useless abstinence-only sex "education" in the public schools. It’s also obvious in the area of education, with Christians attempting to force biology teachers to teach their creation myth (but not those of Hindus, Native Americans, et al.) in place of (or as being equally valid as) the very well established theory of evolution. But the authoritarian tendencies of Christianity reach much further than this…. If your nonintrusive beliefs or actions are not in accord with Christian "morality," you can bet that Christians will feel completely justified—not to mention righteous—in poking their noses (often in the form of state police agencies) into your private life.

I’m not a Freudian psychotherapist, but I get the sense that Mr. Bufe’s main objection to Christianity stems from what he perceives as its oppression of his “right” to live out his sexuality in whatever manner he chooses to practice it. We’ll come back to this later, when he addresses this issue more directly.

I will agree that there is a vocal group within Christianity who see their mission as shaping culture to reflect Christian morality. They would like to enact laws that conform to the Ten Commandments and the moral teachings of Jesus.

However, I would argue that the idea of respect for the ideas and beliefs of others grows out of Christianity. Furthermore, I would argue that any other basis of societal morality will necessarily lead to oppression.

I don’t have the space or time to make a complete argument here. But “tolerance” is intolerance in disguise. It is an underhanded way for one group to force everyone to adopt its values in the name of tolerance.

In contrast, Christianity is transparent. It is open about exactly what it believes. And one of those beliefs is that people have the right to believe what they choose to believe.

The other problem with Mr. Bufe’s argument is that he fails to recognize that everyone seeks to impose his morality on others. Even libertarians seek to impose their morality on others. The idea that it is wrong to regulate what people do in private is a “morality.”

7. Christianity is cruel. Throughout its history, cruelty—both to self and others—has been one of the most prominent features of Christianity. From its very start, Christianity, with its bleak view of life, its emphasis upon sexual sin, and its almost impossible-to-meet demands for sexual "purity," encouraged guilt, penance, and self-torture. Today, this self-torture is primarily psychological, in the form of guilt arising from following (or denying, and thus obsessing over) one’s natural sexual desires…. Given that the Bible nowhere condemns torture and sometimes prescribes shockingly cruel penalties (such as burning alive), and that Christians so wholeheartedly approved of self-torture, it’s not surprising that they thought little of inflicting appallingly cruel treatment upon others…. While the torture and murder of heretics and "witches" is now largely a thing of the past, Christians can still be remarkably cruel. One current example is provided by the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. Its members picket the funerals of victims of AIDS and gay bashings, brandishing signs reading, "God Hates Fags," "AIDS Cures Fags," and "Thank God for AIDS."… Christians are also at the forefront of those advocating vicious, life-destroying penalties for those who commit victimless "crimes," as well as being at the forefront of those who support the death penalty and those who want to make prison conditions even more barbaric than they are now. But this should not be surprising coming from Christians, members of a religion that teaches that eternal torture is not only justified, but that the "saved" will enjoy seeing the torture of others.

Here are some of the assertions Mr. Bufe makes:

• Cruelty is one of the most prominent features of Christianity.
• Christianity has a bleak view of life.
• Christianity is preoccupied with sex.
• Sexual desire is good and should be expressed in whatever manner the individual is inclined to indulge it.
• Christians who are cruel are cruel because of the teachings of Christianity.
• Christians want to impose “vicious, life-destroying” penalties for violating moral rules that should never be implemented in the legal code.
• Christians want to make prison conditions “even more barbaric than they are now.”
• Christianity teaches eternal torture.

While I will acknowledge that people who call themselves Christians have engaged in cruelty, cruelty is not consistent with the teachings of Christianity. To the extent that people have been cruel, they have been acting in opposition to Christianity. And there is no evidence that Christianity indirectly encourages cruelty without openly advocating it.

While some Christians seem to have a perpetually dour mood, Christianity has a very positive and encouraging view of life.

I wonder who is the one who is obsessed with sex. Does anyone really think that there should be no moral restraints upon sexual desire? What about bestiality? Or pedophilia? The question is not whether we should draw lines but where those lines should be.

I don’t think that there really is such a thing as a victimless crime in the sense that he suggests. Commonly offered examples are prostitution, pornography and drug use. (I am not advocating oppressive laws in these areas.) But these all have real victims. We can argue about how rigidly society should proscribe each of these. But to argue that society has no business regulating these matters is either naïve or dishonest.

I wonder where Mr. Bufe got the idea that Christians want to make prisons more brutal. This desire, if it exists, certainly doesn’t grow out of Christian teaching.

While many Christians do understand “hell” as consisting of eternal torture, it is not the teaching of the Bible. The Bible is clear that God takes no pleasure in the suffering of anyone. Hell is a terrible place, but not because God tortures people there. (Maybe I’ll address this more fully in a future post.)

I’ll pick up with Mr. Bufe’s eighth point in the next post.

Let me know what you think.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Reasons to Reject Christianity?

I ran across this pamphlet by Chaz Bufe called 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity.

I had several general reactions to it.

• Most of his objections seem to stem from individuals who called themselves Christians and yet who have acted in a manner inconsistent with the teachings of Christ.
• Many of his objections are based on a misunderstanding of what Christianity really is.
• Some of his objections are intellectually naïve or dishonest.
• This appears to be a list of “reasons” developed “after the fact.” In other words, Mr. Bufe, for unstated reasons, rejected Christianity. This list is his attempt to justify his decision.
• I have no illusion that he would change his mind even if I were able to answer every one of these objections with overwhelming evidence in support of Christianity.

Let me say that I am not dismissing these objections. I think that serious Christians must take them seriously. In fact, I want to address each of them in turn. (I plan to come back to revise and expand these comments later.)

Here is a brief statement about the purpose of Mr. Bufe’s pamphlet:

This pamphlet briefly looks at many of the reasons that Christianity is undesirable from both a personal and a social point of view. All of the matters discussed here have been dealt with elsewhere at greater length, but that’s beside the point: the purpose of 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity is to list the most outstanding misery-producing and socially destructive qualities of Christianity in one place. When considered in toto, they lead to an irresistible conclusion: that Christianity must be abandoned, for the sake of both personal happiness and social progress.

(The text in blue is from Mr. Bufe’s pamphlet. I have used ellipses to show where I have condensed the original.)

1. Christianity is based on fear…. Throughout almost its entire time on Earth, the motor driving Christianity has been—in addition to the fear of death—fear of the devil and fear of hell…. This is not an attempt to convince through logic and reason; it is not an attempt to appeal to the better nature of individuals; rather, it is an attempt to whip the flock into line through threats, through appeals to a base part of human nature—fear and cowardice.

This section asserts several different things:

• Christianity is in essence motivated by fear.
• Without this pre-scientific, irrational fear of eternal punishment, Christianity collapses.
• Many Christian organizations and leaders have used and do use fear and guilt to manipulate people.

I can understand why Mr. Bufe might have this misconception about Christianity. But it simply is not true that it is based on fear. Yes, many leaders and institutions have used fear to manipulate people. This happened frequently in the Middle Ages. But that is not the essence of Christianity. Christianity is about redemption, reconciliation and authentic life. It is about love. Christians are too often guilty of reducing the Gospel to eternal fire insurance.

Jesus did not come to rescue us from eternal torture. He came so that we could enjoy truly human life, a life will not end even at death (John 10:10). In fact, love drives out fear (1 John 4:18).

2. Christianity preys on the innocent. If Christian fear-mongering were directed solely at adults, it would be bad enough, but Christians routinely terrorize helpless children through grisly depictions of the endless horrors and suffering they’ll be subjected to if they don’t live good Christian lives…. The nearly 2000 years of Christian terrorizing of children ranks as one of its greatest crimes. And it’s one that continues to this day.

I suspect that Mr. Bufe had some rather unpleasant experiences as a child. I’m sure that some Christian leaders have used some heavy-handed approaches with children. But there is no evidence that this is widespread.

There also seems to be an implication that children should not be troubled with religion until they are older. All children have a religion, whether they realize it or not.

The argument presented here goes something like this:

• Christianity is false with no correspondence to reality.
• Its foundation is fear and guilt.
• It is abusive to trouble children with these issues.

Do we trouble children with environmental issues? Are not some of these issues framed almost entirely in terms of fear? It seems to me that the real issue here is whether Christianity is true. If it is true, it would be abusive not to tell children about it.

3. Christianity is based on dishonesty. The Christian appeal to fear, to cowardice, is an admission that the evidence supporting Christian beliefs is far from compelling. If the evidence were such that Christianity’s truth was immediately apparent to anyone who considered it, Christians—including those who wrote the Gospels—would feel no need to resort to the cheap tactic of using fear-inducing threats to inspire "belief." ("Lip service" is a more accurate term.) That the Christian clergy have been more than willing to accept such lip service (plus the dollars and obedience that go with it) in place of genuine belief, is an additional indictment of the basic dishonesty of Christianity.
How deep dishonesty runs in Christianity can be gauged by one of the most popular Christian arguments for belief in God: Pascal’s wager. This "wager" holds that it’s safer to "believe" in God (as if belief were volitional!) than not to believe, because God might exist, and if it does, it will save "believers" and condemn nonbelievers to hell after death. This is an appeal to pure cowardice. It has absolutely nothing to do with the search for truth. Instead, it’s an appeal to abandon honesty and intellectual integrity, and to pretend that lip service is the same thing as actual belief. If the patriarchal God of Christianity really exists, one wonders how it would judge the cowards and hypocrites who advance and bow to this particularly craven "wager."

This contains so many assertions and assumptions that I need to list them in order:

• The evidence supporting Christianity is far from compelling.
• The Christian appeal is based upon fear and cowardice.
• If Christianity were true then the evidence would be “immediately apparent to anyone who considered it.”
• Pascal’s wager is representative of the arguments for Christianity.
• Pascal’s wager is an appeal to “cowardice.”
• Nothing is more important than “intellectual integrity.”

The idea that Christianity should be “obviously true” if it is true at all is a naïve view of faith. Everyone has faith in things he or she cannot prove—things that are not obviously true. Faith is inescapable. The question is not whether one will have faith. The question is what that faith will be placed in.

Pascal’s wager is not representative of the kind of calculation that one makes in coming to Christian faith. It is primarily a statement made for the benefit of those who do not believe to demonstrate the “reasonableness” of the choice to believe in Christ. Its utility is not in convincing anyone. Whatever utility it has is only to frame the issue in a different way.

Einstein did not accept quantum physics. He maintained his intellectual integrity to the end. But that has absolutely no impact on the truth of quantum physics. It is either true or false. And it appears to be true as far as we understand it. We use it today in many technologies.

I would also suggest that there is indeed a volitional element to faith. One cannot just believe whatever one chooses. But reason only takes us so far. Beyond that we must choose what we will place our ultimate trust in.

(I’ll pick up with number four in the next post.)

So what do you think?

I would also like to hear from some who agree with Mr. Bufe. Do you take issue with my characterization of his argument? Do you want to reply to any of my answers to his objections?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Growing Community

Craig Dykstra has suggested 13 ways that the church cultivates community.

These “ecclesiastical practices” shape the nature and form of the communities of Christians that we call congregations. This is a much more complex enterprise than we generally realize.

Our lack of clarity about this creates several problems. One is that we are not as effective in cultivating community as we should be. Another is that we are building certain characteristics into our congregations that we are not aware of, characteristics that might be in conflict with the truth we believe.

Healthy Christian community does not just happen. We need to understand how this process works and how we can cooperate with the Holy Spirit in building true koinonia.

To that end, I have paraphrased, reordered and grouped these 13 “ecclesiastical practices” into the following categories.

(This list comes from Dykstra’s book Growing in the Life of Christian Faith, as quoted in Cultivating Missional Communities by Inagrace Dietterich.)

Commonly recognized practices

These are the practices nearly all Christians recognize and employ to “be the church.”

Worshipping God together: Worship is the primary way that most congregations shape their communities. This includes hearing the preaching of the Word and receiving the sacraments.

Praying: This includes both public and private prayer.

Commonly recognized but narrowly implemented practices

These are the practices most Christians engage in but often in a limited manner.

Interpreting the Scriptures together: This is usually a practice reserved for the clergy. But this should include more than woodenly applying the historical-grammatical method. The Scriptures must be understood in our present context.

Telling the Christian story to one another: This is usually done as preparation for evangelism or as evangelism itself. As Christians, we would do well to follow the example of the Jews who retell the stories of their past. It is the stories that shape their identities and values. We are the ones who need to hear these stories.

Carrying out specific faithful acts of service and witness together: When this is done, it is usually done as a chore or obligation. It is either performed with ulterior motives (as a pretext for evangelism) or with distance and arrogance. We should understand service as integral to “being the Church.”

Practices that either supplant the Gospel or are avoided for fear that they will supplant the Gospel

These are primarily done by “liberal” Christians who reduce the Gospel to social action. They are often avoided by “conservative” Christians because they seem insignificant compared to the “spiritual” matters.

Opposing the “powers”: This often takes the form of social action. It means standing against people and organizations that damage human life, that disrupt human community or that harm God’s creation.

Social justice: This is the positive aspect. It means working together to establish and maintain social structures which will sustain life in the world in ways that are in accord with God’s will.

Practices that rarely happen at the congregational level

When these activities take place, it is usually in the context of a small group. They seem too threatening for most Westerners.

Confession: This was a significant part of John Wesley’s weekly class meetings. It is not some legalistic ritual performed out of fear of condemnation. It is rather an expression of deep community. We confess our sins to one another and forgive those who have wronged us. The goal is not so much a “clean slate” before God as it is reconciliation with one another as well as God.

Hospitality: This is much more than having potluck dinners, as valuable as they are. We must not only extend hospitality to our friends but also to the stranger.

Dialogue: We must listen carefully to one another as they tell us their stories, not just wait for a break to jump in with our own story.

Solidarity: We are called to suffer with and for each other (and for all who are our neighbors according to Jesus’ definition).

Practices that are so rare as to be statistically nonexistent in the Church

These practices were common in the early Church but are virtually extinct nowadays.

Acceptance: This is practiced better in Alcoholics Anonymous than in the church. We need to see each other with God’s eyes as valuable right now, even with all our flaws. Then we can encourage and challenge each other as we pursue our own vocations. This requires deep knowledge of one another.

Awareness: This means understanding the context in which we live as well as the “timeless truth” of the Gospel. We must struggle together to become aware of that context and to understand how the Gospel of Jesus Christ takes shape in that context.

So what do you think?

Do you find this list helpful? Do you agree with my categories? Would you organize them differently? Did Dykstra leave anything out? Would you exclude anything from his list?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”