The Perfect Church

I was thinking today about graduate school when the thought of finding a church came across my mind.  Certainly once Jessica and I know where we are going one of our first tasks will be finding a solid church in that area.  Also, it seems to me that we will wind up at a church that most closely fits what we think a church should be like, that is, having certain beliefs, ministries, structure, etc. 

So, the question is this: If you could design the perfect church, what would it be like?

In this exercise, don’t think about the actions of the congregation; I don’t mean a group of people who act perfectly, for surely any group of humans will have their share of imperfections. Further, there are no committees to convince for the things you want to happen.  Think of yourself in terms of a prophet with dictatorial authority over this church. You have all power necessary to hear from God and put into practice whatever you believe Him to be saying. 

You have control over church structure, size, core doctrines, ministries, vision, goals, and everything else you care to control.  Go.

RJ

(Relevant) request

So I haven’t been saying much here lately due to a computer that slept with its fathers for a while, but has been recently resurrected. One of the things that leads me to say anything at all on the topics of religion, morality, culture, etc. is that they seem like such important elements of human existence. That valuing of them leads me down all sorts of avenues. It led me to a college where those things are talked about. It lands me in coffee shops where I sit and read books that I got from Barnes and Noble (where those values also led me), and it’s leading me now to (probably) move at least a thousand miles away from where I’m sitting to a graduate school where I’ll talk, think, and write about these things with people who’ve done it much longer than me, and who are much better at it than I am. The aim, of course, is to become a better thinker, a brighter voice on these issues that determine so much of our lives, and invest meaning in it. This isn’t the goal of sitting in some ivory tower, scowling down at those who haven’t ascended, but rather to become a guide through what I think turn out to be very high and dangerous mountains of human life, where we’ll find peace and beauty.

Currently, I’ve got a good opportunity to join this conversation on that journey in Boston, and I’m fairly determined to take it. As it turns out though, I’m not rich and this isn’t Europe where school is free, so I need some money to do that. I’m definitely not asking for any readers here to pony up on that, but it’s a fact that our God owns and has control over everything, so I’m asking you to pray that He’ll provide the means for me to do all this, preferably without me ending up with a fifty-thousand dollar student loan bill hanging over my head like Eyeore’s cloud. The specific’s are $20,000 to $28,000 in tuition (cut down from $37,000 by scholarships), and a place to stay in Boston that doesn’t cost the normal $6-800 a month. If you could pray fairly regularly for that, I would appreciate it so much. It may sound idealistic and callow, but I have a sense that I can really accomplish something important in doing all this and, though this isn’t a necessary step to speaking truth and light into culture, it’s definitely a good one I think.

Gratsi,

Michael

Follow up on previous post. Thoughts?

Here are a couple of comments left about the previous post.

These are not my original ideas. This was what Dr. John Warwick Montgomery taught when I attended his Master’s level apologetics course, and he is widely considered to be one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the 20th century. I invite you to look him up on Google or Wikipedia. But since he is not here and I am, can I interest you in returning to Delve Into Jesus to explain in our discussion area where you think this teaching contradicts Scripture?

I am not quite sure of your point here. While this post doesn’t contain any scripture references, I think that its basic logic is sound as well as supported by the Bible.

I have a couple of points to make.

1. It doesn’t matter to me at all where any idea comes from if it contradicts clear teachings in scripture.

2. Logic is only sound when the starting premise is sound. If the the starting premise is faulty, any reasoning that comes from that premise is irrelevant.

Thus, God will not control us, compel us or force us to do anything. We are completely free.  (arsindelve…author of previous article)

This statement is the starting point for the rest of the article. All the answers on suffering that follow are based on this premise. There are no Scripture references to back this statement up, rather there are tons that say the exact opposite.

Exodus 4:11, “And the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him dumb or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

Deut. 32:39, “See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal; And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.”

1 Sam. 2:6-7, “The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to Sheol and raises up. ⁷The Lord makes poor and rich; He brings low, He also exalts.”

Ecc. 7:13-17, “Consider the work of God, For who is able to straighten what He has bent? ¹⁴In the day of prosperity be happy, But in the day of adversity consider— God has made the one as well as the other So that man may not discover anything that will be after him.”

Isaiah 45:5-7, “I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; ⁶That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, ⁷The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.”

Lam. 3:37-38, “Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? ³⁸Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth?”

Amos 3:6-7, “If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it?”

So I think this article does not help whatsoever in helping people understand why bad things happen. They happen because God is working all things out for His purposes. It is just a weak watered down answer to a really complicated and heavy issue.

Article I strongly disagree with.

Found this surfing around.  I think it contradicts a lot of Scripture.  Thoughts?

How Can A Good God Permit Evil in the World?

Posted by arsindelve, Executive Director, Delve Christian Ministries 

    

Why is there evil in the world?

The source of much of the evil in the world is you and I – all of mankind. We hurt others, we hurt ourselves and we hurt God. We sin. Each and every one of us has done this at least a few times in our lives. We have known what was right and what was wrong and we consciously, deliberately chose to do wrong. For some, the evil is nothing more than a lie or some hurtful words. For some, it is murder and savagery. Regardless of the severity, the nature of the sin is the same. At that moment, we rebelled against God and said to Him, “What I want right now is more important than you. I know this hurts you and I know it’s wrong but I don’t care, I’m doing it anyway. 

Why did God allow us to get into this mess?

God made us this way because He loves us. He did not make us to be puppets or robots because true love can never be forced or demanded. It can never come from someone who is unable to make any other choice. Only when someone makes a decision from their own will and desire can it be said to be complete and true love. Thus, God will not control us, compel us or force us to do anything. We are completely free. Sometimes we do good, and sometime we do evil. God does not typically interfere. 

Why does God have to allow the effects of evil? Why not permit the choice, but not allow the awful consequences?

Imagine this idea in your own home, if you have any young children. Every time your child does something wrong, let’s pretend you will simply clean up the mess and say nothing. There will be no punishment and no cleaning of their own mess. If they destroy something, you must replace it without saying another word. You will still have to try to do your best to teach them right and wrong, but there will never be a consequence for bad behavior. In this scenario, it’s easy to see that your child will learn to do what feels best for them, for they cannot possibly have a sense of other people’s needs and feelings. Without consequence and punishment, they will become ultimately selfish because it is impossible for them to know what it feels like to hurt another person. It’s only by suffering the consequences of our actions that we can learn and become better people. Removing the consequence removes the moral element and it removes any opportunity we have to grow. 

Why permit all the effects of sin? Why not remove some of it?

He does! In fact, if one were to ask, “What has God done about the problem of sin?” the answer is, of course, “He sent His Son to die.” However, this is what He has done in order to solve the problem ultimately and forever. In order to minimize the effect and consequence of sin daily, God has provided us with cultural, political and societal institutions such as government, economic order, family and education. All of these were put in place by God to minimize both the desire to sin and the effect of sin. These institutions protect and shield us, and without them we would descend into anarchy and chaos. (Witness the moral and ethical decline in the last 40 years as society has dismantled the traditional family unit which God provided.) 

What about Disease and Natural Disasters?

Of course, this is not the entire picture. Free will and consequence cannot explain a three-year-old getting cancer or a nation wiped out in a earthquake. How can a loving God permit these things? No one sinned and no one made a choice. These things just happened! 

First, we need to realize that as a result of our sin, the world is not what God intended it to be. When Man first began to rebel, everything changed and the earth which was once a blissful paradise became tough, unpredictable and wild. The fact that we, as a people, have lost our paradise is a consequence we all share for our combined sin. You can never point to a single event or sin which causes a child to fall ill, but you can say that we are all a sinful people and as a result, the world is a difficult place in which to live for each and every one of us, for none of us are without blame. 

Yet still, there is another explanation. Is is true that sometimes God will permit evil or pain to happen for greater good. This is a very difficult thing, because we may never know in this life what the greater purpose was. It might be a great relief to know that by dying, your child will affect a hundred lives in a positive way, but sadly, we rarely have the opportunity to know. And so, it becomes an issue of trust and faith. If something bad happens to me, especially if I have prayed to God to take it away and He has not, I must have faith that God is in charge. I know that He is good and powerful and there is a reason that this is happening. I trust Him even when it makes no sense because He is good. 

That is easy to say and very hard to do! It can be the hardest thing in the world to stand by and watch someone suffer while all the time knowing that God could take it all away if He wanted. We pray and pray, and we start to worry that maybe God is not so good after all because a “good” God would take this pain away. But if He took it away, what greater good would be lost? 

If God is everything we know Him to be, then we have to have faith no matter how hard it may be, that He loves us and has our best interest in mind. He loves us too much to let us be the child whose parent cleans up after their every mess. He wants us to become something better. 

 

 

 

The Lord, Our God, the Lord is One

A fellow contributor to this blog recently got me hooked on This American Life, presented by Chicago Public Radio. They run hour-long programs which focus on one topic and typically have a few different stories relating to different aspects of said topic. I download the free, weekly podcasts and listen to them while I run or clean house. It’s difficult to explain why the show is so interesting – I think it’s just the human factor. I love listening to people describe their lives.

A couple of days ago I had finished listening to the one released on Monday and still had a little more of my run to go. I decided to finish the Valentine’s Day podcast on finding love. They mostly talked about romantic love but they had one story about friendship love – the BFF style of friendship. The story was about two eight year old little girls who had never thought they would find a best friend. These two little girls are different. They are unique. But, they were lucky enough to meet one another at a conference for girls just like them. You see, they are transgendered.

When I heard this little fact, my jaw dropped. Eight-year-old, transgendered little girls. Wow. They recorded this story at a yearly conference for families with a transgendered child. It’s in its second year and has about twenty families in attendance. They focus on these two particular “girls”, Thomasina, formerly Thomas, and Lily, formerly William. Thomasina’s parents talk about a conflict between the two of them over which pronoun to use for their child. Thomasina has asked to be referred to as “She.” “Her” mother agrees – the father is reluctant. They go on to talk about how when Thomas was little he always loved playing dress up and they didn’t interfere – lots of boys go through this phase. Thomas’ phase persisted. When he was five years old he said to his mother, “I’m mad at God. I’m supposed to be a little girl. You know mommy, you’re my mother, you know I’m a little girl.”

The reporter then moves to the other child’s mother, Colleen. Incidentally, Colleen and William are not their real names. Colleen is on her own raising this transgendered child – dad wasn’t interested in raising a little boy as a little girl. In fact, Colleen expresses great emotion over how Lily was forced to dress and act like a little boy when “she” went to “her” father’s house. She expresses great pride over the time that her “daughter” bravely walked into school on “her” own after “her” father had taken “her” to the barber and had “her” hair cut like a little boy’s.

Now, this story brings up plenty of issues. Primarily, it left me with a number of questions about parenting and gender. However, there was something particularly shocking that Colleen shared that I found pertinent to the theme of this blog. As Colleen discusses the time when William transitioned to Lily she talks about feelings of great guilt. She worries that she has caused this to happen. You might be agreeing with her as you read this but you haven’t heard why she thinks that.

She doesn’t blame it on her parenting. Instead, she blames it on her prayers. You see, when she found out she was pregnant she began praying that she would have a daughter because she already had a son. Even after the sonogram which told her that she was having a son, she prayed she would have a daughter. “Please, God, let me have a little girl.” She truly feared that her transgendered son was the answer to her prayers.

This woman never really clarified her religion but let’s say, for the sake of our discussion, she thinks of herself as a Christian. (I don’t think this is an arbitrary assignment – she believes in a God which listens to and answers prayers and lives in the Bible Belt.) Maybe many of you who are reading this think that it is quite obvious that the God of a Christian woman would not answer earnest prayers for a daughter with a transgendered son. My point is that it wasn’t obvious to this woman. She really believed that her God might do this to her and her son.

Sometimes I really wonder if I believe in the same God as other Christians do. I don’t mean that I am singularly unique, I just mean that among our different brands of Christianity, do our different versions of Christianity really center on the same God? Sure, let’s say that all these brands include some foundational doctrine – one God, sinful mankind, and the sacrificial and salvific death of Christ which will bring eternal life to those who believe. Is that really enough to make us believe in the same God?

In church we talk about non-negotiables like those foundational doctrines I wrote above. Then we’ve got some negotiables which are primarily related to the way we worship. You worship God your way and I’ll worship Him mine and it’s all gravy. Yet I really wonder sometimes, aren’t we saying something about the God we believe in and what He expects and what He enjoys through the way we worship? The same questions could be asked of the way we pray.

For example, in a previous post Michael argued that God’s primary desire from/for believers is obedience as opposed to intimacy. If one Christian talks about a God who most wants to be intimate with people and another talks about a God who most wants obedience from people are they really talking about the same God? Or, let’s say you have one Christian who believes that God most wants health, wealth and happiness for believers and then another says that God most wants us to suffer for the cross. Are they really talking about the same God?

Maybe at the end of the day we admit that as Christians we have lots of different versions of who God is and that’s alright. God is big enough to accept us all. He understands that we’re not going to get it all right and He is gracious with us. But I don’t know. In Galatians, Paul preaches against this different gospel that the Galatians had turned to. Paul seems pretty big on not diverging from the gospel he had preached. I wonder how different we’re really allowed to be.

Colleen’s mother eventually convinced her that she had not created a transgendered son through her prayers. Colleen did say one other thing about God, though. She said to her “daughter”, “You know, I don’t think God did this. I think that nature has a way of messing up. You know, there are children born with one arm, there are children born with a larger nose, and everyone has something that, you know, they feel insecure about.” If Colleen believes that Jesus died for her sins and that he is her only hope and she also believes these other things, does she still believe in the same God as you?

Jesus’ moral psychology (moved from Mind on Fire)

Seemed more appropriate for this blog.
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I was thinking today about someone I know, and whom I consider to be a pretty rotten person (and whom you almost certainly have never met). I’m not really as much of a hater as that makes me sound like. If you knew them at all (and, again, you don’t), you’d almost undoubtedly think the same thing; in fact, most everyone I know who knows this person thinks it too. So, if I am just a hater, I’m in good company. None of that is the point though. What makes my opinion of that person especially significant, and worth mentioning, is that I know the person extremely well. I know what makes them tick probably better than anyone – I don’t even think they know as much about themselves as I do. They’re (maybe intentionally) blind to what goes on inside them, but, having spent so much personal time with this them, and having seen them in so many circumstances, I think I’ve got a great bearing on just why they are so disturbingly malicious.

The reason? Their parent’s are even more terrible than they are. They, very subtly, put unfair, unrealistic expectations on the person, never praise, always demean and berate, require without reward, don’t listen, don’t ask, don’t talk, don’t care. The result? This person is painfully insecure, feels like an absolute failure at even the smallest, most insignificant flaw, and has never learned to appreciate themselves in any way. So the person hates everyone around them, because they’ve been taught that there’s no good in them, and so doesn’t see it (even when it’s there), yet they see the good in others, compares, and “finds” that everyone else is superior to them. The result? They’re underhanded, two-faced, hateful, insulting, always teetering on the brink of injuring the other person (to make them out to be as low as this person already feels), and full of a deep, disturbing rage.

This sort of analysis of a person figures pretty heavily into modern ethics and psychology (birthing the new discipline, moral psychology), and it casts a shadow on our normal judgments about people. Normally when you meet a really terrible person (say, Jeffrey Dahmer), you just write them off as terrible, and you’re done with it. But, once we realize that there are roots to our character apart from our own choices – that our lives and surroundings mold us, morally – we feel pity, and think that maybe we’re not so right to just pass judgment on people based on their actions, or even their character. Maybe the fact that a particularly mean person had absolutely terrible parents that taught them to feel and think a certain way about themselves (as with the acquaintance I mentioned) sort of justifies or negates their badness?

Well, I think Jesus has something to say on the subject. I know Jesus wasn’t doing moral psychology in the way it’s going on today, and maybe He didn’t even have this particular observation in mind, but I think it’s really implicit in something He said – I think it’s a real consequence of His teachings. He says,

“If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Like I said, we’re finding what’s implicit in the statement, not it’s most immediate meaning. So here’s what I think is there. Jesus is talking about self denial. In this context it’s denial of one’s own life agenda to take up the one Jesus is proposing – what He takes to be God’s agenda for human life. To condense it, Jesus says that our choices about how to live – how to exist in the world – should not be primarily a self-centered judgment. That is, how we choose to live should not be a choice made by simply considering facts about ourselves  – our personal desires, goals, etc. – but rather must be made from our considering a larger, cosmic agenda that is more universal, humanitarian, social, and divine in origin.

This is uncontroversial. It’s really just the foundation of most ethical systems really – that our choices about how to live shouldn’t just be self-concerned, but rather made in light of larger principles. But there’s something relevant here to how we consider the bad people of the world – the malicious. I think all malicious people are probably like my long-term-acquaintance. They live only in light of their own interior life, but, there’s a context to their meanness that makes sense out of it. I think, though, that we make a mistake when we write their badness off (even just a little), and decide to just pity them. The mistake is that we’re assuming that being a good or bad person is just about choosing to behave a certain way. If that were true (it’s not) then these people would be less culpable and blame-worthy, since they’ve just been taught by people above them to behave in terrible ways. It’s not like they sat down and decided to be mean – they were raised that way. It’s not exactly their fault.

But that exposes the whole flaw in thinking that way. Being good isn’t just about behaving rightly – it’s about choosing to be a certain type of person; it’s about choosing a certain agenda for your own life. It’s about choosing the basic way you’ll guide your existence, and the fact is everyone has to do this. Most people just choose not to choose. They just go on doing what they’ve been guided to do by their personal experience. They never consider what agenda they will make their own, and are stuck in this cloistered blind bubble of self-concern, guided, like an animal, by whatever character and ideas they happen to have been impregnated with by their circumstances. This is what my former friend up there does. They’ve been taught to feel insecure, unhappy, and fearful, and so act consistently out of that framework.

But, Jesus’ view (and I think the intelligent view) of being a good person, beyond just acting rightly, requires that we make a good choice about what our agenda for life is. It won’t do just to have been raised to be pleasant. We have to choose, intentionally, what we’ll be, which sits above and beyond choosing how we’ll behave in a particular instance. If we don’t make that choice, in some way, at some point, we’ve failed. My past friend is just an especially strong example of a person who chose not make that choice, and so is a glaringly deficient person, stuck in a single mode of living that’s fueled by considering only their own feelings, desires, experiences, etc. The solution, then, is to not blend morality and psychology, so that we no longer blame, but just pity people who are bad, but to let them both do their things. The only remedy for moral badness is a choice about one’s agenda for life based on something other than a constant obsession about how one stacks up, who one is, and how one feels. The remedy for one’s bad feelings and bad self-conception is psychological reflection.

God’s Glory, and Our Gratitude?

So, everyone here lives in Birmingham. There’s a pretty hefty Christian population here, and it’s fairly diverse. There are large Baptist churches, Charismatic churches, high-churches, low-churches, etc. The circle I’m part of, though, is marked by contemporary worship style, a respect for exegesis and conversation in our learning, and a heavy Calvinist theology. One voice that I’ve found to be especially strong among my Christian friends is John Piper’s. He’s a big deal around here, and I know a whole lot of people who subscribe to the core of his theology – that God’s greatest desire is for His own glory, and that our calling is to glorify God. I used to be a pretty devoted Calvinist and Piperist myself, but am no longer either, though I think they’re both respectable thinkers.What I want to offer here, though,  is one reason why I think maybe no one should buy into the idea that God’s ultimate, and greatest desire is for His own glory.The reason is this: if God’s ultimate, rock-bottom desire is His own glory, then we don’t have a very good reason to give it to Him.

Why do I say this? Let me illustrate with two things. First, let me paint a quick portrait of how I think Piper, and most of my Christian friends, understand God, and then I’ll give a short story to show how I think that picture makes God far less worthy of glory than an alternative way of seeing Him.

On this Piper-style view of God, God hungers for His glory insatiably. He aims for it in all that He does. He impregnates His works with muted cries of His greatness. He seeks it from all of His creatures. In the world, everything derives it’s sole value from whether it glorifies God. The world is God-centered, and God is God-centered, and this is how God wants everything to be. Sin is the stealing of God’s glory; it is robbing God, and God finds this completely unacceptable to the point of divine rage. His actions in the world all amount to a reordering of creation to it’s natural, God-centeredness, so that His glory is restored. This is what makes Him happy, and  it is His happiness that He seeks invariably, and so should we, for the only true good is God’s glory.

So, now that that picture is in place, here’s the story. Imagine you have a four year-old girl. You and she have just spent the day together shopping, talking, eating ice cream, etc. As you walk out of the ice cream shop, you drop your wallet and bend to grab it, letting go of your child’s hand for a moment. As you do this, the kid spies a puppy across the street and instinctively, without a thought, runs straight for it into the street where a large truck is definitely going to run her down. You can’t do a thing about it. Just at the last moment though, a man dives in front of your daughter, saving her life, but he doesn’t fair so well. The truck doesn’t mow him down and kill him, but it screeches to avoid the collision, fishtails, and slams into his legs, breaking them both.

So what is your attitude toward this man who risked his own life, and willingly suffered serious injury to save your child? You’re obviously very grateful, right? He’s worthy of your praise, right? Certainly. But wait, there’s more.

As he’s hauled into the ambulance, a man in a suit approaches him and hands him an envelope, shakes his hand, and walks away. Curious, you ask him what just went on. He tells you that the city just recently passed an ordinance that says anyone who saves the life of a child will receive a million dollars, tax-free, and it was his luck to see your daughter dashing into the street like that, because he really wanted that money. It was, in fact, his greatest desire.

So, new question: Are you still grateful? Well, probably not. You’re probably actually kind of disgusted with the guy at this point. He’s sort of a fraud. He did a heroic act, for sure, but not out of real heroism; rather, he acted out of self-centeredness. Maybe you’d still be grateful in a way – if it weren’t for him, you’d no longer have your daughter – but you gratefulness would  be a sort of weird, second-rate, accidental gratefulness. You wouldn’t really be grateful to him; you’d just be grateful that the city offered money for these sorts of actions, and that there happened to be a money-hungry citizen there when your daughter ran into traffic. In any case, even if you did retain some gratefulness toward this guy, it wouldn’t be very much at all, and you certainly wouldn’t have much praise left for him. The reason for this is that praise isn’t dished out on the basis of actions alone, but on the basis of the action’s motives. A guy who saves your life so he can rob you doesn’t get praise, but someone who saves you because he loves you and wants you to live a happy life does.

So, returning to Piperist calvinism. We’re supposed to praise and honor God, right? Of course. But on what basis? Piper says that the basis of our glorifying God is God’s greatness. (On Piper’s system) He’s just the greatest of any imaginable being, and so deserves praise. But that’s just plainly false, because I can imagine a much greater being that John Piper’s god – one that acts out of a different ultimate motivation: love for other beings as ends in themselves, not as mere instruments for gaining His own praise – which is really what we are on Piper’s system, a mere means to an end, the end being God’s glory.

But some Piperists will still say, “Yeah, but God deserves the glory. He’s the greatest!”. Two weavy, circly points to be made: First, if we can imagine a morally greater god (i.e. one that is other-centered and selfless), which we can, then Piper’s conception of God is not the greatest possible God, and so isn’t the greatest, since it just doesn’t fit with most xian theology to say that God could be better than He is. Second, even if Piper’s view of God is right, He still doesn’t deserve our total praise, because He’s not totally admirable. His motives just aren’t very praise-worthy. We should only praise Him for His other qualities like power, intelligence, creativity, etc., and save our moral praise for people who warrant it by their good intentions (love for others, and selflessness).

Piper will say though, that God saves us out of a desire not just for an ego boost, but to gain your love. This sounds nice at first, but I still think it’s less than a perfect motive. Imagine, in the story above, that, instead of his desire for money, the man rescued your daughter out of a desire for your praise. He did it because he wanted your admiration. In that scenario he’s still not nearly as admirable as a man who did it out of selfless love for your daughter. He’s even a little creepy.

So, this is the picture I think Piper (and Piperists) eventually have to paint of God, and I don’t think it’s a very appealing one, since I can think of a God that is, intuitively, more honorable. The mistake Piper and his followers make is that they fail to see that there’s a paradox of moral greatness. The more your actions are motivated by a desire to be morally great, the less honorable they are. That’s because such actions are ultimately self-centered, but true moral greatness is motivated out of an other-centered love for others, and this is what I think His foundational motive is. This is woven into to Jesus’ commands to die to yourself, and love one another, and I think this is the heart of God, a prism that disperses love into the world, rather than a mirror that reflects it back to Him.

What is a relationship with God?

I came to Christ sometime near the end of high school. That wasn’t really all that long ago for me, but it’s my whole Christian life, and it seems a lot has happened since then. As I’ve grown in the faith, I’ve grown away from a lot of my early ideas, religious practices, and general ways of doing things in my religious life. I think this is natural, and I imagine most of Christian world is doing the same sort of thing. It really seems that it is. I never listened to Carmen, but I am assured by others that he was a big deal back in the day. I’m hoping scripture mints and t-shirts that look like brand logos but really say “A Bread Crumb and Fish” or whatever on them soon join mister Carmen too. Survival of the fittest and all. One thing that I’ve noticed, though, which has stuck around since my earliest days as a believer, is a certain way Christians have of talking. We have a certain language that all our own, and is difficult for outsiders to understand. We talk about having a “heart for missions”, a room full of people being “anointed”, and being a “prayer warrior”.  Most of these Christianese phrases don’t really come from the bible, but are just a way of talking that’s evolved over time. There’s nothing really wrong with that (except for that it might sound silly or confusing to outsiders) as long as we know what we mean when we say them, and as long as what we mean is right. There’s one particular phrase I especially want to think through here, and that is this phrase “a relationship with God”.

This term, “having a relationship with God”, was a big part of my Christian birth, and I hear it nearly every time I get in a religious conversation with a Christian today. It seems like it might stick around a while. Now, it’s not a term you’ll find in the Bible. It’s not a strictly theological term, like “atonement” or “eucharist” or something which has one definite meaning. It’s a sort of catch all phrase used in popular Christian culture to mean “being a Christian” or something close to that. It’s used to capture and sum up all of what Christianity is about. To grow as a Chrsitian is to grown in your relationship with God. To become a Christian is to begin a relationship with God, and so on. But there is a problem with this way of talking, and this problem popped up for me when I walked into Christendom and heard this term. People would constantly talk about their relationship with God, and how everyone needs to have one, and, while I agreed, I was left wondering, just what sort of relationship should I have with God? There are all kinds of relationships that people can have with each other. Doctors and patients have one sort of relationship. Hubands and wives have another kind. There are brother and sister relationships, boyfriend and girlfriend relationships, classmate relationships, master and slave relationships, and the list goes on and on. So, with all this talk of having a relationship with God, just what is a me-and-God relationship supposed to be like? What should define my relationship with the God of the Bible?

Now, our culture has evolved to a level where a lot of sorts of relationships just aren’t very common, though they may once have been. For instance, there are no explicit master-slave relationships in America today. There are also no servant-king relationships, or pretty much any sort of real relationship where the members aren’t equals. Sure you have a boss at work, but that’s not your real life. It’s just a game we go play for forty hours a week to pay the bills. In reality, everyone’s the same. We all think that way here. So, in a world where everyone is the same, what should define a good relationship? Our culture responds with one word – intimacy. Equals should really know each other. We should love each other and appreciate each other and enjoy each other and give ourselves to one another. That’s friendship and romance, the only two sorts of relationships that we aim for now.

So, intimacy is our paradigm. It’s in the back of our mouth whenever we talk about real “relationship”, and that filters into our religion too. When we talk about having a relationship with God we mean being intimate with God. Our Christian spirituality is based largely around this one concept. God is  our counselor, our comfortor, our best friend, our bridegroom, our lover. This is our whole way of thinking about relating to God today, and this way of thinking is nothing less than the complete undermining and disregarding of the gospel itself. It’s a lie.

Why do I say this? Consider first the fact that intimacy requires a certain level of equality (or at least common ground – which seems pretty close to equality) between the intimate people. You may object, but think further. The slave girl who sleeps with the master can speak more freely to him than the other slaves. The queeen, while still a subject of the king, doesn’t have to bow in his presence. The son of the emperor can joke with him. This is because intimacy brings you closer together in a personal way, and the closer together you are in that way, the less room there is for power. When the king uses his authority over his wife, she feels less like a wife, and more like a subject; she feels less close to him, less intimate with him. If it’s true that intimacy requires equality (which seems so), then this presents a real problem for popular Christian spirituality because we are not God’s equals. We are his possessions, his subjects, and his children. That last one may seem to ring of friendliness and a sort of equality, but consider that in biblical times the father was a master over his family who could punish his family members, even with death. The father, in biblical times, was literally king of the family. While there’s a certain sort of closeness we can attain in all this, it’s not anything like the intimacy with God we pretend to have today. It’s the closeness of a master being pleased with his servant.

So if intimacy isn’t primarily what our relationship with God should be based on, what should be? What does God mainly want from us? I say not intimacy, but obedience. God wants our allegience.

Think about it. When Jesus came preaching, His gospel was not an invitation to become best friends with God, but a command to “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”. Literally, “turn away from your sins, because God is the coming King”. This is the Jewish picture of God, and so Jesus’ picture, and so should be ours too. God is king. In the first days of Israel’s existence there was no human king of the nation. Why? Because God Himself was king of the nation, ruler of the world. God could have come and established any sort of relationship with fallen humanity, but he chose kingship as the primary metaphor for his relationship to us, not friend. Sure, God may call Israel his bride, but their wedding ceremony, the sealing of their relationship, took place on Mount Sinai, when God gave them His Law, the breaking of which meant death. God may call us His children, but that doesn’t mean He won’t strike us dead or send us to hell if we anger Him. God kills far more people than he speaks to, both before and after the cross. God gives more laws, than love letters. That’s not what one would expect from a God who wants most of all to be our friend. This portrait is entirely biblical, and entirely opposed to a picture of God who most of all wants your intimate friendship. In fact, only one person in the entirety of history is ever called God’s friend. That was Moses, the man who delivered God’s Law.

When I was first told about God, it was at a Younglife camp, where I was told that the Bible is God’s love story for me, and that God wants my heart more than anything. As I have personally come to know the God of the Bible nothing could be farther off it seems. Now, this view has no home in popular Christian spirituality. It may even initially offend many people who truly love God, but in a way this is good. Popular Christian spirituality has succeeded in creating a group of people that somehow call themselves lovers of God, yet have the same rate of divorce, tax-cheating, adultery, and every other sin as a world of pagans who care nothing for Jesus Christ. Jesus has somehow become the church’s best friend instead of its King. The church has lost the fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom. We call him ‘friend’ instead of Lord, and so cese to obey him, because people shouldn’t need to obey their friends. This should be horrifying to us, for Jesus himself said that “not all those who say to me ‘Lord lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my father who is in heaven”.

The foundation, then, of true Christian spirituality is not one-to-one intimacy. That is to be found within humanity itself, between equals, not with an all-powerful, immaterial, and often silent King. We have been given the privilege of being called children of God, no doubt. But that means so much more than mere friendliness with him. That great offer is an offer of his gracious acceptance of us, and an invitation to join His Kingdom, under His rule.  A true relationship with God is one of humble submission to His rule, expressed in His commands that we be righteous, holy, and without the sick stain of sin. Only then are we near to Him. Only then are we truly His children, for Jesus himself, God’s truest child, says

For whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven, that person is my brother, my sister, and my mother. All else perish, without a father, without a home.

[After thought: As I read back over this, I think some statements are just too strongly phrased. I'll just stress that, though I think there is some level of intimacy between God and His people, I don't think intimacy is the primary thing for Christian spirituality. I think obedience is, and I think obedience is the route to closeness to God, or may actually just be closeness to God. This is the thought that I believe has been lost in popular Christianity today.]

An atheist’s account of Christian mission work in Africa

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.

From the Times UK; you’ll be amazed.

Being a thinking Christian (Part 3 of an unintended series)

Before giving a pretty commanding description of how we ought to live as children of God, Paul gives a command as a sort of prerequisite for growing into full submission to God. He says “each one of you, you must be transformed,” how? “you must be transformed by the renewing of your mind” in order to follow fully. Only by transforming the way we think and believe can we understand what God desires from us, and only with that knowledge can we really follow. And, if you think about that, it’s obviously true. You just can’t follow Christ fully if you think there is no god, or that entertainment is the most important thing in life, or that there’s no real morality. Certain beliefs and ways of thinking just have to be in place for a person to imitate, or want to imitate Christ.

Now, in this sort of discussion, there’s the worry that we’ll just become heady academics, that we’ll climb up in our heads and our hearts will die while we’re reading our brainy books. That’s certainly a legit worry. I know of several people who have become so abstract and mental, that theyve lost touch with everything that really touches people. Jesus himself warned that we take care not to let the gospel get choked out of us by other cares, and there’s no reason to think intense bible study couldn’t be a care that chokes out the gospel too. Along those lines, Jesus criticized people at another point for searching the scriptures, thinking that they would bring life, when life was to be found outside of books, in a Person. I think, for this sort of worry, Aristotle gives some pretty cool advice. He says to look at yourself, your soul, like a chariot. Imagine your passions and desires – your feeling self – as the horses that move the chariot, that pull it through the world and drive it forward. But then think of your mind – your thinking self – as the driver, the one who steers and directs the horses, your passions and desires. If we use that sort of metaphor to think through this issue, we won’t run the risk of becoming either so brainy that we are lifeless (because the chariot driver needs the horses to do anything), or so feely we don’t have any real direction in life (because the horses will have a driver steering them). So, I guess I want to say that being a thinking Christian doesn’t mean we’re not feeling Christians too, so don’t take any of this as a threat to your passions. In fact, renewing your intellect is all about refining the direction and control of your passions, not doing away with them.

That said, how do we make the excellent observations from the last two posts practical? Well, the only answer I’ve been able to come up with is a dauntingly simple one. You have to choose to commit yourself to understanding the things that are important about life, even the things that may not seem “religious”, and even the things that seem challenging and scarry. What’s even more daunting is that we don’t automatically know what sorts of things we need to try to understand, or what sort of questions to start asking. But, I don’t think we need to know that at first. Even if we did know all the questions to ask, we can only ask one or two at a time anyway, and I’m sure we can all come up with at least that many to ask, and those will lead to more and more. If you can’t come up with those sorts of questions though, that’s fine, because there’s a single question that will get everyone off to a serious start: “Are my most important beliefs true?” That’s a question that will keep anyone occupied for at least thirty years (which is a really, really long time, right?).

That question’s not easy though. It takes courage and a certain strength to ask it, and to seek for the answers. Most people are pretty content to just go with whatever they’re taught. If those people happen to have true important beliefs like, say, the beliefs that make up their whole religion, they’re just lucky that they were raised to believe that, rather than something else. And there’s another force keeping us from asking too. The push within our culture to live “for the moment”. It sounds awefully fun and romantic, and there’s certainly a place for immersing yourself in the world of experience, but living in the moment will land you on a lot more beds and beaches than libraries and armchairs, and there’s a consequence to that, so you just have to choose. And the right choice takes a lot. It takes self-denial to put down the remote, or the beer, or the ipod and think, because reading and thinking through big questions can be pretty boring sometimes, but that’s part of the renewing of the mind, part of the shift. We can’t be true disciples if we think the value of everything lies in its ability to entertain us. Growing in your mind also takes a certain painful courage, because you have to be willing to go where the truth leads you, no matter what. That includes leaving Christianity if the truth demands. The attitude we should adopt, the attitude of Christ, says that we want to believe and live in light of whatever is true. Not what is convenient. Not what is comfortable or fun or pleasant, but what is true. Is that your attitude? If not, it’s imperative that you make it yours because how you think and believe will determine the whole course of your life.

So, apart from adopting this general attitude, where do you start on renewing your mind, on coming to a right way of thinking, a right set of beliefs? What can you do practically? The first step might be to eliminate a lot of mind-numbing, thoughtless activity from your life. That probably means no more Will Ferrell movies, and almost no romantic comedies. Sorry. Another thing is probably to force yourself to engage regularly in one of the most boring of all human activities, reading. There’s little fun about staring at an inanimate object for an hour at a time, but the point isn’t entertainment, it’s understanding. To help with that, I put together a list of excellent books, websites, podcasts, etc. here. It’s a good place to start. The last thing might simply be to make it a regular prayer that God give you wisdom to think like Jesus. That’s not something we think about, or aim for often, but living like Him certainly has to start there, and that’s what this is all about.

I hope it’s been a help, or at lest given you something to think about.