Know Whom You Worship (February 29, 2004)

Bear with me a few moments in the following thought experiment.

Suppose we ask a man if he is a Christian and he says, “Absolutely. I believe in Jesus Christ. He is my Savior and Lord. He died for my sins. He lives in my heart, and helps me to do right. I will see him in heaven."

Certainly this man is an orthodox Christian - at least as far as his verbal profession would indicate. But suppose now we say to him, "Tell me something about Jesus. When did he live?"

"About 150 years ago."

Well, that's off by more than 1800 years, but it is not an essential point - some people are fuzzy about dates.

"How did he die?"

"Bullet to the head."

Well, that is really odd - we know that Jesus was crucified.

"What can you tell me about his life?"

"He was a man who preserved our nation through its most troubling years during the Civil War as our 16th president."

Ah - now we see the problem. This man is actually describing Abraham Lincoln, but has assigned to him the name "Jesus Christ" and has given him religious significance by saying he "died for my sins" and "lives in my heart." Can we still call this man a Christian? No - but not because he rejects or refuses to believe in Jesus. He does believe in Jesus - he told us so himself. The reason he is not a Christian is because practically all his facts about Jesus are wrong. He may call himself Christian, but the content of his belief indicates that he’s really a “Lincolnian.”

My point is simply that it is important for all of us who call ourselves Christians to get our facts right about Jesus. If we let falsehoods creep into our understanding of him, then there will come a point of critical mass when we are no longer loving and worshiping Christ but rather some perversely distorted mental image of him. Rigorous Bible study and careful theological reasoning accompanied by prayer and the Holy Spirit’s direction will help us form right thoughts about Christ so that we can worship him as he is and not as we (perhaps falsely) imagine him to be.

That goes for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as well. If we believe wrong things about God we will be idolaters worshipping a false deity. This thought occurs to me when I hear of people turning away from God in anger when they do not get a “yes” answer to their prayers. I think, “What kind of God were they praying to in the first place? Were they praying to the sovereign and holy Lord of all creation, or to some glorified genie in a bottle?” The “god” that some people address in their prayers bears no more resemblance to the real God than Abraham Lincoln does to Jesus Christ!

Here is another example. Some years ago I received news of an adulterer who claimed that he was doing God’s will by divorcing his faithful wife. I wrote the beast saying that, despite his claims, he was not a Christian. I said, "Whatever 'faith' you have is worthless, because you place it in a God who condones your plans to dismiss your wife, and that God does not exist. The one true God, the one I worship and fear, pledges to damn unrepentant, vow-breaking lying adulterers like yourself.”

The God who exists is the one whom we know through Scripture, and there is no other God. The Jesus who is our Savior is the one whose life and teachings are recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Knowing and learning the sacred texts and thinking rightly about them is no mere academic exercise. It is a holy thing to do. Through the Bible we know God, the real God, and thus protect ourselves from blurred, false, misleading and even idolatrous images of him.

Real Seekers Long For God (February 22, 2004)

I received a flier the other day from a church that is putting on a production of "Arsenic and Old Lace," a classic comedy about two old lady serial killers. Cary Grant and Peter Lawford starred in the movie version - you'll find it in the classics section of video stores.

I read the flier carefully to see if there was anything about the Lord, or the Bible, or just anything remotely connected to our faith. There wasn't. I did see that the church's drama ministry is “known state-wide” and that the church's senior minister (director of the play) "has been hailed as having the ability to charm everyone he meets and bring out the best in them all." Also, this "highly-respected drama ensemble will present a wonderful comedy filled with mystery and joy. It is an event not to be missed!"

I called the number listed for more information and asked, "Does the play have anything to do with God or Jesus?" I was told no, it was just a play.

I'll be blunt. This strategy of "Let's do something fun to attract seekers!" is a reason why we're losing real seekers to false religions. People who long to connect with God, or who mourn their sin, or who despair over life's trivialities, or who desire to grasp the eternal, are utterly turned off by skits and chuckles and vaudevillian banter. When they see that we are trying to bait them to God with frivolity, and that we seem embarrassed about holy things, then it should not surprise us when they run to religions like Buddhism for spirituality or Islam for discipline. I'm beginning to fear that the public face of Christianity in "seeker-sensitive" churches looks an awful lot like an invitation to be shallow.

Listen to the world. In an episode of The Simpsons, Lisa converted to Buddhism not because she had anything against Jesus but because her family's church had become disgustingly commercial - a mirror of profane culture rather than a refuge from it. Even unbelievers, if they are spiritually sensitive, can discern a church's spiritual descent. A non-Christian friend of my son reacted to a Starbucks-clone coffee shop in a church she visited by saying, "That isn't right." She was correct, and Christians who know the story of Jesus evicting moneychangers from the temple should know better than to accommodate "seekers" by turning their church into a mall.

We gather at church to worship God. That is not to say we can't do other things there too - share a meal, have some fellowship, delight in one another's company. But let it be clear to any visitor, to any seeker, that if he comes to our assembly what he will find mainly is people composing their hearts to worship God and receive grace to be conformed to the image of Christ. We are not ashamed of that. We put it right out there in front, and take care to let nothing distract us from that holy purpose.

Can You Capture The Holy On Film? (February 15, 2004)

I have been thinking long and hard about whether to see Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I have some misgivings.

The first time I watched a video of Robert Duvall's The Apostle, I had to turn it off and walk away. Not because I objected to the content, but because the line between reality and cinematic representation was blurry, leaving me with a kind of spiritual vertigo. What I mean is, while the film had authentic “Holy Roller” preaching and prayers and invitations to follow Christ, I knew that behind the camera there was a director saying things like "Action," and "Cut," and "Let's have Billy receive Christ again, more tears this time, and we need to adjust the lighting." It struck me as a trespass over the guardrail that shields a holy place from all that is unreal. We may enter a holy place, of course, but only with reverence and fear. All drama and pretense must be left behind.

I feel that the more sacred a thing is, the more it should be left alone, not subjected to the profaning influence of drama. Please understand that I have no problem with Bible skits and plays per se, especially for kids. I've even written a few myself. But even there I observe certain limits. A fellow missionary and Christian puppeteer once said to me, "There are two things I never have a puppet do. One is pray, and the other is receive Christ." I knew exactly what he meant, and was glad for his sensitivity to the sacred. Prayer is real - it is how we connect to the Almighty, and to have a puppet mimic communion with God is wrong. Nor can I see how it honors Christ to invite him into the heart of a soulless, cardboard dummy. I think that is kind of like Uzzah touching the ark of the covenant in 2 Samuel 6: well-intentioned, but a violation of the holy.

Is it a violation of the holy to have an actor portray Christ in his suffering? I wish I could say for sure, but I just know that something in me recoils with discomfort when I see it. Nothing is more real to me, more meaningful to me, than the death of Jesus on behalf of my sins. Can a movie represent that? Can a movie help you appreciate it more?

What comes to mind in this regard is the single most transcendent moment in my life - witnessing the birth of my firstborn, Benjamin. That was a unique event, never to be repeated but always to be treasured. It mystifies me to hear reports of men carrying camcorders to their wives' bedsides in order to film them giving birth. Are they NUTS? How can they film that? How can they put a camera between themselves and the birth of their child? Don't they understand anything about majesty and transcendence, let alone seemliness?

We are all wired differently, and I must keep that in mind as I try to define the border between guarding the holy and squawking my personal preferences. I'm the sort who loves to visit national parks but never takes a camera, knowing that taking pictures will only distract me and looking at them afterward will only disappoint me. All I want to do is bathe in the experience of nature first-hand and then leave it at that.

I pray that The Passion of the Christ will stir hearts and provoke worship and lead souls to Jesus. I do not doubt that it will benefit some. But as for me, I think I’ll pass.

Strengthen The Priest! (February 8, 2004)

Recently I’ve been blessed more by listening to the Catholic radio station, AM 820, than the evangelical one, FM 90.1 (WMBI). My theology of course lines up mostly with WMBI, and I remain convinced as ever that the Catholic Church must repent of the errors that Martin Luther pointed out hundreds of years ago. But at least the Catholics know how to do Christian radio, and I wish that WMBI would be that deep and reverent and respectful of the listener. You have no idea how frustrated I get listening to evangelical Christian radio show hosts trade inept banter and joke about trivialities. (Though maybe the Catholic radio does that too, and I just haven't heard it.)

Sunday morning on the way to church I listened to ex-baseball commissioner (and devout Catholic) Bowie Kuhn share nuggets of wisdom at what appeared to be a Catholic version of a "Promise Keepers" meeting. Among the pieces of advice he himself had received and acted upon was a comment made to him by a bishop who said, "When you go to Mass in whatever city you’re visiting, don't sit in the back pew any more. Sit in the front."

"Why?" Kuhn asked.

"To strengthen the priest!"

(I love that word "strengthen". We evangelicals would say "encourage", but "strengthen" is better.)

The bishop explained that the priests would know who Kuhn was, and it would help them to see a public figure setting an example of interest and respect for the rest of the parishioners. In his own mind, Kuhn saw himself as nothing special, and he had no idea that where he sat would make a difference to anybody. But challenged to view things from a perspective outside his own, away from the pew and up on the chancel where there stood a possibly discouraged priest, it made sense that, by sitting up front, he could render a small kindness to the man of God. From then on, at every new church he visited, he sat up front.

A commitment to moral behavior involves sending your mind outside its selfish confines in order to view yourself from the perspective of another. I am thankful Kuhn was able to "see himself" from the chancel and perceive the effect, and act upon it. Many times I have had the "weakening" experience in the pulpit of watching church leaders giggle to themselves over private jokes as the sermon began, or watching them go out in the middle of the sermon to get a cup of tea. It is hard to feel the Holy Spirit's power when preaching to inattention and irreverence.

But with a congregation of Bowie Kuhns, the preacher will feel stronger and the parishioners will receive a greater blessing.

Why I Am A Theist (February 1, 2004)

A friend of my son Ben is an atheist, something I have never been tempted to be. But talking with him has led me to ponder anew and re-articulate the reasons why I have long felt atheism to be untenable. That is, even if I weren't a Christian, even if God had never called me nor placed faith within me, I think that rational considerations alone would force me to acknowledge - willingly or not - a spiritual reality beyond the physical.

Suppose that there is no God. Presumably then, matter/energy would be all that exists. Which would mean that we ourselves are simply complex configurations of atoms that bounce off each other in a Brownian cacophony of random collisions that produce the illusion of order. While atheists (I think necessarily) acknowledge this fact, I wonder how deeply they have thought through the implications of it. Let me draw out one.

Atoms interact by trading and sharing electrons. That is pretty much all there is to chemistry - electrons moving from one orbital to another. It is fair to say that these electrons have no will of their own - they are subject, en masse, to forces that make them jump in certain ways. Though you never know what one electron will do, if (for example) you bombard enough of them with enough photons under certain conditions, they will necessarily carry out their part in a process like photosynthesis. They can't help it. They are subject to forces and laws.

If atheism is true, then every thought you ever had, every pain you ever felt, every injustice you ever denounced and every affection that ever tugged at your heart have involved nothing more than a large set of electrons jumping orbitals under circumstances precisely governed by the laws of physics. That includes your reaction to these words as you read them. You may think you are evaluating an argument, agreeing or disagreeing, looking for flaws, drawing inferences - but all that is really happening is that chemicals in my brain have sloshed together and fired neural messages to my fingertips to type these words, which in turn bounced and blocked a set of photons which reached (or significantly failed to reach) the chemicals behind your eyeballs which then wired messages to your brain cells for interpretation and response. But "interpretation-and-response," if you are an atheist, is simply a matter of chemicals responding to chemicals. There is no intellectual will, no "But on the other hand I think," no rational agreement or disagreement of any sort whatsoever. I write what I must write and you respond as you must respond because we are under the absolute tyranny of the chemical reactions that define us.

What we perceive to be rational thoughts and choices are, in a purely material universe, a grand collection of physio-chemical farces. Under atheism, all our choices are made for us, and all our thinking is done for us, by electrons acting with the same kind of regularity that makes sodium bicarbonate bubble up when you pour vinegar on it. Our brains' chemical reactions may be more complex than our sandbox volcano projects, but they are no less determined.

I am not saying that, since we would find it abhorrent to regard rationality as an illusion that froths up from a chemical bath in our brain cells, then it just cannot be so. Many abhorrent things are so. What I am saying is that rationality is a fact whether we like it or not. We do reason, and choose, and make judgments both rational and moral. If these inferences and judgments are necessarily the products of physical interactions (at the subatomic or any other level), then there is nothing true or false, or right or wrong, about any of them. While we reason with one another intellectually and admonish one another morally, these attempts to persuade and cajole have nothing (in atheism) to stand on. Try as you might, you can derive no "ought" (as in "You ought to believe this because it is true", or "You ought
not do this because it is wrong") from mere chemicals, no matter how complex, responding to stimuli, no matter how varied.

Then again, if God exists, then both true rationality and true morality are possible, because he provides a ground of reality which allows us to be more than chemicals in motion. The existence of a Reality beyond the physical means that our thoughts can be valid, our actions can be good, our choices can be governed by spirit, our outrages can have moral sanction, and our affections can embrace non-illusionary delights. The world as we perceive it is real, and our actions and thoughts within it are not simply non-rational products of the whole, but responses and initiatives that are genuinely true or false, good or bad, right or wrong.