August 27, 2008: "What Is Christianity Mainly About?" (Part 2)
Bill Maher complained recently that religion (by which he meant Christianity) is "not mainly about doing the right thing or being ethical. It's mainly about salvation. It's mainly about getting your butt saved when you die."
I think I can understand why Maher would say that. He's probably heard some bad sermons over the years. I've heard them too. Ever since I was a boy I've heard invitations to receive Christ that were really only about getting into heaven and staying out of hell - and some of those were so egregiously self-centered that they deliberately gutted the gospel of any call to repent and serve God. Jesus was presented as our ticket to heaven rather than the Lord who must be worshiped and obeyed. He was that "Thing You Had To Believe In" in order to get to the unending fun you really cared about. "You want to go to heaven? Say this prayer!"
The problem of crass Christian exhortation is an old one. When Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto begged the citizens of Geneva to return to Catholicism in 1539, he made a point of appealing to their desire to go to heaven. He wrote: "I presume, dearest brethren, that...all... who have put their faith and hope in Christ...have done so for this one reason: that they may obtain salvation for themselves and their souls."
Was that really the only reason to believe in Christ - to obtain salvation for oneself and one's soul? Not for Christ's own sake, nor for his pleasure, nor even because he commanded it - but simply to get saved? I'm afraid Sadoleto thought so. He even taught that personal salvation was the greatest thing a person could desire: "We all...believe in Christ in order that we may find salvation for our souls. There can be nothing more earnestly to be desired than this."
Sadoleto's letter was brought to John Calvin, who quickly wrote a response that merits careful study on the part of all those who proclaim the gospel. Attacking Sadoleto's notion that the best thing a man could desire was salvation, Calvin wrote: "It is not very sound theology to confine a man's thoughts so much to himself." Exactly. Instead, Calvin continued, we must "set before him, as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God." That is and must always be the Christian's main motivation: to glorify God. The zeal to exalt God must overrule the natural - but purely selfish - zeal to save our souls. Or, as Calvin put it, "This zeal [for God's glory] ought to exceed all thought and care for our own good and advantage."
Calvin even warned that good people would find tasteless and boring a constant stream of sermons about getting into heaven. The following quote is worth reading twice: "It certainly is the part of a Christian man to ascend higher than merely to seek and secure the salvation of his own soul. I am persuaded, therefore, that there is no man imbued with a true piety, who will not consider as insipid that long and labored exhortation to zeal for heavenly life, a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God."
I don't know if it will do Bill Maher any good, but I hope that some day he gets to hear some solid evangelical preaching that seeks above all else to magnify God. Glorifying God is what our faith is mainly about. Yes, there is that matter of getting our butts saved when we die - but that is just icing on the cake.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
August 20, 2008: "What Is Christianity Mainly About?" (Part 1)
Last night on “Larry King Live” atheist Bill Maher voiced a complaint against Christianity. He said, "One thing I don't like about religion is that - ask any of the truly devout - it's not mainly about doing the right thing or being ethical. It's mainly about salvation. It's mainly about getting your butt saved when you die."
I suppose by Maher's standards I qualify as one of those "truly devout", but I do not answer, "This is mainly about getting our butts saved when we die" when asked what is central to the Christian faith. What, would I say, is our faith mainly about?
It is mainly about glorifying God. Ethical behavior, doing the right thing, is certainly one aspect of that. How can you glorify God if you displease him? Christians believe that God has commanded us to be pleasant and kind and gracious and honest and noble and generous, and not do things like cheat, lie, kill, steal, extort or insult. Moral goodness is bound up in Christian doctrine, and can't be bled or cut out of it. Ethics-less Christianity is no Christianity at all - it is a bloodless, boneless corpse.
Atheism, however, survives quite well without ethics. In fact, I have never been able to understand how atheism can build a theory of moral behavior that actually succeeds in urging anybody to do good. I am glad that Bill Maher wants to "do the right thing", and I hope he continues to want to do the right thing and does not think too hard about it. Because if he does think about it, he'll see (ask any atheist!) that morality reduces to social custom, which reduces to urges dictated by the competing claims of evolutionary biology, which reduces to chemical reactions in our brains and in our environment, which reduces to electrons jumping from the orbital of one atom to another under the precise laws of physics and the imprecise randomness of quantum mechanics, which reduces to, well, that's pretty much all there is! That is where the chain of moral reasoning stops. What then is to keep the atheist from torturing Guantanamo detainees or falsifying evidence to convict innocent men if, when he asks why he shouldn't, all he's got to answer to (or even formulate an answer with!) are atoms in his brain knocking about like ping pong balls in a lottery glass cage? For the Christian, though, at the end of every chain of moral reasoning (which in some contexts we might call "temptation"), there is a holy God wagging his finger and saying, "You must not do that bad thing."
Doing the right thing is packed hard into Christianity and distributed through every feature of it like crude oil in Canadian shale. Dig into atheism, however, and keep digging hard and deep, and you will bore a hole right through the center and come out the other side without ever having encountered a single thing to fuel good works with. I'm not saying atheists can't find reasons for doing good - I'm just saying they can't find them in atheism. Good atheists (I've known several) will then shrug their philosophical shoulders and say, "Well, I don't know why, but we should do good anyways." Bad atheists (though they are not logically inconsistent) will say, "Nietzsche was right," and, given power, will become our Stalins and Mussolinis and Pol Pots and Kim Jong Ils. Millions die as a result. How can you appeal to the conscience of someone who knows in his heart that conscience is an illusion - the mere froth of an evolutionary heritage that strong people can sweep away with a wave of their hand?
I think there is a reason why, when you go around the world and look for those who are rebuilding schools in New Orleans, rescuing AIDS orphans in Kenya, helping lepers in India, rebuilding the shattered lives of rape victims in the Congo - what you find are Christians, Christians, and more Christians, and virtually nobody representing the atheist and freethinker societies. It is not just because Christians outnumber atheists - though certainly that is a factor. It is because our religion commands us to do good no matter what.
More next week, Lord willing, on what our religion is mainly about.
Last night on “Larry King Live” atheist Bill Maher voiced a complaint against Christianity. He said, "One thing I don't like about religion is that - ask any of the truly devout - it's not mainly about doing the right thing or being ethical. It's mainly about salvation. It's mainly about getting your butt saved when you die."
I suppose by Maher's standards I qualify as one of those "truly devout", but I do not answer, "This is mainly about getting our butts saved when we die" when asked what is central to the Christian faith. What, would I say, is our faith mainly about?
It is mainly about glorifying God. Ethical behavior, doing the right thing, is certainly one aspect of that. How can you glorify God if you displease him? Christians believe that God has commanded us to be pleasant and kind and gracious and honest and noble and generous, and not do things like cheat, lie, kill, steal, extort or insult. Moral goodness is bound up in Christian doctrine, and can't be bled or cut out of it. Ethics-less Christianity is no Christianity at all - it is a bloodless, boneless corpse.
Atheism, however, survives quite well without ethics. In fact, I have never been able to understand how atheism can build a theory of moral behavior that actually succeeds in urging anybody to do good. I am glad that Bill Maher wants to "do the right thing", and I hope he continues to want to do the right thing and does not think too hard about it. Because if he does think about it, he'll see (ask any atheist!) that morality reduces to social custom, which reduces to urges dictated by the competing claims of evolutionary biology, which reduces to chemical reactions in our brains and in our environment, which reduces to electrons jumping from the orbital of one atom to another under the precise laws of physics and the imprecise randomness of quantum mechanics, which reduces to, well, that's pretty much all there is! That is where the chain of moral reasoning stops. What then is to keep the atheist from torturing Guantanamo detainees or falsifying evidence to convict innocent men if, when he asks why he shouldn't, all he's got to answer to (or even formulate an answer with!) are atoms in his brain knocking about like ping pong balls in a lottery glass cage? For the Christian, though, at the end of every chain of moral reasoning (which in some contexts we might call "temptation"), there is a holy God wagging his finger and saying, "You must not do that bad thing."
Doing the right thing is packed hard into Christianity and distributed through every feature of it like crude oil in Canadian shale. Dig into atheism, however, and keep digging hard and deep, and you will bore a hole right through the center and come out the other side without ever having encountered a single thing to fuel good works with. I'm not saying atheists can't find reasons for doing good - I'm just saying they can't find them in atheism. Good atheists (I've known several) will then shrug their philosophical shoulders and say, "Well, I don't know why, but we should do good anyways." Bad atheists (though they are not logically inconsistent) will say, "Nietzsche was right," and, given power, will become our Stalins and Mussolinis and Pol Pots and Kim Jong Ils. Millions die as a result. How can you appeal to the conscience of someone who knows in his heart that conscience is an illusion - the mere froth of an evolutionary heritage that strong people can sweep away with a wave of their hand?
I think there is a reason why, when you go around the world and look for those who are rebuilding schools in New Orleans, rescuing AIDS orphans in Kenya, helping lepers in India, rebuilding the shattered lives of rape victims in the Congo - what you find are Christians, Christians, and more Christians, and virtually nobody representing the atheist and freethinker societies. It is not just because Christians outnumber atheists - though certainly that is a factor. It is because our religion commands us to do good no matter what.
More next week, Lord willing, on what our religion is mainly about.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
August 12, 2008: How To Fight Poverty
In a cover story this week on Pastor Rick Warren, Time Magazine reports that the influential pastor of Saddleback Church is "leading and riding the newest wave of change in the Evangelical community: an expansion beyond social conservatism to causes such as battling poverty, opposing torture and combating global warming."
I'll leave aside torture and global warming for another day, but as for battling poverty - is this a new cause for evangelicals? In the past all we cared about was social conservatism, but now thanks to Warren and others we have awakened to the campaign of ending global poverty?
Among the things I find frustrating about this "new evangelical emphasis" is its blindness to the fact that conservative Christians have always been the best poverty fighters the world has ever known. We own this topic. We've known how to prevent and stay out of penniless misery for thousands of years. All the principles are jam-packed into the pages of the Bible, and they are on display every time we open it up and proclaim its message. There is nothing new about how to fight poverty. Here in a nutshell is how not to be poor:
1) Work hard. (This includes studying hard to learn a skill – work hard at being educated).
The Bible says that "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth" (Proverbs 4:10). You'll never end the poverty of those who refuse to learn, who drop out of school, who depend on the goodwill and productivity of others for their food. "If a man will not work, neither let him eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
2) Don't have sex with anyone you're not married to.
The Bible's laws against adultery, fornication and all other sexual misconduct (Hebrews 13:5: "Let the marriage bed be undefiled") are great anti-poverty measures. Poverty results from the kind of immorality that produces fatherless children, sexually transmitted diseases, broken homes, etc. The other day I read an article about a region in Africa where the majority of children are raped. That is what their culture permits and expects. As long as this inhumanly cruel perverse sexual behavior continues, this region will always be poor - no matter how many billions of dollars of aid are given to it, and no matter how often its debts are forgiven.
3) Don't have vices.
Let me personalize this one. The other day I shocked a man by telling him I'd never had a beer. It's true. Completely aside from any moral implications, do you have any idea how much money I've saved over the years by never buying alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, porn, or lottery tickets? A lot. This is one of the factors that helps explain the minor miracle of how I have been able, in the past few years, to raise two sons in the suburbs while taking home a preacher's salary of $543 a week. But for all those people who waste money on things that ordinary evangelical preaching warns against, well, it doesn't surprise me if they wind up poorer than I am.
If you have a life that obeys the principles above, and a society and environment that respects them, then in all likelihood you won't be poor. Of course there are exceptions. You might be poor anyways because of disease, handicap, natural disaster, oppression, or really bad luck. That's why we have charity, and must always act charitably toward the worthy poor. (Yes, the worthy poor - 1 Timothy 5:9-10 forbids helping widows who had been lazy or promiscuous; they had to have done good deeds.) I've been the thankful recipient of charity many times myself, and am all in favor of it.
We who take the Bible seriously have always known how to fight poverty in ourselves and others, and that fight has always involved an uncompromising message to act morally, work diligently and give compassionately. What then, is "new" about Warren's battle against poverty?
Nothing, really, except for the call upon governments to take action. This is why Warren is convening a forum with Barak Obama and John McCain in Orange County, California. This is why Mike Huckabee and James Meeks left their pulpits and their callings to proclaim Christ so that now they could really make a difference(!) by pushing for political solutions to public problems. This is why a number of evangelical leaders, including Warren, John Stott and Billy Graham signed an open letter to President Bush asking him to undertake the cause of the poor in global concerns.
It is a big mistake. Every government campaign to end poverty has only created more of it in the long run. Lyndon Johnson's well-intentioned programs created cycles of dependency that made and kept people poor. The same Time Magazine issue that features Warren has a stunningly honest article on Africa, "Pain amid Plenty", that outlines how the billions of dollars of charitable aid to Africa over the years has had the unintended effect of fostering perpetual starvation.
I can't understand why Christian clergymen are taking the cause for fighting poverty to governments when political institutions have been so bad at it and we have been so good at it! This isn't government's job. Governments are there to preserve order, protect the citizenry, punish evildoers and reward good behavior. Ask them to do more than that, or worse, give them the power to try to create the poverty-less utopias we like to dream of, and they will find ways to make people starve.
In a cover story this week on Pastor Rick Warren, Time Magazine reports that the influential pastor of Saddleback Church is "leading and riding the newest wave of change in the Evangelical community: an expansion beyond social conservatism to causes such as battling poverty, opposing torture and combating global warming."
I'll leave aside torture and global warming for another day, but as for battling poverty - is this a new cause for evangelicals? In the past all we cared about was social conservatism, but now thanks to Warren and others we have awakened to the campaign of ending global poverty?
Among the things I find frustrating about this "new evangelical emphasis" is its blindness to the fact that conservative Christians have always been the best poverty fighters the world has ever known. We own this topic. We've known how to prevent and stay out of penniless misery for thousands of years. All the principles are jam-packed into the pages of the Bible, and they are on display every time we open it up and proclaim its message. There is nothing new about how to fight poverty. Here in a nutshell is how not to be poor:
1) Work hard. (This includes studying hard to learn a skill – work hard at being educated).
The Bible says that "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth" (Proverbs 4:10). You'll never end the poverty of those who refuse to learn, who drop out of school, who depend on the goodwill and productivity of others for their food. "If a man will not work, neither let him eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
2) Don't have sex with anyone you're not married to.
The Bible's laws against adultery, fornication and all other sexual misconduct (Hebrews 13:5: "Let the marriage bed be undefiled") are great anti-poverty measures. Poverty results from the kind of immorality that produces fatherless children, sexually transmitted diseases, broken homes, etc. The other day I read an article about a region in Africa where the majority of children are raped. That is what their culture permits and expects. As long as this inhumanly cruel perverse sexual behavior continues, this region will always be poor - no matter how many billions of dollars of aid are given to it, and no matter how often its debts are forgiven.
3) Don't have vices.
Let me personalize this one. The other day I shocked a man by telling him I'd never had a beer. It's true. Completely aside from any moral implications, do you have any idea how much money I've saved over the years by never buying alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, porn, or lottery tickets? A lot. This is one of the factors that helps explain the minor miracle of how I have been able, in the past few years, to raise two sons in the suburbs while taking home a preacher's salary of $543 a week. But for all those people who waste money on things that ordinary evangelical preaching warns against, well, it doesn't surprise me if they wind up poorer than I am.
If you have a life that obeys the principles above, and a society and environment that respects them, then in all likelihood you won't be poor. Of course there are exceptions. You might be poor anyways because of disease, handicap, natural disaster, oppression, or really bad luck. That's why we have charity, and must always act charitably toward the worthy poor. (Yes, the worthy poor - 1 Timothy 5:9-10 forbids helping widows who had been lazy or promiscuous; they had to have done good deeds.) I've been the thankful recipient of charity many times myself, and am all in favor of it.
We who take the Bible seriously have always known how to fight poverty in ourselves and others, and that fight has always involved an uncompromising message to act morally, work diligently and give compassionately. What then, is "new" about Warren's battle against poverty?
Nothing, really, except for the call upon governments to take action. This is why Warren is convening a forum with Barak Obama and John McCain in Orange County, California. This is why Mike Huckabee and James Meeks left their pulpits and their callings to proclaim Christ so that now they could really make a difference(!) by pushing for political solutions to public problems. This is why a number of evangelical leaders, including Warren, John Stott and Billy Graham signed an open letter to President Bush asking him to undertake the cause of the poor in global concerns.
It is a big mistake. Every government campaign to end poverty has only created more of it in the long run. Lyndon Johnson's well-intentioned programs created cycles of dependency that made and kept people poor. The same Time Magazine issue that features Warren has a stunningly honest article on Africa, "Pain amid Plenty", that outlines how the billions of dollars of charitable aid to Africa over the years has had the unintended effect of fostering perpetual starvation.
I can't understand why Christian clergymen are taking the cause for fighting poverty to governments when political institutions have been so bad at it and we have been so good at it! This isn't government's job. Governments are there to preserve order, protect the citizenry, punish evildoers and reward good behavior. Ask them to do more than that, or worse, give them the power to try to create the poverty-less utopias we like to dream of, and they will find ways to make people starve.
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