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.

Middle East Gang Warfare

Once again President Obama has shown his inestimable skill as a community organizer. His detractors may have been too hasty in condemning his lack of foreign policy experience. I do not claim to know what he really thinks, but it would be understandable if he looks at the troubles in the Middle East as a gang conflict. Since he cut his political teeth on Chicago's south side, one assumes he has experience with gangs. Voila: foreign policy experience.

The President may be onto something. The parallels to gang culture are striking. The typical gang and the factious parties in the Middle East both serve as their societies' organizing forces, much as family does in other places. Both lay claim to certain territory as rightfully theirs. Both usually involve acts of violence to prove one's loyalty and commitment. Both demand ultimate allegiance. Both have aspects of positive community building alongside the dreadful violence that dominates their public face. Both are fatally intolerant of any view but their own. Many think both stem from the boredom and perceived disenfranchisement of impressionable young men.

Perhaps the President's Chicago style approach has been to let the gangs fight it out to see who is the strongest, then work with the winner to create a livable situation. A wait-and-see attitude seems to have characterized his response to Iran, Egypt, Libya and Syria. Maybe his delay was caused by the uncertainty in his "community." US voters are not uniform in what they want in the way of "organization." Then too, many US citizens question the need for any involvement in the Middle East at all.

Whatever the President is thinking, his new stance concerning the conflict with Israel and the Palestinians seems stunningly ignorant. The so-called two state solution cannot work unless one of the parties surrenders claim to the temple mount in Jerusalem. I suspect it will snow in Hades before that happens. Making Israel return to pre-1967 War boundaries as a prerequisite to negotiation asks one "gang" to abandon their corner unilaterally. Netanyahu would be run out of the country if he agreed to that. Finally, it is lunacy to imagine that Hamas will put aside their blood feud with Israel just because they are asked nicely. The President has a better chance for a hole-in-one on a par five than seeing all this come about.

For a fuller explanation of why Obama's approach is fruitless, I invite you to follow the link to my blog from last September. Briefly, one might say peace in the Middle East just isn't in the cards. The roots of the conflict run not centuries, but millennia deep. Believing history has a planned and orchestrated end helps, but it gives few clues as to how to navigate the stormy seas of our generation. One thing does seem certain: whether you believe Israel has a divinely ordained place in history or not, democratic Israel is our ally. Obama's speech this week appears to throw Israel under the bus. You don't have to be John Hagee to know that's just not right.

Diogenes Shrugged

Ayn Rand's classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, is being introduced to a new generation with the release of a movie by the same name this spring. The title comes from a line in the novel where a character asks what sort of advice one should give to the mythological Atlas considering that "the greater [Atlas'] effort, the heavier the [weight of the] world bore down on his shoulders". The response: "To shrug".

I do not share Rand's libertine, anti-religious world-view by any means. However, the world she fictionalized in 1957 is becoming fact in 2011. The collapse of society Ayn Rand predicted in Atlas Shrugged took place because government gradually took control of everything. Doubtless she was influenced by Orwell's 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which also features a dystopian society brought about by an excess of government. Both authors share worthy cautions, but they misunderstand a significant element of American society as it was originally conceived.

Our nation's founders recognized that the government they envisioned could not exist apart from the moral underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian world-view. Rand and Orwell discount religion as an escape mechanism which harms rather than helps society. They have it exactly backwards. Without a moral compass the engine of commerce will inevitably drive the ship of state onto the rocks. As I said recently in my blog, "True Lies", dishonesty abounds today. Purveyors of false information seem to be multiplying like a cancer eating at the core of our world. Without good information, a republic cannot survive; it will devolve into some form of tyranny.

Allow me to present two more examples of the deceit which infects the decision making process in current national debate. New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a rabid anti-gun advocate. He recently paid for a national ad campaign which declares that 34 Americans are murdered every day. This is deceptive on a number of levels. First, Bloomberg has the count wrong. FBI statistics for 2010 list 26 murders being reported daily, not 34. Even 26 is slightly overstated because police report as "murders" cases which are subsequently reclassified as other causes of death (negligent homicide, manslaughter, suicide, self-defense, etc.) Second, while any number of murders is tragic, in a population of more than 300 million depraved human beings, that only twenty-some are murdered each day might be considered remarkable. Third, not Bloomberg nor any of his fellow anti-gunners will report that states with liberal gun policies (like Arizona) have lower murder rates than those with draconian laws (like New York.) A 42 page study by eminent researchers concludes that European countries which have tried to eliminate private gun ownership have not seen a decrease in murders. Much to the contrary, Florida State criminologist, Gary Kleck has written that, "civilian ownership and defensive use of guns deter violent crime and reduce burglar-linked injuries."

My second example of public deception involves the link between vaccination and autism. The details on this issue are not yet clear to the public, but I think I know what is coming on this front. Government agencies and pharmaceutical companies have repeatedly claimed that there is no link between autism and vaccination. Yet just days ago a citizen group brought to light the fact that dozens of families with autistic children have been paid large settlements by the federal government's "vaccination court," a body established to protect private companies from lawsuits. Investigative reporter Trace Gallagher of Fox News recently asked, "If there is no cause and effect, why the multi-million dollar rewards?" Why indeed.

Trust is vital in any relationship. This applies double in the relationship between a people and their government. One need not be a Christian or any religious type to want the ninth commandment upheld in public enterprise, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." I fear the American experiment will fail at last if we do not rediscover the cost of deception and the value of honesty. Diogenes' search for an honest man might prove fruitless on Madison Avenue or in the halls of Congress these days. Pray he is not forced to shrug.

A Land in Ruins

The weather makes news again; headlines as far away as the UK shout, "Worst Storm Outbreak for 40 Years." The UK Mail Online asks "Is this the American Tsunami," perhaps referring to the devastation in Japan, or for those with longer memories, the Indonesian event of 2004. Chris Matthews of MSNBC made another historical reference when discussing President Obama's planned trip to view the storm ravaged town of Tuscaloosa. Matthews lauded Obama's quick response as compared to President Bush's tardy visit to New Orleans after Katrina. One wonders if the Dems will ever tire of making comparisons with "W."

My question is whether we really want a Presidential response to a natural disaster. Certainly, the country's top executive must register compassion for hurting citizens. But as part of this compassion our modern leaders seem to think government action is required; it is definitely expected -- by Matthews et al. anyway. After hearing the horror stories and seeing the pictures of FEMA villages and discovering the massive fraud which resulted from federal involvement after Katrina, I question the wisdom of delegating disaster relief to Uncle Sam.

It may be an unfair comparison, but it is nonetheless interesting to note that the Mississippi victims of Katrina are mostly back on their feet now, while much of New Orleans remains largely in ruins. Perhaps it is coincidence that Mississippi got by with much less federal aid, while New Orleans depended almost entirely upon FEMA and other Washington based efforts. The Democrat run political apparatus in Louisiana must also shoulder it share of blame. It may also be a coincidence that the Mississippi political machine was headed by Republican Haley Barbour.

What Chris Matthews and many liberals do not understand is something Karl Rove pointed out to a radio audience recently: “People don’t understand the federal government is not in charge of these things, and the basis on which they can take charge is very unusual.” Explaining that things went so badly in Louisiana because of the incompetence of Democrat state and city officials, Rove suggested that Bush should have invoked an 1807 law that gives the federal government the right to take over states. “It was a mistake. We should have used the legal authority to declare the state an insurgent, taken the political heat of pushing out the state’s governor and overruling the African-American mayor of New Orleans.”

Though I respect Rove's political savvy, I disagree with his premise. The federal government should not be involved with local politics at all -- not in bad times or good times. Shocking as it may sound, I do not think any government should be expected to pick up after anyone's personal disaster except to make sure the public roadways are passable, municipal services are provided, and civil order is maintained. This is what limited government means to me. Unfortunately there is a near majority of my fellow citizens who think that government services should be unlimited. Our current national fiscal disaster is the result of this insatiable appetite for public largess.

All people of moral character, but Christians especially know the meaning of charity. Those who have, help those who have less. Natural disasters provide living demonstrations of this principle. Glenn Beck used his national soapbox for this good purpose last week. He is organizing private assistance for the victims of the recent tornadoes. Think what you will of his alarmist rhetoric and Mormon theology, he understands what is needed in this desperate hour. We the people, not least people of faith, must take back our country. If we don't do something soon, wild weather may be the least of our worries.

True Lies

I am tired of being lied to. I just scanned my spam blocker's contents and found two I thought were not spam. One had UPS in the address and the other something about Mail Delivery; both had suspicious looking links in the text and multiple recipients even though they were supposedly personal information. I dumped them both back into Spamland without opening them.

Truth bending advertisers have been tricking gullibles into questionable purchases since advertising was born, I imagine. Fliers circulated in 17th century Britain lured adventurers with promise of untold wealth to be had in "Virginia," the generic name for the New World of North America. The history of Plymouth or Jamestown reports the scoop on that story. Early American snakeoil salesmen promised elixirs that would cure everything from gout to shyness. Some were herbal potions with potential healing effects, but many were little more than colored water with a shot of liquor for taste.

Today claims are shouted from all around us, from late night TV to endless email spam blasts. The ones that upset me the most, though, come from advertising driven by politics. One should not be surprised; again, history is replete with examples of less-than-truthful politicians. If one examines the root of the word, there is no surprise. A dietitian specializes in diet; an optician specializes in eyes; a politician specializes in the "polis," the people. They know how to work the crowd, con the mark and fleece the pilgrims.

Even knowing this, I still hate being lied to. There are too many examples to count, but I will offer three. George H.W. Bush emphatically declared in his presidential campaign that he would propose, "No new taxes! Read my lips," he famously said. We all know how that played out. Then there is Clinton's infamous, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Right. Today it is Obama decrying the partisan spirit in politics, saying repeatedly that he dislikes party rancor. Yet he is the one who insults Republican Congressman Paul Ryan who is sitting on the front row of his budget speech. He is the one who insinuates that Republicans want to dismantle Medicare and Social Security. He is the one who brands Tea Party members as radical extremists. Etcetera ad nauseum.

Finally on my list of peevish liars are the atheists who claim to know there is no god. This cannot be true, logically, and I suspect Christopher Hitchens and the gang are intelligent enough to realize this. But they promulgate the lie regardless. They may think there is no god, and for that position I would say, "Bon chance." But to categorically exclude the possibility that a god exists is arrogant foolishness. The ground for many atheists belief is in fact their disbelief in the miraculous. They cannot imagine a being of higher intellect and power than their own inflated ego, so they deny such a being can exist. One wonders if worms slithering across wet sidewalks deny the existence of boot-shod feet.

I am thinking about miracles and truth just now because it is Resurrection Sunday. Many people, sadly even some who call themselves Christians (only God knows,) do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The philosopher known as Apostle Paul body slams that idea by asserting that without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no Christianity. Sine qua non. Christ Jesus' return from the grave is the miracle of Truth in the flesh, or is it the truth of a fleshed out miracle? However you conceive it, because He died, I live; because He lives, I will never die. And I will always hate the lie.