Is Atheism the Lack of a Belief?

When I was a child, I used to believe that once year a fat man would ride his flying sleigh to my apartment, pour himself through the key hole in the door (we did not have a chimney) and then leave me a litany of GI Joe and Ninja Turtle related paraphernalia. This was great and wonderful…until about second grade. At that point, for some reason, I became aware that my Mother was the person getting me the gifts. I of course felt no great loss at this because hey…free GI Joes. So I guess you could say that since second grade, I have lacked a belief in Santa.

You’d be wrong though. I don’t merely lack a belief in Santa. I disbelieve in Santa. To “lack” something means to not have something. So, to lack a belief in Santa would mean that I merely do not have a belief in Santa’s existence. It would be an odd state of neutrality in which I literally have no opinion or belief regarding the existence of Santa. But I do have an opinion or belief regarding the existence of Santa…and I stand resolutely against. No offense to Santa, poor guy, but I disbelieve in him. I don’t lack a belief in Santa; I positively assert that he does not exist.

So, as an Asantaist, I’m unable to claim that I don’t have a belief in Santa, if that were the case I couldn’t engage in the discussion. Nor could I have my opinion on it. I would feign neutrality if I claimed that my views toward Santa were merely lacking belief. I ardently do not believe in him.

Why the extended metaphor? Mostly to use the term “Asantaist”…but also to lay out my issue with Atheist thinkers claiming that Atheism isn’t a belief, but a lack of belief. I listened to part of an Intelligence Squared debate yesterday in which AC Grayling and Richard Dawkins asserted  more than a few times that Atheism could not be fundamentalist (which was the proposition of the debate), because Atheism is a lacking, as opposed to something positive. I find this to be an odd maneuver. Anyone whose ever heard Dawkins discuss theism knows that he is far from neutral on the issue. His book The God Delusion seems rather clear that he disagrees with the statement “God exists”, but also that he agrees with the statement “God does not exist.” He is not neutral (humans rarely are).

What would it mean to “lack belief” in something? Well, what does it mean to “lack” something? When I lack a car, it means that I sadly do not have a car. When I lack water, it means that I am about to become dehydrated, and when I when I lack the ability to translate German, it means that I’m about to fail a test. The question is then, are beliefs like these other situations? Are beliefs something I purchase/make? Are they things that I hunt out? Are they skills that I pick up? Or are they self-generating?

Let’s say my friend Taylor were to tell me that this upcoming season of the TV show Community would see the Janitor from Scrubs become a regular fixture at Greendale Community College. Without any hesitation, or almost any thought on my part, I would immediately have a belief regarding his claim. Unlike the car, water or German, my beliefs immediately generate upon hearing a proposition. I would initially hold a negative belief toward his claim, given that I know the Janitor is still staring in another show, The Middle, which is on another network. So even though I would say, “I don’t believe what you just said” I would actually mean, “You’re wrong.” Prior to his telling me his belief, I was ignorant of it, and I therefore lacked a belief in the proposition, but once he said it, I was no longer ignorant of the belief and I had a response to it.

It seems to me that belief in God is the same way. It makes sense for Atheists to claim that they don’t believe in God, that’s the very meaning of the word; however they don’t lack a belief in God…they have a negative belief in Him. The only way for someone to honestly lack a belief in God, is for them to have no concept of God (this seems overtly rare in any culture anywhere at anytime). In no way am I attempting to say this is an argument for believing in God…however I do think its time that Atheists stop playing word games and stop claiming neutrality. There is nothing neutral about secularity or Atheism. It is not merely lacking a belief. The human mind does not let us lack beliefs toward ideas that we are introduced to. Atheism is the disbelief in God…it’s a positive statement. To say “I am an Atheist” is to say, “I believe there is no God.” And that’s fine…let’s discuss it…but don’t pretend that your assertion is a neutral void…or a default. Disbelief is a response to a proposition, same as belief is, and that makes one no more or less valid than the other.

 

The Human Cost of Date Setting: How Harold Camping Ruined a Middle Schooler’s Weekend

“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice; from what I have tasted of desire, I side with those who favor fire…” Interesting idea Robert Frost, but my favorite band named after a humanoid rest function believe that the end of the world starts with an earthquake, birds, snakes and areoplanes…which apparently does not scare one Mr. Lenny Bruce.

Sadly, it appears that both Frost and the boys in REM are dead wrong. It is currently 5/19/2011, and according to a man named Harold Camping, we are 2 days from the start of the end of all things. Camping, who has falsely predicted the second coming many times, has pegged Saturday May 21, 2011 as the day in which God calls His elect home. After the elect are removed, the Earth goes through a few months of horror and finally faces the final judgment in October, sometime before Halloween….or Harvest as we Christians like to call it.

There are plenty of blogs about his teaching and his arguments…and as of Sunday, they will not really be useful. But, that isn’t the only thing that changes. I have 2 students in my classes that I teach who firmly believe Camping’s teaching. Today one of them explained to me that on Saturday he and his family are going to spend all day in prayer until Jesus comes and takes them. This student believes that on Saturday, he will be in heaven.

So what happens when he wakes up on Sunday and he’s still in Tustin? As a 7^th grader, what happens to his faith? Does he fear that he wasn’t actually a believer? Does he conclude that Christianity is bunk? Does he think that Camping is crazy? I won’t know until Monday. But, I do know that the outlandish and unbiblical comments made by Camping have set this 7^th grader up for heartbreak. As teachers, let us remember that there are real consequences to what we say, and that people may actually base their lives off our theology. If that doesn’t make you hesitate before purporting a position…then you need to make sure you never teach in a Christian context ever again. The responsibility should make one fearful…particularly when setting dates that Christ says no man can know…and convincing children of error, which Christ spoke rather sternly against.

 

The Foolishness of Love Without Knowledge

Have you ever gone up to a total stranger and told them that you love them? Not in the “love your neighbor” sort of way, but in the “Maybe you should meet my parents” sort of way? Or in the “You are my best friend in the whole wide world” type way? You haven’t? Why not?

Oh, because that’s crazy.

Seriously, if a stranger came up to me and said, “Sam, I love you! You are so amazing! So awesome! Everything about you is so great!” I’d be a little confused. How can someone who doesn’t know me, and truthfully knows little about me, prattle on about how great I am?  (Or how could anyone who does for that matter?)

And, when friends of this stranger ask what makes me so great, what can the stranger say?  Perhaps something along the lines of, “I like Sam because he’s super sporty and athletic.” At this point, anyone who has at least a minor connection with me would say, “Well, that’s incorrect. Sam doesn’t play sports, and he doesn’t watch them either. He thinks that the LA Clippers are just a very disappointing set of barbershops, and that the Houston Astros are Texas’ regional branch of the Jetson’s fan club.”

Perhaps the stranger would say, “Well, we can disagree on this, its no big deal. I just like to see Sam as more sports oriented than you do, and that’s ok. I think we can agree that Sam is far too great to be put in a box.”

My friend may say, “Well hold on now. It does matter. The Sam that you’re talking about isn’t the Sam I know. Look at this email he sent me last night that says, and I quote, ‘Man, sports a lame.’ What you are saying about Sam isn’t true. You are making things up because you really would like a Sam who likes sports, but in reality, Sam is a portly geek who still thinks Rugby is a type of stinging insect attracted to Berber.” (Please note, my friend and I would have words at this point, he’s really ripping on me).

The stranger may respond with. “Look, I know that’s how you’ve interpreted Sam, but you need to expand your understanding of Sam and realize that maybe Sam is different to everyone who knows him? Or maybe you should just focus on knowing Sam and how great he is, without worrying about all those facts about him.”

My friend would then either punch the stranger, laugh at the stranger or punch and then laugh at the stranger. The one thing my friend wouldn’t do is take the stranger seriously. In what world would anyone take that type of talk seriously?

The church. That’s where we take that type of talk seriously. See, whereas we would be offended, or think daft, or have a low view of someone who claimed a deep love and relationship with someone they knew nothing about; when it comes to God, the contemporary church takes such ignorance as a positive.

“Don’t get bogged down in doctrines, just love God” is a very appealing statement, until you understand that “doctrines” are “facts about God.” So, the statement actually is “Don’t get bogged down in facts about God, just love Him.” It now sounds less appealing, but still, it is the case that a relationship with someone is more important than having a data sheet about him.

The problem is, this mindset seems to make one’s relationship with God the only one in which a deepened relationship does not entail deeper knowledge. When I think about my closest friends, they are by and large the people I know the most about; and had I not wanted to know more about them, it’s a safe bet that a friendship would not have developed.

Yet, with God, we seem to think that it’s more spiritual to remain an adoring stranger than someone who seeks to learn more about Him. Why is the God relationship the one relationship in which we see ignorance as valor?  Love without knowledge is, in every relationship, nothing more than infatuation. We have a generation of Christians being trained to be infatuated with God, not to love Him. This needs to change, or we will soon have a generation of atheists who stopped believing in a God they never knew.

 

Why Love Can’t Really Win in Rob Bell’s Theology

Let me start by saying that I still firmly stand behind my initial assertion that Rob Bell is, at heart, a universalist. Not the type who believes all roads lead to God in this life (he’s an inclusivist on this side of death), but the type who suggests that everyone ends up saved eventually. I firmly believe that is what Bell thinks, and I think in my previous post on the matter I demonstrated that I at least have reason for that belief. That said, I think I, and most of us defending orthodoxy, have missed an important point in Bell’s book. Bell may say that he believes love wins, but his system doesn’t let him actually believe that.

On pages 114-115, Bell misunderstands the function of a city gate in the first century, and therefore mishandles John’s statement in Revelation that the gate of heaven never closes. Gates were used to defend a city against attacks, so John’s statement is that Heaven is unassailable; however, Bell suggests something else completely.

Bell suggests:

“Second, we read in these last chapters of Revelation that the gates of that city in the new world will ‘never shut.’ That’s a small detail, and it’s important we don’t get too hung up on the details and specific images because it’s possible to treat something so literally that it becomes less true in the process. But gates, gates are for keeping people in and keeping people our. If the gates are never shut, then people are free to come and go.”

Given his other statements in the book, initially the response to this paragraph is to come to the defense of the doctrine of Hell, and for good reason. Yet, Bell does not just say that heavens gates stay open so that people can come as they please. He said they could come and go. If the book Love Wins is accurate, people may leave heaven.

On page 116, Bell breaks character and actually answers one of the questions that he asks in his book. The question that he thinks we can answer without speculation is not “Does God get what He wants?” but “Do we get what we want?” Bell responds saying, “And the answer to that is a resounding, affirming, sure, and positive yes. Yes, we get what we want. God is that loving.”

Is that love? Bell seems repulsed by the idea that God would turn wrathful toward those who die without believing in Him; yet, he sees it as perfectly loving for God to let His children walk into Hell if they so choose? Realize that we are only God’s children by adoption after we are saved, before that we are God’s enemies. So traditional Christian theology suggests that while God loves His enemies and desires their repentance, Bell suggests that God loves His children so much He allows them to walk into Hell? That seems backwards. Bell seems to suggest something far more unloving than orthodoxy. A man who desires that a man on death row apologize, and offers him forgiveness if he does is far more loving than a Father who loves his 5 year old so much that he allows the child to play blind folded in the street if he so chooses.

Obviously I believe that Bell would suggest that once in heaven no one would ever choose to leave, which is why I think he’s a universalist (everyone eventually will make that choice); however, his system manages to be more dangerous than universalism now that I think about it. Bell thinks that people can leave heaven if they want.

For Bell there can be no such thing as eternal life. People might not praise God forever. All the pictures we have of heaven in Scripture might be a lie. Christ might go to prepare a place for me, and I might not think it’s roomy enough once I get there. Love doesn’t win, or at least not God’s love.

God loves me so much that He let’s me do anything that I want without ultimate consequence? That isn’t love, that’s permissiveness. A husband who let’s his wife cheat on him perpetually doesn’t do so out of love, but out of apathy. The parents who let their child cut itself do not do so out of love, but out of apathy. Bell’s system is designed to focus on God’s love winning in the end, but it’s ordered in such a way that it opens the door for God’s apparent apathy to let humanity’s pride win.

Couldn’t Bell suggest that my arguments against his view of the eternal state could be used against my view of our present one? He could, but he’d be confusing our struggle with sin during sanctification with our triumph (in Christ) over sin in glorification. If heaven is open for people to leave, then there is no triumph over sin in glorification. In this system love doesn’t win, sin does. Pride wins.

Don’t I always deserve the right to shun God? No, no I don’t. After glorification, I desire only God and even if I could leave heaven, I never would want to. My will would only desire God. Could Bell appeal to this type of system as well? No, he can’t. If the will can only choose to love God, Bell would say that wasn’t love. For love to be love in heaven, Bell must assert that those in heaven can reject God and stop loving Him at any time. Heaven ends up not being much different than Earth.

As deadly as Bell’s teaching is to the doctrine of Hell, it might be more accurate to see the full danger of his threat to orthodoxy in his assault on Heaven. Bell may believe that love wins, but his system certainly doesn’t leave that option open to us. Thankfully we know that biblically it’s more accurate to say that love won, and it did so about 2000 years ago on the cross. And once love claims its victory over a soul, there is no unseating it.

 

Why I Care About Hell

Why are so many people so concerned about defending a doctrine that states that countless people will suffer for all eternity? Wouldn’t it just be nicer to say that everyone gets to be happy for eternity? Perhaps everyone gets to lay back in a hammock eating lemonheads on a beach in New Caledonia while listening to Izzy’s rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Wouldn’t that be a better story?

No. No, that would not be nicer to say. Why? Because it isn’t true, and hearing truth is far more important than merely hearing what you want to hear. If it were nicer to tell people only what they wanted to hear, then there would be no talk of armed robberies, we would be silent about cancer and we would be mum about war. Yet, if there were a man pointing a gun at my head asking for my money, it would not be nice of you to tell me that it was a blow dryer. Saying falsehood because it sounds nice is not a way to deal with reality.

You may have noted that my analogies in the paragraph above were all negative ones. Does this mean that hell is bad? No. Hell is bad insofar as prison is bad, because that’s what hell is, a prison. Do we think that a life sentence in prison is morally wrong? No, we don’t. So then, why do so many thinkers in today’s world have such a problem with hell? The answer’s easy—people who don’t understand sin, cannot understand hell.

Sticking with the prison analogy, let’s say that a mass murder gets put in jail for life. Most people wouldn’t have a problem with the sentence, and the only ones that did would probably be disappointed that the man wasn’t given the death penalty. Now let’s say that an Eagle Scout steals a candy bar, and when prosecuted, he gets sent to prison for life as well. Almost everyone, except for perhaps those who hate Eagle Scouts or love candy bars, would be outraged. How dare the justice system put this Eagle Scout in jail for life! Prison, where he will suffer and be separated from he outside world! People would find the verdict reprehensible and vile. No one would think that a just punishment was given.

And that right there is the crux of the issue. Why do pastors today seem to have a problem with hell? Why do Christians want to pretend the doctrine doesn’t exist? Why do we desire to have our ears tickled telling us that God would never punish people for eternity? Because we are a world of mass murders who think we are Eagle Scouts.

Now, I’m rather sure that no one reading this is an actually murderer, and I myself often stay my hand from bringing retribution on those who correct my many misspellings. However, the fact is, no matter how good we think we might be, we are only measuring ourselves against each other. I am not as bad as Hitler because I have not killed 6 million Jews. Totally. I’m not saying anyone reading this, nor anyone weakening the doctrine of hell is worse than Hitler, but I am saying that Hitler isn’t our mark of demarcation.

Another example. Those of you who know me are aware that I am not what one would call “in shape” or “physically fit” or any such nonsense. However, when I go to the gym at about 1am, there are usually two or three people there who are more out of shape than I am. So, I do what any sane person would do and I take the treadmill next to them and crank it all the way up to 2.5mph with a 6 incline and I go to town. Suddenly, I look like an athlete. These guys next to me are only doing 1mph on a 0 incline? I’m basically an Olympian. But, if I had to run a 6 minute mile, it doesn’t matter how many out of shape guys I out treadmill, or how athletic I feel, the fact is that in my present state, I’m going to fail.

We can compare ourselves with each other all that we like, but our eternal destination is not a committee decision. When we look to each other to define our goodness, all we end up doing is convincing ourselves that we’re better than we actually are. People think teaching the doctrine of hell is mean, because they don’t think that anyone deserves it. They don’t think anyone deserves it, because they don’t understand the doctrine of sin. Sure they might understand that sin is bad, but when they say its bad, what do they actually mean? Do they think sin is bad in the same way that a mistake is bad? Or that an error is bad? If so, then yes, it would seem that sending someone to eternal punishment is unjust.

Yet we have a just God. And that God spoke about hell. As did Jesus and every New Testament author. None of them gave the idea that hell will be temporary, and none of them gave the idea that someone could leave once there. Those ideas simply aren’t in the Bible. So where do they come from? They come from people not understanding that we actually deserve life terms. They come from people thinking they’re in shape on the treadmill due to the fact that the person next to them is worse off. They come from people not understanding sin as spiting in the face of God. And it is not nicer to tell someone that sin is merely a mistake when it is actually spiting in the face of the Almighty. It is not a better story to say that God thinks, “Oh, they are only human and not all that bad.”

No, that isn’t nicer at all. That is a dangerous, dangerous lie. And it’s a lie that I pray more people will start combating. A Christian who does not take hell seriously is a Christian who does not take sin seriously. A Christian who does not take sin seriously is a Christian who does not take holiness seriously. A Christian who does not take holiness seriously is a Christian who does not take God seriously, and I wonder how Christian such a person is.

 

What is Universalism and Does Rob Bell Hold to it?

Universalism.

Due to religious leader Rob Bell and his new book Love Wins, the topic of universalism has seen quite an increase in airtime as of late. Twitter, blogs, interviews, etc. are all using this word and asking if it applies to Bell. Bell has denied the application of the word to himself, yet after reading his book, he sure sounds like one. But what does it mean to be a universalist?

Roughly stated, universalists hold that eventually everyone will be reconciled with God through the work of Christ on the cross. Christians of all types clearly would agree that they are reconciled to God through faith in Christ; however universalism is the assertion that absolutely everyone will be reconciled to God through Christ, be it that they heard the name of Christ or not, they will be redeemed.

This view sounds very similar to another view named pluralism, but universalists are quick to inform you that they are not pluralists. A pluralist believes that all religions are equally valid and lead to the same truth. A Christian is saved by following Christianity and a Muslim is saved by following Islam. The universalist takes umbrage with this statement because the Muslim is not, in their view, saved by following Islam, but saved by Christ, even without knowledge of Him.

So, what is the difference between pluralism and universalism? Academically, pluralism sees the divine as ineffable and each religion as an equally valid attempt to interpret it. Universalism sees only Christianity as correct, yet God, in His love and by the work of His Son chooses to redeem everyone, regardless of religion (or lack thereof). This redemption may be immediate, or it may be after those who were not Christians on Earth are punished after death for a suitable period of time. For the pluralist, all religions are equally valid paths to salvation; for the universalist, Christ makes all beliefs equally valid paths for salvation.

Functionally, the difference is a felt need to take John 14:6 as serious as is possible, while not sharing Christ’s other belief that the path and gate to life are narrow and few find it. Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father but through Him. The pluralist considers this verse as a truth relative to the Christian interpretation of the divine; whereas the universalist desires to see it as absolutely true, and they therefore project Christ’s saving power to all humans everywhere.

As mentioned above, universalists come in two main groups. The first believe that Jesus immediately makes all life paths equally valid so that no matter which religion (including non-religious options) you chose, you will arrive in heaven and see that Christ is the one who saved you and you will rejoice with Him forever. The second type asserts that Christians go to heaven immediately and that the lost are banished to hell; however once in hell, the lost will either pay for their crimes for a suitable amount of time and then be allowed into heaven, or they will repent of their sins and then be allowed into heaven.

Rob Bell is the latter type of the second group. He is careful not to actually claim that he is a universalist, but what he does is present the idea of universalism through nuanced questions and reflections. On pages 110-111, Bell suggests that people being punished forever in endless torment is not a good story. “A story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn’t do, say or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn’t a very good story.” However, the story of everyone enjoying God together apart from shame or guilt is a beautiful story. Bell suggests that it is a good and loving thing for Christians to want the latter.

Notice, Bell didn’t say that he thought the second story was correct; merely that he liked it better. He presents it as positive, the former as negative. If you present a belief that you do not want your reader/listener to believe in a positive light, then you will later refute or undermine the position. Further, you will present your own position in a more sound or positive light in order to draw attention to it. Bell never makes this move.

Am I appealing to ignorance then to say that he is a universalist? No, I’m using the same abductive and inductive reasoning that we use everyday. By this I mean that I’m merely applying a standard to Bell’s presentation that we apply to every other situation. A parent does not present heroine as a great life choice unless doing so to immediately undercut it and juxtapose the horrors of it. Why would a writer consistently make a point sound good if he thought it a lie and then never undercut it? He wouldn’t. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assert that Rob Bell is a universalist. Perhaps a soft universalist, i.e. he believes that everyone in hell can be saved and the offer never closes, but the choice is still up to them, but a universalist nonetheless.

This belief is opposed to three of the myriad theologians that have been appealed to in order to vindicate Bell. Origen who thought the everyone (including Satan), no matter what, would be saved; CS Lewis who entertained postmortem salvation but believed that those in hell would never leave (the gates of hell are locked from within), and Martin Luther (who Bell takes out of context on page 106) who claimed that God could save those in hell, but nothing in Scripture makes us think he does.

Another example of Bell’s ability to hide behind questions can be seen on page 2 where he asks if God can create millions of people who are going to eternal anguish and still be loving? Then on page 64, Bell muses, “God is loving and kind and full of grace and mercy—unless there isn’t confession and repentance and salvation in this lifetime, at which point God punishes forever. That’s the Christian story, right?”

These two questions are the sort that atheists typically ask. Hearing them from a Christian is surprising, but not seeing them refuted is utterly shocking. Unless, the writer honestly believes they have a point and are at least true enough not to undermine. Again, reasoning shows us that either Bell is insanely irresponsible, or he believes the implications of the questions he’s asking.

The case against Bell gets more substantial when we look at a few of his other statements, which again do not state he is a universalist, but can have very few other motives behind them:

• Page 182: “Let’s be very clear, then: we do not need to be rescued from God. God is the one who rescues us from death, sin and destruction. God is the rescuer.” Contextually, Bell says this after talking about the belief that God has to punish sin. He dismisses whether or not its true that God has to punish sin, and then presents this idea that we need not be rescued from God. The implication being that God’s wrath is an idea we need to get beyond.

• Page 174: Bell asks if God becomes someone different when we die. He believes it seems so because God goes from being loving to being wrathful at that moment. How can we trust such a God? Clearly for Bell, the answer is that God doesn’t become wrathful. The Bible seems to take the other approach, indicating that God’s wrath toward sin is present even before we die (Romans 1:18)

• Page 154: Bell points out that in John 14:6 Jesus never states that those coming to the Father through Him know they are coming through Him. This idea by itself might make Bell sound like he’s simply an inclusivist (someone who thinks there may be some saved people in other religions); however, given the rest of the evidence presented, it seems safe to conclude that Bell is a universalist who subsumes inclusivism into his system (or makes use of a weakened form of the first type of universalism listed above).

• Page 150: “As obvious as it is then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion.” This statement assumes that its been suggested that Jesus is too small for other religions, as opposed to other religions being invalid because they do not have Christ as their center. The assertion from Bell is clear universalist speak. The question is not about Jesus’ size, but about other religion’s veracity.

The exegetical fallacies in the book are numerous. Truthfully, and though I’m prone to exaggeration I’m being quite serious, almost every serious appeal to Scripture that Bell makes in his book is rife with exegetical errors. He can’t handle the Greek words for hell when he attempts to, he doesn’t understand the point of a city gate in the first century, he quotes John 12:47 to say that Jesus didn’t come to judge, but ignores the next verses that says unless people repent, His words will judge them on the last day, etc.

Should people read Love Wins? The question is bit like asking if Miss America should carry mace walking down a dark alleyway in a town called Crimesville whilst someone shouts, “She’s vulnerable.” We really have no choice in the matter. The fact is, people that we know, people in our congregations, people who lead small groups, etc, are all going to read this. If it were possible to keep them from desiring to read it, then no, we wouldn’t have to read Bell’s book. Sadly, people will read it, and they will, much like they did with The Shack, think it makes good points. So, for them, we must as least be familiar with what is being taught in the book, so that we might help them see that in hell, the “worm does not die” (Isaiah 66) for a reason, and that the Great Commission is vitally important since hell is far from being evanglism’s safety net.

Bell’s book is dangerous, not because its revolutionary, but because its intended to shatter existing norms. We need to be ready to defend against his teaching.

 

Why I’d Never Get Hired as Youth Pastor for a Mega Church

This is a re-post from my previous “TheoJester” Blog circa 2009

 

Let’s be frank, I am not the world’s most ideal youth pastor. Yes, I have the traditional youth pastor goatee; but my jeans are not form fitting, I hate coffee and the only V-neck shirt I own is orange and was bought on accident as a workout shirt from Wal-Mart. My wardrobe does not look like it comes from a Good Will store specializing in 1960′s and 70′s apparel, I think having youth eat a gallon of mayonnaise is disgusting and I find food fights disrespectful. I’m not a fan of having a band of some sort come in and try and woo youth to show up, make emotionally charged decisions and then never show up again…and it took me 5 tries to get “decisions” misspelled close enough for spell check to tell me the right spelling.

At core I’m an apologetics guy. My heart is in the defense of the Christian faith and seeing orthodoxy form in the lives of others. On the whole, this isn’t the most important thing to a large majority of what we call Christian Youth Ministry. Be it Joel Olsteen style self help, or William Young feel good experientialism, or Rob Bell’s casserole of wrongness…the church does not on the whole care about orthodoxy; it cares about assimilation. Be that assimilation into acting like everyone else, or going out of your way not to act like everyone else (and join the large group that does just that…the irony). Either way, the dogmatic concern in the church as a whole, and in youth groups predominately, is a concern on action.

Action clearly is important. However, a youth pastor’s job is not to make the youth act a certain way. Philosophically speaking, acts comes from being (Colin Gunton has a great book on this). Since I can only act in such a way that I am, even if I do action “x” for a while…if I m actually person “y”, then over time my action “x” will stop and action “y” will be what is left. This is why my job is not to teach youth not to lie; rather to teach them that God is truth. If I teach them “don’t lie” that will only go so far as their conscious (and their thinking I’m right) can take it. But if I teach them that “God is truth” and that therefore a lie is an affront to God, then there is a reason to not lie. Telling the truth has nothing to do with me or them, and everything with God.

This need for depth is why when I’m in charge of a youth group, they know CS Lewis. They know Augustine and Luther (Martin, not Lex…they know Lex cause I’m a geek). Many youth pastors think that youth only need the basics of the faith, and maybe that is because that’s all they can bring to the table…but our present society is not the type where any Christian just needs the basics. Teenagers are the target of worldview assaults like crazy. If a teenager graduates High School and thinks homosexuality is wrong, that is a rare thing. In a society in which the average age that a child is introduced to pornography is 11 (it might be 10, I cant remember the study I looked at), if they make it out of High School…or even to High School a virgin, that’s impressive. But those things only happen thanks to a deep and firm relationship with God, not a passing feeling about Him.

Do I talk over the heads of some youth? Totally. But you know what happens when you teach 7th-12th grade at a 7th grade level? The 12th graders stay jr highers. Do you know what happens if you teach 7th-12th at a 12th grade level? The group as a whole, over time, matures and can think at a higher level. Its painful at first, but has yet to fail. And, in 2011 there is not a single issue a 12th grader faces that a 7th grader doesn’t face.

Hence, I’ve always said that I focus on Discipleship and Dodgeball; deep teaching and fun games that teach them not to take themselves seriously. No real reason I decided to write this today aside from the fact that I realized I probably should have this written some place.

 

Why Humanity Smells like a 90’s Song

Starting in the early 1900’s, it became vogue to consider religion a purely human phenomenon that needed a psychological explanation. Freud and the like noticed that religion is ubiquitous and seems intrinsic to mankind. The resulting hypothesis that was put forward in Freud’s The Future of an Illusion was that belief in God stems from a psychological desire for a perfect father figure to watch over us. Since we desire the universe to have a purpose and a reason, we project part of ourselves onto the universe and call that projection God. Therefore, the God that we worship will bear a strange similarity to who we are and what we conceive as important.

Despite noticeable flaws in Freud’s assertion (why would the prideful project the humble and the lustful project the chaste?), and its rather post hoc feel, the projection argument continues in the writings of many modern atheists. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Barker, etc all either implicitly or explicitly state that God and religion are relics from the childhood of our species. In our infancy as a species, we felt that we needed a father of some sort to watch over us; however now that we have grown up as an animal, it is time to leave behind childish things (as Hitchens borrows from St. Paul).

Let’s grant for a moment that it’s true that, like a newborn baby, humankind in its infancy needed a parent of some sort in order to establish itself. Let’s also grant that it is true that in our present enlightened state, we have no felt need of God; we are independent and God merely gets in the way. My question is simply: “Do we sound grown up?” If I told you a story about someone who looked at his or her parent and said, “I hate you! I wish I were free of you! I don’t care what you say, I will never ever be like you!”  and said person acted as if his parents didn’t exist, how old would you presume that person was? What if I added that this individual felt cool being a rebel thanks to throwing off all the shackles that his parent had placed on him?

How old is the person I just described? No one would guess it was a mature 50 year old, nor a well adjusted 25 year old. The person I just described is clearly in their younger teens. What adult looks at the things of childhood with distain? Adults long for the magic of childhood, it’s the teen that wishes to grow up. The adult and the child love and cherish their parents, the teen wants them dead.

John Loftus mentioned to me after a talk he gave in Riverside that skepticism is an adult mindset; children are the ones who have faith. Is this true? Think about the adults that you know, are any of them truly skeptics? The skeptic is the one who doubts perpetually and takes the child’s repetitive question “why” and makes it a caustic tool to assert libertarian freedom from constraints. Adults aren’t skeptics, 15 year olds are.

So, why waste a blog entry on a piece of propaganda (and that is what the projection “argument” truthfully is)? Roughly because it seems that if we use the suggested analogy given us by Dawkins and the like, we end up with a much younger humanity than they suggest (which is not surprising given how often 13 year olds presume they are going on 30, or so I’m told by Jennifer Garner). Therefore, if it looks like humanity is not “grown-up” but merely in our adolescence, is it any wonder that we hate our father? He embarrasses us in public, stays up at night and busts us for trying to sneak in, let’s us know when we’ve disappointed him and disciplines us when we deserve it. Teens hate that!

However, eventually teens grow out of their rebellion. They realize their parents were right about almost everything, and they are pleased that they are able to have a loving relationship with them once more. So in the long run, if we can learn anything from this piece of propaganda…its that the New Atheism might be the result of hormones and puberty, and in a few decades humanity will see the need to restore their relationship with God….and have slightly less oily skin.

 

Apostasy and Diet Plans

Any given week in newsstands everywhere you can be guaranteed to see three things: First, you will see less magazine options than there were last year due to the beauty of digital media. Second, you will see at least 17 pictures of women wearing barely anything on various magazine covers and assuring you that they do this not for attention, but because they are proud of how they look (which also explains why they have their pictures photoshoped?). Third though, you are guaranteed to find at least one headline for a “guilt free dessert”.

The idea of a guilt free dessert is interesting, because it presumes that: one, I attach moral value to Oreos, and two, that a dessert can maintain taste without that which caused the taste. Whereas a “guilt free cheesecake” might be palatable, or even resemble cheesecake’s flavor, The Cheesecake Factory is not overtly scared that it will be put out of business by Jenny Craig’s Cheesecake Fit Bar (or what ever its called).

Why aren’t people flocking from the Cheesecake Factory to the Jenny Craig Bar? Because once that which causes the guilt has been removed, the cheesecake doesn’t taste as good; it seems to be missing something.

Why the extended discussion on dessert? It’s oddly enough not because I’m hungry, but rather because the analogy seems fitting as I consider the topic of apostasy. In the past few weeks I’ve read and heard multiple stories of men and women who have walked away from Christianity, and a frequent statement they make is that they feel so much less guilt, or so much peace since making that choice. They have less existential angst since they gave up on Christianity, or deemed it intellectually untenable.

Two of the stories I’ve read were those of William Lobdell and John Loftus. Lobdell was a reporter who was converting to Catholicism in the 90’s when the Catholic sexual abuse scandals broke. He wrestled with the evil he saw and tried hard to accept the fact that religious people could be evil and yet God could still be good. He wasn’t able to. He turned to drinking, became irritable, etc. The man could not know peace until he stopped believing in Christianity.

John Loftus studied under William Lane Craig and has 2 Masters in theology, yet has also walked away from the faith. In his book Why I Rejected Christianity Loftus explains that while a pastor, he had an affair with a stripper who helped him in a community outreach program. When I spoke with him after a speaking engagement, I asked about the affair and he assured me that it was not what lead him away from the faith, the books he read on science were. However, in his book, at the conclusion of his de-conversion, Loftus touts that he now lives a guilt free life.

Both of these men, who by the way seem like genuine and kind men, were in a state of unrest, and once they gave up their faith, they experienced freedom from guilt. Neither argues that one should walk away from the faith in order to flee guilt/angst; however, they both do present a lack of guilt as an atheistic signing bonus. So, What has caused this new lack of guilt?

Roughly, its what happened with the cheesecake. The content that served to give the cheesecake its flavor is removed, and there’s no guilt anymore. Concordantly, the content that served to cause guilt or unrest was removed from these men’s lives and they now both know a great peace. The question remains though: Is it worth it? Leaving behind health concerns (for I know that this is where my analogy breaks down) and looking purely at taste, is guiltless cheesecake ever the same as real cheesecake?

These men felt guilt/unrest because they had lives that touched truth (I won’t say that they embraced the truth, I can’t know that, but they were very aware of it). Truth is what caused them to be aware of their failings and the failings of others, and the way they found peace was, instead of heeding that truth, removing it.

The guiltless life is only possible in 3 ways: you don’t sin, you fully trust that your sins are no longer your own because Christ took them, or you stop thinking that sin exists. The first is impossible. The second is a life long battle of realizing a deeply held actuality. The third is the easiest and most immediate. To stop feeling guilty, remove the standard that judges you as wrong, and therefore as guilty. All you have to do is accept a life that tastes less rich, less deep and less Oreo-like in its greatness.

 

The Deceptive Question of “Why?”

Over 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Each day, millions of children die due to malnutrition or disease. People have to go through their lives missing limbs, stuck in wheelchairs, battling down syndrome, etc. We don’t have exact numbers, but we know that daily people are raped, molested, beaten, tortured, mutilated….How can God be good and loving and still let these things happen? How can God either allow or cause such pain to happen to creatures He claims to love?

This question is the most frequently asked of believers. The issues with causation, naturalism or evolution are all secondary to this issue. As Christians, we can look at the fine-tuning of the universe, or irreducible complexities all day long and be fine. Even if we don’t understand the debates, we can feel good knowing that there appear to be solid philosophic reasons to believe in God, and that scientific inquiry doesn’t fly in the face of God; however evil and suffering remain. No matter how adept one is at understanding philosophical argument, the death of a child is understood universally as painful and evil. How do we as Christians even begin to address such a question?

Well, there are many ways to address it. The vast majority of them are to attack the argument itself, which truthfully is the only way to refute the argument in philosophical discourse. My favorite of these tactics is to point out that without an absolute yet personal entity, there is no standard for “good” making the concept of “evil” meaningless. If there is no standard for what is good, then nothing is actually evil. The question is self-refuting. (Please note that whereas evil is dependent on good, good is not dependent on evil. The absence or perverting of a thing predicates the existence of the thing, but the opposite is not true).

There clearly is more to say about ways to address the question itself, but I would prefer to look at the heart behind the question. If God is good, why is there evil? If God is good, why is there suffering? I just finished reading the book Losing my Religion by William Lobdell where he talks about being a reporter covering the Catholic sexual abuse scandals and how that eventually led him to leave the faith. How could God let these boys be molested?

That is a hard question. And as Christians, if we look at it and give a glib answer to it—a throw away Christian cliché—we should be ashamed of ourselves. But presently, I’m considering, what is the heart of this question? What I perceive to be at the heart of of the question, beyond the hurt, pain and confusion, is a truthfully unanswerable question, which is actually no objection to Christianity.

Let me explain. What possible answer could be given when someone asks why the Holocaust happened? In order to answer that, the Christian would have to supply a reason that the questioner deemed of greater value than the life of 6 million Jews. Obviously this threshold of what’s acceptable would sway based upon the questioner, but the fact remains, the answer to the “why” would merely have to make what happened in the Holocaust seem worth it from the human perspective.

(Oddly enough, it seems that the same type of question, only a more personal one, “Why was I raped?” or “Why did my child die of cancer?” seem harder to address than the Holocaust issue. The fact is, we have a higher threshold for explanation on our own pain than on the pain of others.)

Let’s look at an easier case, if on can call it that, in this “why” question. In 1999, Columbine High School was rocked by the unprecedented actions of two seniors who killed 12 students and 1 teacher. One of the slain, Rachel Scott, took a stand in the last seconds of her life for God, and many have credited her actions as either strengthening their faith, or as helping to lead them to Christ.

So, in the case of Columbine, we can say to the questioner, “X number of people were saved and inspired.” However, that doesn’t fully answer the question. Let’s pretend that the questioner accepts the reason and does not dismiss it as hearsay or coincidence. His response will most likely be, “Well, couldn’t God have done that another way?”

You see, the questions about the Holocaust, Columbine, rape, molestation, murder, etc, are truthfully not “why” questions. This is why we as Christian have a hard time, if we take the pain of the issues seriously, addressing them. At core, the questions are ones of “why this way?” If God is good, why is this the way He chose to do X? Usually when the question is asked, we don’t know that “X” represents, but when we find out it’s a safe bet that the questioner won’t be satisfied by it.

We can conclude then, that if the true intent of the objection to God’s goodness is not that the questioner demands a reason, but rather that the questioner disapproves of the means whereby God acted, then the objection is not, “If God is truly good why did he let 13 people die at Columbine?” but rather “If I were God, I would have achieved my goal in a painless manner.” Hitchens is pretty adamant about the fact that he’d run things differently if he were God, and in a recent lecture I attended, John Loftus explained that if he were God he would have made animals not experience suffering.

At this point, its impossible not to sound heartless. If objections to God’s existence based upon His apparently lack of goodness are truthfully nothing more than the objector asserting that they disagree with the way God did something and would have done it another way; then I see no real objection to God’s existence. There are persons whom do things in manners that I disagree with all the time, yet I can’t use that to argue against their existence, why do we think its viable as a weapon against God?

Further, if there is a God, He is smarter than the person objecting to His existence because they did not do things the way they wanted Him to do them. This line of argumentation is not much different than when a child believes they should be principle of their school because they would give longer recesses, when they don’t realize that such a choice would extend the school year, raise teachers salaries and increase the state debt.

I realize this all sounds harsh, but at core, the argument against God’s existence due to evil is nothing more than the cry of a sad and wounded heart wishing it wasn’t enduring the pain it presently feels. Its not looking for an answer, its just the reaction of an being made in God’s image lashing out at the sin and pain that we brought on ourselves and wanting to shift the focus else where. It’s the result of being told for years that we should never experience pain and that when someone loves you they want you happy no matter what, as opposed to wanting you holy no matter what.

Its for these reasons that when someone objects to God’s existence due to suffering and evil, I both dismiss the argument and yet take it dreadfully seriously. I dismiss it because it’s a contentless objection due to a statement of preference; yet it remains a window into the heart of a broken person attempting to understand the world that isn’t how they think t should be….and they’re right. This world isn’t how it ought to be…but for very different reasons than they posit.

But that’s another post

(Note: This post is about those using “why” as an objection, not as an honest question. Those asking it as an honest question are usually within the realm of Christendom and therefore would not use it as an objection. To this person, there is often not an answer, just the opportunity to walk through the hurt/evil with them. This tactic is the one that we see Christ demonstrate frequently)