Is God a Democrat?

This blog is for people who insist that there is no real difference between a Republican and a Democrat: after all, they’re both politicians, one might say. With that reasoning, there is no difference between men and women: after all, they’re both humans. While there are many issues on which both parties can be either uniformly commended or disparaged, there are also core principles which distinguish them. A couple prime examples of how the two major political parties differ have surfaced in recent new cycles.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) case against Boeing in South Carolina which began last summer has resurfaced. Simply stated for those who may not be familiar with the case, the NLRB says Boeing cannot build a plant in South Carolina (a right to work state), because the company will be taking jobs from their facility in Washington state (a union plant.) Boeing says strikes at the Washington plant have seriously impaired their ability to serve their customers (I think that is what strikes are supposed to do.) To better serve their customers, Boeing wants to have non-union workers build their airplanes.

Good for Boeing; good for South Carolina; not so good for Washington (the state or the District.) The principle at stake here is that manufacturers should be allowed to make their products wherever they can get the biggest bang for the buck. The federal government has no business telling Boeing (or anyone else) where they can build plants. The free market system dictates that market forces, not the government, determine where and by whom things get made. If in fact there are laws on the books that would prohibit Boeing from building in South Carolina, it is the law that is wrong, not Boeing.

The other case that is hitting the news again is the question of the constitutionality of Obamacare. Specifically, some question the legality of the mandate that citizens must all buy health insurance. They ask what right the federal government has to compel a purchase on no condition other than citizenship. Proponents of Obamacare like to say this is no different than mandated auto insurance; this is a false comparison. A person may choose not to drive a car and escape the mandated insurance. A person would have to renounce citizenship to avoid the Obamacare mandate; these are not comparable. Proponents also maintain that healthcare is a right rather than a privilege. This is also mistaken; healthcare is no more a right than food or shelter. We should assist those who struggle to afford it, but not by mandating that everyone buy it in a federally prescribed manner. (For more on this, see my “Open Letter to Debbie Stabenow.”)

Someone may be asking about now what this has to do with heaven. The Christian world-view does have something to say about politics and economics. Some mistakenly think that the typical Democrat stance on most issues is more Christian: help the poor and needy; restrain greedy capitalists. Actually, the Republican position usually runs closer to a Biblical model. The Bible calls for individual responsibility and wise use of personal resources, not government enforced charity or government redistribution of wealth. Some misunderstand the early church practice of having things “in common” as being akin to communism. This is not at all correct. Even in its most radical forms, Christian charity is based in individual responsibility to manage what God has placed in one’s control. The church redistributes wealth which has been freely contributed by her members, not through compulsion.

None of this should be taken to mean that there are no Democrats who are Christians or that all Republicans are. Neither is the case. The point is that there are differences in the way the parties address issues, and usually the teams line up according to ideology. The Democrat ideology supports greater state or federal control while the Republicans usually lean toward greater individual responsibility. The Democrats are often concerned with equal outcomes whereas Republicans favor equal opportunities. In the end (on election days,) it does not come down to whether the person has a “D” or an “R” after his or her name. It is rather about whether the “P” (for policies) lines up with the G-O-D.

Crisis of Faith 3

I read a good book by Daniel Taylor recently called The Myth of Certainty. Taylor's message is that we are not wrong or weak to have questions about our faith. I recommended the book to the person I am corresponding with in this "Crisis of Faith" series. She asked two very good questions in her last email, so I will answer both as completely as I can while being as brief as possible. First she mentions that her circle of “friends” is all anti-Christian. I told her what I told my youngest daughter (the reflective one in our brood): "Get some Christian friends. If your church doesn’t have a group of young, vibrant people to hang out with, maybe you need a new church too. Have you considered volunteering at some Christian ministry in the area? That is another way to meet people who think Christianly.

"You say you want a position that is 'defensible.' Christianity is, in fact, the most defensible world-view I know. The only 'morons' in the scenario you describe are the ones poking fun at you. The word 'moron' comes from a Greek word meaning to be foolish or to act without knowledge. What your derisive co-workers don’t know is that the Bible has more empirical data supporting its validity than any other ancient text. Jesus’ existence and even his resurrection are better attested to than many commonly accepted events like the assassination of Julius Caesar or Washington crossing the Delaware (and thousands of others.) Your co-workers despise the Bible because it destroys their comfortable presuppositions. They cannot believe the Bible because it reveals their entire world-view as a sham."

(It may be comforting to know that more and more scientific types are finding a Darwinian, evolutionary explanation of the universe to be untenable. Not that they are all becoming Christians, but the last report I heard said a majority of scientists now reject Darwinian evolution in favor of some kind of design theory. That puts Christians in the majority with a possible explanation for the design which science is now finding impossible to explain in evolutionary terms. One author believes that we are witnessing the last generation of people who will try to defend Darwinian evolution.)

"Now for your second issue: does God send 'good people' to hell. No. Categorically, no. Surprised? I can say that with authority because there are no 'good people.' You know that too. 'All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.' You must have read Romans three. Ever since Adam chose to go his way instead of God’s way, every human born is destined for hell. That is just the way it is. As our federal head, Adam messed it up for the entire race. You may not like the sound of that; it is harsh. I agree. But you said it yourself, 'We [are] mostly just nasty people struggling to contain our irrational, aggressive, selfish natures.' The key word you used is 'selfish.' We have a hard time accepting the fact that there is a God up there who gets to make the rules, not us.

"At this point I am going to tell you something that could get me in a lot of trouble. I think that many Christians have a simplistic view of salvation through Jesus. I believe unequivocally that there is no salvation in any other name but Jesus, just like the Bible says. However, I think God gets pretty creative in how he saves those he wants saved. We just heard last Sunday from a former missionary about a whole Muslim village having a dream about Jesus the night before someone came to preach there. I have heard stories like that all my life. I also think that God saves infants (like all the aborted ones) who never receive Jesus in the typical way. I think God saved every Old Testament saint without their ever saying the name Jesus. Some would say these are exceptions or special cases. I think every person is a special case. Frankly, I think God can save whomever he wishes to save. There will not be one single person in hell by accident because they didn’t get a chance to hear the gospel.

"When you say this sounds 'uncaring and inflexible' you are applying human judgments to God’s actions. That’s your mistake. We can’t judge God by our standards; he judges us by his standards. If reading Taylor gave you the same kind of confidence kick he gave me, you should be able to stand up to your atheist co-workers and give them what-for. Honestly, the ground they stand on is a whole lot shakier than where you stand. Remember the parable about the house on the sand and the house on the rock. Remember you stand on the Rock. Those other guys are on quicksand."

Do This in Remembrance

September 11, 2001, is without a doubt one of the most significant dates in United States history. The loss of life, the suffering, the anxiety of that day is without parallel. Yes, D-day, Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg and Bull Run matched or surpassed the casualty numbers of 9/11, but the immediacy and stunning reality offered by modern media coverage made the events of that September morning garish and dramatic in a way not known before.

When the four hijacked planes had wreaked their havoc on our collective senses, we were driven to our knees in more ways than one. We had the wind knocked out of our arrogance, arrogance bred by an adolescent feeling of invulnerability. Something more than a geopolitical hubris was shattered that day. People who had previously used the name of God only in vain suddenly took it more seriously. Certainly, some still cursed with an added vehemence. But millions of other Americans bent their knees in earnest prayers: prayers for the victims, for the families, for our leaders. And many prayed for understanding: what can this mean.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. It falls on a Sunday and the church I attend will be celebrating the Lord’s Supper. I am struck by the parallels between these two memorials. The shock, the pain, the utter senselessness of the violence must have been predominant in the days immediately following both events. Fear edged in as people wondered if more death and destruction would follow. A strong sense of community and shared suffering flooded the American people on 9/12 as it must have those distraught followers of Christ the day after “Good Friday.” For many there was a foreboding that an era had come to a close, that the future was shrouded by gloom.

When Jesus told his little band at the Last Supper that they would henceforth see the cup and the loaf in a new way, it was like the evening of 9/10/2001. They did not grasp the import; they had no idea what was about to descend upon them. Twenty-four hours later, then especially fifty days later, they began to understand. The horrors of that one awful day would never be forgotten, and the true significance of it was cemented in their hearts and minds by the trauma.

I am not suggesting for a moment that 9/11 has equal historical significance to the day Christ died. I am saying that believers would do well to seek that sense of community, the shared suffering, the renewed sense of purpose that dawned with 9/12. Just as it would do our country good to remember that, it would do the church good to hear, “Do this in remembrance” as a call to that. When we, “Remember his death until he comes again,” let us remember what a traumatic, world-shaking thing it was. If we really believe, we must see that the world still trembles from the effects of that wonderful, terrible day. Although our fear has been replaced by hope, we must never lose the urgency of the drama; we must not forget the eternal significance of the event. That is why we have memorials.

Crisis of Faith 2

It is not unusual for me to be asked why I believe so firmly that I am right about my faith. In answer I will offer a brief explanation why I believe what I do. First to philosophy. I know I am very Western or occidental in this, but I cannot get comfortable with the Eastern (oriental) mystics' concept of a universe without reason and logic. Most of the religions from the East are based on the idea that the world humans experience is meaningless: there is no point trying to figure things out, because there are no answers. The height of human experience in the Eastern way of thinking is to empty the mind of everything -- reason, emotion, memory, everything. This, they say, is the path to true fulfilment. That just doesn't work for me.

After the philosophical reasons come the historical. There is no other figure in history quite like Jesus. There have been many good teachers and other charismatic leaders, even some who claimed to be divine. But none can match Jesus' performance: he came back from the dead to validate his claim of divinity. You don't have to rely on the Bible alone to believe this astounding fact. Many secular sources confirm that people who were Jesus' contemporaries swore to the death (literally) that he was alive. It's hard to argue with an eye witness if you weren't there too. (And no, none of the theories against the resurrection hold water.)

Another historical fact that is just about as miraculous as the resurrection is the Bible itself. Name one other book that can make any of the Bible's claims. Written across a thousand years in 66 books with 40 different authors, the Bible contains one unified message from Genesis to Revelation: God made humans for Himself; they turned away; He is driving history to bring His people back. And you can't ignore the hundreds of fulfilled prophecies; the statistical probability of chance fulfillment is staggering beyond reason. (No, I don't buy the detractors' argument that the prophecies were written after the events and predated. Archaeology soundly rebuts that canard.)

Finally there is the spiritual proof. This one is difficult to present because it is the strongest argument to the individual who experiences it, while being the weakest defense against those who have not. One can point to thousands of transformed lives over the centuries as proof that Christianity "works." Yet doubtless there are Buddhist, Muslim and Zoroastrian conversions which seem to contradict Christianity's exclusive claims. All I can say is that I know that I know that I know that the Spirit of God dwells in me and that He feeds me, leads me and gives me a sense of peace and assurance that is undeniable.

When it all comes down, the choice of a belief system will necessarily involve faith. (That was redundant.) Whether you choose Christianity, Hinduism or Voodoo, you will come to a point where you must give yourself over to faith. The real choice then is whether you will choose to place your self in the hands of Jesus, Vishnu or Satan or whomever. I choose Jesus. It is not a blind choice (like some say, "Blind faith.") It is faith in a set of revealed propositions which satisfy my requirements for a world-view. In other words, it works for me.

Crisis of Faith 1

I was introduced to a young woman recently who is having some doubts about her Christian faith, raising some legitimate questions for which the prepackaged answers are not satisfying. I have decided to publish my answers here since the questions she has are not at all unusual these days. The global marketplace of ideas has made "shopping" for religion much more prevalent than in the days of monolithic belief systems passed on from one generation to the next. Even in the past, however, it was always necessary for each generation to choose to believe or not, because God doesn't have any grandchildren.

The issue which currently troubles this young woman is whether good people who don't believe in Jesus damned to hell? For those of you who read me regularly, you know I dealt with that at length in my series “Answering Rob Bell,” parts 1-6. Before I even get to the point of sharing that argument however, there are more basic issues to settle. The question of God’s judgment cannot be answered without first tackling another more basic one: is the Bible the revealed truth of God or not? Until one settles that question, there can be no ground for debate. Granted, there are different "interpretations" of many Bible passages, but unless two people agree that the Bible is authoritative, they will have no ground on which to base their arguments.

I believe that there is sufficient evidence to prove that the Bible is unlike any other book known to man; I believe it has the kind of supernatural characteristics that one would expect in a document that claims to be the revelation of a supreme being. Its unaltered longevity, fulfilled prophecies, historical and archaeological accuracy and amazing internal integrity (for a book comprised of 66 volumes written by 44 authors over thousands of years) argue clearly for its divine nature.

Philosophically, I believe that a supposed supreme being who created sentient creatures would logically want to communicate with them in some way. It is also logical to imagine that said being would likely have rules of engagement and standards of acceptable behavior. It would be illogical, if not sadistic to create sentient beings with innate moral sensibilities and then leave them clueless as to the basis for their existence.

Some have proposed that the God of their imagination is just such a sadist, as a poem by Steven Crane suggests that God built the ship of humanity and then sent it rudderless into the sea of fate. This is the position traditionally known as deism and describes the view of many who call themselves agnostics. This point of view is intellectually unsatisfying to me, and has proven depressing to virtually all those who hold to it, many becoming hopeless nihilists or bitter cynics as a result.

I concluded the first response to my friend by saying that if we can agree that the Bible is an authoritative source of truth for determining who we are and how we must live, then we can have a discussion. I will enlarge my response to the original questions in the next installment. If you are interested in following this line, stay tuned.

Rolling Thunder

As I write, thunder is rumbling somewhere over Lake Michigan. I don't like the inconvenience of a sudden rain or the damage lightning can cause, but I love a thunderstorm. When our kids were little we told the usual fairy tales about angels bowling in heaven or dropping pumpkins off their wagons to calm the kids' natural fear of loud noises. Once they grew older, we began to explain thunder as a hint, a metaphor of the awesome power of God.

This opens up all kinds of teaching opportunities. Thunder is loud and scary; God is big and not someone to be trifled with. Lightning can destroy things; God owns the earth and if he wants to break something, it's his right. Thunderstorms seem to pop up out of nowhere (forget our new radar weather forecasts;) God is everywhere and you never know when he will act. If this sounds like a terrible way to introduce kids to God, bear in mind that the Bible constantly instructs us to fear him. I love the line C.S. Lewis puts in the Chronicles of Narnia regarding Aslan, the figure of Christ in the series: "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."

I think too much of our teaching about God in the church today tries to make him safe. I have previously commented on Rob Bell's outrageous statement that the biblical "story" about hell is not attractive and we need to concoct a better "story." It is common to hear believers trying to downplay the harsh nature of the God of the Old Testament: the Levitical penalty for adultery was stoning both parties; the Canaanites were to be subjected to mass genocide; a crowd who rebelled against Moses was swallowed by an earth quake -- twenty-three thousand of them.

Do I think that we should preach Jonathon Edwards' sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" every Sunday? No, but I think the required balance is missing. I assigned the Edwards' sermon in a Literature class and got the expected reaction from a couple self-avowed atheists: who would want to believe in a God like that? Mea culpa. I should have had them read another of his works on the grace of God or the fellowship of the saints or anything for balance. The wrath and the love of God must be taken as a whole. Either alone distorts who he is.

People love to talk about the wonder of creation in a starry night sky or how the beauty of a sunset speaks of God's tenderness towards us. These are good analogies, but so is thunder. I believe that much of what is wrong in society today can be traced to a loss of fear of God. We used to speak of parents putting "the fear of God in 'em" to motivate good behavior. Now I hear the (sickening) parental cry, "Stop doing that, Johnny, Okay?" as little Johnny continues to wreak havoc and the parents shrug.

What Johnny needs to hear is a clap of thunder -- and maybe he should experience a little bolt of lightning in the form of a swat on his behind. I think we could all do with a flash of "inspiration" like that occasionally. Without a sense of how big God is and what his rights are over his creation, we all tend to get a little too big for our britches. I say, "Roll thunder, roll."

Waiting for Morning

I just finished an interesting little book by Bruce Catton called Waiting for the Morning Train. The theme of the book is woven from the threads of the author's hometown view of the decline of the lumber era in northern Michigan at the dawn of the twentieth century. What I like best about the book is the way Catt0n places the march of human history in perspective. Beginning with the "Little Ice Age," which buried his beloved peninsula under thousands of feet of glacial ice, then skimming through the early natives and explorers, he sets the stage for his scene in the play.

Most interesting to me was the comparison Catton made between the natives' use of copper and the Europeans' use of lumber. The natives took the copper they found exposed, learned simple smelting techniques and improved their lives with only minor changes to their culture. The Europeans learned better and better ways to take the trees, inventing a subculture along the way, then abandoned everything when the forests ran out. They left behind a scarred landscape and a population without means of support. After depleting the exposed copper, the natives simply went back to their old ways.

It is true that the natives' refusal to change ultimately lead to their near extinction. However, I wonder if there is a lesson in their attitude. I recently heard a colleague refer to information found in books as "real," as compared to that found on Google. She, like me, began teaching back when computers occupied entire rooms and had less computing power than today's wristwatches. I find a curious mix in my generation of those who embrace the digital age and those who curse it.

Dylan Thomas advised that we not "go gentle into that good night." I am wondering about going gentle, or otherwise into the good morning. We chuckle at the Kindle commercial when the "real book" advocate" revels in turning down a literal page. Some say it is the feel, others the smell of "real books" that makes them preferable. A friend recently said that my digital piano would never replace a "real" concert grand. Some folks won't give up their vinyl records. My wife still believes potatoes baked in a conventional oven taste better than those from a microwave. If we draw these lines too hard, we end up where the Amish live: out of phase and out of touch. But again, I wonder if they are all wrong.

We do lose something with each advance in technology. The automobile and the airplane have made the world a smaller place. At the same time, they have brought about the separation of families that once would have occupied adjacent properties. Medical advances allow us to prolong lives far into a stage of dependency which taxes family members and society with new burdens which death once obviated. Instant communication via satellite and cellphone has eliminated thoughtful communication almost entirely. So-called social networking on the Net has replaced old fashioned face to face friendships for many people.

I could go on, but in trying to think Christianly about this, I am double-minded. My good friend and pastor is a world travelling consultant on Internet uses for religious organizations. He can tell story after story of the gospel being spread through digital means. This is accomplished through a medium which is also the largest purveyor of pornographic destruction on the planet. I have a library in my laptop that surpasses the one I used in my Bible college forty years ago, yet I am so busy that I barely have time to read anything. We are witnessing the dawn of a new age. Information is the new currency, and digital distribution and manipulation is the press that prints it.

Just as Catton imagined the ice ages in the cold north wind, we might sense the glacial freeze of our new economy in some unforeseen collapse of the streaming infrastructure on which it flows. In the meantime, I wonder what new day this morning of technology is bringing. And I wonder if we will make the best use of it while waiting for that final morning when we wake up where all things are new -- and real.