Turning a Garden into a City

In our mid-week Study/Pot-luck extraordinaire at Living Hope Church, we have been studying the topic of work, more specifically, the work for which God made us. When you look at Scripture with this topic in mind, there is a rich and varied theology of work from literally the first to the last page of Scripture. One of those "book-end" details is a tree that shows up both at the beginning of the human story and at the end. When God plants the garden he puts in it a Tree of Life. Then humanity is given the responsibility to tend to the garden. Then, at the end of history as we know it, God's children are re-gathered in a city in which is planted, you guessed it, the Tree of Life.

Genesis 2:9 "And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

Revelation 22:2 "...also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

We begin in a garden, are given the task of cultivating it, and we end up in a city. A lot has been said about the significance of this move, but I find it provocative to pull Socrates into the discussion. Biblically speaking, the garden we are given by God is cultivated by the gifts and resources he gave each of us and the resources he embedded in creation. We work, as God's under-creators, and turn his gift into a city, which is from a certain point of view, the collection of a multitude of trades each laboring for the good of the city. This is, basically, how Socrates described the city in Plato's Republic. Each trade is engaged in for the betterment of individuals and families, but also have the larger purpose of building the just city.

Biblically, humans are creative and productive because they are created in the image of a God who is creative and productive. We take the things God provided for us, we employ our gifts and trades for the good of ourselves and our neighbors, and we build a city. And then, finally, when God rules all in all, that city (that collection of human productivity in the virtues of Christ) becomes the perfect city - the City of God.

The Self-Destructive Cycle of Self-Infantilization: We're All Babies Now!

Three articles, three separate sets of circumstances, the same problem. The problem is the self-infantilization of our culture, and it will lead to wide-spread and unsavory consequences.

At the National Review Online, Charles Cooke writes about the chilling effect of liberal emovitism in, "The New 'McCarthyism' Exists, but it Has Nothing to Do with Ted Cruz." He cites the case of a Purdue-based doctoral student and teacher named Fredrik deBoer who publicly lamented the state of his students, and thus the state of his teaching.

Fredrik deBoer took to Twitter to rail bitterly against the toxic climate that the advocates of “tolerance” have created on his campus. “Students,” deBoer wrote, are “very quick learners,” and they have realized that they can use our present hysteria to advance their interests. Indeed, far from helping to educate, deBoer added, our current penchant for hyper-sensitivity is having a deleterious effect on the quality of the critical training he is expected to provide. “If you question even the most obviously dishonest and self-interested invocation of trauma/triggering/etc,” deBoer lamented, “you will be criticized severely.”

And then a liberal friend of deBoer's adds her two-cents on the situation.

Writing anonymously on the “White Hot Harlots” blog, a “passionate leftist” friend of deBoer’s painted a disquietingly similar picture. “Saying anything that goes against liberal orthodoxy,” he declared, “is now grounds for a firin’.” Indeed, “even if you make a reasonable and respectful case, if you so much as cause your liberal students a second of complication or doubt you face the risk of demonstrations, public call-outs, and severe professional consequences.”... in fact. “I would not get fired for pissing off a Republican,” our anonymous friend insists. Rather, “liberal students scare the s*** out of me.

These teachers at public universities have come face-to-face with the intellectual climate created by secular progressivism - a climate of reason, free-exchange, and pursuit of the truth has been replaced with violent and threatening displays of emotion.

At the magazine, First Things, Mark Bauerlein writes about how it has become difficult to impossible to interact with this kind of emotivism in, "The Rhetoric of Anti-Discrimination." His article focuses on a briefing by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights titled, "Examining workplace Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Americans." In it he quotes the transgendered representative at length making it obvious that the only argument offered up in favor of their position was an appeal to emotion. Bauerlein concludes,

What argument can be made against this cry of the heart? Who wants to stand up and deny suffering? The preceding person on the panel spoke against the ENDA revisions by noting mostly the costly and unreasonable litigation that will follow, but you can see how feeble that objection is relative to the pain of these vulnerable souls. So some businesses have to pay a few dollars more—isn’t that worth the healing that will go with it?
 

Given our current cultural climate and the values of equality, diversity, tolerance, and non-judgmentalism, I see no effective answer to these emotional pleas. There are principled answers, yes, but none that pass muster in public settings.

In other words, we have come to a point in our cultural discourse where reason and argumentation are no longer convincing in the public square because they have been effectively replaced with appeals to emotion. What can you say to disagree with how a person feels?

And then thirdly, a now well-known article that was published in the New York Times authored by Judith Shulevitz titled, "In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas." In it, she details a campus group's reaction to a debate about what is allegedly the "rape culture" on campus. This woman's group effectively quashed the debate and erected a safe room where people could go if they heard rhetoric that "invalidated their experience." The organizer of the safe room remarked that she was hurt by hearing people disagree with her deeply held and sincere beliefs. The author analyzes the situation well and cites what I think is a perfect moniker for this trend - "self-infantilization." She writes,

Still, it’s disconcerting to see students clamor for a kind of intrusive supervision that would have outraged students a few generations ago. But those were hardier souls. Now students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals — mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like. This new bureaucracy may be exacerbating students’ “self-infantilization,” as Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College, suggested in an essay for Inside Higher Ed.
 

But why are students so eager to self-infantilize? Their parents should probably share the blame. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, wrote on Slate last month that although universities cosset students more than they used to, that’s what they have to do, because today’s undergraduates are more puerile than their predecessors. “Perhaps overprogrammed children engineered to the specifications of college admissions offices no longer experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity,” he wrote. But “if college students are children, then they should be protected like children.”

Examples of this new cultural reality could be produced ad-infinitum, ad-nauseam from the arenas of academia, government, politics, entertainment, and the media. For a long time people have lamented the rise of the power of the appeal to emotion in politics, and certainly that is a common problem, but this is different. This is systemic. This is engendered by, and I would say made necessary by, secular progressivism, and today the culture-shapers have themselves been shaped by this brand of emotivism and lack the intellectual tools to make any other appeal.

So, how did this happen?

For my thesis in graduate school I chose to read the collected works of Richard Rorty who was at the time the leading American philosophical proponent of what was then called postmodernism. People still use the term, but is has been made gauche by those who are its disciples. (That happens when an idea is so bad that its disciples refuse to give up the worldview but deny the title, as if changing the label will remove the stain.) Postmodernism had its roots in a philosophy that proclaimed suspicion of all truth claims. Rorty once infamously declared that "truth is what my colleagues let me get away with." It was argued that appeals to truth failed and did not do justice to how various cultures viewed the world and taught their children how to live. Then postmodernism took another step and went from suspicion of truth to the belief that any appeal to truth was an act of power over another human being, and thus our modern notion of "tolerance" was born. To be tolerant, in this new postmodern world, was to avoid making truth claims or judgment claims of others, and those who did were labeled intolerant.

This is a terrible view of tolerance. In reality, tolerance is reserved for those with whom you disagree. In this new view of tolerance, it is reserved only for those who agree with you, and those who disagree are labeled as intolerant. And being labeled intolerant is now the worst thing that can be said about  a person.  It is a terrible definition, but it has won the day. The catch with this view is that it was destined for self-destruction the day it became cultural cache. It rejects reality, grounds any concept of "truth," "good," or "right," in personal preferences, and raises emotion to the highest level of public discourse. As a result we have, in more ways than one, lost our minds and replaced them with our tear ducts. And moving forward, all we need is the next set of whiners to make their case and make it louder than the last group of whiners, and the definition of what is socially acceptable will change. The whole worldview is a self-collapsing cycle of public protests and threats of litigation.

Postmodernism ironically reduced itself to appeals to power, and over time has further reduced itself to appeals to emotional power. When truth beyond your preferences is gone, the only way to get your way is to exercise power over other human beings. Argument is gone, power reigns. And this is the very core of the secular progressive worldview, which is why I argue that the reduction of all human interaction to power and emotion is a necessary consequence of this way of seeing things. This also explains why secular progressives accuse everyone else of making power-plays to get their way - it is projection pure and simple. They have no argument, by virtue of their postmodern worldview, so they sling emotion and hope it sticks.

For the young mind, the result is exactly what our three authors noted. The uniquely human capacity for reason and reflection is diminished in favor of emotion coddling. More and more, older children are unable to make the crucial distinction between what reality really is like (for example, other smart people disagree with you and deserve to be heard) from their sincerely held beliefs (leading to climate where dissenting points of view are labeled as "hate" or "intolerance").

This leads to what is now the new fundamentalism. More on that later.

For now it will suffice to say that Christians ought to have nothing to do with this rampant self-infantilization. Christians are people of truth, not propaganda. Christians are people of self-sacrificing love, not coercive hate. Christians are unafraid of other points of view, for all truth is God's truth. Christians are people who are being built and matured in the image of Christ and in the kingdom of God, not letting themselves get stuck in the early Freudian stages of infant development.

In addition, Christians are people of hope. There really is a powerful and redemptive truth out there than can change a life and free it from its childish shackles.

What I See As A Pastor

I had a chance to show someone today "what I see" when I look over a congregation as a pastor.

A young man has been walking to church for a few weeks and he stopped by today in bad shape. Life is hard for him and he is baffled about where God is and whether he is paying any attention. A couple of us had a chance to talk with him and pray with him, but I have to tell you, these conversations are often very hard to get through. It is a common truth that life is often very hard, and most every Christian will experience seasons when they believe God is absent, and despair.

At one point he mentioned what he sees when he walks in the doors of our church. He sees people with smiling faces and happy children. He sees people who love God. He sees people raising their hands in worship. He sees people who feel the presence of God, and he keeps coming back because he feels the presence of God here as well. He wants what they have.

So I took him into the sanctuary, we walked down to the front, turned around, and I showed him a little of what I see every Sunday. I also see people happy to be with the family of God and who worship with all they have each week. I also see beautiful families, and I revel in the sounds of children racing through the halls, hugging their parents, and carrying around whatever craft they glued and colored that morning. I even get to hold a few of them.

I also see the saint who is twice widowed but who pours her life into her brothers and sisters in Christ. I see the families dealing with severe mental and physical disabilities who bring their kids and family members because worship soothes them. I see teens and young adults who have lost parents at an all too early age, but who come and find friendship and strength in church. I see blended families following God but who struggle with the rotten choices of their other family members. I see parents with wayward children who struggle in prayer constantly. I see single parents doing their dead-level best. And the story goes on, and on.

To my eyes, this is part of what makes church so beautiful. It isn't the perfection. It is more the quality of the mercy and grace of God alive in imperfect and hurting lives. It is the beauty of lumps of coal being turned into diamonds by the power of a loving and nail-scarred God. It is the cross leading to resurrection.

The Disciple and Happiness

There is a line in Pride and Prejudice in which one sister tells another, and I am paraphrasing here, that she cannot have her happiness until she has her goodness.  Jane Austen is relying on a traditional sense of happiness (and goodness) to make her point that virtue is the path to true happiness. For a very long time philosophers and theologians believed that humans were made to be certain kinds of beings, namely rational and virtuous beings, and that we would not lead fulfilling lives until we began to function according to our created mandate. Thus, happiness was to be a consequence of reason and virtue. This idea, which reigned philosophy and culture for centuries, has fallen apart and been replaced with one form of hedonism or another. Happiness now is a factor of what makes us feel a particular emotion without any regard to virtue or the right training of character. In fact most people now find the idea, "the right training of character," to be odd or offensive.

But for the follower of Jesus Christ, we must return to a version of this traditional notion. Moreland and Issler say, "According to the ancients [Moses, Solomon, Jesus, Aristotle, Plato, and the church], happiness is a life well lived, a life of virtue and character, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness" (The Lost Virtue of Happiness, pg. 25, italics theirs). The way I want to put it here is that in the life of the believer happiness is the place where there is no tension between what gives God joy and what gives you joy.

For the Christian, maturity consists in the building of the life and character of God within us. As the Apostle Paul noted, we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of God's Son. This is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is a beautiful and powerful thing. It is a joyful thing. But it presupposes that we currently, or in our broken human condition, are not in the image of God (Romans 8:29). We must be transformed to get there. Thus, the things that give us joy or happiness now may need to change and the things that give God joy must replace them in the makeup of our character.

So, at the very least, the Christian needs to learn that they cannot accept happiness on hedonistic terms, or to settle for the kind of joy that comes with a broken and sinful nature. As C.S. Lewis said in another context, if we do those things we are happy with playing in the mud when the glories of heaven are available to us. The Christian is given the Word of God, the life of Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit, and these become our guides in learning God's kind of happiness and joy, and they become the power of our transformation.

Toward a Public Christian Faith

It has become a common, if unexamined, belief that the only institutions that have anything to say about a culture’s common problems are politics, law, and higher education, especially the hard sciences. What this means is that when we are faced with common, large, problems we look to these institutions, people, and their respective ideologies to provide solutions. The problem is that none of them have any solutions worth any serious devotion.

The Christian, however, has at their disposal another resource that has answers to public problems. At the very least it provides a sound and valid foundation for understanding and addressing our common issues. But our culture has ruled it out of bounds for public discussion. The living Christ and Christian theology is the resource that exemplifies God’s wisdom and power among humans and which reveals truth to us. But people of faith, theologians, pastors, and churches have been relegated to the insignificant shadows of “private belief” or “opinion.” And not only has the outside world pushed the church and her theology out of the public square, the church has, in many respects, become content there.

To come “out of the shadows” and put forward a full-bodied public life the church must learn that she is a public institution with answers to our culture’s common problems. We need not subsume ourselves and our priorities to the other institutions listed above, and neither do we need to learn a triumphant posture over them. Instead, for the follower of Christ, all these vocations (and many, many more) become means of expressing our theology. If this is understood and practiced, the Christian need not seek a revised form of Constantinianism (because they no longer see politics as a surrogate savior), and the Christian need not separate their faith from the tasks that consume most of their waking hours (because their faith and their lives have become indistinguishable).

Part of what this means is that the church must learn to use the resources at her disposal to begin learning and teaching what it would mean to begin thinking about daily life with Christ. Christ is not a spiritual add-on, or the ideal who guides some of our moral decision making. Instead, he is the very manifestation of the Creator of all things, the smartest man who ever lived, and still alive filling his people with the power and wisdom of his kingdom. So, we don’t begin thinking about marriage, politics, law, education, computer programming, or custodial work with the presupposition that Christ is not concerned. On the contrary, if the Christian is doing it, Christ is deeply concerned and involved.

Does this mean we must develop a “Christian quantum physics,” a “Christian computer programming language,” or a “Christian” anything? Not necessarily. Instead, we ought to become people enamored with and filled with Christ and then go do our jobs, or relate to friends and family, or vote.

I wonder from time to time, what would it look like for the local church to become so robust a community founded on the truths and life of Christ that people find in her the resources they need to address life and all that comes with it?

Christians in this World

The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus was written in the late 2nd century by an unknown disciple, self-described as a "disciple of the apostles" to a Roman teacher who was likely the tutor to Marcus Aurelius. Though an ideal, it is a wonderful description of how Christians can approach their lives in this world - lives lived here but belonging to God.

For Christians are not distinguished from the
rest of mankind either in locality or in speech or in customs. For they dwell not somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor practise an extraordinary kind of life. Nor again do they possess any invention discovered by any intelligence or study of ingenious men, nor are they masters of any human dogma as some are. But while they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians as the lot of each is cast, and follow the native customs in dress and food and the other
arrangements of life, yet the constitution of their
own citizenship, which they set forth, is marvellous,
and confessedly contradicts expectation. They dwell in their own countries, but only as
sojourners; they bear their share in all things as
citizens, and they endure all hardships as strangers.
Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and
every fatherland is foreign. They marry like all other men and they beget
children; but they do not cast away their offspring. They have their meals in common, but not their
wives. They find themselves in the flesh, and yet they
live not after the flesh. Their existence is on earth, but their
citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws, and they
surpass the laws in their own lives. They love all men, and they are persecuted by
all. They are ignored, and yet they are condemned.
They are put to death, and yet they are endued with
life. They are in beggary, and yet they make many
rich. They are in want of all things, and yet they
abound in all things. They are dishonoured, and yet they are
glorified in their dishonour. They are evil spoken of,
and yet they are vindicated. They are reviled, and they bless; they are
insulted, and they respect. Doing good they are punished as evil-doers;
being punished they rejoice, as if they were thereby
quickened by life. War is waged against them as aliens by the
Jews, and persecution is carried on against them by
the Greeks, and yet those that hate them cannot tell
the reason of their hostility.

Discipleship Changes Things - The Words We Use

When we become disciples of Jesus - or become serious about following him - all kinds of things are supposed to change. The Jesus way of life is a new way; a way of thinking, believing, and doing that is often radically different than other non-Jesus ways of doing things. So it would follow that discipleship to Jesus begins to transform our lives in ways we may expect, and in ways we may not expect. So, what kinds of changes might we expect if we begin to authentically follow Jesus? Over time I want to flesh out several changes, but here is one you might not expect.

Our vocabulary changes, and I don't mean we stop swearing. We may very well stop swearing when we become disciples, but I am thinking of a much more significant shift in the way we understand and use words. Words are powerful things. Language is more life-shaping than you probably think. At the very least, words signify things and ideas. When we use words we are verbalizing what is going on around us or within us. We express relationships between things in the world and we express what is going on in our inner states. We say, "The light is green," and we mean to say something about not only a certain colored light, but to also convey meaning. We are saying, "it is your turn to drive." We can say, "I feel anxious," and reveal something going on within us that another person may not know unless we say it, and we may be communicating a need for sympathy or reassurance. In either case, we use words in ways that we believe will communicate with other people.

So it is with our use of words and ideas that appear both in Scripture and in the common culture. What do you think of when someone tells you they spent Thanksgiving with their "family"? What ideas and images are conjured in your mind when someone talks about their "anger"? What about "friendship," "work," or "love"? The images and ideas that arise in your mind when people use those words with you are the result of years of contextual content-filling. In other words, those words have already been defined for you (in large part) by your background, education, language, culture, and so forth. Exaggerating a bit, you might say that whoever or whatever filled your vocabulary with meaning has also given you your view of how the world works.

There is an unavoidable tension here for the disciple of Jesus. Christian theology and practice wants to use words one way and the rest of the world wants to use them in another way. We live in a pluralistic culture, becoming more so all the time, and each corner of our culture wants to use words in different ways.  The more ways a single word is used, the more difficult it becomes to maintain a straightforward belief in the way "we" think that word ought to be used. To put it another way, if the church teaches you one thing about "love" for one hour a week, and media teaches you a very different thing about "love" 40-60 hours a week, which meaning will be easier to believe? And if you want to believe what the church teaches about "love" then you will need to work harder at it.

But then, it seems this is one thing the follower of Christ learns to do if they plan on being genuine disciples. If we are discipled by someone or something, we are taught a view of the world by them. The disciple is striving to learn the Jesus way of life, including the Jesus way of using words. This means that we learn how to begin with sound biblical ways of understanding words and their respective concepts and carry them into our respective niches of society. What normally happens is the reverse is the case. Church and Christian theology often feel odd or antiquated to us because we have let other things define the terms for us.

So, what does it mean for you to robustly learn and absorb the biblical meaning of "love" or "forgiveness" or "work" and then engage your world? We are all waiting to see, and we will all be better for it.

Links with Little Context

What are the rights of Donor-Conceived People? by Alana S. Newman

We’ve created a class of people who are manufactured, and treat them as less-than-fully human, demanding that they be grateful for whatever circumstances we give them. While fathers of traditionally conceived human beings are chased down and forced to make child support payments as a minimal standard of care, people conceived commercially are reprimanded when they question the anonymous voids that their biological fathers so “lovingly” left.

Five Ways Liberals Ignore Science by David Harsanyi

It’s no big deal for us to ask Republican evolution skeptics to raise their hands or force a bogus Senate vote to try and shame Republicans, yet no reporter would ever think to ask a pro-choice politician if they believe life begins at conception. Sometimes denialism matters and sometimes it doesn’t.

Why It Matters That the Exodus Really Happened by Gregory Alan Thorbury

Truth matters. People want to know the answers: the who, the what, the when, the how, and the why. And without providing those little truths, they may never learn of the ultimate Truth behind them.

Molecular Biology Has Failed to Yeild a Grand "Tree of Life"  by Casey Luskin

Unfortunately, one assumption that these evolutionary biologists aren't willing to re-evaluate is the assumption that universal common ancestry is correct. They appeal to a myriad of ad hoc arguments -- horizontal gene transfer, long branch attraction, rapid evolution, different rates of evolution, coalescent theory, incomplete sampling, flawed methodology, and convergent evolution -- to explain away inconvenient data which doesn't fit the coveted treelike pattern. As a 2012 paper stated, "phylogenetic conflict is common, and frequently the norm rather than the exception." At the end of the day, the dream that DNA sequence data would fit into a nice-neat tree of life has failed, and with it a key prediction of neo-Darwinian theory.

Is The "Pastor as Leader" Paradigm Destroying Pastors?

In his refreshing book, Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul, Lance Witt collects several distressing statistics regarding pastors and their vocation:

1,500 pastors leave the ministry permanently each month in America. 80% of pastors and 85% of their spouses feel discouraged in their roles....Over 50% of pastors are so discouraged they would leave the ministry if they could but have no other way of making a living. Over 50% of pastors’ wives feel that their husband entering ministry was the most destructive thing to ever happen to their families. 30% of pastors said they had either been in an ongoing affair or had a one-time sexual encounter with a parishioner. 71% of pastors stated they were burned out, and they battle depression beyond fatigue on a weekly and even a daily basis. One out of every ten ministers will actually retire as a minister.

There is a lot to be said about what these stats represent, and Witt does a wonderful job talking about the importance of restoring the pastor's soul and leading from the depths that can be created by God. But there is something more to be said. It is a frustration I have with the 'pastor as leader' model that has become a kind of talisman in the evangelical world over the past three decade.

Pastors are not CEO-style leaders. Yet they have been treated as such and expected to lead and produce results like captains of industry. My working theory is that one significant reason pastors have such an incredible failure and dropout rate right now is that they are pressured to be the kinds of things they are not by nature. Here is a nutshell version of how my theory works.

1. Our culture and our churches have almost completely lost a biblical definition of the role of pastor.

2. Our culture and our churches are enamored with the seemingly magical techniques of corporate management.

3. Because we lost the one and learned the other, we imposed corporate-style management on pastors.

4. That kind of leadership requires a certain kind of leader to make it "work" and most people called into the pastorate are not that kind of leader.

5. Hence, most pastors quickly become frustrated, depressed, and angry.

So, there it is. I hope over the next few days to tease out each assertion and make more sense of what we have done to pastors and the church and how, God willing, we can reverse course.

Work is a Bountiful Gift

Charles Wesley wrote this hymn encouraging believers to honor God in their workaday lives.

Forth in Thy Name, O Lord, I Go

                Forth in thy Name, O Lord, I go,

                my daily labor to pursue;

                thee, only thee, resolved to know

                in all I think or speak or do.

                The task thy wisdom hath assigned,

                O let me cheerfully fulfill;

                in all my works thy presence find,

                and prove thy good and perfect will.

                Thee may I set at my right hand,

                whose eyes mine inmost substance see,

                and labor on at thy command,

                and offer all my works to thee.

                For thee delightfully employ

                What e'er thy bounteous grace hath given

                And run my course with even joy,

                and closely walk with thee to heaven.

This hymn affirms some wonderful things about the Christian view of work and worship.

God has graciously and wisely assigned us our task. Work, biblically speaking, is a bountiful gift from God in which we engage in God's calling, honor God, love our neighbor, and take part in the foreshadowing of the coming kingdom of God. Yes, really, this is how the Christian faith looks at work.

The best way to 'take God to work' with us is to recognize that he is already there. We do not need to bring God kicking and screaming into our daily lives where we do not really know where he fits anyway. He is already ahead of us working in the lives of those we live and work with, and he can even be at work in the labor itself.

When we are aware of God's presence and wisdom within our labors, there can be delight and joy. It is the perspective shift that makes this possible - God is here at work in my/our labors which he has graciously given.

We are having a great time at Living Hope Church on Tuesday nights in our series, "The Work God Made Us For" digging into these issues and what Scripture has to say about them. You are invited!

The Church as a Public Institution

James Davison Hunter on the politicization of American culture in "To Change the World":

"If modern politics is the sphere of leadership, influence, and activity surrounding the state, politicization is the turn toward law and politics - the instrumentality of the state - to find solutions to public problems....This is demonstrated by the simple fact that the amount of law that exists in any society is always inversely related to the coherence and stability of its common culture: law increases as cultural consensus decreases." (pg. 102)

"It is difficult to even imagine much less accept the idea that there should be public space occupied by activities or organizations that are completely independent of the political realm. The realm of politics has become, in our imagination, the dominant - and for some the only adequate - expression of our collective life....This in turn has brought about a narrowing of the complexity and richness of public life and with it, a diminishing of possibility for thinking of alternative ways to address common problems and issues." (pg. 106)

I find Hunter's analysis here hauntingly and almost depressingly accurate. I say "almost" because I believe the accuracy of what he portrays opens a door for the church to step in as that public institution that has other, non-political and non-legal ways of answering our common problems. But this requires that the church and her leaders learn how to address the issues of the day and the universal issues of the human condition without waiting on those in public power to lead the way. Here are some thoughts on how that may happen.

The church has answers the state will never truly grasp. Even if most people in positions of legal, media, educational, and political power were genuine followers of Jesus Christ, we live in a pluralistic culture in which the imposition of "Christian" laws will, in the end, do only a little good. The church must learn to lead the way. Do not wait for a vote to have a sweeping cultural consequence. Step up and address life with the unique set of resources the church has at its command.

Our theology must lead the way. We are currently told that theology is backwards, coercive, and an outdated way of thinking in our modern age. But that is what people who do not understand Christian theology tell us, so why do we have any reason at all to believe their dismissive point of view? Theology well done, with its eyes wide open to all of God's truth, is a powerful and wide-ranging guide for our common problems. Maybe one reason the world sees us like specialists in alchemy and phrenology is because we have not taken our theology seriously enough.

Church leaders need to broaden their own education and understanding of the world. Specifically, I believe pastors need to stop being experts in mid-level management techniques and start being experts in the kingdom of God and the human soul. Pastors ought to read broadly and often. They need to acquaint themselves with the best out there in the fields of science, sociology, psychology, history, biography, philosophy, theology, and more. Then their sermons need to reflect that self-education.

The church needs to be courageous. One of the themes carried through the book of Acts is that Christians "spoke boldly" when they had the chance. Christians carry a message that sticks out and will be called names, but it is a message that has the power to save and transform lives. But that will only happen when the church learns to be winsome, wise, and bold.

How To Avoid Discipleship - Mishandle Doubt

Doubt is natural in every human life on nearly every conceivable level. In human relationships there are doubts about loyalties, loves, behavior, and intentions. In education there is doubt about value and truth. In business there is doubt about decision making, markets, and people. And on the story goes.

Certainty, genuine certainty, is rare. Often, when humans project certainty they are ripe for a dislocation of their beliefs unless they have already processed their doubts. False certainty is a thin defense against the inevitable waves of doubt. A Christian will not settle their doubts or the doubts of others by pretending to ‘have it all together’ or acting as if they have all the answers to all the difficult questions.

In my experience, doubt is not only universal, it can be a powerful teacher. If doubt is handled well it can lead us into genuine insight and a deeper relationship with God. If doubt is handled poorly, it can lead either to a false and thin confidence or a shipwrecked faith. Here are some quick thoughts on how not to handle doubt.

Do not pretend they don’t exist. This may be the first line of defense when a genuine issue arises within our hearts and minds or in conversation with a friend, but the tendency to act as if the doubt does not exist or is not significant actually gives more weight to the doubt. Over time a person will begin to think that because they or their Christian friends were unable to even admit the doubt, it must be scary enough to be true.

Do not give or accept trite, quick answers. This has the same long-term consequence as refusing to admit they are real. Simplistic answers do not suffice to deal with significant issues or problems people face, which raise doubts about God and his nature. Suffering and loss are significant, and so should be the process of dealing with them in light of the existence of a good and providential God. Feel enough confidence in God’s active care of people to take time and wrestle with real issues.

Do not give in. The Christian faith is true; it’s all true. Giving in is common among those who struggle with doubt, but that need not be the case. Others have been where you are and others have been in more dire situations than you and they have found God to be just and true. You can, too. God knows we struggle with doubt, so he meets people in deep and powerful ways when they seek him in the midst of their personal darkness. I found a God who cares in the depths of feeling minuscule and I no longer worry about his loving attention. Let your doubt lead you to a revelation of his unchanging character. You cannot do that if you give in.

Opening the Faith to Examination

Much has been written in response to the recent Newsweek article by Kurt Eichenwald, “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin.” So much so, that the various and obvious mistakes and oversimplifications by the author have been revealed and the article itself shown to be, fundamentally, a screed. But if the article is useless in actually understanding the ins and outs of biblical interpretation and translation, it may be ironically useful in highlighting a virtue of the Christian faith.

It is often argued that Christianity is believed on faith (faith defined as ‘against good reasons’), and is thus fundamentally anti-intellectual. It is said that if Christians would only open their minds to reason, skepticism, and science they will see the error of their ways. The Christian, in short, does not think and their faith is ripe for the shredding. When push comes to shove, however, it turns out that Christianity is open to rational investigation and the current trend of anti-Christian skepticism and New Atheism is a closed loop of fundamentalism.

In his Vital Magazine article, “Who’s Misunderstood,Newsweek?”, George P. Wood makes this point, “Yes, I want to take Eichenwald to task for some of the unfounded things he wrote in this article. But I also want to listen to him. My friend Craig S. Keener once said, ‘When we fail at self-critique, God sometimes raises up outsiders to help us (gently or not).’ Might Eichenwald—despite the many errors of fact and judgment in his piece—nonetheless be raising some important questions?” George follows this up with a set of questions worth asking and answering as well as we can.

He is right to note both things: Eichenwald’s article is an intellectual embarrassment, and the Christian faith still takes the challenge and the questions seriously. As a matter of theology and history – principle and practice – the Christian faith is an open book. Quite literally our book has been open to scrutiny and study since day one and anyone who tells you differently has not done their homework. Christian theologians have opened their formulations to scholarly and practical criticism. This necessary virtue of the Christian faith can be summed up in the questions, “Is it true?” and “Does it make sense of life?” The fact that plenty of Christians and individual churches have embraced blind faith does not negate our actual theology and historical practice.

The Christian famously believes that all truth is God’s truth, thus the believer should not be afraid of questions and differing points of view. If an issue is raised that the Christian does not know what to do with, I guarantee someone else has. Most challenges to the Christian faith are nothing new, so they have been answered in one form or another for hundreds of years by some of the world’s leading thinkers. If the challenge comes from a new corner of science or philosophy, the Christian only needs to draw on the deep well of current, credible resources.

The Christian also believes that their faith will be refined and strengthened the closer to the truth they come. We believe deeply in truth and the existence of a God who is the very ground of being, so it is important for us to come closer and closer to our God. In his epistles, Paul consistently commends knowledge of God (Greek, scientia) to his readers and says that it is vital for their growth toward Christ. The Old Testament has an entire genre of literature called Wisdom Literature which commends both intellectual knowledge of God and wise living in the ways of God. Thinking and living in the open air of investigation is in the Christian’s blood.

In stark contrast, the current form of atheism is like two of the three famous monkeys sitting on a fence. Their hands are over their eyes so they will not see other points of view, their hands are over their ears so they will not hear criticism of their own views, but their mouths are wide open.

What About Living As If He Really Does Exist?

So now we have an ex-Christian pastor turned atheist after an experiment in which he lived a year as if God did not exist. This gives me reason to wonder what might happen if people resolved to live as if God did exist. And not just any god, but the God revealed in the Christian Bible. What would happen to a skeptic if they obeyed all the things Christ commanded us to do? What if the ex-pastor had resolved to live a year as a genuine disciple before experimenting with atheism?

What if Christians themselves resolved to live a year as if their God really did exist and really did give them power to live his kind of life here on earth? Have a hard time imagining that? I guess you and I are not alone.

But here is why skeptics will not do it. If you actually decide to live like that, even for a short period of time, you are accountable to a moral system that goes deeper than fakeable surface behaviors and does not change when you wish it to. If you want to live like an atheist you are accountable to no moral system in particular. For all the bluster about atheists living moral lives, the term 'moral' in that assertion is up for as many interpretations as there are individuals and situations. Our ex-pastor may have chosen a vague Western system of (ironically) Judeo-Christian values, but he would have been equally justified in picking militant Central American Communism to guide his steps and kill the next capitalist he saw. Without God, both are equal choices. The problem for humans is, with God, they are not and we are responsible for the lives we lead to Someone more powerful and eternal than us.

That bugs the skeptic. It, in fact, bugs every human heart until that human realizes how good it is to live the way the Manufacturer laid out the plans. God is Supreme Lord of all, but he is also irrevocably good and his mercies are new every morning. His disposition toward us now is patience; his very nature is love. Nothingness provides me with none of that, and all the whistling in the dark and making my own meaning without Him still leaves the darkness in charge.

So what might you have to do in order to live a year as if God really did exist? Here is a smattering of commands given to the follower of Jesus Christ. Try them on for size.

"Follow me." Jesus

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength....You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus

"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Jesus

"Put to death what is earthly in you....Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience." Paul

"Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God...casting all your cares on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful." Peter

"Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind." Peter

"Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." Paul

"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." John

We could go on nearly ad infinitum.

It is easy for the human psyche to make the decision, "I'm going to unchain myself from the responsibility I have living under the sun, but I will continue to use it for fuel." It takes a hard-core soul to say, "I will unchain myself from the sun and live as if that really just happened." But what if a human soul recognizes what the sun is and why it is there? What if we make a decision like, "I live under the sun and receive life itself from it, so I will live as if that really is the case."

I Do Not Think Christianity Means What You Think It Means

Ex-pastor Ryan Bell experimented lately with living without God, blogging about it at YearWithoutGod.com, and more recently he penned a column for CNN.com in which he details some of the reasons behind his de-conversion. Conversion and de-conversion are always fascinating to me. They give brief glimpses into not only ‘reasons for’ and ‘reasons against’ their beliefs, but glimpses into the conditions that led to a person’s decision. Bell writes straightforwardly and honestly about several of his conclusions, and it has given me reason to process what he said.

Having skimmed through some of his blog, I see that he writes with an irenic tone and I appreciate that. Additionally, I have no pretense of trying to answer his questions and attempt a re-conversion. But I am moved to reflect, for a few reasons, on what he said and I think a few reflections are in order on this kind of disbelief.

First, if circles of Christians are as shallow and simplistic as he makes his upbringing out to be, they need to repent and reclaim the depths of their faith. Bell portrays a faith, either purposefully or tangentially, that simply was not able to deal with some very straightforward issues. The problem of evil is ever present in de-conversion stories and his is no different. He is attracted to current cultural morays and considers Christian doctrine to be out of step. He actually believes that the Christian faith degrades the value of this world and this life. All of these issues are easily dealt with by Christian doctrine and life, but he was not apparently around people who thought so. And if so, that is a crying shame. There are plenty of pockets of anti-intellectualism within the Christian world, and it need not be.

That being said, all of us are intellectually responsible for these kinds of decisions, and to caricature the faith in such simplistic terms, leave it there, and come to unreasonable conclusions as a result, partakes in a rising form of anti-intellectualism. It is the rational sloppiness at the very core of New Atheism that labels faith as irrational and simplistic, and thus dismisses it by definition and not by argumentation.

Secondly – and this is true of every atheist I have ever personally interacted with or watched online – I simply do not recognize the faith they left. When they describe what ‘Christians believe’ I have no idea where they got their ideas. When they ‘argue’ against Christian doctrine, I see straw-men made of flash paper. I am not moved by their reasons because they make no sense to me. I am not startled by their arguments because they were answered centuries ago. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I do not think Christianity means what they think it means.

For example, Bell goes on about how the Christian faith degrades the value of this world and this life, and that he feels he has found a much more meaningful life without God. He writes:

As I come to terms with the fact that this life is the only one I get, I am more motivated than ever to make it count.
 I want to experience as much happiness and pleasure as I can while helping others to attain their happiness. I construct meaning in my life from many sources, including love, family, friendships, service, learning and so on.
 Popular Christian theology, on the other hand, renders this life less meaningful by anchoring all notions of value and purpose to a paradise somewhere in the future, in a place other than where we are right now. Ironically, my Christian upbringing taught me that ultimately this life doesn't matter, which tends to make believers apathetic about suffering and think that things will only get worse before God suddenly solves everything on the last day.

Bell has rejected a bad Sunday school version of the Christian faith, a faith that has raised the lives of untold millions of people in systems that would have otherwise destroyed them like so many sick dogs. A simple review of Christian history (as it actually happened, not as the NAs tell it) contradicts his conclusion. In addition, one of the core tenants of the Christian faith sanctifies this life in this flesh – the Incarnation of God himself. Yet, Bell is hardly alone. It is common fare to accuse the Christian faith of looking too much to the other side and stripping this life of meaning. But here is where an ex-pastor has the intellectual responsibility to dig a little deeper than a bad Sunday school teacher and spend a little time with Augustine or Aquinas. How about St. Patrick? Why not learn about the theologically rooted and radical hospitality and generosity of Oswald Chambers?

In another place he makes an obviously false observation when he writes:

It struck me this year that nihilism is a disease born of theism. Some people have been taught to expect meaning outside of this world beyond our earthly experiences. When they come upon the many absurdities of life and see that it's "not as advertised," an existential despair can take hold.
 The problem is not solved by inventing a God in which to place all our hopes, but rather, to face life honestly and create beauty from the absurd.

The critical error here is equating finding meaning ‘outside this world’ with the idea that therefore, this world has little to no meaning. Christians root existence itself in the being and loving creative activity of God, but that has literally everything to do with this life and this physical world. The contradiction follows necessarily from the error in the premise: the belief that all is meaningless comes from a belief that infuses the universe with meaning. And then the silly conclusion follows: so we strive against the darkness and make our own meaning. Well, so did Pol Pot and the Nazis.

I literally do not recognize the faith he, and countless others, claim to have rejected.

A new reality is creeping up on us from the corners. There is a new fundamentalism among us. There is a new conventional wisdom and popular consensus that refuses to countenance rival ideas, and it has everything to do with belief in God but not in the way you have been told.

How To Avoid Being a Disciple, Part 2 - Refuse a Theology of Difficult Things

It is nearly axiomatic in the life of Christians that their greatest struggles with faith come in times of stress and difficulty. Financial pressures squeeze families. Serious illnesses come out of nowhere and throw every expectation and hope out the window. Betrayal pulls the rug out from underneath our relationships.  And on the story goes. Struggles of every kind create unexpected bends in the river and create tension for us, tensions between what we expected to happen, what we hope will happen, what we expect of God in our lives, and who we think God really is.

To paraphrase a popular bumper sticker, all kinds of awful things happen. This is the human experience, and as such, it needs to be dealt with in ways that make sense of both our experience and our faith. If we believe in a sovereign God, we need to come to terms with his plan and power and the fact that things in our lives often do not go the way we expect them to. On the whole, however, we have failed at this task. We have simply not taken enough time on the "street level" of Christian lives to develop a theology of difficult things - an understanding that God is still good and great even when we suffer. And the failure to do so is more than a theological oversight, it is another way in which we avoid discipleship.

If we are unable to develop a clear and faithful understanding of God in the most trying times of life, we will find ourselves tossed and turned by even the slightest of winds. It will not necessarily be the gale-force gusts that topple our faith, it may be one contrary breeze. There is no surer way to destroy the future faith of a young believer than to insinuate that if they follow Jesus everything will go well for them. If we do not deepen our comprehension of God beyond believing in his greatness and goodness when "all is well," we will end up with a shallow projection of ourselves and our wishes on the sky, resulting in us following ourselves and not God. Our default theology is never who God actually is, but who we wish him to be.

At the very least, the disciple must learn where they stand in the God-to-human gamut of power. God is God, I am not and can never be. God is, by his very nature, necessarily good and right. I am, by my very nature, small in power and rife with error. So the disciple learns to respond to God's very existence and his call with confident abandon. The three Hebrew children about to be thrown into Nebuchadnezzar's famous fiery furnace understood this well. They refused to bow down to the pagan idol because they knew who truly was God. At the moment of their peril they said, "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up" (Daniel 3:17-18).  In another situation, not leading to potential death but to a radical change in the rest of her life, a young girl also saw what this meant for her. When the angel Gabriel told Mary that as a virgin she would give birth to her long-awaited Messiah, and that her older cousin was also surprisingly pregnant, she replied, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).

If the follower of Jesus Christ gains an understanding of the character and power of God, they become able to follow him in the most complicated of times. This is not to say it will be easy - that would, in fact, contradict my entire point. The three Hebrew children were actually thrown into the fiery furnace and Mary watched her son be executed by the Romans. But if a Christian fails or refuses to come to terms with their sovereign and good God in the midst of trials, in the end they will follow their feelings instead. It is a very quick way to avoid being a disciple.

Part 1

Preach, Live, And Let God Do What He Can Do

“Preach the Word, live in the Kingdom, leave the results to God.” Dallas Willard

I have now heard Dallas Willard say this in a couple of contexts, and I think it is a worthwhile way to think about the vocation of the pastor. As I have argued in the past, I am not sure we have a good handle on a biblical model of pastoring, so hearing from those who have something different to say is valuable to us.

Preach the Word

How could we disagree with this? Yet, my interaction with many churches and pastors tells me that on most Sunday mornings Scripture plays a supporting role at best. Our church supports a lot of missionaries and I often get to preach to people who have traveled throughout the English speaking world and experienced all kinds of churches. After one Sunday morning in which my text came from John 5, the missionary guest said that he could not remember the last time he heard a sermon on God. What does that mean? Can it be that over several years of itineration he had literally not heard (that he could remember) a sermon whose topic was the character and nature of God? Can this be representative of the American church?

If I did not preach from Scripture, I do not know what on earth I would preach from. Does this mean I need to preach verse-by-verse every single week? Not necessarily, but it does mean that my controlling text and set of principles comes from Scripture no matter how I speak.

Live In The Kingdom

The philosopher Aristotle said there were three pillars to effective public speaking: ethos, pathos, and logos. Logos is the logic of your arguments, pathos is your emotional connection with the audience, and ethos is the character or integrity of the speaker. Are you trustworthy? Does your lifestyle somehow backup what you are saying about life?

While striving to avoid some kind of simplistic legalism, it can be reasonably expected that pastors live genuine lives of Christ-likeness. This is not some kind of moralism, but a kingdom possibility. Christ offers us life in the presence and power of the one true God and gave the gift of the third member of the Trinity so that we might actually be able to do that. We say Christ is Lord, but do we live as if he reigns in our lives? The people in our churches have dozens of examples of life outside of the kingdom of God, why not give them at least one example of life within it?

Leave the Results to God

Here is where we may hit the most interference with conventional wisdom. It is either stated or assumed that pastors work to grow the numbers and budgets of their churches. And while health may very well result in that, Willard is clear that this ought not to be the primary goal of ministry. I have said for years that the only thing I am in control of is my obedience to what God has called me to do. I am not called to be a controller or manipulator or herder of people. And if I am not an expert marketer of my skills or church, I am still not called to attach my worth or usefulness before God in terms of “butts and bucks.”

Timothy Keller in his book, Center Church, has challenged me on this. His argument is that we are called to be both faithful and fruitful. At least, we need to strive to be fruitful. And he is right, but in the end his point about fruitfulness may boil down to being faithful to the drive of the Gospel to tell as many people as possible.

But in the end, I think Willard is right. God is the shepherd of human souls, not me. He is the Superintended of our services and gatherings, not me. The Holy Spirit is our guide into truth and toward Jesus Christ, I am only (hopefully) an obedient and useful guide to others along the way.

How To Avoid Being a Disciple, Part 1

To be a disciple is to follow Jesus Christ. There is no discipleship without following Christ in all he teaches us to obey and in how we live our lives under God. There is, however, a form of the Christian life without discipleship, which is a life without Christ (2 Timothy 3:5). The call to follow Christ goes out to everyone, but not even all those who answer the call in the beginning follow through as disciples.

To follow someone is to allow them to be your teacher and begin take on the character of their life, and in the case of Christ it is to also take on the power of his life. In fact, we become like what we follow no matter whom or what it is. The Psalmist tells us about this in the context of idols by saying, “those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Psalm 115:8). So, over time, a mark of the disciple is how different they become from the world and the idols around them. Christ is the one true God, so nobody and nothing else offers us the life that Christ does. People may follow many different idols in this world, but they all end up looking very much the same. The people who stick out as different are the followers of Jesus Christ.

But the minute we say that, we struggle to think of the differences between Christians and the others around them. Christianity without discipleship makes little to no difference in a life at all. After all, how could it? This form of belief is nothing more than lip-service without any intent to allow faith in Christ to sink deeper than some kind of proclamation. As the prophet put it so memorably, “they honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (Is. 29:13). So, what are the hallmarks of a Christian proclamation without the difference discipleship makes?

Christianity without adherence to the fundamentals of the faith will create a life that is indistinguishable from a non-Christian life. It may seem odd to some that we begin talking about a different life by talking about what we believe, but our lives are inevitably the result of our most deeply held beliefs. If you want to know what a person truly believes about an issue, do not put stock in what they say, rather, pay attention to what they do. Behavior inevitably betrays belief, and our beliefs turn us into who we become. It makes a difference whether you believe God created the universe and you or not. You will live differently if you believe Jesus is God in flesh reconciling the world to himself. Your priorities will be different if you believe Jesus is worth obeying and he tells you to make disciples of every nation teaching people to obey everything he tells us to do. You will be a very different kind of person if you really believe that people who are persecuted for righteousness are blessed. And the list could go on.

Why would a Christian not hold to the essentials of their faith? There are probably as many answers to that question as there are nominal Christians, but I think at least two general reasons account for most of the failure of discipleship. First, many Christians are not taught what they believe, and they are not intimate enough with the Word of God to learn it on their own. Their churches and pastors fail them. Their TV watching habits fail them. Their lack of reading and comprehension skills fail them. Whatever the case, the warp and woof of their doctrine has not been made clear and desirable to them, so they go merrily along their way, none the wiser.  Secondly, to believe the things Christ teaches us to believe is to – by very definition – stick out. The follower of Christ learns how to believe that forgiveness is more powerful than vengeance and that humility is greater than the exertion of power. These values, and many more like them, are not at all like the world around us. In cultures where the grass of cultural convention is mowed pretty often and people are told to look and believe the same, Christians are like fast-growing weeds that simply cannot be leveled off for long. But, being that weed, the Christian must get used to getting mowed from time to time.

Disciples must know what they believe as followers of Jesus Christ and strive to have those beliefs reflect the truth as closely as possible. To paraphrase Dorothy Sayers, the drama of your life is wrapped up in the power of your doctrine. Otherwise you will find yourself in an inevitable drift of both belief and behavior toward the way the world sees and does things. You will be indistinguishable. 

The Disciple - It Is All True

I have been reflecting for a long time on what it means to really follow Christ in our changing world. What does discipleship look like when it really takes hold of a life? I believe that discipleship is the priority in the Christian life, so why is it so important? (Yup, I said, "the priority.")

I'll begin here with a few thoughts about what is probably the bottom line, the ultimate reason. It is true.

The whole story is true. Every bit of it really is the way God said it is. He really did create the universe and place humans created in his image in it to tend to it and be in relationship with him. He really did reveal himself. He really did come in person of Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived the sinless life, willingly died on the cross, conquered death and walked out of the grave, ascended into heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit.

Every promise Christ spoke about the reality and power of the Kingdom of God is real. None of it is bubbles and smoke. None of it is intended for only the super-spiritual. All of it is for whosoever will.

The uncomfortable things spoken about the brokenness of the human condition by God are all unavoidably true. It has been said that the doctrine of original sin is the most unlikeable of Christian doctrines, but also the most obvious. Humanity, without Christ, is hopeless - literally.

Now the reason this is an answer to the question of why we ought to be disciples, is that humans are conditioned to believe what is true. It is in our very nature to seek out what is true about ourselves and the world around us. Reality is unwavering and we must, in the end, live according to its terms. This is so ingrained within the human nature that psychology has at least a handful of diagnoses for people who refuse to deal with what is real and true.

We actually live as if 2+2 really does equal 4. Whether we acknowledge it or not we live according to the laws of reason. Human communication would be nearly impossible otherwise. We are ultimately uninterested in false theories of gravity and chemistry because we know they are only useful as curiosities or as bad ideas that help us understand the goodness of the true theories.

The same is true between people. Unless we have reason to believe otherwise, we assume, within reason, that people tell us the truth. If you don't believe me, try going through a day believing everything everyone says to you is a deliberate lie. You will not get far. Even when we interact with strangers, we are built to tell and believe the truth.

There is no good reason not to apply this same standard to ultimate things - to the things of God, life, and salvation. We live best in reality when we are in accord with it, and if God created all things then, we live best when we live in accord with that God. And discipleship is learning to live in accord with God and his creation. When we learn to follow Jesus Christ in his way of life, we are learning to think and act the way God did when he was here on earth in human flesh. Truth himself came and walked among us (John 1:14, 14:6), now we follow.

Can Christmas Still Be True?

It is becoming one of our new Christmas traditions – well-funded atheist organizations spreading holiday cheer through billboard campaigns like this one declaring the Christian faith to be a fairy-tale. A significant part of the atheist strategy right now is to throw around phrases like “fairy-tale” without much argument but a lot of emotion and condescension. It is assumed that the Christian faith is nothing more than something made up for children and simple moralizing like an Alice in Wonderland or Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Once a person matures they learn that what they were taught was simple and hilariously false. It is time to move on. At least, that is how the atheist story goes.

Given how the term is so lightly and accusingly used in these kinds of campaigns, I wonder if anyone involved has done their homework. I am inclined to say they have not. “Fairy-tale” in this kind of use is a slur, not an accurate portrayal of a piece of literature, such as the Bible. Fairy-tale is a well documented and seriously studied literary category, so surely someone has paid attention to it and compared it with the Christian story. One of the differences between fairy-tales and the Christian faith that is simple to see if someone takes the time to see it is the historical rootedness of the Christian story. These were real people, real events, and real effects of the divine in our world. Fairy-tales are not. At even a cursory glance, the charge of “fairy-tale” simultaneously falls flat as untrue and diminishes the credibility of those who make the charge. If they want to call the Christian faith a fairy-tale, at least they could do a little bit of work.

There are a few who have made their careers studying what we lightly call fairy-tales. Some of them became convinced of the truth of the Christian faith. One man even called it the fairy-tale that came true. C.S. Lewis’ academic career and writings, which long outlasted his tenure, are not well known among evangelicals, but deal extensively with Medieval literature, mythology, and fairy-tales. One of the western world’s leading experts on what fairy-tales actually are came in contact with Christianity and became convinced of its truth.   

Part of the beauty and power of the Christmas season is that we celebrate the moment when divine truth and Being entered human history to make God known and life with him possible. Christmas endures all the onslaughts of consumerism and atheism because it is true. The truth may sometime lie beneath a pile of slurs and propaganda, but it remains. Christ came to earth, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, willingly died on the cross, and then defeated death.

And it is shockingly true that we can still become a part of the Christmas story when we walk and live in Jesus Christ.