Bill's Religious Archives

The Fourth Horseman

2011-10-11T02:58:00.000-07:00

The allusion in the title is to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, to which the four most widely known atheists, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett have been compared, callling them the Four Horsemen of Atheism. I have discussed Dawkins and Hitchens here, and Harris, briefly, here. This post concerns Daniel Dennett.

Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell[1], is what places him with the other three atheists, but I don't think it is a fair characterization of his writing. Actually the whole allusion to the four horsemen is unfair to both Harris and Dennett, much like lumping Fundamentalism, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism together and calling them Christian. In many ways the differences are just as great among the atheists as among the three types of Christianity.

Dennett is an atheist, but he doesn't rub one's nose in it like Dawkins or Hitchens, nor does he outright condemn belief in God as do the other three, nor does he attempt to destroy religious belief. As a philosopher, he is stepping back a bit and in effect saying, "Religion is a big deal in the lives of many if not most people, we should understand why." He is proposing that religion should be studied like any other natural phenomenon, such as reproduction or social structures, with a view to understanding both what is beneficial and what is detrimental to people. He is also aware that in the studying of it, it is possible that it might be broken, that a part of its efficacy is its mystery.

The concern over understanding how religion really works, is "the spell" that he is proposing to break. He spends the first chapter pointing out that from a biological perspective, religion does not make sense. He also points out that religions enjoy "traditional exemption from certain sorts of analysis and criticism." [ital in original] This exemption is the spell. The spell is also the feelings that religion inspires in some people. The danger in studying religion is that this spell will be broken. He spends most of the book making the case that the study is worth the risk. But then he is not a believer.

I am not a fan of Dennett, but neither am I a foe. I have disagreements in one of his areas of expertise, the mind, but I found much to respect in this book. If one gets around or ignores the rank egotism of his wanting to refer to the intellectual atheists as "brights" the book is generally respectful of religion and religious people. He tends to elevate evolution to the same quasi-religious plane that Dawkins does, but is less offensive about it and provides quite a bit more information along the way.

He also brings in some very different illustrations from nature than the usual ones. Being a philosopher of the mind, he is fascinated by natural events that reprogram the minds of animals. In Elbow Room, he discusses a wasp call sphix, that has a very complex behavior that it turns out is not at all thinking though it appears that way. In this book he describes an ant that is infected with a fluke that changes the ant's behavior so that the fluke will be eaten by a cow or sheep. Dennett draws upon a much broader base of knowledge than any of the other authors I have read among the atheists. It shows in that his arguments are much stronger, and at the same time more temperate, with little dependence on rhetoric.

This book has caused me to reassess my opinions of Dennett. It now behooves me to acquire his entire output and carefully read it. I don't expect to come to agreement with him, but he is important for me to understand and be able to discuss, since we have at least two common areas of interest, religion and the mind.

[1]Dennett, Daniel C., Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Viking Penguin, New York, (2006)

God's Problem

2011-10-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

This is the title of a recent book[1] by Bart D. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It is an thorough presentation of the problem of suffering in the world as discussed in the Bible. It is also a personal statement by Dr. Ehrman on why he is an agnostic. He became an agnostic in response to the argument from evil against the existence of God.

This book is a very readable and excellent guide to what the Bible says about suffering, and points out that the answers are contradictory. Along the way, Dr. Ehrman points out the illogic of people who thank God for saving them when they are among the few saved in a disaster, when many others died at the same time. The obvious question is, "Why didn't He save them also?" or "Why did He allow the disaster in the first place?"

I have discussed the problems of good and evil and theodicy in other posts, so won't repeat the discussion. My answer, rather than agnosticism or atheism, was to decide that God was not omnipotent. [My thirty years of agnosticism were due to logical, philosophical issues not the problem of evil.]

Dr. Ehrman's presentation of the problem of evil is excellent. I think his attempted resolution is a bit weak, but then many would say my resolution leads to a God that is not worth worshipping. (Actually, I can't say as I worship God so much as revere, respect, and listen to Him.)

For anyone concerned with the theodicy, this is an important book. It presents all the sides of the issue, and all of the answers that have been offered. I strongly recommend it.

[1] Bart D. Ehrman, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer, HarperCollins, New York, 2008

The End of Faith

2011-05-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

I have just finished Sam Harris' book, The End of Faith. It of course belongs with the other output from the so-called New Atheists, or as I term them, the Evangelical Atheists (EAs). However, much about the book is a marked departure from the usual polemics. Compared to Sam Harris, people such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, John Loftus, and Richard Carrier are more like rabid dogs, foaming at the mouth, and snapping at anything within reach. Harris has much to say, and though it may not all be accurate, he does it in a reasonable manner. One has the idea that he might actually be willing to discuss and reason with his opponents rather than subject them to some sort of ad hominum attack.

One of the more outstanding points in his book (and one that has apparently not set well with the other EAs) is that he is willing to consider that there may be something other than just materialism, that there may be things spiritual to consider. Another outstanding point and one he shares with Christopher Hitchens, is he is willing to tackle Islam as being what it is--a murderous political religion that is of necessity exactly that and not a "religion of peace." Harris' analysis is more thorough than that of Hitchens and certainly much more convincing.

There are places where his liberal political leanings show through, and to some degree I think they color his assessment of the role of religion in the US today. He does not really attack the Nazis, or the Communists (Stalin, Mao) with the same vigor and detail that he does Islam or the Inquisition. As a result the impression is much more skewed against religion, which is his objective.

A thorough analysis of his book will have to wait for another time. I will probably also include his ethics book with it when I do it.

Probably the most unusual part of reading this book was it was not painful, as was reading Dawkins, Hitchens, Loftus, and Carrier.

A realization

2011-04-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

As part of my readings for "Skeptics and Believers" I am reading Christopher Hitchen's "God is not Great." This is much like Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," a collection of all the horrors he can find executed in the name of religion being used as the single exemplars of religion and then condemning religion and the belief in God based on this extremely biased sample. What created the realization was the constant repetition of "Religion poisons everything."

I suddenly realized that both Hitchens and Dawkins are using exactly the same logic as the gun-grabbers. Gun-grabbers blame the gun not the person pulling the trigger for the damage or death caused by gun-fire. Hitchens and Dawkins blame the religion not the person using it to justify their horrific behavior. Religion is simply a formal or informal statement of beliefs that can be used to justify behavior, and depending on the person using it, the behavior can be either evil or beneficent. Unless, like the Quran, there are explicit directives to perform evil acts, religion and religious doctrine is of itself neither good nor bad. It is the uses to which HUMANS put it that create good or evil.

Of course, in addition to misplacing the blame for the evils done in the name of religion, both these atheists refuse to acknowledge that there is good coming to the world in the name of religion. Then the issue would not be so clear-cut.

A kindred soul

2011-04-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

I have been watching a DVD course from The Teaching Company, called "Skeptics and Believers." This is a historical study of the various versions and criticisms of Christianity since the Enlightenment. I also am doing all the readings that go with the lectures. We are currently on the early 19th century, and specifically Friedrich Schleiermacher. He is considered the founding of the Romantic school of theology, and has influence still today. In Claude Welch's book, "Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century", Vol 1, on p. 63, is this quote from Schleiermacher:

"...to create an eternal covenant between the living Christian faith and an independent and freely working science, a covenant by the terms of which science is not hindered and faith not excluded."

With the exception that I have no pretensions of creating something eternal, this is the most concise statement of my aims with my religious studies and writings that I have seen.

What I am doing is even in keeping with his ideas. He believed that religious ideas had to be restated with succeeding generations to keep their meaning. So I am working to restate them to have meaning for our times.

Win the Future

2011-01-31T12:37:00.001-08:00

I think the abbreviation for Win the Future, WTF, applies quite effectively with its original meaning as a response to the State of the Union speech.

Some general thoughts concerning religion

2011-01-31T12:18:00.001-08:00

Religious Diversity
I have become somewhat interested in religious diversity through the writings of my friend, Kevin Kim. Kevin discusses that there seem to be two main views of religious pluralism or diversity, convergent and divergent. The convergent view says that all religions are ultimately expressing the same thing in different terms (Gross oversimplification but that is the essence) and the divergent view says that they are discussing different things. I tend to agree with the divergent view for the following reason(s).

The universe and our totality of experience is much richer than we can contemplate in its entirety. It is much like the blind men and the elephant, and each of us or each group of us focuses on a limited set of attributes. However, in the case of religion we have no way of knowing that the various belief systems are related at some core, a la the elephant. It is more likely that each religious tradition carves out its set of interests and creates boundaries that prevent its finding some core. As long as the participants believe it has answered the questions they wish answered, there is no motivation to look beyond those boundaries. As a consequence, I do not think it possible to find some common belief system among the various religious traditions. This is not to say they are in conflict. It is quite possible for them to coexist both socially and within the same individual. This is an area of further study for me, and I expect there will be modification of my views over time.

Bibilical Interpretation
There is a version of biblical interpretation that seems to want to approach the Bible as if every word is exactly, factually true, as written, in the 21st Century. This is the basis of Fundamentalism, and it is a dependency for Evangelical Atheism to have any say. It apparently motivates the author of a book our daughter loaned me called "The Year of Living Biblically." Even at my early stages of study, it is a ridiculous position to take. First of all, what version of the Bible is definitive, King James, New International, Revised Standard, New Revised Standard, The English Bible, The North American Standard, etc. I have worked with nine different translations, and found that for theologically difficult areas, there are nine different renderings of what is supposedly the same Greek text.

Not only that, if one looks a the field of textual criticism, one finds that it is impossible to determine the original text. We are looking at many generations of copies, and the oldest versions found are second to third century, over one hundred years after the originals were written. Textual critics have found hundreds of thousands of errors or changes in various copies. Some are as simple as misspellings, but some are rewritings to fit a particular theological stance. Then one can question which textual version did a particular translation use as its base. Interestingly enough, the King James version, which is often the basis for the biblical inerrantists, is currently considered to have a very unreliable version of the Greek as its basis, compared to what has been found over the last fifty to one hundred years.

If one is going to do interpretation of scripture in modern times, there is a complex process that has to be undertaken. First one has to determine what is historical vs. theological in the writing. Second, one must determine what the writings meant for the author and his/her audience. Then one must determine if that meaning can still hold today, especially in the light of modern scientific findings. Finally one can apply the scriptures to today's world.

There are very egregious violations of this program today, the most notable being the "Left Behind" series of books. Based on a direct application of the words of "The Book of Revelation" to modern society, it is a completed reinterpretation of that book which described the evils of the Roman Empire. 666, the "mark of the beast" is the sum of the numeric analogs of the letters of the alphabet used to write the name of Emperor Nero. This is not the first time, but is one of the more notable times this has been done. Another version of this was "The Late, Great Planet Earth."

I believe one of the problems that Christianity has today, is that it has not been brought up to date, but rather has been diluted with a false inclusiveness vs. a theological restructuring.

The Stifling of Religious Expression in the US
From the time I was in high school fifty years ago, to now, there has been a constant effort by some athests to suppress the expression of religion in the public forum. Lawsuits over prayer in school, creche scenes in public parks, the existence of crosses in public places all have been part of this effort. Where the Constitution says that Congress cannot make any law to force people to attend a certain church, or consider any church an "official" church, they have taken it to mean that there cannot be any expression, voluntary or otherwise, in public forums of religious belief. There have even been instances where, contrary to the second phrase of that amendment, that there can be no law burdening religion, religious groups were banned from having any meetings on public property though there was no connection of the religion to the property, yet all other organizations could use it.

On the other side, Fundamentalists have attempted to create in law some of their beliefs, such as the teaching of Intelligent Design as part of the science curriculum in high schools, or laws restricting what can be offered on motel television movie systems, or laws restricting life partnerships recognized by the state to only a man and a woman. [I have written on this before, and I have no problem with the state recognizing civil unions. The biggest part of the controversy is the attempt to redefine marriage, which has met with greater restrictions than would otherwise occur.] The most contentious effort is the one to completely ban abortion. Which is a simplistic approach to a very complex issue. Note that unlimited abortion is an equally simplistic approach to that issue, though that is the current law.

Between the Evangelical Atheists and the Fundamentalist Christians, all the air has been sucked out of the room with respect to religious discussion in public. I will do what I can to counter this. In effect, I will eventually produce a lot of words that will boil down to, "A pox on both your houses." The intolerance of both groups for any beliefs but theirs runs counter to all the aspirations for Freedom of Religion that this country was founded on.

An inadequate “Case Against Christianity”

2010-08-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

“The Case Against Christianity” by Michael Martin, (Temple Press, Philadelphia, 1991) is written by a capital “A” Atheist, one who evangelizes for atheism. Having been an atheist for thirty years prior to becoming a theist, I have no problem with someone publishing a book in support of atheism. However, I would have expected something better than this from a professor of philosophy. Despite the claims on the back of the cover, the scholarship is lacking to the point of appearing as intellectual cowardliness, the premises of the argument are set up to guarantee his “winning,” and he sets up a caricature of Christianity as being the whole or at least the majority of it. His technique could be described as episodes of particular specificity surrounded by large amounts of generality. I think the writing could be described as rhetorical not scholarly. He also depends on a lack of proof being taken as disproof of Christian positions, as he presents them. This of course is a logical fallacy, so is not explicitly presented but is implied throughout the book. It is exactly the kind of book, I in my atheistic days, untrained in philosophy and having only a smattering of scholarship in the area would have written. As such it does a disservice to all involved, Christians, atheists, and philosophers, trivializing centuries of debate.

Were it not for the current atmosphere of hostility to Judeo-Christian belief in our society, this book could be ignored. Considering that it is twenty years old and little or no mention has been made of it, that I have seen, it has been ignored. However, it is also an example of the kind of argumentation that can have persuasiveness to wannabe intellectuals, who read it as support of their adoption of atheism, without the knowledge to evaluate it uncritically. (Even those who should be critical apparently aren’t, given their support on the back cover.) Apparently being an Atheist, as opposed to an atheist, blinds one to ones own illogic and poor argumentation, just as Fundamentalism blinds one to the current status of science and scholarly religious discourse. This review is presented to make an object lesson of this book in how not to argue religious questions.

From the first, Professor Martin engages in the use of sweeping generalization of history, dismissing the first few hundred years of debate over what constitutes the correct Christian doctrines as a massive suppression of dissent by the church. He also sees the rise of Biblical Criticism and emergence of Science in the Nineteenth Century as an attack on Christian doctrine not as an attempt better understand the world. An in-depth study of both of these periods would show it to be much more complex than that.

At this point he justifies his book and presents us with these two paragraphs:

“Although some nineteenth- and twentieth-century criticisms of Christianity deserve praise for raising important critical questions and for continuing the work of the earlier critics, an adequate, systematic, philosophical critique has yet to be produced. The purpose of this work is to present such a criticism. Although I have elsewhere argued at length for atheism, this view will not be presupposed in what follows. Indeed, a reader can believe in God and accept everything in this book without being inconsistent.

“My object in presenting the case against Christianity is theoretical, not practical. I am not so naïve as to suppose that the arguments set forth here will induce many people to give up their Christian beliefs. My claim is simply that in the light of my discussion rational people should give up these beliefs.”

The claims being made here are breath-taking in their sweep and scope. First is his claim that the book is an “adequate, systematic, philosophical critique.” Second is that it is the first such critique. The third is that his discussion is correct and rational, and finally that his rationality of argument is sufficient to cause a reversal of belief. If one looks at the footnotes, his reputed critical sources are pamphleteers from the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. There are no sources from the work of Higher Criticism that arose at that time. He places himself among poor competition from the start. But worse is his complete ignorance or active ignoring of the centuries of debate that started in the Seventeenth Century over Christian doctrine and its applicability. He is definitely not the first systematic critic. His last sentence is what is so wonderfully arrogant. Restated he says, “I am right and therefore you should change your beliefs. To not do so is to be irrational.” Rationality is based on premises that are given not proven. His premises have to be as convincing as those he is trying to replace, and the logic must flow without choices from those premises. Essentially he is making a claim to infallibility, since he creates an imperative statement.

He next establishes what he will call Christianity against which to make his case. He starts with the creeds, Apostle’s, Nicene, and Athanasian. His presentation of the creeds and their history is quite fair. He uses an obscure 1877 book by Phillip Schaff, who Professor Martin describes as a scholar of the creeds, to support his claim that they are accepted and provide a description of their purposes in mainline churches. In my mind this is pseudo-scholarship. The fact that the three creeds are in prayer books and hymnals and used at services in almost all Christian churches is sufficient. He is simply trying to create a gloss of scholarship on his writing here. He then compares and discusses the various beliefs stated in the creeds and from that creates definitions of the beliefs of a “Basic Christian,” a “Liberal Christian,” and an “Orthodox Christian.”

It is in creating his definitions that he uses a stylistic device that is apparently an attempt to create the impression of deep analysis. He uses formal logic to create the definitions. Example:
“Person P is a Basic Christian if and only if P believes that …..”
Or
“Person P is an Orthodox Christian if and only if P is a Basic Christian and P believes…..”
This type of formality is only used here and in one or two other places. Yet nowhere does the reasoning or discussion use these formalities. I have seen the same kinds of devices in my early writing when I was trying to pretend I was very knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I suspect the same thing here. He then introduces an extra belief statement that Jesus is the model of ethical behavior. He also adds to the definition that a Christian attempts to follow the ethical teachings of Jesus.

At this point, he appears to be reasonable enough, and one can easily accept his starting premises so far. Based on what occurs in the rest of the book, one has to be very careful. He is actually setting up a bait and switch. He will define Orthodox Christianity very rigidly, add biblical literalism, attack it in detail, then claim he has made a case against Christianity, when all he has done is point out the illogic of literal reading and interpretation of the creeds and the Bible.

In the Introduction which we are still considering, he states that these articles of belief are assumptions, and then raises some questions concerning them. Here is where we see some beginnings of tilting the argument in the givens. He divides the beliefs into three groups, historical, theological, and ethical. That of itself is not an issue, it is how he sorts them that starts creating concern.

He groups the existence of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, the Crucifixion by Pilate, and the Resurrection as historical theses. He then states that historical methods are applicable to determining the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. He also makes the claim that historical research is relevant to the determination of the truth of the Second Coming, and in deciding whether Jesus was the Son of God and not a mere man. He also wants to use historical evidence in Jesus’ teachings about salvation and ethics. First of all, he is asking us to agree to the historicity of these events as determining their truth or falsity. These are articles of faith. To some degree they are based on historical events, but one does not make an argument strictly from history in these cases. Moreover, he is also making a claim that he can present a historical case for or against these. As we continue in the book, he does a poor job of it compared to the work I have seen written by true historians.

Considering that the issue of the Virgin Birth may possibly hinge on translation issues of the Koine Greek passages and on interpretation of other scripture, which is contentious in itself, it is hard to believe that historical analysis can provide light here. There have been many previous discussions of the Virgin Birth, and my former pastor said, “My belief is not based on the state of Mary’s hymen.” Of course this puts him outside the author’s definition of an Orthodox Christian, which, as we shall see, is what he is attacking. So the Virgin Birth is as important to our author’s case as it may be to some Christians. The literal Virgin Birth is essential to his case.

The Resurrection is still another issue that does not seem readily amenable to historical methods. The empty tomb may well be in the domain of history, but the explanations may not. The appearances of Jesus after death may be questioned, but ultimately one has not a definitive acceptance or rejection by logic and analysis, but a decision based on one’s own evaluation of the evidence for and against. It is a “fuzzy logic” decision. As for the Second Coming, it is a prediction not a historical event. What we shall see is that he wants to use the absolute, literal statements on when the Second Coming will occur to discredit it.

We shall leave the use of history to decide if Jesus was the Son of God and Jesus’ teachings until the author discusses them.

He then states that the assumptions of the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, and salvation through faith in Jesus raise theological issues as well. He asks some example questions, some of which are immediately not literally true, and some of which have engaged theologians for centuries. He also questions whether Jesus’ ethical views are plausible and if they should be a model of ethical behavior.

The remainder of the Introduction lays out the overall approach of the book. He also mentions that he has two appendices on Divine Command theory of ethics and theories of Atonement. I am not sure why he includes these since he admits that Divine Command theory of ethics is not part of his definition of Christianity, and theory of Atonement is not part of any of the creeds.

This is an ambitious program, requiring the abilities of a historian, a theologian, and an ethicist. People have made a lifetime career of discussion one of the issues he raises, and he is going to cover them all. And, as we shall see, he believes that if one destroys these beliefs by the use of logic one must have destroyed a belief in Christianity or else be deemed irrational. What he forgets is that failure to prove is not disproof. He also is extremely dependent on a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible, a view that is in the minority of Christianity today.

In the first chapter of the book, “The Basis of Christian Belief,” he asks the question, “Under what conditions should one believe Christian doctrines?” This is the first step in creating a tilted playing field for the discussion. He is assuming that belief is conditional, and that people arrive at belief via reason. For he then answers his question, “Surely the answer that recommends itself to reason and common sense is: Other things being equal, one should believe them only if there are good reasons to do so.” Of course his goal is to show there are no good reasons to do so. What is totally ignored is that religious issues are not decided solely on the basis of reason. They are more often decided on the basis of emotional perception and subjective experiences. Such inputs are not subject to reason and therefore “Other things” are never equal. He then creates a classification of reasons to believe into “epistemic reasons,” reasons that make the doctrines likely, and “beneficial reasons,” reasons that benefit the believer. He in turn creates two categories from the beneficial reasons, “moral” and “prudential.” He also considers interpretation of the answers either broadly, which includes all the reasons, or narrowly, which includes only epistemic reasons.

At this point we begin to see the outlines of his approach. The next sentence reads, “There is a strong presumption that one should believe Christian doctrines only on epistemic reasons.” He references his own prior book, Atheism: a Philosophical Justification to support the claim. Considering that epistemic grounds are those which can be demonstrated or supported with objective evidence, he has immediately created a bias in the rule set that eliminates any considerations other than physically evidential. If one buys that condition of the argument one has essentially ceded the battle before it starts. When he couples that with a demand for literal interpretation of creed and scripture, it is easy for him to claim that Christianity fails to be reasonable by his criteria. He waxes on in the paragraph about the unstated dangers of believing Christian doctrine on insufficient evidence. This begs the question: “Insufficient by whose standards?” He also makes a point of the possibility of being epistemologically irresponsible, which sounds good but has no useful meaning, unless one takes the time to define what is “epistemological responsibility.”

At this point he concludes: “…there is both a moral duty and an epistemic duty not to believe in Christian doctrines unless there are good epistemic reasons to believe them. It is indeed a strange view of belief that thinks it is totally subject to duty and reason. Like most fundamental parts of a person’s being, beliefs are built up from far more than just reason and physical evidence. Generally, in this author’s experience, belief is changed only by major experiential events or prolonged intellectual struggle, not some facile discussion of epistemic evidence.

He next discusses beneficial reasons. He states that beneficial reasons might be used when the epistemic evidence is even, i.e. as a tie-breaker. He also says that it is allowable for belief for beneficial reasons if the epistemic evidence is inadequate or, in very special instances when it goes against belief. His justification, however, for this approach is utilitarian, saying that the belief from beneficial reasons will result in benefits and not result in “long-term adverse effects on society, its institutions, and human personality and character.” He presents a couple of rather far-fetched examples of possible beneficial reasons to believe. He is attempting to make the decision to believe one of utilitarian choice, and finally states that there are no reasons to accept a Christian God over any other supernatural being, and that personal happiness is a decision based on individual background. It is interesting that in his discussion of beneficial reasons, he mentions Pascal and William James as having made beneficial arguments, but he simply dismisses them. The fact is that other than his straw men, he does not deal with any of the theological discussions over the ages concerning beneficial reasons to believe. It is a case of silence and tip-toeing by.

He then asks, “Cannot Christian doctrines be based on faith? “ He then looks at the discussions of faith by Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He uses them as stalking horses, considering them as representative of their type of faith arguments and states that if he finds problems with these then there will be problems with discussions that are similar. Of course he ignores the possibility that there might be discussions that are not based on the same ideas as these three.

I have not read Thomas Aquinas and therefore cannot judge the accuracy or the fairness of his summary of Aquinas’ arguments. Professor Martin states that Aquinas uses the existence of miracles the success of the Christian church, and the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy as evidence of the truth of Christian doctrine. He then proceeds to state that these are not adequate supports. Though I would have liked to see more of why he considers miracles a problem, in a generic sense I agree with that statement. His saying other religions are successful by the same criteria is true today, but in Aquinas time, the Roman Catholic church was the only major church. His disputing the Biblical Prophecies by pointing out the failure of the Second Coming, is to revert to Biblical literalism. On this last issue, even by Aquinas’ time it was being interpreted as symbolic rather than literal. The problem is that Professor Martin is disputing a thirteenth century discussion using modern perspectives. That is similar to arguing that a flintlock muzzle-loader is ineffective and useless because there are now automatic rifles. At the time the flintlock was used it was effective. It is the same for Aquinas. There have been many more modern discussions of faith since then, and many of them could be considered “traditional.”

The choice of Kierkegaard for faith is to choose one of the extremes of justification of faith. According to Professor Martin, Kierkegaard argues that a total commitment to a Christian God is necessary even in the face of all contrary evidence, that a belief in God is not justified by reason. Furthermore, Dr. Martin then identifies a Kierkegaardian faith as fanaticism, and discusses the dangers of fanaticism. Dr. Martin then states, “We know from history the incalculable harm that can be done by fanaticism,” and continues with a build-up of the evils of fanaticism. He then condemns Kierkegaard’s definition of faith as a vice not a virtue because he has equated it to fanaticism. At this point he has made several errors. First, he thinks that it is dangerous to be guided by blind, passionate faith. I would argue that it depends on what the guidance is. The example he uses is Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac. That may have seemed dangerous for Isaac, but for Abraham, it would have risked an even greater danger. Professor Martin cannot have his cake and eat it too. If we are going to use utilitarian ethics to judge then don’t suddenly use absolutes of judgment. The discussion of the evils of fanaticism are out of place in the discussion of faith by Kierkegaard. Professor Martin has greatly oversimplified and then caricatured it as fanaticism.

I see no constructive reason why the author chose Wittgenstein as the third exemplar of faith. I know of no Christian doctrine or discussion that is based on Wittgenstein, and from Dr. Martin’s discussion it would not occur. All religions believe in words as common to all of humanity, not as special constructs for their own use. If Dr. Martin’s summary is accurate, Wittgenstein is a retreat from meaning to meaningless internal analysis. Professor Martin and I agree in his last paragraph in this section: “…Christian and non-Christian are really disagreeing and that there is a common language and common categories.” However, we disagree in what he has accomplished. He thinks he has undermined faith as a reason for believing in Christian doctrine. I think he has failed in this task because he chose an outdated discussion of faith, a caricature of faith, and a meaningless view of faith as his exemplars, and having disposed of them generalized it to all of Christian faith, a error.

Now he turns to Christian doctrines as basic beliefs. Using the ideas from the foundational approach to epistemology, one states there are beliefs that are accepted as is and not justified by other beliefs to avoid infinite regress or vicious circularity. Dr. Martin points out that foundational epistemology originally related to simple mathematical and logical statements and to sense experiences. He then discusses the extensions of foundational epistemology to belief in God according Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga supposedly holds that a belief in God is properly basic, i.e. the same as the foundational statements “2+2=4” or “a thing is one thing or not one thing but not both.” However, apparently Plantigna continues by saying that even though it is basic it has grounds for belief. Professor Martin considers this an error and from there to a description of what he considers the problems with Plantigna’s formulation. Finally, he states that Plantigna 1) violates the spirit and intention of foundationalism, 2) claims that no belief can become a basic belief, 3) it makes it too easy for a belief to be considered rational, and 4) that all Christians hold common beliefs that are basic and that they agree on the conditions that make them so. The validity of his arguments is tied up in both his reading of Plantigna and foundational epistemology, neither of which I can comment on. However, his fifth observation is that a belief in God is not appropriate for inclusion in the class of basic beliefs. This I strongly disagree with. To believe in God or not believe in God, i.e. believe in no-God, is of necessity the first choice. It is foundational. Once that decision has been made, everything else is justification for that belief. His discussion is fairly effective in disputing Plantigna on a belief in God as a basic belief. However, I think he has cherry-picked the philosopher he disputes for his particularly weak presentation.

I seriously doubt that Alvin Plantigna is the only religious philosopher to discuss belief, and to take Plantigna, a single example, and then consider the defeat of his arguments as defeating the entire concept of Christian doctrine as belief is analogous to taking out a Sergeant of a company and consider one has defeated the company. His goal in this chapter is to force the discussion of Christianity into a discussion of the epistemological basis of Christian doctrine. For atheists, myself included when I was an atheist, this is the easiest ground upon which to criticize Christian doctrine. However, that does not make it a slam-dunk. To base the entire case against Christianity solely on it epistemology is to ignore most of what religions are about. They are not solely about facts and logic but also the meaning of those facts, and the further implications when allied with personal subjective experience, and testimony of those one wishes to believe.

This essay will deal with the next Chapter in some detail since it concerns itself with the historical Jesus. Since the existence of Jesus is fundamental to Christianity, Dr. Martin’s treatment of the subject is important. This is an area in which I have done some study, so am slightly familiar with the literature and the scholars in the field.

Chapter 2, “The Historicity of Jesus,” begins with a very cursory overview designed to lead to the question, “Did Jesus really exist?” To quote the final paragraph of this peroration: “This chapter, then, considers the question of whether there is reliable historical evidence for the assumption for the historicity of Jesus. It will also ask if there is any historical evidence against this assumption.” To do this he draws primarily on one author, G. A. Wells, and does not discuss any work of the main scholars in the search for the historical Jesus (A review of the current activity in the field lists 19.) A reading of the end notes reveals a preponderance of titles indicating disbelief in the existence of Jesus. Considering that Gert Theissen and Annette Mertz published a major book (The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, Fortress Press, 1998) that was a guide to the literature on the historical Jesus and contained hundreds, if not close to or over a thousand references to the literature, Dr. Martin can hardly claim to have properly researched the topic. From my reading to date, there is much judgment in evaluating the evidence, and I think that Dr. Martin cannot claim any kind of impartiality here.

On with the review. Dr Martin opens the main thrust of his arguments with the common observations concerning the difficulties verifying independently the stories of Jesus in the Gospels. He generalizes the issue by saying, “Skepticism about the details of Jesus’ life can generate skepticism about his very existence.” He then claims that the most respected contemporary critique of the life of Jesus is G. A. Wells. He claims he is well known, and that his position is singled out by apologists for the historical Jesus. (A survey of the literature in my library, including authors that do not favor the current interpretations of Jesus’ life, do not list G. A. Wells as a source, despite Dr. Martin’s claim.)

Regardless of his esteem or lack of it, one still has to look at Well’s argument on its own merits. A proper presentation of Well’s argument is beyond the scope of this essay. It consists primarily of pointing to the Gospels as inadequate historical documents, Paul’s lack of mention of the details of Jesus’ life, the theological goals of the Gospels, the inadequacies of secular confirmation of the events in Jesus’ life, the inability to state dates accurately, and some reasoning on the sequence of appearance of certain narratives in the post-Gospel literature. Wells then concludes that Jesus was actually a myth based on the Jewish Wisdom literature. However, as one reads this summary, one finds that Wells exercises considerable judgment on what is and is not adequate evidence or mention of Jesus.

In discussing the criticisms of Wells, Dr. Martin quotes men that are not part of the mainline historical Jesus scholarship. He thus can be accused of trying to win his point by deliberately skewing the evidence. This area is so complex and difficult, that to try to treat it in a single chapter of 36 pages is not realistic. Based on the selection of scholars, the conclusion was foregone. Because of his own position and the goal he is trying to attain, Dr. Martin gives high credibility to skeptical positions and low credibility to affirmative positions on the existence of Jesus. Since there are figures in history from about the same time that are considered real on the basis of equivalent or even less information, it would appear that for Dr. Martin the stringency of proof for the life of Jesus’ is higher than for others.

The chapters on the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth and Second Coming, and The Incarnation deal with material that can be widely interpreted among Christians. Dr. Martin consistently requires a literal reading when referring to the Gospel stories, which literal reading is easily disputed and defeated. He uses his apparent destruction of a preceding doctrine as part of his case against the current doctrine under discussion. I am not going to discuss these chapters in any detail, as I would not present an effective discussion. I am currently working on my own formulations of the Resurrection and is sequels; I am partial to Mark, not Matthew or Luke concerning Jesus origins (unknown), I think the statements of the Second Coming has much to be discussed as to how and why they were recorded, and I do not believe in the Incarnation. However, unlike Dr. Martin, I do not consider these as reasons to discard Christianity or partial Christian belief.

I do think Dr. Martin’s discussion of Christian ethics warrants looking at in some detail. Though I don’t think it alone can make a case against Christianity, it does reveal some interesting overlaps between Christian and secular ethics.

Dr. Martin considers Jesus’ ethical teachings and example as essential to the case against Christianity. He also considers them important in substantiating the Incarnation. I directly disagree with this last statement. If Jesus’ behavior is to be emulated, to validate it by appealing to the Incarnation is to provide what I call the Divine Cop-out—how could we possibly be as good as Jesus, since he was divine? For Jesus to provide an example of proper human behavior, that behavior must come from someone who is completely and absolutely human while acting. Any other interpretation is to require behavior that is not possible for humans. From my point of view, Incarnation and Jesus example as a human are not related. Dr. Martin does consider the emulation of Jesus’ teachings and behavior as part of being a Christian, even the most liberal type of Christian, and in that I would agree.

The second paragraph of this chapter is a minefield full questions that can only be answered subjectively:

”Our first job is to try to become clear on what Jesus’ teachings were. As we shall see, this is not as easy as it may seem. Once we have some idea of Jesus’ ethics we must consider his gospel impartially and ask: Do Jesus’ teachings provide a workable ethics? Would a sensitive moral observer agree with what he taught? Was Jesus an ideal moral model? Would a sensitive moral person do what Jesus did? In addition, we must ask how Christian ethicists have interpreted Jesus’ saying. In so doing we must determine how Christian ethics differ from plausible systems of secular ethics and if Christian ethics have clear advantages over these secular systems.

His second sentence is a massive understatement. What Jesus said and what he meant by what he said is an active and controversial field today. Dr. Martin can only make his own evaluation of the issue, not a complete and overarching one that would allow him to make a clear pronouncement on Christian ethics. So from the start we have to take the position that he is discussing HIS interpretation of Jesus teachings. Dr. Martin makes a common mistake in the next sentence, the Gospels are not Jesus’ gospels, they are about Jesus not by him. This is a nit in one sense, but possibly important in how he deals with them. We must always keep in mind that the Gospels are what their authors wanted us to know about Jesus, and as such are not true biographies. Their purpose is to teach religious truth, not historical truth. The next four questions are completely open to subjective judgment—workable by what standard, what is meant by “a sensitive moral observer”, what is “an ideal moral model,” and what is meant by “a sensitive moral person?” The last two sentences actually have valid grounds for discussion, and a program of comparing the understanding of Christian ethicists to that of secular ethicists would be a topic for a major book in itself. I don’t doubt that there have been such books written. The one caveat that we must keep in mind for such a discussion is who are the Christian ethicists and who are the secular ethicists? One must be either very comprehensive or at least representative or the discussion becomes simply the comparison of two ethicists to one another, not a general comparison of Christian to secular ethics.

One of the major themes in the discussion of the historicity of Jesus, was that Paul and the Epistles, several of which were written prior to the Gospels do not quote Jesus’ teachings, even when in Dr. Martin’s opinion, it would be to the advantage of the writer to do so. He uses this a presumptive evidence that Jesus’ teachings were actually made up after the fact. This is a naïve representation of the issue, as the purpose of the Epistles was quite different from the purposes of the gospels. The analogy would be the Epistles are to the Gospels, as administrative letters are to the papers of incorporation of a company. The former does not necessarily need to quote the latter in performing their purpose. We must also remember that we do not know the complete context of any of the Epistles or the Gospels other than their internal content and the times in which they were written. There is far more room for selective interpretation than Dr. Martin would have us believe. However, Dr. Martin uses this argument to immediately cast doubt on Jesus’ teachings as being those of Jesus. He then chooses to continue his discussion as if the teachings as related in the Synoptic Gospels were the teachings of Jesus.

In developing his interpretation of Christian ethics, he acknowledges indebtedness to the following: An Atheist’s Values, by Richard Robinson, Atheism: The Case Against God, by George H. Smith, and “Why I am not a Christian” in Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, by Bertrand Russell. From the start he is using an interpretation from three atheists, not even his own interpretation. Immediately one wants to question whether he has read the Gospels himself or is simply taking someone else’s word for it. The remainder of the section quotes some of the most contentious and difficult of the Gospel verses—the so-called “hard verses”—because of the difficulty of preaching on them when taken literally. This, of course, is exactly what Dr. Martin wants to do, regardless of whether this is indeed what is commonly done in Christian churches. What follows is the playing of verses from one Gospel against another, without regard to any of the higher criticism that has occurred over the last one hundred years. This is the same kind of sophistry that Shelby Spong exhibited in one of his books, showing that literal interpretation of the Bible is contradictory. This is not news to any person educated in Christianity. This is where much of the intellectual work of biblical scholars, atheist, agnostic, and theist, has gone over the past hundred and fifty years.

When Dr. Martin discusses Jesus’ life as an example of his ethical teachings, he is selective in what he chooses and plays off the gentleness in Luke against the more judgmental stories in Matthew and Mark. He also accuses Jesus of anti-intellectuality because of his teachings that say to be as children, and to believe what he said. This ignores much of what Jesus said and did at other times, and definitely ignores the context of his teaching. One of the interpretations of his teachings is that he was working against the legalism of the Pharisees to get back to the spirit of the Law, not its absolute behavioral proscriptions. What comes out of the selections of Jesus behavior is more a caricature than a picture of him. His teachings are also evaluated by modern criteria rather than by the times in which he taught. Again, this time implicitly rather than explicitly, Dr. Martin is depending on a literal rather than a metaphorical or allegorical reading of the scripture. Such literalism is confined to only a subset of Christianity. In using a literal interpretation, he makes charges of unrealism and anti-intellectualism.

The section on “What Jesus’ Practices and Teachings Neglect” again depends on literalism in interpretation. Here is the opening of the section:

“Many Christians profess to find in the moral teachings of Jesus answers to all the moral questions of modern life. Needless to say, he explicitly addressed few of the moral concerns of our society today. For example, he said nothing directly about the morality or immorality of abortion, the death penalty, war, slavery, contraception, or racial and sexual discrimination.”

The implication is that since Jesus did not explicitly discuss these issues it is not possible to obtain moral guidance on them. In this case it is not scripture, but Dr. Martin that is being anti-intellectual. He fails to credit the reader with being able to extend a lesson beyond its examples.

Dr. Martin then continues stating that it is not clear what can be deduced from his sayings and activities. He tries to show that Jesus was inconsistent on the subject of poverty, and also condemns him for not explicitly condemning slavery. Such simplistic analyses do not belong in a serious book. These areas have been the subject of much comment and study over hundreds of years. When one considers that the evangelists that wrote the Gospels were selecting material to present their interpretation of Jesus and his teachings, and that they also had to work within a highly censorious atmosphere socially, not all topics would necessarily be quoted. Also slavery in Roman times varied in its causes and the way it was carried out. In fact, some slavery was voluntary. Our modern image of slavery did not necessarily fit the reality of Roman times in many cases. So not only has Dr. Martin depended on a literalism that is inappropriate, he also fails to consider the overall context of Jesus’ times vs. ours.

In the next section of this chapter, “Evaluation of Jesus’ Ethics,” Dr. Martin discusses specific “commandments” that form what he considers Jesus’ ethics. These “commandments” are a formulation by Richard Robinson, in his book, An Atheist’s Values The first is what he terms the Love of God and Faith in Jesus commandments. To quote the first paragraph:

The harsh otherworldly aspect of the Love of God Commandment is accepted by few Christians today. For example, only sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses hold doctrines approximating to the view that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that one should not be concerned about the future, that one should give up everything, including one’s family, to follow Jesus. Although these are clear messages of Jesus they are ignored by most Christians.

Yet he goes on to expand on this, claiming that Jesus was not simply pointing out that people need to focus less on the future and more on enjoying living, but that people should rely on God for everything. He admits that many theologians reject a complete dependency on God to do it all. But he cannot resist pointing what he sees as the error, even though it is not part of mainline Christian thought. Again his discussion depends on a simple literalistic interpretation of what Jesus was saying as if it were a stenographic quote of his words.

He dismisses what he terms the Faith in Jesus Commandment by saying that it depends on the truth of the Incarnation, which he considers to already be destroyed by his discussion of it. This so-called commandment is based on an interpretation of Luke, and is also heavily dependent on the translation being used to justify it. It concerns the belief that Jesus was the actual son of God and that he claimed to be the Messiah.

The next “commandment” is labeled the Purity of Heart and Language Commandment. This is not a direct commandment but is a synthesis by Robinson from the verses in Matthew 5:21-36. Dr. Martin then goes on to discuss how these are in conflict with modern psychology, leading to harmful repression, followed by a discussion in which he points out that following certain lines of thought can indeed be harmful. He then attempts to argue that modern discussion is based on consequences but that is not what Jesus was saying, that Jesus was arguing the thoughts were harmful in themselves. Dr. Martin appears to be following someone else’s discussion and has not created his own from direct reading. The discussion of this section is inconclusive, and actually is one of the more honest sections in the book.

The Commandment of Humility is also synthesized from sayings in the Synoptic Gospels concerning giving and praying in secret, and serving others. Dr. Martin tries to first show that taken to the extreme, being totally retiring can be foolish, using a crisis example. He also tries to say that public giving may be altruistic, that it depends on motive. He also takes the extreme position of not judging others to show it is also unrealistic. He considers it unclear if a less extreme position is what Jesus meant.

At this point, the discussion of Jesus’ ethics is based on another atheist’s synthesis of the commandments from the Synoptic gospels. It also appears to be based on an absolute literalism and an ignoring of both social, Biblical, and temporal contexts. To this point, Dr. Martin almost appears to want his cake and eat it too. He admits that few modern Christians accept the harsh literal interpretation he is condemning, yet still makes the effort to condemn it. It is almost as if he desperately need to score every negative point he can.

The remainder and bulk of the chapter is spent on a discussion of the Love Your Neighbor Commandment. Here is his opening paragraph:

Whatever problems there may be with the ethical teachings and practice of Jesus as they are portrayed in the synoptic Gospels, many Christians would insist that the essential core of the Christian message is the commandment to love your neighbor. Let us sample some of the interpretations of this commandment that have been provided by recent Christian ethical theorists and see if it is acceptable. It should be clear in what follows that some of these contemporary interpretations of Christian ethics have come a very long way from Jesus’ obscure and questionable pronouncements in the Gospels. Indeed, stripped of its theological gloss, recent Christian ethics has a considerable overlap with secular ethical theory. Thus, the question arises of why it should be preferred.

He chose as his examples, Paul Ramsey, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Gene Outka. He also mentions in a footnote a source for four other examples.

Dr. Martin considers Paul Ramsey’s Basic Christian Ethics to be “[o]ne of the clearest and most thoughtful interpretations of contemporary Christian ethics.” From the extensive quotes and discussion presenting Ramsey’s views, Ramsey interprets the scripture concerning loving ones neighbors as having an apocalyptic basis, but that basis is not necessary for them to be valid today. One of the points Dr. Martin makes is the dropping of the hellfire and damnation and vengefulness portions (as Dr. Martin sees them) from Jesus’ teachings. The emphasis is on Jesus mercy and kindness. Dr. Martin then says:

Non-Christians and even humanists can in principle accept Ramsey’s ethical teachings when they are divorced from their theological underpinnings, and despite Ramsey’s claim that Christian ethics cannot be separated from its religious foundation, they can be. There seems to be no reason why non-Christians and secularists could not hold Ramsey’s view about, for example, self-defense and the problems of utilitarianism. The crucial question is whether there would be any justification for them to do so.

But Dr. Martin’s payoff in choosing Paul Ramsey is that Ramsey preaches total non-resistance to anything, not even non-violent resistance. Dr. Martin then pounces on this to show that Ramsey is unjustified in his self-defense position and that his discussion of utilitarianism adds nothing to the criticisms of utilitarianism. He also points out that a justice principle might be an adequate substitute for the love of neighbor. To a secularist this may seem plausible, but not to a Christian. There is depth and implications to loving ones neighbor as oneself that go beyond a simple principle of justice. Dr. Martin also points out that ignoring indirect consequences can be harmful even if one is exactly following the principle of loving ones neighbor as oneself. He of course resorts to an extreme example, but then he has also selected an extreme example of an ethicist to discuss in the first place.

Dr. Martin’s discussion of Reinhold Niebuhr interprets Niebuhr as saying that Jesus preached an impossible ethical ideal that nonetheless has validity today as a guide to our own day-to-day ethical behavior. Niebuhr is taken as thinking that “we cannot live up to the ethical ideal of Jesus because of our human nature.” There is further explication on Niebuhr’s themes, and much of it appears fair. Martin then points out. “Although Niebuhr ties his ethical view closely to Christian religious doctrines there is no a priori reason to do so. Thus a non-Christian and even a secularist could maintain that although the ethics of Jesus is an impossible ideal, it nevertheless provides insights abut and serves as a source of criticisms of actual ethical systems.” He expands on this idea showing how a secularist might find the same ideals but with different justification.

Then Dr. Martin suddenly shifts to his belief system.

I have suggested that even secularists could accept the view that human beings are fundamentally egoistica and attempt to base their belief on the findings of history and the social sciences. However, I am skeptical that this attempt would be successful. Although the rindings of history and social science provide much evidence of human beings acting selfishly there is little reason to suppose that selfish human action is innate and unchangeable or that altruism on a worldwide scale is impossible. There is, after all, ample evidence of human beings acting on purely altruistic motives. We are far from knowing when and under what conditions, however, human beings act with unselfish motives and how altruism can be promoted.

Dr. Martin then considers that Niebuhr’s description of what the law of love amounts to as inadequate and providing clearly what it entails. On those grounds he rejects the interpretation and offers an example of having to chose whether oneself or ones neighbor dies, and the law of love providing no answer. I don’t know that any ethical system other than pure immediate self-interest does provide that answer.

The third ethicist is Gene Outka, who wrote Agape: An Ethical Analysis. Outka is shown to discuss agape as an equal regard for all humans, but a response that takes into account their needs and abilities. That despite regarding them as of equal worth, one responds and treats different people differently. Dr Martin dismisses the theological justifications for agape as being dependent on a belief in God. He does raise the idea that theological statements of is do not necessarily entail the ought of our behavior, and considers Outka to have inadequately addressed this.

Dr. Martin then briefly describes Outka’s comparisons of agape to contemporary secular ethical thinking. He then posits that there might not be any real difference between Outka’s agape and a principle of equalitarian justice combined with a principle of beneficence. His concluding discussions for this section dwell primarily on the issues of the is-ought gap, and also concludes that Outka does not generate more doubt for creating a secular version of agape than a religious one, and that the open question of how much overlap there is between secular and religious agape is not due to disagreement among philosophers but to a lack of evidence and clarity on the notion itself.

Dr. Martin then finishes the discussion of agape with the question of whether there might be times when it is moral to be selfish. He provides examples of situations where a short-term constant self-negation leads to long-term negative consequences. In this he is again taking an absolute literal extreme, which few take, as the attempt to discredit agape. He then posits that there are Christian ethicists that would not allow purely selfish action, action which does not at least indirectly carry concern for others.

He concludes the chapter with this statement:

I have argued that it is possible to develop a plausible secular equivalent to the Christian ethics of neighbor love that in this world at least may well have significant overlap with it. Uncertainty on this score reflects our ignorance over the consequences of our actions and the unclarity in the concept of neighbor love itself.

As a consequence I do not see where this forms part of a case against Christianity. I think he is trying to imply that, if one can form an equivalent ethics without God or Jesus, then why bother with either? Overall, however, I consider this his best chapter in the book. Though I question his choice of Ramsey and Niebuhr as model ethicists, suspecting that they were chosen for their ease of disputation, his presentation and discussion of Outka was quite enjoyable to read and made its points well. What comes from the discussion, however, is that making a choice of belief on the basis of ethical systems is not particularly useful, since almost equivalent systems can be constructed within and outside Christianity. In fact, I would argue that such equivalence is a point in favor of tolerance on the part of both non-Christian and Christian for the other.

I will not discuss the chapter on “Salvation by Faith” in any detail. Partly this is because I have my own issues with the doctrine, and partly because I do not see Dr. Martin as raising any new significant points. It does appear that in order for him to argue against salvation, he has an interpretation of an all-good God that implies there is no judgment of people if God is all-good. He also argues that if one accounts for the “scandal of particularity,” i.e. that the infidels that have no opportunity to learn of Jesus are condemned to Hell, then there is no need for salvation by faith in Jesus.

In his concluding chapter, “Christian Responses,” Dr. Martin picks a number of positions, the main one being nonliteralism. He selects Thomas Boslooper, Rudolf Bultmann, and Richard Braithwaite as his exemplars of nonliteral interpretation. The problem is, as Dr. Martin points out, once one rejects literalism, the field is wide open to an infinitude of interpretations. What he has selected are some of the easier ideas to reject. He also makes brief mention of other Christian responses. The commentary on those is based on his earlier arguments in the book.

His concluding paragraph is of importance:

There are alternatives to rejecting Christianity but either they do not seem promising or else they transform Christianity beyond recognition. It would be far more straightforward and rational to reject Christianity outright rather than attempt to salvage it. However, for most of the 1.6 billion Christians in the world rejection if not at the present time a practical possibility. They are either unaware of the problems of the Christian faith or because their training and background, they are believers nevertheless. I have no recommendations to make here about what can or should be done about this regrettable situation.

The Christianity that Dr. Martin would reject exists only for a segment of people calling themselves Christian, the Fundamentalists. Dr. Martin’s arguments rely on literal readings of the scriptures, and even there one could argue over meaning simply because of the many different translations. I have found in my own researches that all theologically important scriptures are translated to be compatible with the translator’s own beliefs. Among the nine translations I own, many passages are identical across all of them, and the critical passages are all different there being as many as nine different versions. The truth is that there are forms of Christianity that are an anathema to other forms of Christianity. It has already been transformed.

I disagree with his statement that it would be more rational to reject rather than to salvage it. Religion does more than provide a system of ethics and belief. It motivates social interaction and individual well-being. People appear to have an innate need to believe in something. In Dr. Martin’s case it would appear to be “rationality,” which he then uses to justify his belief in no-God, just as Christian scholars justify their belief in God. It is a sad commentary, however, that there are people of both types that feel they are justified in trying to force their views on the rest. What Dr. Martin fails to understand is that there is no value to educating non-questioning Christians about the problems with Christianity, as he sees them. He may have the time, energy, and ability to ask and analyze such questions, but most people do not. Even if they have the ability, they have neither the interest nor the time. Their religious beliefs are incorporated in their lives and form part of a behavioral “shorthand” when making judgments. This is of great value in day to day living. Though I question my religion deeply, I do not find other peoples beliefs regrettable. That they do not agree with me is perfectly fine. I don’t have a monopoly on the correct answers, and truth to tell, neither does Dr. Martin. His view of “1.6 billion Christians” is really quite arrogant.

This book is similar to other books of its type. It does everything it can to destroy Christianity, but fails to provide anything in its place. Overall, by the standards of what I have been reading for the past couple of years or more, this is really quite amateurish. It is a long version of much that I wrote when an undergraduate first becoming an atheist. It has an absolute dependence on literal interpretation of the scriptures, which in turn has a heavy dependence on the translation from which the words are taken. I don’t think Professor Martin would stand a chance in a discussion with a Jesuit, or many of the well-known Christian philosophers and theologians. That I, in my modest state of knowledge, could find it so easy to dispute his writing, is in itself a harsh critique of its quality. What we have here is Atheist Fundamentalism, a warping of the religious intellectual landscape to support his anti-Christian, atheistic belief structure, just as the religious Fundamentalist Christians warp the scientific intellectual landscape to support their beliefs.

Revisiting a controversy

2010-04-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

A few years ago there was a furor over the attempts by some Christians to introduce the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools science curriculum. It went so far as a suit in Pennsylvania to force the teaching. The issue has since died out, but from my perspective it was handled extremely poorly by both sides, and a genuine teaching opportunity was lost. The press, being on against Intelligent Design (ID) from the start, failed to show the real issues underneath, and while everyone was pointing fingers at ID as being religious and a version of Creationism, no one pointed out that the arguments and positions of the other side were equally non-rational being Evolutionism. I think it is instructive to look at this in more detail, because it is another version of the kinds of arguments that have been going on throughout history.

Biblical literalists, that believe the world was created complete as we know it approximately 6000 years ago spend great amounts of energy, physical, emotional, and mental, trying to fit all that is known into their belief. They call it a theory of creation, and if they were willing to actually test its conclusions and inputs against known information honestly, they could indeed call it a theory, however poorly it does its job of explanation, and how invalid it is against any tests based on current knowledge. Because it is not subjected to external challenge, and is defended by ad hoc assumptions to keep the belief, it is an ideology and is most appropriately named Creationism. In fact there is a museum that purports to show and demonstrate the history of the earth in these terms in Petersburg, Kentucky, just Southwest of Cincinnati, Ohio.

One step more reasonable is Intelligent Design. The concept is based on an analogy to finding a watch, seeing its complexity, order, and functioning, and from that hypothesizing a watch maker. In this case, proponents of ID accept pretty much all of the factual basis of modern science, but then interpret it quite differently. Two of the most common arguments for a “watch maker” or “Universe Maker” or God, are the flagellum of some bacteria and a misapplication of probability to chemistry. In the case of a flagellum, because it consists of a dozen very specific proteins, any one of which when removed, renders the flagellum immobile, the analogy is drawn that like a watch, take out any one gear and it fails to function, and the watch is designed, so then is also the bacterial flagellum. What is missing is the idea that the flagellum might have started very imperfectly and over millions and billions of years changed and became perfected. In fact the ignoring of the element of time is one of the most glaring errors in ID.
The other “argument” is a gross misapplication of the concepts of statistics, an ignoring of the principles of chemical dynamics, and a refusal to think in the proper time scales. Essentially the argument is that given the number of atoms in a living being, the probability of them coming together in that configuration is so small as to be impossible, therefore they had to be guided, by God. First of all, one cannot validly calculate such a probability, since that isn’t how it happened. Probability must be calculated on the pathways to the result. Second, of all, if one looks at the chemistry of the universe, one finds that everywhere, the first small molecules of life are found. It is actually more probable that such compounds as amino acids, simple sugars, and even the polycyclic members of nucleic acid, will form than the atoms of matter will stay separated. Those compounds give off energy when they form, thus making them more stable than their separated components. When such compounds are then concentrated, they in turn form other stable, larger molecules, and so forth. Finally, given the amount of time that the universe appears to have been in existence, even relatively low probability events have had opportunities to occur.

Where the ID proponents really come into battle though is with evolution. They simply look at the complexity of living organisms and do not conceive of them occurring by chance or without direction. The eye has been used as an example of this, but interestingly enough, there were some simulated evolution studies that showed that given an increased sensitivity to light in a few cells on the surface of a multi-cellular organism, something functioning as an eye will form. For that matter one can see so-called convergent evolution in the eye of an octopus vs. the eye of chordates. The evolutionary path between them split off long before there was anything considered as a precursor to an eye, but both have amazingly similar eyes.

There is a subset of the ID proponents that will allow continuing evolution, but refuse to grant evolution of all living things from simple precursor organisms. Their constant refrain is, “Show me an transition form.” However, what this really means is, “Show me every possible link between the evolution from one predecessor to the final version that you claim.” There is an absolute refusal to accept any inferred links. However, I have also seen them reject actual transition forms because they don’t show the next step in the process.

For anyone fairly well educated in the basic sciences, it is easy to beat up on the Creationists and ID’ers. However, that is not to say that evolution gets a free pass. Regardless of how well corroborated, evolution is a theory not a fact. It is an interpretation of the facts that appears to fit them the best of other possible interpretations, but it has its own difficulties that are often ignored. The biggest one is, what is the jump from a collection of chemicals to a living organism? One can find all sorts of pieces in the literature. There are little hollow spheres of protein called coacervates that can form non-biotically, but yet in some ways behave like organisms. One can trap enzymes inside them a have them seem to metabolize, drawing in a sugar or similar compound and breaking it into two or more pieces. The pre-biotic chemists have done all sorts of things since the first Stanley Muller experiments that converted a hypothesized primordial gas mixture into a soup of biological molecules simply through constant electrical discharges and boiling the condensate to recycle the monomers and atoms. They have found all sorts of ways to create the precursors of DNA and ATP, two of the fundamental bases of life.
Or another question is how did DNA become the code? For that matter how did RNA become the translator? But still more fundamental, what defines life? We seem to know it when we see it, but have a very hard time properly defining it so that we will know definitively when we create it. Additionally, we still argue over the actual evolutionary pathways given that they exist. And there are many wonders in the biological world that are rarely discussed. We take it for granted now that mitochondria have DNA, and in fact that is being used as a marker in human evolution. But how did it get there in the first place? Most likely mitochondria and their plant analog, chloroplasts, were once independent organisms that became ingested but not digested, and formed a mutual supportive system. The metabolic traces are there, with very primitive anaerobic metabolism in the cytoplasm but the real energy-yielding reactions in the included chloroplasts or mitochondria.

What has happened in the school systems is that science has come to be taught as a collection of facts, not as a way of gathering, organizing, and using facts about the world around us. This is most evident in teaching evolution. It is taught as established fact, not well-corroborated theory. As such it should be labeled Evolutionism, not Theory of Evolution. It is well beyond the scope of this essay, but I think the teaching of science to the point of its being Scientism fits other agenda.

In fighting the introduction of ID into the classroom, teachers avoided having to actually show how science works. They would have had to understand the material well enough to explain its strengths and weaknesses and be able to analyze the fallacies of ID. There were many reasons and excuses given, not the least of which was the ad hominum attack of it was religious and non-intellectual.

From my perspective neither side was being honest. The ID’ers wanted their ideas presented as valid theory to be discussed, actually as an alternative to evolution, and the teachers and did not want any challenge to their intellectual hegemony. Rather than ID being given the necessary exposure to show it for what it was, and ideology, it was suppressed for other reasons. And classroom science became even more entrenched as a collection of facts rather than a system of knowledge acquisition and analysis. It is all reminiscent of the same debates with slightly different foci throughout history from the Middle Ages to the present.

Exclusion, Inclusion, Coercion

2010-04-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

These three words describe the manner in which the three monotheistic religions interact with the rest of the world. They represent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, respectively. The observations are based on their behavior and their scriptural guidance.

The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is filled with injunctions to the Jews not to intermarry or associate with the inhabitants of lands that they conquered or migrated to. The primary concern was to maintain the purity of the people and the covenants with God. To this day, Jews do not evangelize, though the prohibitions among reformed and perhaps conservative Jews have been relaxed. They do intermarry with gentiles. For the Jews the strategy has brought persecution, but also they have survived as a people, drawing themselves from their Diaspora back to Israel.

Christianity, on the other hand, has followed the injunction to go forth and baptize the nations in the name of the Trinity. It took the shift from evangelizing only other Jews, to Paul’s sanctions of evangelizing the gentiles and letting them avoid all the Pharisaic rules and regulations. He was more concerned with their actions towards one another and the rest of the world. As a consequence, Christianity, partly due to the history with Rome, became the dominant religion of Europe. The important note was that it was as much orthodoxy as orthopraxy that provided the growth. A major characteristic of Christianity is that it is done by choice, including the practices of the faith, as well as the questioning. This is not to say that has always been the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but generally speaking it holds true, and certainly does today.

Islam evangelizes, and does so aggressively, BY FORCE. Where the Muslims conquered, they offered a choice of death, dhimmitude, or conversion. Depending on the burden of the jizzya or dhimmi tax, conversion might be more acceptable, to other than those willing to martyr themselves. Once converted, apostasy is punishable by death. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim, whether one wants to be or not. Needless to say, this is effective in numbers of converts, but one questions the strength of the faith. Apparently that is not a concern. When considering the scriptural basis of Muslim behavior, it is important to realize that like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, there are passages that can be interpreted as gentle and others as violent or aggressive. However, the rule in Muslim interpretation is that the later sutras override the earlier ones. Interestingly enough, the later sutras are the ones that are the most aggressive and punitive to infidels.

At this point, I am going to offer some of my own interpretations and speculations. First, that the Muslim-Jewish conflict is not new, and did not start with the creation of Israel. That just handed a cause to the Muslims on a plate. Muslims have had it in for the Jews ever since Mohammed was rejected as a scholar by the “People of the Book” as he called them. The problem is that Islam is simply a corrupted version of Judaism through combining a rather poor memory of Hebrew scripture with the norms of nomadic Arabian culture. Try reading the Quran. It is hard, because it is incoherent. If one reads the history of Islam and the visions in sources that are sympathetic to Islam, it is hard not to see it as a simple justification for whatever Mohammed wanted to do at the time. I found it very suspicious that every time he ran into a problem, he would have a vision that commanded him to do what was the most expedient and not necessarily the most principled.

The Muslim-Christian conflict results simply from the fact that Christians are infidels. We are hated for who we are, and until we get that idea straight in our heads, we will be constantly on the defensive. From my perspective, any Jewish-Christian conflict is due to politics not religion. This is not the essay to address that.

I guess that is enough to get me a fatwa. Ever notice that Jews and Christians never condemn their critics or threaten them with death? Tends to support my theses above.

Theodicy

2010-04-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

This essay is a continuation of a previous one, “Benevolence, Good, Bad, and Evil,” and an expansion of a second, “Thoughts on the Nature of God.” The first essay established the definition of the terms in its title as preparation for this essay, and the second, though it definitely touched on theodicy, was more concerned with the nature of God Himself than the theodicic problem. This essay will examine the question in more detail.

The theodicic problem can most concisely be stated as, “How can God allow evil things to happen in the world?” This is a wonderfully complex question under the surface of the words, because it implies many things about God and assumes other things about Him as well. It implies that God has a choice, assumes that he has the power to prevent it, and describes the events as evil, considering that to be the correct description. This question was first asked in a meaningful way, philosophically, after the great earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The loss of life and property was massive for the times, and given the orientation of the people at that time, the question was natural, “How could God let this happen?”

It is obvious the question still resonates today, when we have any major disaster. Fundamentalists will say it is God’s punishment for the way the victims lived. Never mind that both good people, BY THEIR STANDARDS, were killed as well as the bad. Others simply say it is the forces of nature. Others sweep the question under the rug, because it points out their own internal conflicts in their beliefs. The problem arises because God is considered omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. As I discussed in “Thoughts on the Nature of God,” it is the omnipotent part in combination with the omni-benevolent part that creates the problem.

In some ways, the theodicic question is uniquely Christian in nature. Judaism, as related in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, sees God as fairly harsh and judgmental at times, punishing His people for failure to live up to their covenants with him. To them the concept of omni-benevolence rings false. Islam is similar in that they will see anything happening to the infidel as coming to him, and as evidence of Allah’s judgment. Witness recent statements in the news. Christianity is unique in its concept of nonjudgmental love and caring, which is the basis of the idea of omni-benevolence.

Omnipotence comes from the very beginnings of belief. The logic is fairly simple and obvious, if God created everything, then he must be able to control everything. He is all-powerful. Even if it is taken one step in indirection, God created the laws by which everything came to be, there is still the implication that He is able to completely control everything. After all, if He created the laws, then he can change them as He wishes. But at least from Medieval time forward, there is also the belief that matter is totally inert, and the action of matter comes from the direct intervention of God. In one or another forms, that belief also still occurs today, and definitely relates to the question before us. Many Christians do believe that God controls everything, all the time. [It is hard to see how they rationalize that with the concept of free will.] When presented with the theodicic question, the response will be on the order of, “It is all in God’s hands, He always has a plan, God’s ways are not known to us,” etc., in other words, “I don’t know, and don’t want to think about it.”

In “Thoughts on the Nature of God,” I argued that of the three omni’s, omniscience, at least operationally, and omni-benevolence could have good cases made for them, and that the weak link was omnipotence. But here it is useful to look at omnipotence a bit more. In attributing the creation of the universe to God, there has been a form of rear-guard action fought throughout history, what has come to be known as The God of the Gaps. In essence, as science explains more and more, God is used to explain what is still unknown. For the most part it is not used in serious discussions of creation. However, God as the first cause, or the creator of the matter and laws of the universe from nothing is very much alive and well. This is the ultimate God of the Gaps. “Where did the matter and energy for the Big Bang come from that started the universe, and what determined the laws by which it operates?” “I don’t know,” is emotionally very unsatisfying to most people, hence, it came from God. This still argues for, or at least implies, the omnipotence of God.

So one way to limit omnipotence is to say, that God does not violate the laws of nature. Granted He created them, but now does not change or violate them. This doesn’t get rid of the omnipotence just let’s God voluntarily restrict its use. However, this still leads to theodicic problems as we shall see below.

Let’s now review a bit what was written in “Benevolence, Good, Bad, and Evil.” The crux of the discussion was that Benevolence and Evil entailed intent, but Good and Bad were neutral, in the sense that their effects are judged by their impact on humans, but they happen fortuitously or randomly if you will. They are equal opportunity effects, both people considered good and people considered bad suffer or benefit from them. For the discussion below there are two model events, a natural disaster such as the Lisbon earthquake or the Indonesian tsunami a few years ago, and a man-made disaster, in this case, 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Let’s start with the Lisbon earthquake since that is where theodicy became a philosophic issue. From our perspective today, the Lisbon earthquake was the result of stress relief in the crust of the earth. The stress build-up was due to the relative motions of two plates of the earth’s crust. Through long but consistent chains of reasoning, the event can be tied back to the laws of nature, or the ways in which the physical world works.

Here is the issue: if God made the rules, then he is ultimately responsible for all the deaths, and moreover, can be considered intentionally responsible, since the rules were made by intent. If he is intentionally responsible, then the Lisbon quake is evil since the intent was to enable harm through the operation of the rules of nature. If one tries to argue that as an unintended consequence of the structure of the rules, then one has denied omniscience. If one accepts the intent then one denies omni-benevolence. Something has to give or God is guilty of evil. Notice it makes no difference whether one says God created the earthquake on purpose or says that God did not interfere with the operation of the rules he made. The result is morally the same, unless one makes a utilitarian argument that it was less harmful to allow the Lisbon earthquake than to prevent it. Generally speaking, utilitarian arguments are an anathema to the Christian religion, and to make one in defense of God could be considered sacrilegious at the least and heretical at the worst.

The only solution to the quandary is to say God is less than omnipotent and could not prevent the earthquake. If one denies omni-benevolence then God is morally responsible for all the deaths and damage and it is therefore an evil act—it was intentional. To deny omniscience is to turn omnipotence into a potential out-of-control situation, where vast powers are unleashed without knowledge of their ultimate effects. Again a situation that resolves to evil when bad things happen. If God is less than omnipotent, then He is incapable of exercising the choice to prevent or allow the Lisbon earthquake. Without that capability, he no longer can be held morally responsible and the Lisbon earthquake is an extremely bad event, but not an evil one.

Now let us turn to 9/11. There is no doubt that in human terms, 9/11 was an evil event. It was the deliberate action of the members of Al Qaeda to kill as many infidels and destroy as much property as possible with four fully-fueled airliners. There is no doubt about its intentionality—it took years of preparation for the event. However, we have to decide where God is in all this. If he is omniscient, he knew it would happen; if He is omni-benevolent, He would not want it to happen, and if He is omnipotent, why did He let it happen?

So again we are at the theodicic crossroads, and the arguments against denying omniscience and omni-benevolence are the same. We are back to discussing omnipotence but with some variations. One of the major considerations of moral questions, and in fact underlies all moral questions, is whether or not the actor could have done other than they did. As long as we believe the person had a choice and were capable of exercising the choice, they are held to be morally responsible. In the case of 9/11, why did God not prevent it? It is ridiculous to argue that He wanted some or all of the people that died to do so, and in the case of its being only some the rest are collateral damage. That tosses omni-benevolence out the window. In addition, if He is omnipotent, he could have found a better way to do it.

Starting with the hypothesis above that God cannot alter the rules of nature, then can He still be held responsible? Potentially yes, because Christianity believes He knows all our thoughts and behavior, and with that the potential to change minds. But that raises a difficult question, if God wants us to be moral, we must have free will or our morality is meaningless. If He causes us to make choices, then we have no free will. So once again can God change our minds and doesn’t, or is He unable to directly force us to make the desired choice and therefore can only suggest options? If He can change our minds and doesn’t then we are in the position of being responsible for his choice as well as our own. It also tends to deny omni-benevolence. How can He want the best for all of us, if He allows evil to occur when He could have prevented it?

Again, I think that God’s ability is limited. He can read our minds, and He can, in His own way, communicate suggestions and requests to us. However, we have to be open to them and to Him. It is just like trying to talk in a noisy environment, if the background is too loud, even if one can hear the other’s voice, they may not be understood, and if the background is loud enough, even the voice will be lost. Or to use another analogy, one must be wanting to hear or talk for a message to get through. So if God is doing all he can to communicate, and we are doing nothing, then when we make a wrong choice, it is our responsibility, and solely ours, as to the outcome. Hence, for 9/11, the members of Al Qaeda were so determined to kill infidels, that they were never open to any other argument, and are therefore totally morally responsible for its results.

To have limited God’s power so drastically, that He is capable only of suggesting and asking things of us, has major implications on religion and religious metaphysics. If God is not omnipotent, then He most likely did not create the universe, so where did it come from? If God did not create the universe, then where did He come from? For that matter if He is so weak, what good is He? These are all outside the discussion of this essay, but the last question was addressed somewhat in “Thoughts on the Nature of God.”

In summary, the theodicic question arises from the belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. Once one shows that these are inherently contradictory, one must select one to be less than “omni.” This paper argues that the resolution of the theodicic question is to limit God’s omnipotence.

Atheism, Agnosticism, Theism

2010-04-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

In one sense this looks like a continuum, but actually it is not. The continuum is simply atheism to theism. Within the two, one can make further distinctions. Interestingly enough, they are almost mirrors of each other in the behavior of their adherents. But it will help to do some taxonomy first.

From my perspective, which includes thirty years, earlier as an atheist and later an agnostic, atheism has roughly three main types, militant, quiet, and indifferent. Militant atheists, also referred to as Capital “A” Atheists, are very obvious. They are busy filing suits to rid society of any public mention of God whether governmentally stated or privately stated. They are evangelists for No-God. Often they defend the Theory of Evolution as fact. The most well-known of these was Madeline Maury who started her career of militant, politically active atheism forty or fifty years ago. Though it is a topic for another essay, they most frequently associate politically with the modern liberal factions. They put as much energy and passion into their atheism as Fundamentalists put into their Christianity or Islam. From my knowledge of a few of them, it is my supposition that their atheism is emotionally inspired to begin with and is not subject to any kind of reason as to its reasons for action.

Quiet atheists are often much more thoughtful about their atheism, and as a consequence also more tolerant of theists. Many, like I was, arrived there from a process of questioning the religion they were brought up in, especially when it ran counter to what they were learning in school. They made a choice between what was known intellectually and a belief in God, as He was presented to them, seeing the two as incompatible. They may or may not join cause with the militants on particular issues, but being more tolerant, most likely don’t see it as important unless it violates one of their principles. Their politics will be across the spectrum and based on principle, just as their religious beliefs or lack thereof are.

Indifferent atheists generally have never been exposed to religion, and don’t know and don’t care if there is or is not a God. It’s a “Nah, I don’t think so” approach. This is not the same as agnosticism which will be discussed next. Generally speaking they simply live life by the moment, focusing on what is useful or workable to them and with little concern for all the furor over religious issues in public. I suspect this constitutes the largest part of the people that don’t believe in God. But they probably blend belief-wise into the corresponding theist group.

This is a good place to mention Agnosticism because I don’t place it as the middle ground between atheism and theism. That is because what I consider proper agnosticism requires some thought to realize that there is no proof of the existence or non-existence of God, and a conscious decision to live with the unknown. It takes quite a bit of mental energy to maintain a position with a known unresolved issue. Human nature generally wants to decide one way or another because is makes the remaining decisions easier. The biggest distinction between an indifferent atheist and an agnostic is the answer to the question, “Do you believe there is God?” The former says, “Naw, or some equivalent in casualness,” and the latter, “I don’t know.” In effect, I consider agnosticism off to the side of the continuum.

Progressing along the continuum, we reach the indifferent theists. Typically these are people that have gone to church out of habit all their lives or have been exposed to religion enough to believe in God, but don’t let it have any impact in the way they live their lives. If asked if they believe there is a God, they will say, "Yes, I guess so," but if asked how it effects the way they live their lives will probably have no effective answer. My experience says this is a large proportion of the people who claim to believe in God. Statistics indicate that up to 80% of the country says they believe in God, but the attendance at churches is falling. To me this indicates the belief has no real importance, hence the label indifferent theists.

There is a transition group between the indifferent and quiet theists. This has sprung up in the past several years with the growth of the mega-churches. Mega-churches are characterized by a simple message that makes people feel good. There is strong emotional involvement at the time of worship, and there may be donations, often large, to the church, but the actual impact on the day-to-day lives of many of the attendees is minimal. It is transactionally oriented—be baptized, go to church, donate money, and all is good. Somehow, miraculously, your behavior will be OK and you are automatically saved. The emphasis is not on law and behavior but on the salvation part, with little emphasis on changing behavior. There are testimonials on the good works done under religious motivation, but it has the same spectator feel as attending a movie, play, or lecture.

The quiet theists are probably the largest proportion of the theists that attend church. They belong to all denominations of all the monotheistic religions. They worship fairly regularly, and actually strive to follow the teachings of their religion. They are reluctant to evangelize and only talk about religion amongst themselves. But they live their religion in their lives, doing good, volunteering, donating to all sorts of causes. (This is not to say that others don’t, it is just to point it out as a defining characteristic of the group.) Going to church for them is not a command but a desire, and they take pleasure in the company of their fellow church-goers.

At the extreme of the continuum are the militant theists. The most extreme form are the Islamic jihadists that believe killing non-believers is a holy thing to do. They have their equivalents in Fundamentalist Christians that have killed abortion clinic workers, bombed abortion clinics, and carried out other violent acts in the name of their religious beliefs. Somewhat less extreme and more common on the Christian side of things in this country are the very vocal evangelists for banning abortion, banning sexually oriented media, or making the religious definition of union the legal definition. [Marriage is originally a religious term, and embedding its definition in law is the equivalent to attempts to implement Shari’ia in secular law.] They are also the same general group that wanted to elevate Intelligent Design to the status of scientific theory. Only in their case it was not to be considered theory but fact. The characteristic here is that there is a self-righteousness that says that I believe it is wrong for religious reasons therefore everyone has to obey, even if by force.

Because of their outspokenness, the two extremes are often used to characterize the entire group, militant atheists being the avatar for all atheists and the same for militant theists. Either out of ignorance, failure to think for themselves, or group cohesion, the rest of the group often goes along. It is the actions of the extremes that have put us in the position of having a holy war between religion and secularism in this country. The truth is that this is either a minor or a non-issue to most of the populace, but they are too busy living their lives to take the time to defuse it. With the exception of the militants, there is far more in common among all believers and non-believers than there is difference, and there is tolerance of other opinion. We need to strive to make this more operative.

Thoughts on the Nature of God

2010-01-13T17:51:00.000-08:00

The existence of God can be neither proven nor disproven. In a series of essays, I tried to show that whether the universe is deterministic or not also cannot be proven or disproven. Additionally, I showed that one could put constraints on the problem and reduce it to a question of whether the universe is infinitely continuous at any microscopic level, or not, if it were then it was deterministic. Analogously I can argue that though we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, we can put constraints on what His nature must be if he does exist, given the knowledge we have of the world today and our existing concepts of God.

Generally God is considered an immaterial being that lives somewhere called Heaven. As commonly conceived, He is the ultimate dualism problem, in that being immaterial, He can still affect the material world. One of the implications of my saying God only works through people, is that we can find a way around this dualistic problem. More on that below.

The first constraint that I would argue for is that God does not break the rules of nature. In another essay where I first stated this I discussed its implications on the possibility of miracles. That is outside this discussion but will be covered at another time. What is important, however, is the question of a friend of mine who is a Lutheran lay pastor. He and I had some interesting discussions, and when I said that God does not break the rules of nature, his response was, “Is it because He will not break them, or because He cannot break them?” Further on in this essay, we will see that this has a major impact on the theodicic question. For now let’s look at how traditional Christian belief approaches this.

According to the Biblical tradition, God created everything, the Heavens and the Earth. Today we would generalize this to the Universe. Accordingly then, He also had to have created the laws by which it operates. Since He created the Laws of Nature, then He should be able to use or not use them as he sees fit. Many Christians today, think that God is directly involved in all events on earth, both natural and human-caused. They truly believe that He controls the weather, or can if he wishes, and other natural disasters as well as human-caused evil. They ascribe to a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

This belief leads them into some very serious difficulties when faced with the apparent success of evil or a natural disaster. The immediate question is, “How can God let this happen?” This is often met with the response, “It is not for us to know God’s ways,” or some equivalent. According to an excellent book on the history of evil in philosophic thought, this question was first asked in a meaningful way after the great earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The answers all amount to, “I don’t know.”

No matter how we unpack the trio of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, it is internally self-contradictory. It’s like the old sales saying, “Faster, cheaper, better, pick two.” In this particular essay, we will approach the problem as if omniscience and omnibenevolence are valid.

To justify this choice we can point out that, if God exists, he should be in a position of being able to know so much more than us, that whether or not His knowledge is truly infinite (the ultimate meaning of omniscient), it is so far ahead of ours that we can take it as a working example of omniscience. How could His knowledge be greater than ours? This is another implied ability of God, to know all that we know and more. If we constrain His knowledge just to that which we as humans collectively know, it is much vaster than what any one person knows. This is not just academic knowledge but all knowledge of life under all circumstances of human living. It is fairly simple to assume that He is able to sort and analyze this knowledge, removing contradictions, recognizing similarities and patterns, and defining gaps, given that He is able to acquire it. Generally, God is given greater knowledge than this, so we can take as an operational definition that God is omniscient.

Also we can point out that if God is not omnibenevolent, then why should we worship Him or respect Him? If his motivation is not our best interests, then there is no reason to have Him as God, other than to bribe him to be nice to us, to bend His ends to ours, or at least let us survive and hopefully prosper. There are some other implications of this question when we consider omnipotence.

Let us first examine the consequences of true omnipotence. First of all, if God is truly omnipotent, then He must have omniscience. Otherwise, He has power that he cannot correctly apply or perhaps even use for a failure in the knowledge required to do so. Anything less than omniscience immediately implies less than omnipotence. But if he is omnipotent, then he has the ability to alter anything, change the forces of nature, even, in principle change time. If he can do this, then why do bad things happen to good people, to quote a book title? The problem is that by our moral standards, he is letting evil happen[1] when he could prevent it, and is therefore culpable of being a part of it. One might make a utilitarian argument that says more harm would occur if He did not let it happen, but considering we posit God as a deontological being not a utilitarian being, this is a contradiction of Christian belief. It also contradicts the omnibenevolence attribution, or rather reduces it to a utilitarian calculation as well.

Does He follow the laws of nature out of the respect for our intellectual strivings to understand them? After all, if He changes and alters them willy-nilly, we would never understand them. But then again, why should it be in His interests for us to do so? Why should He want humans to be the cantankerous, ego-driven, independent creatures, that we are? For that matter why should he want us to have free will? These last two questions are obviously rhetorical, but they touch on much of the mystery that comes with the omni-triad.

From my perspective, the idea that God is not omnipotent is the easiest way to deal with the contradiction. God follows the laws of nature, because He cannot do other. At the same time this absolves Him of the problems of theodicy. He allows evil to happen only because He cannot prevent it. But what does that leave us then? He can still be omniscient and omnibenevolent and be unable to do all that He wants to help us.

But if He cannot disobey the laws of nature, just as we cannot, what is His value? What can he do? After all we define him as not material in our world. For that matter, if He is not all powerful, how do we know He is there to start with? Why should we have any belief in Him or His efficacy? If we expect physical demonstration of Him, there is no reason. The example of the professor that says, “If there is a God, let Him strike me dead in the next 20 seconds,” and twenty seconds later says, “I’m still alive, there is no God,” is cheap theatrics not valid philosophy or theology. It also happens to be massive arrogance to consider oneself so important among all the people of the world that God would take the time to strike one person dead just to show His existence. For that matter, it also runs against the omnibenevolence idea, because God is not benevolent to just believers, but to all.

There is a means by which God can be effective on earth, people. God communicates with people.[2] In the Old Testament it was often in dreams or visions. There are stories of direct conversation, e.g. Abram and God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. My own thoughts are that it can be dreams or visions but also something known in a moment of quiet openness. It is not necessarily a voice or vision, but knowledge, and it is conveyed as a choice. In one sense this seems more impotent than potent, but humans are the biggest show on the planet for better or for worse. And regardless of the historical theories that times make the man, history is full of people that single-handedly made a difference either by their own efforts or by recruiting people to help.

We as humans effect the world around us by creating physical objects to change it. We become more effective by recruiting other people to help us do this. From this activity come our societies and cultures. It is not a far stretch to consider that God would do the same thing by asking people to do things that they might not think of themselves, but once having considered it, subscribe to the effort with all their will. And yes, one can look at it like a numbers game just as sales people do, out of so many candidates will come prospects, and out of so many prospects will come closures. The only thing I would think is that with God’s greater knowledge, He has a higher success ratio.

Again however we still must consider that using people is not perfectly efficient. Some evil is so great that only large groups of powerfully motivated people can overcome it. Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, and Mao’s Red China come to mind. The first fell by the force of the Allied Armies. The other two fell from the combined Cold War efforts and their own internal contradictions. Also not all good seems to be rewarded, but that is another topic.

After first admitting our ignorance of whether God exists or not for certain, if we accept His existence as a belief, then what value is that belief? First it is the North of our moral compass. All morality to theists, at least those that believe that God is more than the First Watchmaker of the Universe, starts with what they think God wants as moral standards. (It is not the place to discuss here that most of those standards can be arrived at from non-theistic belief systems.) Most Christians take it much further, ascribing to Him all the power we discussed above, and then asking for various blessings, assistance, and forgiveness. That discussion is for another time. Second, it may be a source of comfort in times of trouble—God is watching out and will help as He is able. Third, He may indeed “talk” to people when they are open to it and He needs their assistance. It is not a forceful “Du wilst,” but “I would like you to….,” or “Have you considered….”

[1]It is evil as opposed to bad because having the power to control it makes Him responsible for it, therefore it can be considered intentional.
[2]It becomes highly speculative physics, but gets around the problem, if we hypothesize that God exists as some sort of field complex in the dimensions other than our own three. Since speculative physics now hypothesizes that the universe is composed of many dimensions, then all things may inhabit more than just the three dimensions we are used to. God would interact with humans through their nervous system’s electrical fields, via the non-spacial dimensions.

Thoughts on Christmas

2009-12-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

Christmas in the US is an amalgam of three different holidays, Winter Solstice, St Nicholas’ Day, and the birth of Jesus. Of the three the commercialization of St Nicholas’ Day has become the most obvious, with the carols inspired by both the Solstice and the birth of Jesus, second. The ideas in this essay are quite preliminary and are subject to further expansion and revision over time. These are first thoughts on the topic.

The focus of this essay is the incorporation of the birth of Jesus into a holiday. Looking at the source materials in context for the birth story, they come from two of the four Gospels, Luke and Matthew, and neither tells the same story. The Christmas story as is done in church and, at one time, school pageants, is a forcing together of the Matthew and Luke birth stories.

Both Matthew and Luke state that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, and Luke gives a lot of additional detail such as John the Baptist being the cousin of Jesus. Matthew has the Magi, and Luke has the manger, shepherds, and angels. Matthew has the flight to Egypt, but Luke simply has them going home to Galilee.

Of greater interest to me is that Mark makes no mention of Jesus birth. Mark is the oldest of the Gospels, with Matthew and Luke coming 25 to 30 years later. In that time Paul had done a large amount of his evangelizing and creation of a Christology—Jesus as savior and Messiah, not just as a rabbi and teacher. It crosses my mind that, by the time Luke and Matthew started creating their versions of the story of Jesus, additions to the oral tradition had been created. The motivation would be similar to: a person as important as Jesus would have to have a day of birth in keeping with the significance.

In addition to the virgin birth, Matthew apparently obtained a story concerning astrological events. No one in over a hundred years of astronomical attempts has been able to explain the “star” of Bethlehem. Furthermore, one cannot literally take it that the star, if it were a heavenly body, would lead them to the manger or to Judea. In fact, from a parsing of the text, the Magi did not arrive until Jesus was about two years old, hence the Herodian decree that all male children under the age of two were to be put to death. Actually, I think the historicity of this is also in question. So the standard vision of three wise men giving gifts to Jesus in the manger is a modern myth.

Luke, on the other hand, uses an entire chapter to describe the pregnancies of both Esther and Mary and establishing that John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus. He also states that there was a tax on the Roman world, causing Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem. Luke also gives us the angels announcing the birth to shepherds, who leave their flocks to go see the baby. Luke has them go live in Galilee. As with the Matthewan story, the historicity is lacking, as is a certain lack of knowledge about sheep herding. Luke in his desire to illustrate the humble beginnings and the humble audience for early Christianity makes a serious error in stating the shepherds left their flocks.

One of the characteristics of Christianity is that it co-opts the prophecies of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, as being the prophecies of the coming of Jesus. The evangelists that wrote the gospels set the pattern for this as did Paul, relating Jesus and the events of his life to fulfillment of prophecy. It begins with the birth story’s fulfilling the prophecy of Micah 5:2-5a. However, it is notable that 5b puts the lie to the passive peaceful image usually portrayed for Jesus. The Jews were looking for another David, not a spiritual messiah.

Part of the appeal and the tremendous staying power of the Christmas story as it has come down to us, is the desire for it to be so. It feels so good. It is an affirmation of absolute goodness in the world. The story is so powerful that it can cause us to suspend our judgment on it and the larger contexts of it. Ex-bishop Shelby Spong did make a valid observation that we tell this wonderful story of the birth of a baby that in thirty-some years will be murdered in the most horribly violent way that the society of the day could devise. The cognitive dissonance is more than we can handle, so we focus on how wonderful this baby is to us, and ignore how he will become important.

It also shows what happens when we do not understand the way in which the Gospels were written. Many if not most Christians, and at one time myself, take them as historical documents, which in fact they are not. They are selective telling of the events the evangelist considered important in telling his version of what the life of Jesus meant to him and should mean to others. The “rules” by which they wrote allowed the attribution of their own ideas to other people’s dialog, and a conflation of both fact and fiction in the telling of the story. We then read this literally and create what is a fantasy.

Despite all the fantastic and a-historical nature of the story, rather than its being derided, it needs to be seen for what it does, stimulates the benign feelings of good-will among people. Even if the effect lasts only for the season, it provides something that does not seem to occur any other way. As such regardless of our intellectual assessments and judgments, emotionally it is valid and should be accepted as such.

The ELCA and homosexuality

2009-10-19T01:16:00.000-07:00

The ELCA's decision to allow rostered pastors in committed homosexual relationships has made news and also has lead to considerable discussion within the church. Despite a six-year campaign on this issue by the leadership, the final decision was made by one vote out of one thousand. Since that vote, the discussions have become very intense both within congregations and across the ELCA synods. At this point, it would appear that schism, such a occurred in the Episcopal Church is imminent.

As I see it, the problem is a conflict of congregational understanding of religious doctrine, intellectualization of scripture and reinterpretation by the clergy, and cultural politics, essentially a perfect storm, if one considers three-way conflicts such a thing. As a result, many parishoners are feeling betrayed and desirous of leaving their church, synod, or denomination.

Most members of a church take the Bible fairly literally. At the very least they consider God to be in charge of everything, and the Bible to be a true and accurate acccount of what God wishes for the world. As such, it is very clearly stated in a number of places that male homosexuality is a sin. (Within my own knowledge, the Bible is silent on female homosexuality. Also within my knowledge, nowhere is homosexuality discussed in the Gospels.) Coupled with this is a common aversion to homosexuality among heterosexuals. By every standard, the parishoners generally consider homosexuality to be a sin. Whether or not this is a desirable attitude or culturally politically correct, this is the reality.

However, parishoners also are fully aware of their own sinful nature, and unless they have true homophobia, will welcome homosexuals as members of the congregation. The problem is when homosexuals are presented as leaders. First, they are seen as perpetual sinners. Rightly or wrongly, congregations want their pastors to be moral leaders in their behavior as well as their preaching. For a known, and in this case unrepentent, sinner to be made the leader of the parish is very troubling. Second, they are seen not as "one of us" but as other. They are not to be trusted in their discussions of scripture and most especially any discussion of male-female relations because they are seen as not knowing about them or as approaching them from the outside.

At the same time there is tremendous cultural pressure not just to tolerate homosexuals, which has been going on for many years, but to fully accept or even celebrate homosexuality as a perfectly normal phenomenon, witness the "Sally Has Two Mommies" type of teaching in the schools and the prominence given to homosexual celebrities. Coupled with this are the campaigns to legalize homosexual "marriage" which is a deliberate slap in the face to most religious heterosexual couples. I have written an essay on this issue discussing it in depth, but the problem is the attempt to appropriate the term marriage not the legalization of commitments between adults.

An additional cultural pressure is the slow, and sometimes not so slow, decrease in membership of mainline Protestant churches. Because all churches are a form of political institution, the leadership is constantly considering ways to maintain and advance their position and that of their church. Rather than understanding we are in a holy war of Christianity vs. secularism, they attempt to compromise--thinking that it is the issue du jour rather than the fundamental problem of absolute standards of religious morality vs. relativistic ethics of secularism. It is quite analogous to dhimmitude vis-a-vis Islam. Their parishoners understand it much better.

The problem, from a leadership point of view is that the churches that are growing, feel-good, independent Protestant and Roman Catholic, use totally different models. The first is simply totally accepting of everybody as members and gives a message that is designed to make everyone feel good about themselves--their sins are forgiven, God loves them, and life will be OK. The Roman Catholics, simply have a fully integrated life program, coupled with the encouragement to be fruitful and multiply. Whether practiced or not, birth control is forbidden by Roman Catholic doctrine, with one relatively unreliable exception. Roman Catholics are encouraged to have large families, and the church makes sure that the children are brought up in the church and kept there throughout their lives. Not by brainwashing, but by showing them how to live their doctrine in the world.

In the meantime, the ELCA is tied to the basics of Lutheran doctrine that it is both law and teaching not just teaching that is the basis of the faith. Most of them have found that to grow they have to have at least one service as a celebration, feel-good service. But what to do about the more traditional members, the ones with the money that provides most of the support of the church? This brings in the third element of the situation--scriptural reiterpretation.

For the last several years, there have been on-going "classes" in homosexuality in the scriptures at ELCA churches. There have also been discussions at synod conferences. The overall thrust was an attempt to remove the stigma of sinfullness from homosexuality. Primarily by re-interpreting the contexts of some scripture and simply saying other scripture was a cultural not holy pronouncement, the Biblical proscriptions of homosexuality were presented as other than they literally appeared to be. Apparently this was not a successful as the leadership had hoped. The vote was so close, that one is suspicious of some hidden arm-twisting at the conference, and the Lutheran magazine immediately had all sorts of op-ed pieces on how we needed to stick together. As it turns out, there are congregations already discussing the formation of an independent synod.

Like the Episcopal Church, the ELCA is intellectually and scripturally liberal and tolerant. The Missouri and Wisconsin synods are much more literal in their interpretation of scripture and flat say that homosexuality is a sin. But in this case, just as in the case of the Episcopal church, it is their undoing. The leadership, seeing themselves as part of the liberal, intellectual elite, took the typical positions of that block and the congregations did not follow. I have commented on this before, e.g., Bishop Hansen's politicking, and articles in "The Lutheran."

The responses to this have varied forms and multiple causes. The ELCA leadership tries to point out that no congregation is required to accept a homosexual pastor. This is simply words to try to make the unacceptable accepted. But to those congregations that truly believe in the literality of scripture or in a more literal sense than is being promulgated on this issue, that means nothing. They expect scriptural consistency throughout their organization. They don't want the risk of a bishop who is a homosexual, which will eventually come from this change. I would take my friend and fellow blogger Kevin Kim further. Kevin said that in the great Protestant tradition, there may be schism. I say there WILL be schism. My first thought was that the splitting parishes would join either the Missouri or Wisconsin synods. Apparently they are taking the great Protestant tradition to its fullest and creating a new synod.

There are those congregations that will live with it, though not comfortably. Some members may leave the church, but most will stay, as it will not directly effect them in their daily and weekly church lives. There are others that will think this is wonderful. My suspicion is that they have a very high percentage of professorial or politically liberal members who are more interested in the cultural component of this than the scriptural one.

From my own viewpoint, the clergy are through discussing it or dismiss possible counter arguments rather quickly. They have the decision, like it or not, and now need to implement it and bring their parishes behind it. Like good soldiers they followed orders and did their best to convince us that it was OK. I am not sure how comfortable some of them are with it. Those that aren't will be the leaders of the schismatic parishes. Those that can tolerate the discomfort will continue to toe the party line, though not enthusiastically, and those that think it is truly right, will continue to support it in various subtle approaches in sermons.

From my viewpoint, the ELCA in this decision, created a new church doctrinally. My own parsing of the scriptures says they are pretty clear on the issue, and one cannot go through such rationalizations without changing their meaning completely. From a purely scriptural viewpoint, they were wrong. From a cultural viewpoint, this is the current big cause, so they appear to have done "the right thing." However, it has sown the seeds of a major division of the ELCA and therefore its ultimate demise. I don't think the number of members it may gain from this will come anywhere near off-setting the number that will be lost.

For myself, I don't have a problem with homosexual preachers, as long as they aren't preaching on relationships. I am not doctrinally bound, since I long ago parted with traditional Christianity and, though I am now a believer, still create my own interpretations and understanding of scripture. I go to church for much more than the scriptural lessons, and I think those of us who stay in the church after this decision are much the same way. Church to us is more than who is preaching at the moment though that is important as well.

Whether the ELCA did the right thing or not in this decision will depend on who you are. From a biblical literalist standpoint, it was wrong. From a cultural standpoint, it was wonderful. From a leadership standpoint, you got what you asked for (Subtext, you should be careful what you ask for, you might get it.). From a overall church survival--not a good thing.

Salvation...Or Have You Been Saved?

2009-10-12T04:25:00.000-07:00

When I was younger in college, one of the questions that I often heard from the campus fundamentalists was, "Have you been saved?" The only effective way to deal with it was to either ignore it or tell them you either didn't care, or were something scary like a Satanist. To them salvation was a Get-out-of-Hell-Free card that only required a particular set of beliefs-orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy. The latter ends up going with the former, but the bait was the easy way to Heaven. From where I stand, Salvation is not that simple nor is that what it really is. To deal with it requires considerable unpacking of the concept as currently promulgated.

Salvation doctrine comes from St. Paul, not the Gospels. Part of the reason it is so successful, is that it incorporates the underlying mythologies of appeasment of the Gods and magic from our distant religious past, and a borrowing of concepts from the Middle Eastern areas where Paul traveled and preached.

There are several underlying beliefs go with this idea. First, that Jesus was literally the Son of God, that he was the result of the impregnation of Mary by God, through some supernatural means--after all He is God. Second, that Jesus was a perfect human, because of his spiritual father. Third, Jesus' crucifixion was the complete payment for our sins. Fourth, if we accept Jesus as our lord, be baptised, regret our past bad acts, and do what Jesus says we will be guaranteed a place in Heaven, because, fifth, God is all-loving, and all forgiving. There is a sub-text, if you believe the right way.

First, let's start unpacking this with the underlying historical, religious traditions. One of the practices that Judaism had was to take a perfect goat, symbolically lay all the troubles and evil of the past year upon it and drive it out into the wilderness. This was the scapegoat,and is the source of the term and concept in our language. Second, before Abraham was stopped from slaying Isaac as the sacrifice to God, the tradition was to sacrifice a first-born son to God or the gods as an offering to have good fortune. (I take the story of Abraham and Isaac to be the mythological way of condemning the sacrifice of the first-born.) Virgin-birth has been around in religious mythology from before recorded history; it is not unique with Christianity. What is unique with Christianity is the concept of forgiveness--at least to the extent that true repentence will obtain forgiveness, no matter how wrong the sin. Paul made brillian synthesis of these concepts to create Salvation Doctrine. It is very effective because it is the solution to internal dissatisfaction and guilt that is part of the normal human condition.

Generally speaking, even presenting the idea of salvation requires an acceptance of both Heaven and Hell. These two concepts have been around in some form probably as long as people have had a sense of the religious. Once one has the idea that there is an afterlife, then there is the question of, where is it and what is its nature? It is not at all hard to tack onto that, the concepts of good, evil, reward, and punishment.

Almost all people have some form of conscience, and are self-aware of when they have done good or bad, to themselves or to others. Their ethical boundaries may be limited to only their immediate families or may expand wider. Most people raised in a Judeo-Christian background or culture, regardless of belief, have fairly wide ethical boundaries. Other people have more limited boundaries, e.g. the tribe, or in extreme cases just themselves. For those who have wide ethical boundaries, Salvation Doctrine offers relief from all the guilt and struggle to do right and failing. Just be sorry you failed, believe the right way, and Heaven is guaranteed. Sure you are supposed to try to not do evil again, but the rules generally are so stringent, that is all but impossible. Jesus is supposed to be the only perfect human.

It should be obvious, at this point, that I have little sympathy for the standard concept of salvation. I do however think that there is valid concept of salvation, in the sense that there is an afterlife, and that the good and the bad do get separated, at least for a while. So in the sense of getting to Heaven, there needs to be some sort of salvation. Judeo-Christian tradition generally has the more general form for this, and the example of Jesus, as a teacher, living what he preached, is the key as I see it.

There are two components that seem critical, one is our own desire to do good and the concommitant remorse when we don't, and the second is the Grace of God. Though I have not read the writings of the Jesus Seminar, I would doubt that Jesus actually said that no one gets to Heaven except through him. I could believe that his example of living is a way to Heaven. With or without a belief in God, Jesus' teachings are very good ways to live, taken with some common sense and not always exactly literally. One also has to filter out what Jesus taught from what others said he taught or meant, including the Gospel writers, and your current author. In other words, his teachings have to be taken and applied as a life-long student exercise, not as a cook book or rule book. One may look to others for different interpretations or for guidance, but ultimately the responsibility is our own. An important caveat is that good done to get to Heaven is worthless. It is good done for its own sake that counts. Spritituality is not transactional.

With respect to the Grace of God, I have long held that it is freely given, not because of belief, but because of goodness. As my Episcopal priest said when I was in high school, "There is more love in the most debauched sinner than in a cold-hearted paragon of virtue." God sees that and does act on it. The debauched sinner is goodness mis-directed, warped, and distorted. An example is that many of the alcoholics I have known were very warm, loving people that used the alcohol as an anesthetic for the pain they felt for others. I did the same, when I was in medical school. At the same time, not all people who are cold on the surface, really are. This is not ours to judge, but to be aware of the distinction.

So there is salvation, but not in the form preached in most churches. It is a matter of being a good person and doing good things for their own sake. It does not mean avoiding certain behaviors just because someone has decided they are bad. The most obvious example is alcohol. In moderation it's a pleasure, and denying any use of it, out of a mis-placed attempt at moral rectitude, may actually be sinful. Like anything else, an excess is harmful. It also is not a matter of doctrine. I have a very hard time with some very nice people, because they think anyone that does not accept Christianity and believe in the standard Salvation Doctrine is doomed to Hell. That is ultimately a very pernicious form of exclusion. "I get to Heaven, but he/she doesn't." The subtext becomes, "I am better."

So striving to be the best person we can be, and do as much good--by our own standards--in the world that we can is the way to salvation. It is actually much harder than the standard formula. We have to constantly judge ourselves and most people are theire own harshest critic, and the standard is not fixed. Generally it keeps getting tougher. But the result is a true self-satisfaction, not a self-righteous smugness.

Benevolent, Good, Bad, and Evil

2009-08-16T04:07:00.000-07:00

These four words have no meaning outside of a human context. Their meaning requires sentience both to provide the value judgment and to provide the actions to which they are applied. In my thinking, these four words are a matrix, not a linear relationship. The two axes are active-passive, and beneficial-harmful. Benevolent and Evil are active, good and bad are passive. Benevolent and Good are beneficial; Bad and Evil are harmful. In all four cases it is human judgment that creates the classification. Good and Bad refer primarily to facts, whereas Benevolent and Evil include intent.

To illustrate, let’s start with a rock, about a foot square in size. As long as it is sitting on the ground where it was last located by natural forces, it is simply a fact, a rock with various attributes. Of its own, it does nothing except occupy a given space for a length of time. It is neither good nor bad in itself. If a human takes the rock and builds with it, it can be considered good as it sits in the wall of the building. If it were to block a road, it would be considered bad. In this case, it may arrive in its road-blocking role without human intervention. The important thing to notice is that whether good or bad, it is in reference to human activity and need. In the first case, human action might have created its new role, but it could have happened simply by the building being built upon its original location, with the rock incorporated into the foundation in situ.

Can the terms benevolent and evil be applied to the rock itself? I think not. Building the building may have been done by a person or persons with benevolent intent, but the rock itself is not benevolent. Similarly the road-blocking role may have been done with malice or evil intent, but the rock itself is not evil. Its goodness or badness derives from the role it was given by human action or with respect to human action, not from any properties inherent in itself. I challenge anyone to find a value of good, bad, benevolent, or evil without bringing human thought and/or action into the discussion, directly or indirectly.

A rock is a neutral object. People don’t hate rocks for their existence. So let’s look at a more emotional issue. Imagine a loaded Glock automatic pistol on a table. Is it good or bad? If it is one or the other, how is it different from a rock, which is neither good nor bad? Is the existence of the pistol bad, because it can be used to kill someone? Immediately the argument is lost, because the killing of one person with the pistol requires the active use by another person. Do you argue that if the pistol did not exist, it could not be used to kill another person? But if it does not exist, the argument is moot, there is no pistol to discuss. One cannot apply a value to something that does not exist.

It is the use of the pistol, not its existence that creates the value, positive or negative. But only humans use pistols with intent. It is theoretically possible to train an ape to use a pistol, but again this is human intervention, and the ape does not have the intention of use a human does.

So let us approach the pistol from another viewpoint. It is manufactured by humans with the intent to make a tool that kills either other animals or other humans. The intent is with those that make or purchase the pistol, not with the pistol. Regardless of why it was created and manufactured, the pistol has no intent of itself lying on the table. Without the intent, there is no good or bad in it. The point is, firearms just like rocks exist and have no value, good or bad, outside of human use. By this point, it should be obvious that the same argument applies to nuclear weapons.

At this point, it is interesting to apply the concepts directly to humans. Similar to the above discussion, is a human standing in the middle of the room good or bad? Unless we know what the person is doing other than standing or what he/she is thinking, the question is unanswerable. Other than to anti-humanists, the existence of humans is value-neutral. However, it is not the existence of humans an anti-humanist is condemning, but rather their actions. Without acting, a human is no more than a rock with respect to our values being discussed. Once again we are back to the point—values are the result of human assessment of human action.

Good and bad may be applied to active behaviors as well as passive existence. A good behavior would be one that is done without error, or achieves its result. A bad behavior would be the opposite. However, what do we do with a behavior that is perfectly executed to accomplish a bad, in the sense of harmful, result? It would seem necessary to separate the execution from the result. The execution must be assessed relative to its correctness, where as the result is evaluated with respect to its impact on people.

As an aside, it is the impact on people that determines good and bad. The impact of human action on the environment is often described as bad. As far as the environment itself is concerned, there is neither good nor bad. The environment is constantly changing and adapting, and human activity is often erased in less than 100 years, which is nothing in comparison to even the current inter-ice-age period, which has lasted for about 10,000 years so far. It is some humans assignment of bad to that impact that makes it bad. So the so-called evil or bad of human impacts on the environment is actually the impact of how those changes are perceived on other humans.

Having established that good and bad are human-assigned values, now let us look at benevolent and evil. As has been stated at the beginning of this post, benevolent is not the same as good, and evil is not the same as bad. They are definitely respectively related, but not equivalent. Good and bad may be applied to inanimate objects as well as animate behavior, but benevolent and evil apply only to behavior.

The main difference between good and bad and benevolent and evil, is that good and bad are the respective ends of benevolent and evil action. Additionally, benevolent action is characterized by its intent, to do good. Conversely, evil action has the intent to do harm. There is, however, a subtlety here. Benevolent behavior is not doing good as a return for earned value, but as more than earned or even unearned. The concept of benevolence, the noun form, includes generosity or an excess of goodness—goodness that more than accomplishes its goal. So too, evil action is that which intends to cause extreme harm.

The difficulty with benevolent and evil is the matter of degree. At some point one can say bad behavior becomes evil behavior. Or good behavior becomes benevolent. In the cases where the intent is unquestionable, the intent defines the action. The desire to do good for the sake of doing good defines benevolent as the doing of bad for the sake of doing bad defines evil. But, even with it defined that clearly, the amount of good or the amount of evil seems to enter in. Helping someone fix their car just out of caring or friendship is good, but doesn’t qualify as benevolent, unless, for instance one springs for an engine rebuild or provides the labor for it. Equivalently, simply purposefully doing annoying things or mildly injurious things doesn’t qualify as evil, unless they escalate into serious harm to the victim.

We also refer to people as benevolent or evil. Again, this is a characterization that is based on our observation of their behavior over time. If a person’s actions continually lead to harm to others, and especially if they seem to be pleased by it or enjoy it, we will start calling them evil. There can also be covertly evil people, who have a façade of well-meant behavior hiding their real intent which is harm. We can also construct the opposite situations for benevolent people.

It now crosses my mind to ask, “How to classify the Count of Monte Cristo?” The end result of his actions is the ruin of his victims. But we know that these victims had already harmed him excessively. It is obvious from the story that he relished the destruction of his enemies. However, he also revised his goals with the revelation of new information, and was remorseful over the death of the child of one of his enemies. It would appear that vengeance and/or justice can carve out limited exceptions to our concept of evil.

To reprise, good per se is not benevolence, bad per se is not evil. Good is not the opposite of evil, but of bad. By the same token bad is not the opposite of benevolent, evil is. Most importantly, all four terms require the presence of sentience to have meaning. With these concepts in place, we now have a frame in which to discuss theodicy—why does God allow evil in the world?

Presumption

2009-07-15T02:18:00.001-07:00

When I was in high school, I would go to church camp for a week every summer. It was a wonderful time. Part of the program was classes that met every day to explain more deeply major concepts in the church's belief structure. I particularly remember the series on sin, in particular the so-called Seven Deadly Sins--Pride, Envy, Anger, Covetousness, Gluttony, Lust, and Sloth. One statement stuck out more than others--presumptuous sin was unforgivable. This is sin that is committed knowing at the time it is sinful, under the presumption that one will be forgiven afterwards.

Presumptuous sin ignores the admonition to always strive to do what is right. Forgiveness requires contrition, and a desire to not repeat the sinful acts. Presumptuous sin cannot be contrite, because one knows ahead of time that what is to be done is wrong, therefore one is not sorry for doing it. It also violates the desire not to repeat the act, because one is planning to do it. One could rename it pre-meditated sin.

Most preachers could wax rhapsodic on this theme, but I want to talk about a parallel concept that is never mentioned--presumptuous salvation. Presumptuous salvation is the assumption that by doing certain things one will be saved and go to Heaven. In effect, it is saying, "I can buy my way to Heaven," not necessarily with material goods, but with outwardly virtuous actions. It is a Christian version of Muslims' thinking that death by martyrdom is an automatic Go To Heaven card. During the Crusades, Christians thought in a similar way--go on the Crusade, kill the unbelievers, rescue Jerusalem from the non-Christians and thereby go to Heaven.

It is akin to the behavior attributed to the Pharisees, a formulaic way of living that required highly regulated behavior, to guarantee being ritually pure. Today we can see it in many Christian denominations with strong proscriptions on certain behavior--smoking, drinking, gambling--on the grounds that they are inherently sinful, and requirements for certain other behavior such as full-emersion baptism. These become a rigid code that is taken as a guarantee of reaching Heaven.

This type of thinking removes the need to actually have to be aware and judge one's thoughts and behavior. Virtue is doing right for the sake of doing right. This is doing right (as defined by the church leadership) for the goal of getting into Heaven.

It goes to motive, as the lawyers would say. There is no virtue in turning the other cheek, if the whole time one is resenting the first slap and wishing one could retaliate. Virtue is in genuinely not wanting to retaliate but feeling sad for all involved, understanding that retaliation simply leads to a worse situation. (BTW, this does not mean there should never be retaliation, but that is a whole other post.)

The most public form this takes is the person that takes the approach that as long as one is baptized, and professes to believe in salvation through Jesus crucifixion, then one is automatically saved. There is a bumper sticker that reflects this--"Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." But the subtext here is actually presumptive sin--I am forgiven so I can sin again.

Along with this attitude of presumptive salvation, is the idea that anybody else who does not fit the formula is not saved. This is a great error by my judgement. It strikes me as totally inconsistent to state that God is loving, benevolent, and forgiving, generous with His grace.....but, only if you believe exactly as I do and act exactly as I do. From my viewpoint, a lot of Christians will have a big surprise coming when they die. Who makes it to Heaven will depend not on the minutia of behavior, but on one's attitudes. There will be non-Christians, and even atheists in Heaven, because they were genuinely virtuous people, and there will be many Christians missing, because they substituted presumptuous salvation for actual virtue.

Q--an update

2009-06-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

I have been reading "The Gospel of Thomas." This is a non-canonical book of Jesus's sayings that forms part of the Gnostic literature. Why it is of interest, is that many of the sayings correspond to the so-called Q material. However, and I don't think it is just the translation I am reading, there are considerable variances in the wording, though the sayings are easily recognizable.

While I was doing my reading on Q, I found that all Pro-Q writers mentioned the Gospel of Thomas and how it was probably either late first century, or early second century and that it had many parallels to the Q sayings. They used this as part of their authentication of Q as existing as a document at one time. However, I never saw any table comparing Thomas to Matthew and Luke in the detail that Matthew and Luke are compared. The anti-Q commentors ignored Thomas, probably because it tended to undermine their case, and because it was not a canonical book. (Anti-Q people tend to be more literalistic and have rigid ideas of what is valid scripture).

So far, my reading indicates that the Thomas material is similar enough to support some sort of common source, but I think it undermines the idea of a single written document. The changes in the Thomas material are what might be expected from the capture of an oral tradition for the first time. There is also the possible editing to fit the needs of Gnosticism (which I see as and East-meets-West thing. Much of the writing reminds me of Zen Buddhism with a Christian outlook.).

If Thomas captured an oral tradition directly, then how do we explain the close parallels of Matthew and Luke? Several arguments are in the material I read:
Luke read Matthew
They used a common document
Their arrangements of the material are greatly different
Their wordings are so similar, or according to Eta Linnemann, not that similar

Nobody seems to take seriously the idea of independent capture of oral tradition, save possibly Eta Linneman, though she supports Luke reading Matthew.

The truth is, the amount of Q material is not that great that a person could not memorize all of it. It is far shorter than a one-act play. So it would be a reasonable concept that both Matthew and Luke heard and captured the recitations of one or more early preachers that had essentially the same versions memorized.

I subscribe to the independence of Matthew and Luke for a number of reasons, but the primary is that each has material the other doesn't, and both use Mark, but edit him quite differently.

The extreme pro-Q people would consider independent capture of an oral tradition as undermining their fundamental assumption--that Q was a written document. They need this to provide sufficient authority for them to claim that Q was the "true" teachings of Jesus and should be the only source of Jesus words, thus invalidating all of 2000 years of Christianity as it has been developed. Independent capture of an oral tradition would not harm the writings of most moderate scholars. It provides a source for the Two Source hypothesis, so they can still talk about "Q material." It would be indifferent to the single-source scholars and anti-Q people.

At this point, I favor the independent capture of an oral tradition. It helps explain more in my mind than a written document does, especially since none has turned up yet--even a Third or Fourth Century copy. It also accomodates the statistical analysis of Eta Linnemann.

Considering the highly conjectural nature of this topic, about all one can do is make a provisional choice and wait for further evidence (not further conjecture).

Q

2009-06-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

The history of the three Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, is both speculative and controversial. The greatest controversy surrounds a Gospel that does not exist, and may or may not have ever existed as a document, Q. The name comes from the German, Quelle or source, and refers to a hypothetical source of the common material in Matthew and Luke that does not appear in Mark. The controversy is part of the so-called Synoptic Problem and has one extreme of saying that Q was a written document that had a complete social structure associated with it that undermines all of Christianity, even to the point of denying the crucifixion. In effect the proponents of this stance on Q say that it is the only meaningful document concerning Jesus. The other extreme states that not only does Q not exist, but also that there is no Synoptic problem. Being of the nature that I am, I cannot stay out of the fray, and am taking my own stance, relatively uninformed (compared to the scholars that are disputing) that it may be.

Some background knowledge is required to understand what is going on with this controversy. For the last two to three hundred years, biblical scholarship has come away from the belief that the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses. All scholars, other than biblical literalists, agree that the Gospels were written from forty to eighty years after Jesus was crucified, and are compilations of oral and possibly early, lost, written traditions. Further examination showed that each Gospel told the story from a different standpoint, and that some things were in common and some things were not.

It was noted that most of Mark was in both Matthew and Luke, but that Matthew and Luke had material that was not in Mark. The material that was in all three has been termed the triple tradition, and the material that is only in Matthew and Luke is called the double tradition. In addition there is material that is unique to Matthew and to Luke. John is not considered part of this problem because his approach has almost nothing in common with the other three Gospels. Because the three gospels have so much in common and tell much the same story, they are call the Synoptic Gospels, from the Greek Syn, together, and optic to see. It is trying to explain the differences and similarities that the controversies arise, in particular concerning the double tradition.

Based upon a number of arguments, no one of which by itself is conclusive, but when added together make a fairly strong case, the Gospel of Mark is considered to be the oldest or first written, probably around 70 CE, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. I have seen no argument against this particular conclusion. What is very striking to scholars is how similar the double tradition material is for two authors that are supposedly writing independently. The double tradition material is composed mostly of sayings, but also a couple of narratives. The order in which it appears is different between the two Gospels, but the wording of any given set of verses is extremely close, in many cases, identical.

This close similarity has given rise to two competing hypotheses. One says that the two gospels are not independent and that Matthew read and used Mark, adding his own material to it, and then Luke read Matthew, and possibly Mark, using the Markan material but also the Matthewan material as well leading to both the triple and double traditions. The second hypothesis says that Matthew and Luke were written independently, and that they had a second source besides Mark from which to draw. This source has had various names in the nineteenth century but has come to be called Q as a neutral term for it. Part of the argument for Q also involves explaining why both Matthew and Luke have material unique to themselves that does not appear in Luke, if Luke read Matthew. The case for the second hypothesis is strong enough that probably the majority of scholars accept the idea of Q in some form, but what form is also subject to debate.

Keeping in mind that this qualifies as no more than a hypothesis, no document or fragment of a document has ever been found that could be considered to be Q, it is useful to examine the extremes of the controversy. One extreme could well be called the True-Believers. This group has been represented in the popular press by Burton L. Mack’s books (See the preceding post.). This group believes that a Q document existed at one time and that it was the result of a school of thought in the tradition of the Greek schools. In the Greek schools there was a Master from whom the school got its name. The master created the core of the teachings, and later students added to the teachings, but in the master’s name. The scholars that hold this position believe they see three or four layers of sayings in what is considered Q material, and think that the first layer came from Jesus, but that later layers were added by students. They consider this the earliest collection of Jesus’ teachings, and therefore it is controlling. Since it does not mention the crucifixion, they in effect say that it didn’t happen. They also use social theory to state that the later Gospels were created to meet social problems. In my opinion, they make two very big mistakes, first they extend their conclusions far beyond any grounds that might be covered by the data, and two, they take their analytical descriptions as the actual reality, just as physical scientists confuse their mathematical descriptions of the behavior of reality as the reality itself.

The other extreme has as an examplar, Eta Linneman, who in the one paper of hers I have read does a careful analysis of matching words and phrases, and makes a very persuasive argument against the existence of a true Q document. However, she goes farther and supports the single source hypothesis that says Mark was first, Matthew read Mark, and Luke read Matthew, that there is no Synoptic Problem. I think the work she has done is very useful and illustrates how easy it is to get carried away with a desired result if not checked by careful analysis. The combination of her analysis and what is still a high degree of similarity could also point to a wide-spread oral tradition of sayings, that both Matthew and Luke used, independently of one another.

I have greatly simplified the details of the controversy, but I think it is important to be aware of it. I strongly disagree with the “True Believers” as I have termed them. The existence of Q, even if written, does not throw into doubt the rest of Christianity. That is wishful thinking on their part. I think part of their over-extension of their position on Q is due to a desire to be politically active by undermining the Judeo-Christian pinnings of our society. I am not sure why it is so important to the one source scholars, such as Eta Linnemann, but I think they have a hard time explaining as much as the two source hypothesis does.

My own view is, that since it is hypothetical, (despite Dr. Mack thinking that once it is published it becomes more real and less hypothetical) one can work with it as an assumption, realizing that at any time it could be shown to be false. The two-source theory explains the most of the Gospel correspondences without special case pleadings. However, from my perspective at the present, we cannot know whether Q was an actual document or not. I am keeping my options open on that.

Justice

2009-05-31T18:28:00.001-07:00

I am often surprised when watching events unfold, that when my belief that justice ultimately comes is validated, it is often both far more subtle and far harsher than I could have imagined. I have a particular instance in mind that prompted this post.

I recently finished the book, "The Christian Myth," by Burtaon L. Mack. Dr. Mack is a Professor Emeritis at Claremont School of Theology in California. In this book, which is the third of Dr. Mack's books that I have read, Dr. Mack explicitly states that he considers Christianity to be the cause of many ills and that it needs to be replaced. He also implies that concepts of God are simply a generalization of ancestor worship (p. 99). In effect, Dr Mack has used his position at Claremont to develop an anti-Christian doctrine and agenda based on a hypothetical document called the "Gospel of Q." [I plan to post on this topic almost immediately as well] In my research on Q, I found an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1996, "The Search for a No-Frills Jesus." The quotes from Dr. Mack in this article are illuminating:

"It should bring an end to the myth, the history, the mentality, of the Gospels. But nobody's going to want to read it!"..."They'll have to read it!"..."It's over," ... "We've had enough apocalypses. We've had enough martyrs. Christianity has had a two-thousand-year run, and it's over."

This was written thirteen years ago. Dr. Mack's work is an impassioned attempt to overthrow established Christianity. It represents an entire career of scholarship, albeit based primarily on the works of two other scholars.

From the considerable reading and research I am currently conducting, Dr. Mack is not even mentioned in most of it, and there are a few good scholars that contradict, not support him. The strongest evidence against Q, the basis of Dr. Mack's career, is from Eta Linnenberg, who performed a careful statistical analysis of the supposed equivalences and found them far less persuasive numerically than they are claimed.

For a man with the desire to upset the universe, or at least all of Christendom, to be relegated to oblivion is far more punishing than to be given a major confrontation and defeat in public. One can almost feel sorry for him. Had he made the decision to stay with his scholarship and not try to make it serve social-political activism, the outcome might have been quite different.

Sunday Notes--01/13/2008

2008-01-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

The Power of God

This Saturday, the verses for discussion at the Men's Breakfast were the 29th Psalm.

Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty,
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name;
Worship the Lord in holy array
The voice of the Lord is upon the waters;
The God of glory thunders,
The Lord is over many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful.
The voice of the Lord is majestic.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
Yes, the voice of the lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
And Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord hews out flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord makes the deer to calve
And strips the forest bare;
And in His temple everything says, "Glory!"
The Lord sat as King at the flood;
Yes, the Lord sits as King forever.
The Lord will give strength to his people;
The Lord will bless His people with peace.
--- New American Standard Bible

After I read the passage I said that the psalmist obviously lived in the outdoors and saw God in everything around him. I then asked, "Where do we see God today?" I got one response of "In our families," and another "In creation." The second speaker then made the analogy that since a building has a designer so creation had a designer. After that there was silence. So the discussion went to another topic.

What troubles me is that here was a collection of devout men, who attend church regularly, who have no sense of the presence of God. What is it they believe in? How can they pray to God and yet never sense Him? I don't mean that one must always feel his presence, and it may be only indirectly, but how can someone claim to believe in something never experienced? Alternatively, it could be that the experience is so personal and subjective that they are either embarassed or afraid of ridicule if they express it. In a group of two dozen men, who have been having breakfast together twice a month for years, this seems a bit far-fetched, especially in light of many of the discussions that have occurred both at breakfasts and retreats.

But perhaps I have stumbled onto a problem with mainline Protestantism and an explanation for its slow demise, to be replaced by churches based on emotional experiences and appeals. When I was much younger, during my college years, I would visit friends that owned a farm on weekends and long vacations other than Christmas. Their church services were simple and the preacher was very good at weaving an almost hypnotic spell. One also had the feeling that they never questioned their faith, and that most could point to some time or place where they felt God's presence.

Intellectual pursuit has been extremely successful in the past several hundreds of years in improving the day to day lot of mankind, especially in Western civilization. We are now starting to make it almost a religion in its own right in our obsession to remove all traces of Christian and Jewish belief from our public culture. Any idea is automatically suspect if it has a religious background to it. Where once religious-based principles were the touchstone of moral codes and general judgment of behavior, now intellectuality is attempting to rule, and the mainline Protestant churches are beginning to go along with it. The most recent notable example being the Archbishop of Canterbury stating that the Christmas story was a myth. [Sure it is, but the way it was done, and the timing served as an attempt to undermine anyone believing in the story in any way.]

The problem is that few of us are intellectual elites that can live on rationality alone (or rather pretend to do so). The myths and legends are necessary to provide us with a touchstone to our natures. Having lived thirty years as a wannabe intellectual elitist, I can say it was hard work, and created a subtly impoverished life. Actually, the elitists have their own set of myths and legends, though they would passionately deny that is what they are. The two main ones are The Big Bang, and Evolution. This is not to say that those two concepts are in error, it is to say they provide for the same needs as the Genesis and other biblical legends do for many Judeo-Christian believers.

With the control of public discourse becoming more and more absolutely secular, our experience of life no longer is allowed to consider God as part of it. We are too busy with cell-phones, TVs, iPods, and constant activity to have any time for contemplation. Life has become a constant rush and a constant interruption of our thoughts. Bedtime after all the family is asleep, airplanes, and waiting on my wife are the only times I find for my own thoughts. I make those times to think, so what about others that are given no time to think, and don't realize they need it? It was during one of those times--an airplane at 32,000 feet on a normal day, that I had my most notable experience of God, and it was very subtle, and very real.

There is an old expression, if you are up to your waist in alligators, it is hard to drain the swamp. Today's society creates alligators as fast or faster than we can deal with them--if we let it. Currently it is all the pundit-babble on the upcoming elections, both primary and general. Or if you wish, all the sordid details of our celebrity sub-culture. One can easily continually distract oneself with You-tube, blogs, and a myriad of on-line entertainments, as well as traditional TV enhanced by hundreds of channels with any choice one could wish for. This kind of superficiality is reinforced with the lack of substance of our education system.

So perhaps it is no wonder that the mainline Protestant faiths are declining. It isn't about their message, it is about their lack of engagement, their inability to reach the feelings of the parishioners in a religiously meaningful way. They have become too smart for their own good, to quote another old expression. Or perhaps we should say they have lost their common sense.

Sunday Notes 0930_2007

2007-10-01T16:40:00.000-07:00

Love of Riches

Today’s scriptures were concerned with the negative side of riches. The Old Testament lesson was from Amos and described the “worthlessness” of riches. The Psalm was Psalm 1 which was part of the text I used in a sermon last year, only in the context it was less concerned about rewarding faithfulness than punishing worldliness. The Epistle lesson was from Timothy and included the famous line that the love of money was the root of all evil, and the Gospel was the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and that the rich man went to Hell and Lazarus went to Heaven. Pastor did a different take on this than the more common one of condemning riches that many take, but he still came out emphasizing the have/have not issue.

I think the problem is that the Biblical verses and most, if not all pastors, become caught up in the politics of envy and lose sight of the real lesson and the economics involved. It is much like the so-called sin taxes, they are imposed heavily on “sinful” things, tobacco and alcohol, in a hypocritical attempt to look like one is suppressing them but actually carefully adjusting the tax so that the goose keeps on laying the golden eggs of revenue. The condemnation of riches is the same sort of behavior in many cases. By creating guilt from the damning of riches, the church hopes to receive more riches for its purposes, which it considers God’s purposes and therefore OK.

A church is like a government—it creates no wealth, it merely redistributes it. Churches take the money from the offering and spend it on the church and on the missions and programs of the church. It also spends it on the costs of administration and upkeep of the church and its programs. Just a government has an insatiable appetite for money, so to, does a church. There are always more poor, more hungry, and more repairs. There is always another program to start or to expand. There is always a need to improve the facilities. This is not to condemn this; it is a statement of reality.

Where the church fails is it does not encourage the acquisition of riches by its members IN A MORALLY CORRECT WAY. The condemnation of riches in the bible is, because in acquiring the riches, the rich become oriented only towards their own wants. The problem is that nothing can be accomplished without money or riches. Material goods count as long as one is in the physical world. Our church just completed 124 quilts this year to be sent to various relief activities involving the Lutheran Church. This may be motivated by the desire to help others, but it is very material. It required money and time to produce the quilts, and both of those can only be provided by people who are better off than subsistence survival.

Poverty is often presented as great virtue. But poverty does nothing but sustain itself. Giving up everything one has to be impoverished with other poor people accomplishes nothing for anyone in the long run. The image of Sister Theresa has been very cannily exploited by the Roman Catholic Church. It produces huge amounts of cash and material flow that the church then uses to buy and/or create converts. Other than size, however, the Roman Catholic Church is little different from any other organized religion in this regard.

I really don’t want to get off on institutional religion in this note, my concern is with the individual approach to riches in light of scriptural teaching. It is part of human nature to acquire goods. It is a survival trait that in our society can be destructive taken to extremes. It is also part of human nature to be interested first in oneself then in others. Part of the churches teaching, at its best, is to help us to see others as a piece of ourselves. Where the acquisition of riches goes awry is when the person acquires the riches exclusively for his/herself. This the problem with the rich man in the Lazarus story from Luke. He cares not for anyone other than himself. Lazarus is a symbol of those in need.

The problem, however, is that simply giving away money does nothing more than alleviate the immediate need. I am all for conditional giving. The recipient has to make changes in their life and lifestyle in order to receive the charity. This is the secret of the success of IHN, which has an 80% success rate after a two year follow-up. The program requires changes to participate in it.

The correct approach to riches is to have no qualms about acquiring riches, and even rewarding oneself along the way, as long as one meets some conditions:
1. The methods of acquisition are moral, not just legal.
2. One is WILLING to share ones wealth in a reasonable and generous way. The guideline in the bible is a tithe, but in today’s world unless one does it from the start of life, it is rarely accomplished.
3. The sharing of the wealth is not as a handout, but as a hand up to assist in improving the recipients life, not just making it momentarily easier
4. and most of all, the sharing is done quietly, preferably anonymously. To do it for self-aggrandizement is to negate the virtue. To do it to earn a place in Heaven is also to negate the virtue.

To acquire riches is part of being human. The other part is recognizing other humans, especially those in need.

If the building is important, what should be in it?

Two Sundays ago, I presented some ideas concerning the importance of the building in the growth of a church. As both of my commentators pointed out, I really didn’t discuss what should happen inside the building. In addition, my wife also pointed out that a megachurch is not necessarily what everyone, including myself, wants to belong to.

I was a member of a church that was decaying. It was doing some of the right things too late and in the wrong way. It had two traditional services, and early and a late, and a celebration service that was very upbeat, only had the gospel lesson, and a continuous communion using intincture. It ended up not growing because it became three different congregations, none of which would agree with each other. In addition, the celebration choir refused to engage in evangelism considering it a prostituting of their purpose in worshipping. In effect the church became the church of many egos.

I remember shopping for a church in Pennsylvania, and we attended many different flavors of ELCA. There was the hide-bound traditional that used the Red Book with some pasted in edits to make it less male chauvinistic. We attended a fairly large church that had a charismatic pastor, and we attended a very large church that had a fabulous organ, a professional quality choir, and a head pastor that did not know anybody in the congregation, leaving it to his assistant pastors. In other words, it was a church to get lost in.

What this all points out, is that before a church takes on the task of growing, it needs to be clear about what it wants to become. The key to any growth is the youth of the church, both to retain the members of the family and to appeal to their friends. But one also cannot, as the seminar mentioned in the earlier post, cynically say those who are here can be ignored. They can and will leave if their needs are not being met.

When I was growing up, the church I belonged to had adult services that were traditional, and a youth service, RUN BY THE YOUTH, that was traditional but the most abbreviated version of Morning Prayer allowed. The youth group was vibrant and we had some very successful social functions with other congregations of the same faith. In fact, I met a girl that I dated for some time at one of these functions. It may be that a church does not want to grow beyond a certain point, but over time they will. It is a matter of making sure that all needs are met, not just those of growth.

This is probably where most churches fail, defining their goals. The first problem is realizing they only have two choices, grow or die, there is no third choice—stay the same. That equates to die. Many times they do not realize that they must compromise, or they refuse to compromise. The latter was the problem at my former church. All churches have four major groupings, youth, young parents, older parents, and a population of adults with children gone from the home. Each of these groups has distinctive needs and familiarities that are a consequence of the period in which they grew up. There needs to be traditional services for some, blended services for others, and truly contemporary services for the rest. There also needs to be some way to periodically bring them all together in the same service to maintain the sense of community. There also have to be ministries that bring members of disparate groups together—ministries that do not depend on liturgy for their function.

The ultimate result of a successful definition of goals and plan to accomplish them will be the church of the goals that continues to grow and requires the redefinition of the goals as time goes on. Unfortunately, or fortunately, a church is never static, and it is a matter of what change they want to allow and deal with, not maintaining the status quo.

Sunday Notes – 9/16/2007

2007-09-17T17:31:00.000-07:00

What makes a church

This is the first of several notes resulting from attending a seminar on church building. I thought the seminar was to be about construction and finance. It was also about what is necessary in the church to allow it to grow. I had many of my preconceptions altered about the nature and purposes of a church.

When most of us say the word church, we have in our minds an image of a building, typically what we went to as we were raised, what we currently attend, or, if we are unchurched, so to speak, some iconic image that says, “this is a church.” WRONG. The building is a tool. It is not the end; it is not the definition.

Ask most people what the purpose of a church is and they will say, “to worship.” Wrong again. The purpose of a church is its mission, and if it has no clear mission, it will die. To fulfill its mission the church must use whatever does the job within its moral boundaries. When many people in a congregation want to build a new church or change the current church, what they want is something for them – not something for the outside world. Again, WRONG! If you want your church to grow, you have to build to attract the outside, not comfort the inside.

What was emphasized was that the church building shapes the church’s effectiveness in its ministries. This implies that the physical building can interfere with the purpose of the church or one or more of its ministries. I often thought that the growth of the fundamental Christian faiths was due to the theology or details of the beliefs. Actually, once most people are assured there is a God, that He forgives, and that they can get to Heaven, they are little concerned with the details of the theology. A church is defined first by its mission and SECOND by its theology.

What crosses my mind is that a church is where:
1. You can feel close to God – though that can occur in non-church environments.
2. You can feel comfortable with your surrounding persons.
3. You feel safe and secure
4. You want to give back some of what you received
5. If you walked in, you could have a conversation with God
6. The worship service makes you feel good.

There are three important things to note in what is listed above:
1. no mention of the building
2. no mention of a particular liturgy
3. (a subset of #1, no mention of a sanctuary.

Truth in blogging time: I am a liturgical and physical conservative. I LIKE having the old chants, the old hymns, the old liturgies. I like having a defined sanctuary. Any time I am in the church and can sneak away, I go and kneel in front of the altar and pray. My particular need would be met with a simple side-chapel.

So what has occurred in me is a fulfillment of the realization that not all liturgies are suitable for all worshippers. God doesn’t need to kiss my butt with a chapel or liturgy that I like, He has me on board. Now that I am on board, I am to bring in others, not sit and rest on my sanctity. And what will bring in others is not necessarily what brought or kept me in. Times have changed. This means that the building requirements, the liturgy requirements, the service requirements, have changed.

So we have to reconsider what makes, for any religious group, a church.

What defines the future of the church

Churches can either grow or die. It is rare that they can achieve a permanent stability, replacing lost members by internal growth or people coming in from the outside. If it is attractive to outsiders it will grow, and if it is not, it will eventually die.

Growth comes from two sources, youth and new families. If youth feel comfortable at church and bring their friends who also feel comfortable, eventually the families of the youth will follow. This is an outstanding trait of the dynamic churches—they provide for their youth. The second source of growth is couples with babies or very young children. They want to bring their children up within a church environment, just as they had been.

The churches that provide a place for youth to come and hang out, party, and play games will keep their own youth, and will attract their friends because it is fun to go there. If you can add a youth service that appeals to their senses and gives them an experience of wonder, they will become believers. When churches did not have to compete against TV, video games, and various hang outs, it was easier to retain their youth—there was no where else to go, and parents maintained stricter controls over their coming and going. Where the model once was conversion then fellowship, it is now fellowship then conversion. Remember, the message does not have to change, only the delivery method. When youth feels cared for they respond by caring in return and by remaining in the church.

Young couples have needs that come from the conflicting demands of child-rearing and jobs. One of the most important of those is day care and pre-school. Churches that provide a day-care and preschool, will attract parents because the fact that it is church-related gives it a stronger recommendation than secular day care. All dynamic churches provide day-care and pre-school and as they grow, they often build grade schools. Again, because it reassures parents that the values important to them will be taught.

The major hurdle in creating a growing church is that the people in control of the money are not the youth and new parents – they are the older parishioners who want to feel comfortable and want the church to reflect their wants. They often are wedded to the church as being the building itself, or the items in the building that they can point to and say, “so and so made this” or “this is from the very first opening” or other similar statements. It is not that this is unimportant, but how important is it to the mission of the church? Often there is no defined mission in such circumstances. Older parishioners don’t see the need to give youth priority, or to go to the extensive effort to create an approved day care or pre-school. They don’t want the change that this will require.

But the choice is very simple, change or eventually close the doors.

The Beatitudes--the great mis-interpretation

2007-09-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in The Lutheran, there was mention of the pacifistic orientation of the Beatitudes. The context was in a discussion of the war in Iraq, a discussion which made no mention of the willingness of jihadists to kill anybody not a believer as they believed. Further comment on the article itself is outside the purpose of this post.

Both the Beatitudes and the phrase "turn the other cheek" are used to justify total pacifism in the face of bare, brutal aggression. From my reading of Jesus and his works and teachings, it is a gross distortion. The man who cleansed the Temple was not a pacifist. For that matter the martyrs of history were not necessarily pacifists going unprotesting to the slaughter, but rather the totally defenseless herded regardless of their efforts.

So let's start with the Beatitudes themselves. The appear in both Matthew and Luke, and I will use the New International Version to illustrate. (Sometime in the future I will do a full study of these verses. The post here is a preliminary note.)

Matthew 5:1-5:12
1 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him,
2 and he began to teach them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Luke 6:20-6:26
20 Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
22 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.
24 But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.

A general parsing of the Matthewan version relates to showing that the spiritually down-trodden are to receive a reward in heaven. The Lucan version relates more to the materially down-trodden. It is the Matthewan version that is most often quoted, so we will deal with it for now.

The verses that would lead to a possible pacifist interpretation are:
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

First of all, verse eleven is clarified by verse 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.... It says that if you are persecuted because of belief in Jesus you will be rewarded in heaven. It does not say that if you want a reward in heaven you have to be persecuted. Much of the New Testament seems to be interpreted in such a transactional manner. It is almost a version of neo-Phariseeism where prescribed behavior will bring guaranteed rewards. Sorry that is a form of magic or attempting to manipulate God.

Now let us look at verse 9. It says peacemakers are blessed, but it does not say anything about how, when, or under what conditions peacemaking should be approached. I seriously doubt that peace to Jesus was defined as the absence of active violence. Peace meant true living together harmoniously. Something that is not to be found simply by not fighting. It is possible that General George Patton could be called a peacemaker because by fully defeating his enemy, he assured that there would be no fighting later.

Verse 5 is the most interesting and the most difficult. What is meant by "meek"? We facily interpret it as mild-mannered, non-combative, and non-confrontational. But is that what is meant? This post will only speculate that meek in this sense is those who do not puff themselves up, but simply do their work without concern for credit or glory. This will be an area for much further research.

In summary, I have tried to indicate that the common interpretation of the Beatitudes is quite wrong and leads to an anti-life position where might makes right rather than right making right. I cannot reconcile abject surrender to "I come so you might have life and you might have it more abundantly."

Sunday notes--2/25/2007

2007-03-01T19:00:00.000-08:00

Suicide
Classically, based on Roman Catholic theology, suicide is the one sin God would not forgive. From my reading of it, this is because suicide is self-murder and the murdered is no longer around to express remorse and ask forgiveness. This is based on what I consider a flawed model, that the priest is necessary for forgiveness. In other words, one must go to confession to be forgiven. Let me state right now, that I don't buy into that idea, so either bear with me or go somewhere else.

The question to be considered is: are there suicides that are forgivable? Deriving from that one can ask: If there are suicides that are forgivable, then what distinquishes them from those that aren't? Or, how fine a line can we draw between forgiveness in spite of suicide, and condemnation because of suicide?

In order to make the problem tractable, I want to sort out suicides into groups. The first group is those in totally intractable physical pain. Pain that is not amenable to modern analgesics, at least in legal doses. The second group is those who have reached a point of total despair, due to health issues or other life issues. The third group are the clinically depressed. The fourth group are the self-centered angry and attention-getters.

Let's start with the intractable physical pain group. The logic is "Thou shalt not kill" and if one kills oneself, it is sinful. But this is a very absolute proscription. It requires that a person in agony beyond any normal comprehension [it does exist, I've been there, bk] with no hope of alleviation must continue to suffer until they die without outside intervention. To take this position and blame God for it is to make God a partner to torture. This is totally incompatible with a benevolent God. However, if God cannot or will not violate the laws of nature to relieve this suffering which must grate against the omnibenevolent side of His nature, then He becomes by default a party to torture. In such a conflict, brought on by the very nature of the omnipotent God, the choice to end one's life voluntarily seems hardly to be a sin, but rather the resolution of a difficult problem. By my reasoning, suicide under such circumstances is not a sin.

Now let's turn to a group that is not so clear cut: those who have reached a point of total despair, due to health issues or other life issues. Starting with the health issues, these are easier to sort out, if one has a permanently debilitating disease or condition, is one allowed to take one's life? Not necessarily. Despite the grim future, if there is the opportunity to provide wisdom, insight, productive work, or other value, then it would be a sin to deprive oneself and the rest of the world of this value. If one is reduced to total futility, and even the mind cannot produce any value or communicate any value, then BY CHOICE, it would not be sinful to take ones life. Note however, this is not a pass for Dr. Kevorkian. The individual must make the decision and carry it out. By all standards I hold valuable, Dr. Kevorkian ends up a murderer. Suicide is a personal responsibility--it cannot have assistance. I realize there is an inherent conflict here--a person in such a state may not be able to engineer their suicide. Regardless, and here is one of the places I draw a line, no one else can commit the act. They might make the means available, but they cannot actually assist in the act of death.

The life issues subgroup would appear to me to never be justified in suicide. There are some amazing stories of people surviving the most horrible of lives, e.g., Ellie Weisel (sp?). It is pure self-pity and indulgence to think that life cannot go on because of ....... I've been there too. The worst single event is loosing a child and my wife and I continued. Even if it is more than one child or one's entire immediate family or one's fortune, this is not justification for suicide. One still has value and opportunity. It may not be what was previously offered, but it does exist. In reading this over, I am struck that there is a life issue class that is difficult to deal with--causing accidental death. I have known people who have done this, and coping with it is harder in my mind than with the death of a loved one. this is one case I will leave undecided. I thought of a third life issue that rarely applies in todays permissive, relativistic society--the total loss of one's personal honor and integrity. Regardless of how it happens, there comes a moment of sanity when one looks at the carnage and wonders how, if at all, they can ever recover their self-respect. Under such circumstances, it has the flavor of reparation or ultimate penance--a desire never to have it be possible again. There is a most profound remorse associated with it. It is the stuff of great tragedies. Such a situation strikes me as not sinful but an attempt to act with the greatest of rectitude.

Our third group are the clinically depressed. These are people whose minds have gone into a spiral downward, and everything is seen as one more oppression or failure. Not everyone in this position is as lucky as I have been, to have a hope or concern to cling to. When one is in this position, all that is perceived is total despair and no opportunity to change. Often there is no one important enough to delay action for, or to consider prior to acting. For someone at this point, life is a zero. There is no way to continue without endless pain or conflict. I am working hard to create sympathy for this person, because he/she is totally unable to step outside of themselves to see any other opportunities. At this point, having a choice is far more theoretical than actual. Persons in this place are not in their right minds, and it makes more sense to hold them responsible as one would hold responsible a person of diminished capacity rather than one of normal mind. This is one that God would have to sort out--were they crazy enough not to be responsible? God only knows. But for us, it is not ours to judge. We should offer them the full death rites as if it were an usual death by natural causes.

The last group is composed of self-centered, self-pitying, angry people and attention-getters. The latter category ends up killing themselves by mistake--they stage a suicide as an attention-getting bid and it goes further than planned. To me this is a slam-dunk--it is a sin. God may forgive them but their motives from the start were tainted with the goal of manipulation. But what about the first category, the angry, self-centered people who kill themselves because they did not get their way. Some high school suicides are to the point here. Any case of suicide as "I'll show you, I'll kill myself" fits the mold here. This is a despicable and definitely sinful form of suicide. It takes the very thing of value in the other person, love and concern for another, and turns it against them to cause horrible pain.

In summary, I argue that there are some instances of suicide that are not sinful, there are a few that are debatable, and there are those that are definitely sinful. The non-sinful group includes those in intractable pain, those in total despair with no hope of relief, and those whose self-judgment consider death as the only acceptable punishment. The debatable group are those with life-issues other than terminal health. All the rest, which is most suicides are sinful by my reasoning.

Judas Iscariot
The discussion on suicide above grew out of some thinking I was doing concerning Judas Iscariot. It started with a bureaucratic change in security procedures at a client. One comment was that there aught to be a special place in Hell for such persons. My companion had never thought of Hell has having special places, and so I mentioned Dante's Inferno, and the bottom where Judas and the Devil were frozen in ice and biting each other's necks. My companion then said that Judas' betrayal of Jesus was necessary for him to become the Savior.

I have thought about this for a while, and it strikes me that there is some very faulty reasoning on the part of Paul, who is the main proponent in the Bible of the death of Jesus on the cross relieving us of the burden of punishment for our sins. The argument as it applies to Judas goes like this:
1. We are saved by Jesus death on the cross.
2. For that to happen Jesus had to die.
3. For Jesus to die, he had to be tried and condemned.
4. For him to be tried, he had to be turned over to the authorities.
5. Someone had to turn him over to the authorities.
6. Judas had the role of betraying Jesus.
7. Judas' betrayal is essential to our salvation.
8. Judas is a hero not a villain, because he is necessary to our salvation.

To me, it smacks of Pooh saying that the reason there are bees is because they make honey and the reason there is honey is so I can eat it.

Paul created a strong emotional image by combining the sacrifice of the first-born with the scape-goat. He then took that is the purpose of Jesus on earth. My reading of the gospels was that Jesus was less concerned with heavenly reward than with right living on earth. It is only after his death that much of what is ascribed to him has come to be. It is just like interpreting Isaiah to foretell the coming of Jesus, when actually he was foretelling the coming of another David.

The argument above assumes predestination. Judas by that argument was predestined to betray Jesus. But if that is so, how can he be punished for it? He could do no other. If we remove the predestination and teleology from the story of Jesus, we have what is still a powerful, but no longer supernatural, story of a great teacher who ran afoul of the establishment. The estatablishment found a way to frame him to the authorities so that he would be killed, and they would not have to do it. Judas acted on the baser side of his nature, and then in remorse over what he did, killed himself. Here was the link with the above discussion on suicide. In Judas case, it was an attempt to redeem his honor by paying what he saw as a just price for the life he betrayed.

But was Jesus death on the cross necessary for our salvation, or was it the full example of what it means to be true to oneself and ones values? I never understood the fairy tales that had whipping boys and girls in them. It was forbidden to strike a prince or princess so if a whipping/spanking were required, a commoner received the punishment instead. I never understood how someone else taking my punishment would make me a better person. By the same token, I fail to see that Jesus' death was for my sins. Actually it was BECAUSE of not FOR my sins, my being a human collective my.

If that is the case, then Judas becomes more understandable. He became subject to his baser instincts, threw in with the Sanhedrin, and then realized the enormity of what he had done and killed himself in remorse. This also gets rid of the problems of predestination and how Judas could be a sinner if he was necessary to the salvation plan.

Sunday Notes--2/18/2007

2007-02-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

Prayers for Peace
Once again I am struck by the simple-mindedness of the paragraph in our weekly prayer for the church, the world, and all of God's people. I am using the phrase simple-minded in its most pejorative sense--diminished reasoning ability. We are to approach God as children, but not as idiots. A prayer for peace without a corresponding prayer for the destruction of evil is to wear blinders at the least or to willfully misread reality at the worst.

I would be satisfied with a prayer for help in recognizing evil that we might more effectively fight it. But there is not even that. True, what I really want is the explicit naming of Jihadism as evil from the pulpit, but that would run counter to the rabid ecumentalism that infests the leadership of Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches.

Christianity as practiced in this country has become concerned more with the feel-good side of being forgiven and less with the moral standards that have been the mainstay of Western civilization. In its attempts to be inclusive it has shed its standards, and yet can be arbitrarily exclusive. It can include homosexuals and no longer condemn couples "living in sin", but exclude other denominations from assisting with projects because they might evangelize.

It brings the plight of the Palestinians to everyone's attention, yet never discusses why it is that way. They condemn Israel for building a wall, yet never condemn Palestinian terrorists for bombing innocent civilians, or the entire Middle East for refusing to deal with Palestinians and helping them. In effect, they support the Muslim desire to destroy Israel so the Palestinians can go back to where they say they belong and rape and pillage everything Israeli.

There is no discussion of what peace should look like or what is preventing it. Simply a blanket request for peace so the troops can come home. In effect, it is politics disguised as religion and deniably so. I have often referred to Jesus' cleansing the temple as a non-passive expression of his religious beliefs. Closer to our time and definitely connected to my denomination, Lutheran, is the example of Dietrich Bonhoffer. He is considered a great Lutheran theologian, and was executed for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler. His example says that if one knows someone or something to be evil, one should do all that is necessary to irradicate it.

Perhaps the problem is in our refusal to state anything is evil. President Bush had the courage to name an Axis of Evil. All it did was lead to a firestorm of criticism. Now there is a refusal to name militant Islam as evil, for fear that it will be construed as a blanket condemnation of Islam. This is ignorance. The fact is, that literal interpretation of the Quran does lead to evil. It is explicit in the verses--kill anyone that does not belief in Islam, conquer the world, and force all to be either believers, dead, or dhimmi.

It is as if our churches have lost the sense that God helps those who help themselves. They have become towards God as the secularists have become towards the government. Present oneself as a victim and be provided for. Our prayers don't ask for help to accomplish good in the world, they simply ask for comfort. They ask for wisdom from world leaders, but not skill and guidance that our military may be effective. In fact, prayers for the military are lumped in with the segment on prayers for the sick and dying--keep them safe, bring them home, but don't help them do their job better.

One of my favorite hymns as a child was "Onward Christian Soldiers". It is never sung anymore, and in fact I'm not sure it is even in the new hymnals. [They were just published. I will be very interested to see the overall flavor.] It is as if the concept of a Christian soldier is now considered an oxy-moron. Well, our church leadership will be the first to go if Islam wins. At that point they will find out just how important Christian soldiers are.

Sunday Notes--12/31/2006

2006-12-31T11:54:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Story
The Christmas story appears in Matthew and Luke, and not Mark or John. Mark predates Matthew, and supposedly Matthew used much of Mark as a base for his gospel. John seems to be from a totally different tradition. Luke knew of Matthew's gospel, and provides essentially the same story with a lot of enhancements concerning Mary and Elizabeth who is said to be John the Baptist's mother. However, the story of the magi appears only in Matthew.

The entire story is shrouded in legend. Attempts to fix the historical clues come up with contradictions and inconsistencies. It is actually doubtful that the birth occurred on or around Dec 25, but rather the day is a co-option of a pagan holiday. That Jesus was born to poor parents is a given. His father was a carpenter and would have had little money. Laying the baby in a manger after swaddling him is a poignant image, but is it possibly true? We would have to have some idea of birth customs of the times. I would think he would be simply held by Mary.

What are the origins of the story of the Magi? No one has ever been able to create a strong, plausible explanation for the Star. Many good, reputable astronomers have tried. Without that the story becomes even more legendary. It makes a good promotion of Jesus as a great and wonderful person to have three kings or wise men or magicians come and visit him as a baby, but doesn't really fit what Jesus is to become. Again the story tends to support the Messiah as a Davidic king rather than a great Rabbi, when viewed as being foretold, though it makes a good selling point for his impact later--he was seen as a child to be a chosen one.

What strikes me more than anything else is the contrast of the birth of an infant and its attendant joy at a time that is normally drear. Mid-winter is not normally a time for celebration, which may explain some of our almost hysterical attempts to have a joyful time. Here we are given a reason to be joyful in an image that is inherently joyful. There is some historical truth in the story perhaps, but mostly it is inspirational rather than factual.

If nothing else, it emphasizes that from the most humble beginnings great things can come. The baby of a carpenter and his wife, too poor to afford a room in an inn, became the greatest teacher and spiritual leader of all human history.

Church Music
During this general time of year, our church changes liturgies fairly often. As a consequence I started reflecting on the differences, and their appeal. I began to realize that the liturgy was originally written by elites, not the common people, and that what many of us hold as traditional is something that is accepted only because there was no alternative. Generally, I think the people that like the traditional liturgies are also the ones that are into classical music and literature, in other words, the elitists.

It was hard for me to believe that the modern liturgies were actually liked. I have since changed that opinion, not because I came to like them, but because I heard from people that did. Modern liturgies are akin to pop music in their sophistication, or lack thereof. They have the same kind of easy melodies and simple rhythms. Obviously, I don't care much for pop music.

But two things are important here: 1) the basic principles do not change, and 2) the liturgy reinforces in most people the lessons and principles being provided. There is nothing in salvation doctrine that dictates it be promoted in plainsong, Gregorian chant, Luther's hymns, or for that matter any of the modern liturgy writers. What is important is that the message reach its audience. A liturgy that is not pleasing will create an antagonism that interfers with the hearing of the message, and the converse is true.

What is needed is for a church to either select for a given congregation and have only one liturgy, or else be open and have several liturgies throughout the year.

Sunday Notes--12/10/2006

2006-12-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

Christmas Kindness
One of the themes mentioned in the sermon today was the especial kindness that seems to occur at Christmas. Despite the frustrations of shopping and the short tempers it produces, there seems to be a greater inclination to do works of charity and to attempt to be nicer to people. I don't think it is due to Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Its success was due to the expressed attitudes' already existing.

I think it comes from a combination of the Christian Christmas story and non-Christian traditions that include gift-giving at this time of year. The image of a new-born sets the overall tone of the holiday. There is also the story of the gifts from the Magi. But intuitively it is the baby that is central to all our Christmas thinking. Even the agnostics and atheists are caught up in it, unless they take special precautions.

It is interesting that we celebrate Jesus' birth and make a great to do of his greatness, yet make little or no explicit connection with the horror of his death on Good Friday. At Christmas we focus on what he is, but not how it is that he is a savior. Our Christmas carols reinforce this dual focus, the baby in "Away in a Manger", "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem", the majesty in "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful", "Angels We Have Heard on High", "Oh,Holy Night", a blend in "Appalachian Christmas Carol".

Then there is the emphasis on care for the poor in "Good King Wenceslas", and the party time in "Deck the Halls" and "Here We Come A'Wasselling". It is as if the Christian message gets directly translated into emotions which then are given control over our behavior. At the same time there is a dis-connection from the everyday world, where many of these behaviors are considered anti-successful. That is the success of "A Christmas Carol", the ultimate materialist succombs to the Christmas message.

It is a time of year when we engage to one degree or another in wishful thinking about the world around us. We see it and respond to it as if it were as nice as we wished. To some degree this is a return to childhood. But that does not make it wrong. In truth, it is good. It provides a break in our normal thinking and feeling, and allows different, if not new, thoughts and behaviors to come out. Sometimes it even leads to change for the better.

Sunday Notes--12/3/2006

2006-12-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Advent
There are many approaches to Advent. This year the theme in our church seems to be expectation, in the sense of expecting a wonderful event. Regardless of whether one believes the salvation theology, or like me, one believes that Jesus was a great teacher and leader, commemorating his birth is a proper thing to do. We honor the birthdays of all great people either with a mention or a celebration of some sort.

Last year the theme was more of Advent being a mini-Lent. A time for introspection and consideration of our human nature. This also seems appropriate to the occasion. Mostly because of the time of year, when everything slows down and there is time to assess the past, present, future, counting our successes and our failures, and taking stock of ourselves.

The other sense of expectation that might be considered is that of anticipation of a party. This is the secular version of Advent. It starts the day after Thanksgiving and ends New Years Day. The focus is on the acquisition of materials goods for onesself or ones loved ones, and on partying. Again this is an attempt to have one last fling before Winter sets with force. There is an element of denial, because often there is an underlying sadness that is replaced with almost hysterical gaiety.

For me this year, it is a sudden, unexpected, early, and certainly welcomed slowing of the pace I have been at for over six months. With it comes gratitude for all that I am blessed with.

Sunday Notes--11/26/2006

2006-11-26T14:21:00.000-08:00

Daniel
The First Reading in our lectionary for the last couple of weeks has been from Daniel. I am not familiar with Daniel, but I plan to become so in the future. The verses chosen are from Chapter 7 and deal with a vision of the end of time and a final judgement. The similarities are so strong to Revelation, that I would consider John to have simply redreamed Daniel. What is has done is motivated a study for the future on comparisons of Daniel and Revelation, and perhaps, more generally a study of the eschatology of the Bible. If the readings I have seen so far of Daniel are any indication, there is really little that is new in the eschatology of the New vs. the Old Testaments, and a comparison paper is in order. That, however, is a retirement project. For those interested, you have been pointed in an intriguing direction.

Christ the King
Of all the themes in the interpretation of the New Testament, this is the one I have spent and will continue to spend the most time on. The text from John which forms the base of this celebration, was my first successful exegesis of Biblical text. My pastor at the time either encouraged a scholar or spawned a monster. I'll let you choose which.

I submit to no king, divine or otherwise, but I fully accept God as my guide and Jesus as His greatest exemplar. Given this attitude, it is no wonder I saw the Johanine gospel in an different light. I have written on this theme before. This was a long exposition of my position. This provided in a very long post, the summation of my study to date, including the comparison of nine different translations of the Bible.

I have acquired a very sceptical view when I read the Gospel of John. Whereas I tend to be far more accepting of the Gospel of Mark. John hypes Jesus in every way he can, focusing on what John considers Jesus' majesty. Mark tends to be more of a reporter, as best he can. If you want examples of my scepticism, read the link to my post two years ago. But regardless of John's hype, Jesus did some very real things on Earth, and left an indelible example. John's Gospel forms the basis of the celebration of Christ the King Sunday, which served a dual purpose, to counteract the beginnings of seeing Hitler as a messiah and to put some counter pressure on Lutherans with their celebration of Reformation Sunday. [Many thanks to my pastor for his history lesson this morning.] To quote the Johanine text, which is, in my opinion, grossly mis-interpreted:

John 18:37 ..."You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth...."

My parsing of this text, which is explained in detail in the link to my earlier post, is that Jesus came to testify to the truth, not to be King. There has been a conflation of the political charges against Jesus with the desire to glorify Jesus, leading to a reading of John and the other Gospels that is not true. In fact there are translations of Jesus' inquisition by Pilate, that have Jesus saying explicitly that he is a king.

The hymnal is laced with songs that use regal images of Jesus, "Crown him lord of all", "the little lord Jesus", etc. Rather than refer to him as Raboni, or teacher, we call him Lord or King, which is in direct contradiction to his ministry in the gospels. Jesus taught, and discussed, he did not rule.

Christianity is not a command structure, where if we follow orders we will be saved and if we don't we are damned. Such a thing would negate both free will and grace. To follow Jesus is not to surrender one's autonomy and thought, but to apply it in often difficult circumstances according to the guidelines he established.

Sunday Notes -- 11/12/2006

2006-11-15T05:19:00.000-08:00

Infanticide
Last week Great Britain's medical care system espoused the euthanasia of "severely deformed infants". This is a monstrous recommendation but not surprising considering its source--a broken, welfare-state medical system that needs to conserve resources it doesn't have. It is perfectly in keeping with the proposals from the British system not too long ago. [See below]

What makes it nightmarish is that the Church of England endorsed it.

No longer does the C of E hold life inviolate. They are utilitarians just like Peter Singer. One of the highest standards of the Christian faith was (still is for most branches) the sanctity of human life. It is also Christian doctrine that a fetus is a human, usually from the moment of conception.

In effect, this endorsement says one of two things or both:
1) Regardless of the fact that the infant was conceived of human parents and borne of human parents, if it is severely deformed, it is not human
2) Human life is no longer sacred. Undesired infants, or other humans for that matter may be killed.

And then they have the gall to call it euthanasia. They aren't going to actively kill it with a lethal dose of drugs, they are going to passively kill it by not feeding it or giving it water. Despite the deformities it is still a functioning human and will suffer. And if it is sedated until it dies so it does not suffer? Then where is the distinction from simply injecting it with a lethal dose?

Earlier this year I wrote a piece called "And the beat goes on" which was a follow-up on a piece called "Dance of death". I'm not sure what to call this--Embracing death, I suppose. For this the C of E should be rejected by all churches with which it formed a common communion. It no longer deserves the label, Christian.

Sunday Notes--11/05/2006

2006-11-06T16:22:00.000-08:00

Revelation
The Second Lesson today was from Revelation. Revelation is the most controversial book of the Bible. To the literalists of various types it becomes a major guiding light. Many of them have made great fortunes, spiritual and/or material, from this book, witness the "Left Behind" series.

To those of us who try to interpret it in a more rational way, considering it as allegory and parable, it presents quite a lot of difficulty. This is dream material. It is highly symbolic. It is wishful thinking on a grand and glorious scale. At the time it was written, many believed that the end of the world was to be even within their lifetimes. This confirmed that belief and gave substance to their imaginings of how it would be.

But we are 2000 years beyond that point. The world hasn't ended yet, and most likely will not for a long time to come. So what are we to do with Revelation? I say interpret it as John's innermost desire for a world in the image of Jesus' teachings. It is what John would have ultimately happen. That makes it neither right nor wrong. It also means that we should not, most definitely not, ascribe any current or recent past events to those in Revelation. John wasn't speaking to us, he was speaking to his time. But the ideas he presents can be applied in a more general sense. One should always keep in mind that John wanted to present Jesus in majesty, not just as the Great Teacher. Revelation with its expansive visions is in keeping with that desire.

All Souls Day
This Sunday was All Souls Day in the Lutheran church year. We were visiting a church in Scottsdale, AZ, this Sunday, and heard one of the best sermons I have heard in a long time. The message was essentially that Death is real, and that rather than deny death's existence, one should live life to the fullest, while aware that death can come at any time--as well my wife and I know. To be afraid of death is to give it dominion over our lives.

My post script is to say that it isn't being dead that is scarey, so much as getting there. I think that is true for most people, if they really stop to look at the death process, it is the getting there that scares them. But yet, that is exactly where they have some control. Living life to the fullest creates the easiest pathway to dying, simply because there is not the misery of anticipation and fear. Death may come suddenly, but it won't be terrible on the victims. For all you nit-pickers who can cite all sorts of exceptions to the above, go ahead, and I will still claim that those who live life to the fullest will have the easiest deaths, in general.

Sunday Notes--10/30/2006

2006-11-01T20:50:00.000-08:00

Prince of Peace
Peace and religion have become far different from what they originally were with respect to each other. The common concept of Jesus is one of pacifism and many use this concept to justify pacifistic, non-judgmental, and non-confrontational behavior. When they hear the phrase "Prince of Peace" they hear peaceful prince not prince that brings peace, or they consider the peace to be spiritual not worldly. The phrase comes from Isaiah 9:6--

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

This passage along with a fairly large chunk of the rest of Isaiah is in Handel's "Messiah". It is interpreted to foretell the coming of Jesus.

But it was not foretelling the Jesus we seem to want to have. Isaiah and all Jews were looking for another David, a warrior king. A prince of peace who would bring the peace by destroying or holding at bay those who threaten Israel. Today peace is some woozy-minded concept of no strife and everyone plays nice together, sort of a human version of "The Peaceable Kingdom." That is not what the Gospels say. Jesus says he came to split father from son, husband from wife, etc. He came to cause judgment and decision. And he certainly didn't come to be tolerant, my prime witness is the cleansing of the temple. There is such a thing as righteous anger and he demonstrated it. Jesus had no illusions that it might be possible to talk everybody into being peaceful, good, and just. He offered his views and they were accepted by huge crowds. They were also fought by the establishment. Nowhere do I read that Jesus tried to negotiate with the Scribes and Priests, or compromise, or do anything for peace. He stayed true to his principles. As to why Jesus did not fight to save his own life, I discuss this in two places, one was my sermon on this and the other excerpts from a long paper on the Gospel story.

The Prince of Peace brings peace from strength guided by principle. It is not a peace of conflict avoidance, but a peace of strength of might and right. What would Jesus do? The right thing, whatever it took, uncompromisingly.

Sunday Notes--10/22/2006

2006-10-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

The Interpretation of Scripture
Those of you who read my Sunday Notes, know that I have my own way of interpreting what is written in the Bible, and that I am anything but a traditional Christian. Instead of discussing a particular passage or concept, I want to talk about approaches to interpretation.

One way of approaching the Scriptures is to assume every word is literally true. In doing so, the literalists create some difficult problems sorting out passages that are at least incompatible with, if not contradictory to, other passages taken literally. In addition, even when taken literally, many parts of the Bible are quite ambiguous. When approached this way, the Bible becomes not just a story of mankind's relationship with God, and guidelines for living a good life, but a prescription for specific behavior and belief. If one does exactly what the Bible says to do, one gets to Heaven. Of course there is still the problem of figuring out what the Bible says to do, especially in a world totally different in circumstance than the times in which it was written.

The other extreme is a dismissal of the Bible as a set of myths with no meaning to modern man. Even if God exists, the expositions in the Bible are dated and of no significance. This can be coupled with a belief in God, but usually a Deism-style God, a Being that set up the Universe then left it to run itself.

Once we leave either extreme there are many variants. Some essentially discard everything but the Gospels. Many mega churches are in this category. The Gospels become the only lessons at a service, which is mostly a feel-good kind of event. This group of Christians believe in salvation by Jesus' death on the cross but after that don't seem to hold much truck with Biblical teaching except as it supports that doctrine. It is almost a form of Gnosticism lite-modern, where my behavior today isn't important as long as I have accepted Jesus as my savior.

The traditional churches all tend to fall on the other end of the spectrum being to one degree or another literalistic, and looking at the entire Bible for their lessons and guidance on how to live. If I were to draw a midpoint on the scale it would be where a church has a contemporary service, characterized by simple, modern songs, a single Gospel lesson, a praise group rather than a choir, and a sermon that is less a sermon and more a feel-good message. Once that line is crossed, interpretation of the Bible becomes a private thing, if it exists, not a subject for sermons.

Having come to my beliefs from 30 years of atheism and agnosticism, I first of all, consider the Bible to be an excellent source of wisdom. I do not believe it is literally true. The main reasons are that if it is literally true, what version is the correct one of the hundreds out there, in English and all the other languages of the world, and how do you reconcile the obvious contradictions both internally and with respect to the modern world?

I also don't believe that people have changed in the last three thousand years in any major way. They still show all the same personalities and traits today that they did back then when the Bible was written. Or conversely, we can interpret personalities and traits back then the same way we do today. If this were not so, the politics of the Jewish leaders and Pilate at Jesus' crucifixion would not be obvious to us.

So here is the lever we need to open up Biblical interpretation, the similarity of people across time. In order to use that lever, we need to take off our rosy-colored glasses of mythical greatness of Biblical people, and see them as humans trying to solve the same kinds of problems we are today. The reason they became recorded in the Bible is that their solutions and behaviors were the correct ones for the time and situation.

I arrived at this conclusion long before I became a theist. I became very aware that the teachings I was hearing in church with my family were correct without bringing in God as a commanding/demanding figure. In and of themselves they worked when applied correctly. "Turn the other cheek," nicely translates into don't sweat the small stuff, and an abbreviated version of "sticks and stones...." I found that simply letting the small things roll past allowed the other person to reconsider without pressure to defend and usually led to a far better outcome for both. Where the literalists get in trouble here, is that it turns into a call to total surrender under deadly attack. Another example is the story of Abraham and Isaac. I consider this to be the myth or legend that indicated the cessation of sacrificing ones first-born. Its power is in the fact that Abraham was doing what he thought was God's will and God actively stopped him and stated His displeasure in the practice. He (God) also provided the substitute for a people that believed one had to make a sacrifice to get God's attention.

The Bible has to be read as a record of what worked for other people and why they thought it worked. The reasons why are not so important as what worked. The reasons why are based on knowledge of the world over two thousand years ago, and can change. Also much of the Old Testament is written in a symbolic style, taken from dream material. This does not negate is underlying truth, but may obscure it to us.

The other premise I hold is that writing the Bible, in all its variety of styles and authors over time, is inspired by God, but not dictated by God. When the writers had an experience that could be attributed entirely or partly to divine intervention or activity, they then wrote about it. It was important to them that people know what happened.

So when I approach the Bible, I read what is there, determine if it is primarily factual or mainly allegorical or metaphorical, and think about what it meant when it was written. Only by understanding its meaning to the writer can we bring the essence of the meaning into our own lives. Often this understanding requires outside sources to properly understand. I have five major commentaries on the Bible and there is at least one other I eventually want to acquire. The value of these is that after I have taken everything from the passage I can on my own, I can then learn where scholars have found factual explanations, or expanded the context of the passages and have improved my understanding of terms. Then I integrate this material into my own understanding.

I don't necessarily consider that my approach is necessary for everyone or desirable for everyone. I'm a nerdy, geeky kind of guy, and really get into scholarship. However, the general idea that Biblical people were pretty much like us, and what worked for them can be ADAPTED to work for us, is the take away from today's note.

Sunday Notes--10/15/2006

2006-10-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

I now have the time and energy to bring back my Sunday notes. For those of you new to the blog, these are a collection of thoughts on religious issues, some long some brief. They are archived in my Religious Archives Blog.

This year we are in Mark in the gospel lessons, and currently in the section known as the "hard lessons" because Jesus has such an uncompromising point of view in these verses. Last week was on divorce, and I thought the Pastor handled it very well. He must be given credit for tackling it head-on, because many pastors duck on this and preach from the epistle or the Old Testament lesson.

Back to the eye of the needle. It is the well-known verses about the rich, young man who asked what he had to do to get into Heaven, and Jesus told him to sell all he owned, give it to the poor, and follow him. It was followed by the often quoted, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven." This message resonates with those of envy or those in want, and creates a lot of distress for those who are well-off.

Taken literally it is used as a blanket condemnation of the rich and a demand that they give up their riches. But looking at it from a real-world perspective, riches are required to produce wealth and sustenance from which comes charity or opportunity for the poor and needy to permanently fix their problems by being employed. From my viewpoint, what is being emphasized by the story is that the young man valued his money more than life itself.

The ultimate exemplar of the story taken literally is Mother Theresa and her kind, who live lives of poverty and bring the gospel to the impoverished. She is being held up as a wonderful example for all of us. If that is so, then the whole world should be poor, sick, malnourished, and miserable. That is what would happen if all the rich gave away all their riches and gave them to the poor who would then consume them.

I have a hard time believing God wants us all to suffer and be deprived on this earth. What would be the point? We would appreciate Heaven all the more? If one views Heaven as merely a better Earth, then that might be considered possible. However, I think Heaven is entirely beyond our comprehension, though I have made my own speculations on the subject. What I would think would be God's wishes is that we all be as comfortable as possible on this Earth, enjoying it to its fullest possible, morally, and helping others to do the same.

The complete opposite of the gospel lesson, both literally and spiritually is Scrooge. He denied everyone, himself included, any benefits of his wealth, he simply accumulated it in every way possible. He did indeed love his money more than his life. Somewhere between Mother Theresa and Scrooge is the truth contained in this gospel lesson.

Never being reticent to offer an opinion, here is my take on it. We should pursue a life of productive work using our skills and talents to the best possible way. If that way leads to large incomes or good incomes that through savings and investments become large, there is no shame in it, and in fact it may be a source of realistic pride. We should also be aware of and take advantage of opportunities to help others in a constructive way. As an example on the small end of the scale, be willing to buy a beggar a meal but give him/her no money. The first has the benefit of guaranteeing the person being fed, the second has no guarantees at all but what it will disappear into a bottle, a vein, or up a nose. On a larger scale, assist with time and money for programs such as housing homeless or Habitat for Humanity. On a still larger scale assistance to charitable foundations or creating charitable foundations are good.

Throughout all of these activities, I see no virtue in giving to look good, or giving to buy ones way into Heaven. The gifts have to be given freely and with a genuine desire to help. There is no virtue in giving so much that one makes ones self or family suffer. That simply creates resentment and self-righteousness, both of which are forms of deadly sins, envy or covetousness in the first case and pride in the second.

I see no sin in the enjoyment of ones money, as long as there is willingness to share with others and to provide charity. It is when the money becomes more important than caring about or for people that it is a problem.

UPDATE: 10/17/2006 Rendering unto Caesar
This topic seems to be a constant thread in our culture lately. The newspapers have latched onto the morality issue and the liberals are trying to hide their secularism. Today on the airplane I engaged in a debate with a man who was trying to use religion to justify left/liberal positions on the war in Iraq. Needless to say we didn't get very far, both being of strongly held positions, but I was struck by the way he wanted to interpret the Bible for his side and not recognize the fact that both of us could have different interpretations and both be right, due to the open way the Bible is written. To him it was imperative that one should act a particular way because of one's Christian beliefs. He didn't seem able to see that there might be more than one way to determine the actions required, and that one used the body politic as an individual working with other individuals to arrive at a course of action. While trying to illustrate my point that there were different interpretations possible, it seemed to really hit a nerve when I pointed out that both he and I enjoyed the consumption of alcoholic beverages (he was drinking whiskey neat), and that there were those whose reading of the Bible would condemn us for it. He immediately said the conversation was over. Most peculiar. If anyone has an explanation for it, I would be interested. My first thought was that he had lost and didn't want to admit it.

For those interested, my sermon on this topic is here.

Sunday Notes--07/16/2006

2006-07-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

Praying for Peace
Every Sunday part of the general prayers is a prayer for peace in the world and a cessation of war. This is a desirable state of affairs, but coupled with the prayer seems to be an attitude that simply stopping the fighting is a solution and that it will create peace.

I have a sense that most mainline protestant religions have been hijacked by a pacifistic attitude, that simply not fighting is a good in itself. They have gotten the wrong message from the gospel, elevating turning the other cheek to abject surrender, and sweeping Jesus cleansing the temple and saying he came to split brother from brother, etc., under the rug. In effect, what should be the bastion of unbending morality and rectitude, the church, has become a resting place for moral equivalencing and a sloppy "We are all brothers" [despite the fact that my "brother" will behead me or put me in servitude.]

What we should be praying for is VICTORY. A total conquest over the forces of Islamic Jihad. Praying for peace is a way of avoiding making the very moral judgments that are required, because the shape of the peace being prayed for is never explicitly defined, as if it were self-evident. If the world is saved from Islamic Jihad, it will be the fundamentalists and the Baptists who will do the job. Despite my various disagreements with their version of Christianity, they have one great strength--they make moral judgments unapologetically, and that is what is sorely needed here.

Sunday Notes--07/09/2006

2006-07-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

Religious Style
Saturday, at the men's breakfast, we got into a discussion of churches and what they provide. We were talking about the largest churches, 5-10,000 every Sunday, and noticed that the ones that were mentioned were all non-denominational, non-liturgical churches. One of us pointed out that a lot of these churches seem to focus on the non-believer, or the person just coming into the church, leaving those already there, to pretty much fend for themselves theologically. He termed them "Seeker Churches" as being oriented towards those seeking a church or some sort of religious affiliation.

My wife and I then had occasion to visit one of these churches the next day. Some friends were baptizing their children that day. There was essentially no liturgy. There was an opening hymn, the baptism, recognition of those who had completed a bible study course, a pastoral prayer (very informal at that), an anthem by the choir, a Gospel lesson (no other scripture was read, no OT, Epistle, or Psalm), the sermon, the collection, and the benediction. The sermon was not an exegesis on the gospel text and in fact had to stretch to relate to it. It was a recruiting speech, pure and simple. Overall, I had the feeling I was in a performance. The pastor was so cheerful and positive I almost thought he might have had his smile put in place permanently by a plastic surgeon (except once in a while it slipped). His voice modulation was the perfect evangelical minister accent.

The whole thing was to make people feel good. This is probably what is going on with religion today. The mainline Protestant groups are generally shrinking. The theology is too nuanced, and the liturgy too serious for today's people raised on TV and instant gratification. Keep it simple, be baptized, accept Jesus as your savior, and you are good to go. Don't worry about all that grace and works stuff. You have been saved--you're going to Heaven. Oh yeah, make sure you come every Sunday and put your money in the collection plate. It is the new version of indulgences, Born-Again-Christian style.

I have no problem with there being joy in religion, but when joy, here and now, becomes the end, there is something wrong.

Then there is the self-righteous special--follow this set of rules and you are holy. Pharisees in Christian drag. Ready to condemn at the drop of a swear word, whiskey, or pants. Not only that but so virtuous-feeling because they aren't like those who do such things. Since they are Biblical literalists almost exclusively, I wonder how they deal with Jesus and wine, or for that matter, his forgiveness of sinners. The whole concept of Grace disappears. There are members of my family in this group, that don't believe my son is in Heaven, because he wasn't baptized by full-emersion.

Baptism
Having brought this topic up in the preceding paragraphs, I thought I should make a short note on how I view baptism. The two most common views of baptism are that it is either a rebirth (rising from water) or a washing away of sin. For that matter it could be a combination of both.

I don't see it as either one. Being symbolically oriented, I see it as a public statement of commitment to Christian ideals. Parents make the commitment for their children (just as they do for other things that must be decided for their good before they have the capacity to decide), and God Parents take on the responsibility to see it through. Baptism is an important first step in religious belief. It is a ritual that publically states ones willingness to be part of the Christian community. For children, First Communion is next and finally Confirmation (the Christian analog of Bar or Baht Mitzvah). For adults, at least in the ELCA, once one is baptized, one can commune, and after brief training in Lutheran belief, one can become a member. This latter is an important formality. It is the recognition that one is now a member of the family.

Evangelism
The scripture at men's breakfast yesterday was the story of Ezekiel's becoming a prophet. Each prophet has a different story, and each is specific to the prophet's nature. What most people don't realize is that to one degree or another, we are all prophets. Prophets were not primarily prognosticators. They were, and are, truth-tellers. The more prominent (or notorious, as you chose) did indeed prognosticate and often it was gloomy. Sometimes the truth was condemnatory, hence the creation of the word, Jeremiad, a doom-saying condemnation of something.

How we are prophets is in how we live our lives. We live according to our vision of the truth, and it is our public lives that convinces people to believe or not believe what we say. If we live according to the religious beliefs we say we have, we provide an example of what that means and by our existence become evangelists. Typically evangelism behaviorly means bringing someone to church and convincing them to join. But what we forget is that in order to bring them to church, we have to make our lives vis-a-vis the church desirable.

To be an evangelist, we need to have a clear picture of our relationship to God and how we practice it. It is that practice that will provide our evangelism, not all the talking in the world.

Sunday Notes--6/25/2006

2006-06-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

Sensuality
Sensuality is both the most ignored and the most demonized aspect of human living in religious thought. It is ignored in every way by religious teaching except in relation to sex where it is demonized. It is especially bad with the self-righteous fundamentalists. Many of them condemn anything even hinting of sensual pleasure. Of course they have a disconnect or they wouldn't be able to procreate or even nourish themselves.

Sensuality is necessary to living. As humans, we do many things for pleasure, and because something is pleasurable it is possible for it to be pursued in excess. That it can be pursued in excess does not per se make it wrong. But that is what the self-righteous often do--condemn something for its possibilities not its actualities. Perhaps I was overstating it when I said no attention was paid to sensuality except for sex. Three minor deadly sins are all sensual, gluttony, lust and sloth. Yet look at them, and we see all three as excesses of pleasures necessary to life, nutrition, procreation, and rest.

God wants us to enjoy life, fully. In my view the Aesthetics were satisfying their own internal needs, not obeying commands from God, when they pursued a life of deprivation and self-punishment. What God does not want us to do is pursue sensual pleasure to the exclusion of all else, or to the detriment of ourselves or other creatures. There is no evil in desiring the feel of satin against one's skin. I don't know that there is any evil in mild inebriation. Music is a ubiquitous sensual pleasure, though one person's pleasure is another's torture sometimes :-). Buying a finely cooked meal that is exquisite to enjoy is wonderful. Riding a motorcyle without protective gear is a bit questionable in the sense of sensuality overriding judgment of risk, but the original purpose is not sinful. The problem there is, of course, that the protective gear removes much of the sensual pleasure.

I think part of the reason sex is so demonized is that it is so fundamental to the survival of the species that it is extremely powerful in its effects and its desire to be accomplished. It is much older and much more fundamental than any of our civilizing processes and comes into conflict with them continuously. Those who condemn it and rail against it are afraid of it. It is an attempt to control total prohibition. But there are many forms of sex that are perfectly OK. Obviously sex in a marriage is generally OK, but it can be taken to harmful extremes or expressions. Nude art has part of its appeal, not just from aesthetics, but also from the unconcious (or not) vision of the subject as a sex object, and sometimes the art deliberately plays into that.

I have a strong tendency to be more utilitarian than deontological here. It is very hard to build a detailed deontological case on what is acceptable behavior and what is not, especially in the area of sex. This is because as long as no harm is done to another individual it is a matter of personal choice. But even under circumstances of individual choice, a person may harm themselves either temporarily or permanently. Alcohol and drugs, sex, and food are all subject to individual abuse that harms only the individual. (They can harm others as well, but the situation is different then, and the issues are more clear cut.) What makes it difficult to generalize is that, what is harmful for one, may not be for another.

I don't have a definitive conclusion here. I would say that when you hear someone condemning behavior as sinful, check more carefully. It is very convenient to want to generalize our own issues, ascribe them as coming from the Devil, and condemning them as categorical evil for all.

The Devil
My last paragraph above led me to some new thoughts on the Devil. Generally I don't ascribe to the Devil as an entity. I can often see how one would, but the concept appears to me to be an attempt to get evil out of us and external where we feel we have more or less control and can justify it. The Devil is made both too powerful and too trivial, much as we do God. We create a Devil locked in permanent combat with God for men's souls, yet we say God is O3 (Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent). If God is Omnipotent, why does he allow the Devil? Then we turn around and consider all our temptations to sin as coming from the Devil. What a great way to avoid responsibility. If the Devil is so big, powerful, and evil, why would he bother with puny us? Seems to me with the battle with God being over control of the universe, why bother with people, just take or destroy the whole planet.

It does, however, give us great feelings of importance, that God and the Devil would fight over our souls. The battle is in us. We are capable of good and evil. We have to chose one or the other, almost continuously. The more clearly we understand our principles and the more firmly we hold to them, the easier are the choices. It is we, ourselves, that go astray. When we are led, we allow it, whether from moral weakness or ignorance.

Sunday Notes--6/18/2006

2006-06-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Old Testament Stories
Today at after the early service, I had a fascinating discussion with our church organist and choir leader. One of the topics we discussed was the story of Adam and Eve. I take the position that such stories have a spiritual, metaphysical, or allegorical truth, but never historical or literal truth. So for me the story of Adam and Eve fulfills a need for humans to have a story of how they fit in the universe, a tale of their origins. All peoples have one. Tony Hillerman's stories of the Navaho reservation in New Mexico often have a telling of the story of the origins of the Denii, or Navaho. I have read other such stories in various places in the past as well.

What was fascinating to me was that our organist's interpretation of Adam and Eve was that they were ejected from a heavenly or spritual Eden not a physical one. It is an interesting interpretation, though not one I agree with. It does create problems for the origin story. My own interpretation is that the story of Adam and Eve is the story of the origins of humans as humans. The tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. One of the most distinguishing characteristics of humans as a species is their ability to take a moral stance and to make moral judgments. This requires knowledge of both good and evil and what makes each what it is.

Couple this with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and we have the origins of theodicy. I interpret the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as the description of a natural disaster, and it may or may not have been true that both of the communities were totally corrupt. Here we have a natural disaster as God's punishment. In the story of Adam and Eve we have personal moral issues, and God punishes them for disobeying. In both cases there is the having to deal with making ones choices for good or bad, e.g., the eviction from the Garden, Lot's wife being turned to a pillar of salt. Then there is Noah and the ark, in which God destroys the world for its sins, but saves the righteous.

From these very clear-cut examples, mankind went on for thousands of years in the Judeo-Christian traditions ascribing disasters to God's will and expression of displeasure. It was not until 1755 and a massive earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, that killed many people, many of them obviously not greatly sinful, that this question was again examined. Since that time philosophers have argued on the whole issue of theodicy, trying to explain both natural disasters as evil as well as human behavior that is evil. There had finally been a general position arrived at similar to what I came to myself, that God did not create natural disasters to punish people. They were morally neutral.

Natural disasters are happenstance. As it is easy to observe, both the good and the bad suffer roughly equally during such times. With increased knowledge of the natural world and how it worked, the place of God in the scheme became more remote, and Old Testament stories became relegated to myth and legend. But that does not mean they have no value. They speak in emotional terms to things that are in us, and answer questions that are not even stated conciously. Else they would not have the continued resonance that they enjoy today.

Sunday Notes--06/04/2006

2006-06-04T18:57:00.000-07:00

The DaVinci Code
The only connection this post has with the book and movie of the same name is I want to talk about the possibility of Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene as is claimed in the book. The topic is of some interest, obviously, and one of my good friends lead a discussion at the men's breakfast while I was on my way home, and reported that about half the men would not accept the idea and the other half, including him, were not bothered by it.

I think the people, that would not accept the idea of Jesus' being married to Mary Magdalene, would not accept Jesus' being married to any woman. My guess is that they also are more interested in the idea of Jesus' divinity than his humanity. From my earllier writings it is clear I come down very strongly on the side of Jesus as fully human, and ignore the part about fully divine. As Dr Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, so thoroughly pointed out quite some time ago, there is no logical way that Jesus could be both fully human and fully divine at the same time. As I argue from time to time, Jesus message and example has no meaning for us unless he was fully human during his time on Earth. It is meaningless to ask "What would Jesus Do?" if he is more than human, because then we could not possibly do what he did.

So let's look at what might be the situation, given that Jesus was a fully human Jewish man in Galilee during the Roman Empire. We have a story in Luke that around get 12 Jesus was astounding the Scribes and Priests in the temple. That is around the age of the Jewish rite of passage into adulthood called Bat Mitzvah. (For a young woman it is called a Baht Mitzvah.) I realized just today that the story in Luke may be a story of Jesus Bar Mitzvah that was garbled by an oral tradition passed on by Gentiles that did not understand its significance. Taken in that light, in addition to the various ecclesiastical meanings that get attached to the supposed reply to his mother, it confirms that Jesus was probably pretty smart, and for our purposes in this post, lead a very normal life for a Jewish boy and man of his day.

That being the case, he would have learned carpentry from Joseph, or had Joseph died before his training was completed as an apprentice to another carpenter. By the age of 18 he would have been earning his own living. Also by that time he would have been expected to be married. Once married, children would have followed unless one or the other of the marriage were infertile for some reason. It is possible that there were children and none of them reached adulthood. Infant and child mortality was severe in those days. It is also possible that Jesus was older than the traditional age of 30-35, and his children were all grown and on their own.

If Jesus did marry, I would seriously doubt it was to Mary Magdalene. If she was a historical person, she came into the story very late. If Jesus were married it would have occurred much before the Gospel events. But if Jesus was married, or was a widower, why did the Gospels not say so? Because it was not important to the purposes of the Gospel writers, who wished to emphasize the new relationship with God that Jesus had created. The historical facts around Jesus' marriage or non-marriage bears no importance for his teachings.

To me there is considerable humor in the fact that in attempting to challenge the foundations of the church, Dan Brown, and the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the non-fiction work on which the DaVinci Code is based, took at face value the scripture, they were questioning, and latched onto the only woman of significance in them (other than Mary his mother) for the wife of Jesus, whereas a proper questioning would question her existence as well.

An Important comment on Christianity and Islam
After I posted the above I found this article which I think is very important to read. Also read the comments.

Sunday Notes--05/28/2006

2006-05-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today I had the honor of being the leader at both services and giving the sermon. This sermon was unlike the other two, in that I had an assigned scripture that was to be preached on, as opposed to my having selected the subjects for the other two sermons. The timing of the presentation of the other two sermons made them appropriate for the lessons at the time, but that was not the motivation.

This sermon is a pretty standard explication and exegesis of the biblical text. It does not follow the particular lines of study and inquiry I am making personally, but those are not something a general congregational audience would be interested in. All in all it was well received.

God’s Witness Protection Program

For any of us that read crime novels or watch crime shows on TV, the idea of a witness protection program is not new. Someone who has agreed to provide information in the prosecution of a criminal is given a new identity and sent off to some undisclosed location to live a new life. They are also supposed to be protected from harm by law enforcement.

Being a Christian, especially in the early days, was much like being a witness to a criminal act, from the way one was treated. It could be physically dangerous to be a Christian, and in fact, all the apostles, save John, died violent deaths because they did witness to Jesus’ ministry here on earth. Then why do I say that God has a witness protection plan? If the witnesses die, where is the protection?

Let’s start with what it means to be a witness. In our first lesson we see the process of selecting a replacement for Judas. The apostles have two names that qualify, Barsabbas and Matthias. They cast lots, and Matthias is chosen. Casting lots is the writing of names on stones, placing the stones in a container, and shaking it until one of them falls out. The disciples believed that Jesus from Heaven would chose which stone would fall out. This is because the Apostles were chosen by Jesus, as was emphasized in our lesson last week, and therefore a replacement had to be chosen by Jesus, as well, to be valid.

The qualifications of an apostle were that they had to have been present throughout Jesus’ ministry from the baptism by John to the Ascension, so they could bear witness to these events. The most important of the events was Jesus’ Resurrection, for that was the proof of the conquest of death. So for the apostles, to witness meant to tell of events that they personally saw. But what of those who did not personally see?

Looking at the second lesson, we see that John is talking about those who receive the testimony given by God to Jesus, and believe. Though it is not clearly stated, there is the idea that this testimony should then be repeated, that one should bear witness to Jesus by repeating his testimony. We will return to what that testimony is in a minute.

Our Gospel lesson today is from what the 16th Century Lutheran theologian, David Chytraeus, has called the High Priestly Prayer. The entire prayer is John17:1-26. According to the The Interpreter’s One Volume Edition, the prayer consists of four parts. In verses1-5, Jesus offers himself for God’s purposes; in verses 6-19 (our lesson for today), he expresses his concerns for the testing of his disciples, in verses 20-23, he ask for intersession for all believers to end of time, and in verses 24-26, he expresses his expectation of a final consummation in the age to come. We focus today on his concerns for the testing of his disciples—his witnesses.

Verses 6-8 state that the apostles are witnesses and the nature of the witness:

6 "I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;

8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

They are the witnesses of God’s word as given by Jesus, and know clearly that they are witnesses to God’s word.

Verses 9-12 are Jesus’ request that the apostles be protected by God.

9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.

10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Because the apostles belonged to Jesus, and he is leaving the world, they are now God’s. Since Jesus will no longer be there to protect them he asks that God protect them.

Verses 14-18 are the statement of why they need and deserve protection.

14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.

15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.

16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.

17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

Jesus knows their witness will not be readily accepted, and that they must remain detached from the world, yet still in it and not tempted by sin. And they must go into the world and witness or testify.

But what is the nature of God’s protection for his witnesses?... What is His Witness Protection Program? It certainly is not a protection from physical death. All the apostles died a violent death as martyrs for Jesus. So let us return to the second lesson and see what John says.

Here again are verses 10-13:

10 Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son.

11 And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

First, we see the witness—the testimony of the belief in the Son of God. This is what we are to witness to. The protection is ETERNAL LIFE. Not just life on earth, but life forever. This is God’s Witness Protection Plan—life forever.

As a final note, though, we need to look again at Psalm 1. Because God is not so heartless that he makes us wait for Heaven to receive any reward as His witnesses. Instead of the version in our bulletin, I would like to read the version from the Jerusalem Bible. This Bible was a translation of the original Greek into French, which was then translated into English by British monks. I think the double translation and the English skills of the monks provide a wonderful statement:

How blessed is anyone who rejects the advice of the wicked
And does not take a stand in the path that sinners tread,
Nor a seat in company with cynics,
But who delights in the law of Yahweh
And murmurs his law day and night.

Such a one is like a tree planted near streams;
It bears fruit in season
And its leaves never wither,
And every project succeeds.
How different the wicked, how different!

Just like the chaff blown around by the wind
The wicked will not stand firm at the Judgement
Nor sinners in the gathering of the upright.
For Yahweh watches over the path of the upright,
But the path of the wicked is doomed.

Let us pray: Dear God, help us to always be good witnesses to your word, and preserve us, as Jesus asked, that we may have eternal life.

Sunday Notes: 05/21/2006

2006-05-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Christian Fellowship
One of the features of belonging to a Christian denomination (and it may be true of any faith, though I am speaking only from experience) is that attendance at a church as a visitor brings immediate acceptance. I had to remain over at the customer location this weekend, and attended church this morning. Now I will admit that I tried to skew the odds in my favor. I drove by four of the five possible churches I might attend, and chose this one specifically for its modesty. It was physically small in a modest neighborhood. They had a traditional service for the early service, so that was my choice.

When I arrived, I was greeted genuinely warmly as a visitor. Essentially the entire congregation welcomed me either before or after the service. In fact one member invited me to come to breakfast with a group of them. I had to decline this time, but I will be returning in a few weeks, and will go then. I originally had planned to visit this church this time and another church the next time. I have decided to change that plan. I was genuinely welcomed this time and expect to be the next time. It repeats a pattern I have experienced before.

A couple of years ago, I spent a weekend in Philadelphia and then several months later did again. In both cases I attended a small German/English Lutheran church. The most wonderful thing about it was that they remembered me from the first time, the second time, and extended an invitation to come to their social hour between services.

When my wife and I were shopping for a church in Pennsylvania, it was a combination of the preaching and the people. We like belonging to a church where we are known and appreciated. We found that there are many churches that can be cold. Not in an obvious way, but none the less never knowing fellow parishoners. We attended six churches before we found one were comfortable in.

For those of you looking for a church, or wondering about belonging to a church, I would tell you it is more important for you to feel comfortable than to have a specific theology. You can find a church with the most correct theological approach by your judgment, and if you are not comfortable, you won't be a regular attendee. The most important part of Christianity is common to all denominations--the belief in salvation through Jesus' death, and the forgiveness of God's Grace. The rest is simply window-dressing, and subject to personal interpretation.

Regardless of the ideal that it should not matter, the personality and style of the pastor or priest is important, as important as the welcome of the congregation. Remember, you are going to listen to the sermons for years to come. Not all pastors are right for all people.

The decision to attend a church regularly is important, enough so that time needs to be taken to do it properly. It is not enough that one goes to the nearest church of the "correct" denomination every Sunday. That is not what church is about, unless one wants to be like a Pharisee, where the letter not the spirit is what counts. When you attend church properly, you miss it when you don't. You should want to hear what the pastor has to say, and feel like a member of a large family.

I realize there are those who want to belong to a "successful" church, and there are certainly those in existence, the big, highly organized, full of programs with multiple ministers churches, whose music rivals large cathedrals and hundreds attend every Sunday. And to go there is better than not attending, but for me, it would be a getting lost. I have spent enought of my life as lost; I want to feel found and as if I belong, and I think that is a major motivation for many to join a church. That was what Jesus extended to all, a welcome and belonging.

Sunday Notes 05/14/2006

2006-05-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

Preaching
I have been givent the honor of preaching for the two services on 5/28. Though I have preached before, it was on topics of my own chosing, and I requested the opportunity to preach. This time the topic is assigned--the lessons, Gospel and psalm for that Sunday. It is an interesting problem. I have to consider the texts in light of what they mean at the time written, in terms of what scholars in the commentaries have said about them, and finally, how to bring them to the everyday life of the congregation.

For those of you who have followed my religious postings either over the two years I have been blogging or from reading the archives, realize that I have major disagreements with the theological positions of established religion. Interestingly enough, we end up in much the same place--trying to live moral lives according to the directions created by Jesus. Where most Christians believe they are saved by the sacrifice of Jesus' life on the cross, I take the crucifixion as the ultimate example of living by ones word, and believe we are saved through God's Grace, directly. It ia fortunate Christians don't burn heretics these days, or I would have fueled flames long ago. I guess I will be at the head of the line when the Islamics behead heretics and infidels.

Glorifying God
It sruck me during church that the term "glorifying God" may not be as clear as it first appears. The term glorify in English has both positive and negative implications. Growing up, I heard the term used disparagingly as in, "That's just a glorified pup tent." Certainly it would not be used in that context with respect to God, but what is the glorification of God?

The Bible has many passages of the type, "They went away glorifying God...." But what were they doing? Interestingly, I cannot think of any everyday usage for the word glorify. It just isn't part of daily speech. We might praise someone, but, at least in modern times, we don't glorify them. Besides, praise is used with glorify in the Bible, so the two are not synonymous. Additionally we see places where some act, often of Jesus, glorifies God. There is a phrase that sticks in my head right now, "...go forth and glorify your Father which is in Heaven." [For those who haven't figured it out, I am lousy with remembering quotable verses with citations. E.g. John 3:16 " For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. I had the citation and first 13 words right. I looked the rest up.]

The overall impression is that glorifying God is a physical not a verbal act. To glorify God is to act in a manner that shows belief in and dedication to His teachings and commandments. It is not done in an overt way, declaring one is acting out of ones belief in God, but simply quietly going about doing what is right, presenting an example of the value of a belief in God. God doesn't need the praise or the glorification, we need to do it. The result may be called glorification, but it is actually over time a transformation of ourselves into better people.

A Hand on Your Shoulder
For those of you tempted to psychologize on this following post--don't bother. I have had more than enough counseling and therapy to recognize wishful thinking from reality.

About a year after my son was killed, I was in New York working. I sat down to dinner that night and about two or three bites into the entree was unable to eat any more. All I could do was sit there, with slumping shoulders and slightly bowed head, waiting for the server to check on me so I could get the check and leave. There was an older couple sitting behind and to the right of me, and after several minutes the woman came over and asked if I were all right. She was of course worried that I was physically sick. I explained it was the grief over my son, and she expressed sympathy and went back to her table. [The world still has Good Samaritans in it, even in New York City, though since it was a hotel restaurant, I suspect they were from out of town.]

I returned to my room and tried to work. I sat at my PC, unable to do anything, lost in my grief. While I sat there, for just a moment, I had the feeling of an arm being laid across the back of my shoulders providing comfort. There was no sense of a particular person or even a person at all present, simply the feeling of being comforted by someone placing their arm around my shoulders for a moment. I have never felt that since, but then the grief has never been quite as bad since.

So you see, the Beatitudes are true. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." And not just when they reach Heaven, but here on Earth as well.

Biblical Reality
The Bible is a wonderful mixture of stories and history, with history always subservient to the story line. Some people approach the Bible as meaningless, being the words of people who are deluded in a belief in a Supreme Being and His power and refuse to give it any credit. Others on the opposite extreme approach it as if every word were literally true and spend massive effort trying to reconcile inherent contradictions. The former throw the baby out with the bath water, and the latter spend so much time looking at the individual hairs on the head or eyelashes that they forget to see the entire baby.

The correct approach to the Bible is that it is a record of the Jewish and Christian people's belief in and relationship to God. As such it uses history where that is seen to be due to God's influence, whether positive or negative. This is a major characteristic of the Old Testament. It also is the record of the wisdom of the religious leaders over the ages. As such it will tell stories, provide songs, embellish reality. It is very easy to pick at pieces here or there in the Bible as being inaccurate or even wrong. Even allowing for oral tradition and its notorious fallability, it is obvious many things cannot be literally true.

Biblical truth is not literal, physical truth, but metaphorical and metaphysical truth. It is far more about how we should feel about God and each other and how to approach God. Behavioral commandments should be seen more as what occurs as a result of belief than as a means to it. The stories should be seen as illustrations of a belief not has history. It is perfectly acceptable in Biblical writing to interpolate, explain, and enhance to make a point. I consider John's Gospel to be the archtype for this. Where he relates a story that is in one of the other Gospels, it is usually elaborated and expanded with speeches that expound John's belief. I strongly suspect that much of what John ascribes to Jesus is actually John. I find it hard to believe anyone remembered some of the speeches in such detail considering their length. For that matter, how did anyone know what was actually said at Jesus' trial? What is important is the lesson that Jesus remained true to his teachings and followers, even unto death.

Statements that were literally true 2000 years and more ago, are no longer literally true, but still contain the kernels of truth that we can use today. It is up to us to get past the literal and see them.

Jesus as the Pascial Lamb
Of all Christian doctrine, this idea is the one I have the most conflict with. It is almost as if we didn't learn anything from Jesus' being here. That we are still so primitive and savage that we believe we have to propitiate God to survive. We sneer at human sacrifice and condemn it in everyone else, yet we glorify Jesus' crucifixion by interpreting it as a human sacrifice. The bottom line of saying Jesus died for our sins is to say he was killed as a sacrifice just as the lamb or goat has its throat slit in offering. We explicitly identify Jesus with the sacrificial lamb or with the scape goat, but have no horror in doing so. We condemn the mob for wanting Barabbas, yet are we not that same mob in different guise? Do we not see that we are performing the primitive magic rite of placing our sins on an external object then either bannishing it (the scape goat) or killing it (the sacrificail lamb) then believing our sins were dealt with in the same way?

We are not saved by our own works or someone else's death. We are saved by our own genuine contrition and remorse and God's Grace. Jesus showed us how it has to be done.

Sunday Notes--05/07/2006

2006-05-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

The "Right" Translation
Today I was talking with one of my fellow parishoners, and she asked me about some particular study bible. I said I didn't know of it, but that I was aware that a lot of the so-called study bibles have a particular agenda to promote. I described what started me on my biblical studies, and that I had nine different translations of the Bible, and for some particular verses would see up to nine different translations. Her next question was, "How do we know which one is the right translation?"

The question is one that has no exact answer. One cannot point to a particular translation and say, "THAT is the correct translation." First of all, scholars will never agree completely on the more difficult passages. Second, those who translate have particular mindsets and beliefs that they bring to the work, and thus create translations that have that cast to them. Third, those who read the translated work have their own concepts of what is correct, and will accept with difficulty that which has does not reinforce their prior belief.

The right translation is a personal thing. The right translation is readable and understandable. If it generates questions on the part of the reader, then that may be for the good, as it will lead to further reading and discussion. One can see a chart in The Family Christian Bookstores, that shows the level of reading comprehension required for various translations, and the amount of literal translation vs. translation for meaning. Translations range between 6th grade and 12th grade, and some are more literal whereas some try to capture the meaning. Thus, different translations will appeal to one group and not another.

I don't consider what translation one uses as critical to understanding Jesus' message, and the messages from God. For the most part the differences are not of great theological import. Most are of a nit-picking nature. However, where the difference has the greatest potential impact, the translations vary the most from one another. I would recommend one of the standard translations, Today's English, New International, New Revised Standard. I do not recommend the new version that suffers from political correctness, and makes great changes to make it gender-neutral. This last is not translation but revision of the original message.

Do not be concerned about the "right" translation, but rather about receiving the right message and/or lesson. In all of the nine translations I have been using in my studies, the main lessons from Jesus are there regardless of the exact wording.

The Good Shepherd
I wrote on this topic last year saying:

The only part of the analogy I like is the shepherd as a symbol of a caring, powerful leader and protector, hence my appreciation for the 23rd Psalm.

This year I am not so much interested in the image of us as sheep as the metaphorical image of Jesus as Shepherd.

Truth in blogging statement: Almost all of what I say in the next paragraph is paraprased from the sermon our pastor gave this morning. It was one of the few times he and I were not only on the same page but singing the same verse and note.

The first thing that Jesus said in the Gospel lesson for today is that he was the Good Shepherd. It turns out that the word in Greek for good here was for morally good, not good as in taste or accomplishment. In other words, Jesus is a moral guide. Secondly, he would give his life for us, as he did, whether to be the ultimate sacrifice that buys us salvation or as the example that one must be good and true to ones beliefs, even if it leads to ones death. And third, he heals and restores us as in the Twenty-third Psalm.

Given the positions I have staked out previously, I don't consider Jesus as a sacrifice buying us salvation. I think that comes through God's grace directly, in response to our genuine contrition and remorse over our misdeeds. But as a moral leader, showing us what is possible, he is to be held as the highest example, including his willingness to die rather than violate his beliefs and teachings. Jesus as a healer and restorer is in the contemplation and acceptance of his teachings.

Sunday Notes--4/30/2006

2006-05-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

Liturgy
With Easter we have once again returned to my least favorite liturgy, one written by Peter Kemp. I intensely dislike this liturgy; I consider it akin to nursery rhymes in its depth, complexity, and aesthetic appeal. But I have come to terms with it. I have decided not to fight it anymore.

Why I decided this relates to the purpose of liturgy. I have written on liturgy before, making my personal preferences clear. However, one of the statements I made to justify myself actually applies in a more general sense for everyone and justifies the adoption of multiple liturgies as our church has done:

It is an emotional thing. The liturgy, as I have said before is supposed to provide an emotional support for the mental activities of the lessons and sermons.

For me, classical music and a liturgy that goes back to the Gregorian chant tradition has deep emotional connections. But for others nothing could be further from the truth. I am the only one in my family, including my extended family (with the exception of one sister-in-law) that likes classical music. In fact, almost all of them dislike it, not even tolerating it. If they are representative of people in general, and I think they are, then traditional liturgy may have no emotional impact with many people and may even have a negative one.

This is an aesthetic issue not one of principle. Since we now use a more traditional liturgy for part of the year, I am willing to live with something that is distasteful to me at other parts of the year.

Resurrection
We have just celebrated the Second Sunday in Easter, and the lessons are still focusing on the Resurrection. Consistent with my other writings, I have a lot of difficulty with the Resurrection Story as stated. This post will not provide an answer, but will talk about the problem as I see it.

For a person to be truly dead and then come back to physical life is completely counter to the laws of nature, and I have clearly stated that I do not believe that God violates the laws of nature. To those who hold that miracles (as events counter to the laws of nature) do occur, this is not a problem. Believing such allows taking the stories of miracles at face value, and allowing them to be part of the support of belief.

However, for me one of two things must be true, either Jesus was not truly dead when he came down from the cross, or he did not physically appear, but appeared as a spirit or ghost. One other possibility is that imposters appeared and the Gospel writers were taken in by the related stories. It is possible that this last might account for some of the stories in Luke or John, in particular, but certainly not all of them. That Jesus appeared after the crucifixion as a physical person is primarily attested by the story of Thomas putting his finger into the nail holes and his hand into the spear wound. That Jesus appeared as a spirit would be easily considered if the Thomas story and the fish story of John did not exist. The mode of Jesus' sudden appearance in the locked rooms, and that he was not immediately recognized by Mary at the tomb or the disciples on the road to Emmaus, would lead to some consideration of his being immaterial.

It is also possible that Jesus did not die on the cross. My reading of the Gospels is that he appears to die. He may have fallen into a coma. He may have fallen into some trance-like state. A spear wound in the side would not be immediately fatal. If it were from the left side, it may have pierced his stomach, in which case the resulting fistula would not cause death. (There is a famous case in medical history of a patient with a gastric fistula that allowed major research into the physiology of digestion in the 19th century.) From the time he was taken down to the discovery of the empty tomb, despite the apparent placement of Roman Guards, could allow for him to be removed to a place of recovery.

I do not question the belief of the disciples and the Gospels writers that they believe they saw the physically resurrected Jesus. What I am questioning is not their belief, but what they actually saw to lead to that belief.

Sunday Notes--4/23/2006

2006-04-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

Communal Christianity
The first lesson for today, the Second Sunday of Easter, is from Acts 4:32-35.

32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.
33 With great power the apostles gave their testomony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
34 There was not a need person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.
35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

We discussed this at the Men's Breakfast. The first thing out of the leader's mouth was "Sounds like Communism or Socialism." At first blush it does. We had two retired pastors, one Lutheran and one Methodist in our group, and both addressed this from the non-obvious viewpoints. I will add one more.

First of all one of the retired pastors made the very important point that "the whole group...were of one heart and soul." This was voluntary action, unlike communism which is forced. The other pastor made the point that what was important here was the expression of values, that possessions were less important than the well-being of others.

I would like to make the point that it probably didn't happen exactly as stated. If everyone sold everything and pooled the money, it would only go a short way, before everyone was starving. What is more likely that those with means of income generation turned the proceeds to the group, not selling the means themselves.

I think the important lesson here is not that Christians or any theist should pursue a communal lifestyle, but rather that they should put the care and concern for others ahead of their desire for material things. There should be no question that when faced with another's survival need which could be met by the sacrifice of some personal possession, the owner stands willing to do so. Rarely would there be the necessity to actually sacrifice a prize possession, but more likely the on-going call to defer gratification and contribute to the causes for the needy rather than buy an addition for a collection, or upgrade or enhance some prize possession.

I think the misconstrual of this lesson is similar to that of the lawyer being told to sell all to achieve the kingdom of heaven. It is not a condemnation of being rich, per se, but rather the values that place money and possessions ahead of people.

Sunday Notes--4/16/2006

2006-04-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

Easter
To everyone, Happy Easter. This is the season of renewal and rebirth. Whether you interpret the story of the Resurrection of Jesus as a literal historic event, a misinterpretation of a true event, or an allegorical or metaphorical story, its message of a triumph over death as represented by Winter is true. My wish for you at this time is that you be open to receive Gods's blessings, and that you begin all anew and refreshed with the renewal of Spring.

Sermon
On Good Friday, I gave the following sermon:

Decision in the Olive Grove
Today we are specifically remembering Jesus’ crucifixion, but I would like to go back to the evening before, because it gives a greater context to the events of Good Friday. From the study of the Gospels that I have been doing for the last two years, I have concluded that THE determining point in the establishment of Christianity was Jesus decision to not fight in the olive grove after the Last Supper.

All four gospels tell this story with variations. Here is Mark’s version of this event. The words of this version are the result of comparing nine different translations of the Bible and producing what I consider the closest meaning to the original Greek the Gospels were recorded in.
Mark 14:43-53:
43 Just at that moment, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived and with him a crowd of men with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders.
44 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.”
45 So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him.
46 And they laid hands on him and seized him.
47 But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
48 Jesus then said, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to capture me as though I were a robber?
49 Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching and you did not seize me; But let the scriptures be fulfilled.”
50 Then they all deserted him and fled.
51 And a young man was following Him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him,
52 but he left the cloth behind and ran away naked.
53 And they led Jesus away to the high priest; and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes were assembled.

We know all too well what happens after this.

This scene, especially as described by Mark, always puts me in mind of the Hollywood monster movie. You know the scene, when the crowd is aroused in the local pub by some loudmouth, and, grabbing whatever is at hand, charges up the hill to the castle to get rid of the monster and his master. This image is reinforced with John’s account, when Jesus identifies himself and they all fall down. At the moment, I am trying to look at things as historical events as much as possible, and it is easy to imagine a crowd motivated by a mixture of dread and self-righteousness as being afraid of Jesus. It may be that John wants to use their falling down as an indication of Jesus inherent divine power. My guess that what John describes as falling down is actually minor stumbling and slipping as they backed up in the dark and not a wholesale falling like dominoes.

Again considering the crowd, just how big was it really, and who was in it? There are some differences among the four gospels. We have Jesus and the remaining eleven disciples on one hand. According to Luke 22:38 there were two swords among them. I would also assume that each carried a knife of some sort. Against this we have the crowd. If it were truly a large crowd, as Matthew or Luke indicate, or for that matter if it were the Roman guard as John suggests, I cannot imagine any of the disciples drawing a sword against such foolish odds. For that matter, the crowd could not be well-armed or the cutting off of the ear would have merited instant retaliation. My guess is that a rag-tag group of around two dozen people, armed mostly with clubs and knives, came after Jesus. The odds would have been about even with numbers vs. swords. Jesus, seeing that nothing but bloodshed would come from resistance stopped the disciples from further aggression or defense and allowed them to escape.

John is always emphasizing Jesus’ majesty and divinity, and I have a lot of difficulty with John’s version. It is not consistent to call out the guard to seize Jesus at the olive grove, and then have Jesus taken first to either Caiaphas’ or Annas’ house. I also don’t see the Roman guard falling back at the mention of Jesus name, or relinquishing control of Jesus to the Sanhedrin once they had him. I am inclined to think that Mark is the most historically accurate of the four.

In summary then, we have this situation: The Chief Priest and the Sanhedrin roused a bunch of people to come and seize Jesus. They named the Chief Priest’s bonded servant to be the leader of the group. (He was the one injured and therefore at the head of the pack within reach of a sword). They took Jesus to the Chief Priest’s home. Later the Roman guard was called in, after the grounds of the charge of rebellion were created.

The whole point of recreating the scene in the Olive Grove in our minds is to emphasize what Jesus did there. What is important is that Jesus is fully human. Let us get rid of the idea that Jesus considered himself more than human. If he were more than human, it would be asking the impossible for us to follow his example, as we are certainly expected to do. There apparently is or has been a long debate on the subject of Messianic Awareness—did Jesus consider himself the Messiah. If he did, it would have been strictly in the Judaic tradition of Messiah which was another anointed military king such as David. I think from Jesus’ behavior we can rule that out. He never acted in such a manner. At the same time, it would be a logical contradiction of the belief that Jesus was the fully human son of God, if we assume he could make the decision not to fight, knowing he would be resurrected, or that he had a special place in heaven after he died. Jesus had to make this decision, just as we might in similar circumstances, weighing those things of value to him.

Let’s try to imagine what might have been in Jesus’ mind that night. Here he stands with his eleven closest friends, having a few weapons among them, and none of them trained as fighters. Facing him is a mob of scared, excited villagers, full of bravado, and each depending on all the others being there to remain steadfast. Accompanying them are some goons from the Temple. Jesus is fully aware that what they want is him. He knows that if he is captured he will die, by what means is not clear but also at this point not important. He also knows that there is the possibility that he could escape. He may also realize that if he does, he will be hounded all over Judea and Galilee until he is captured. In the process of trying to escape, one or more of his best friends and certainly some of the crowd will be hurt or killed. All of this is on his mind, and the fight starts. One of the crowd is injured, and it becomes very real that death for someone will occur. At that point, thinking and feeling much as you and I might about these things, he accepts his fate, and says “Enough.”

I believe this is the turning point. This is the point at which the Christian doctrine of love of all becomes established by example. Jesus followed his own commandment to “love each other as I have loved you.” Jesus loved his disciples and cared enough about the poor fools of villagers, that he gave his life rather than risk theirs to protect his. This was not an act of cowardice. A coward would have run or tried to save his own life. This was an act of the highest bravery. Knowing that his death was guaranteed, he saved the rest.

We give soldiers medals for this, God gave him a church.

Let us pray: God, please give us the courage to follow Jesus’ example and make the right decisions, acting out of love for others, and not our own self-interest.

Sunday Notes--4/09/2006

2006-04-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Holy Week
On Palm Sunday we as Christians begin the celebration of the reason for the existence of our faith, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. I have posted on Easter before. This year I have taken a more active role in the celebration. I was the producer and director for the play "The Living Last Supper" which depicts the DaVinci "Last Supper" with actors and has as a script a series of monologues, each describing the life of the respective apostle and ending with the words, "Is it I? Lord, is it I?"

The production was well received, with many comments on its being inspirational. This was the goal. I had purposely created a minimalist version of the play, deliberately not recreating the picture in costume or backdrop, but rather the poses at the table with all the apostles wearing the same robe, an off-white, Jesus in pure white, and Judas with a black over-robe. The backdrop was portable partitions drapped with neutral colored cloth, tan, grey, and slate blue. Other than one comment that the simplicity of the production was a good thing, all the comments were on the message--exactly as desired.

This Friday, I deliver the sermon at the Good Friday service. It is an edited version of one of my posts a year ago. I will post it next Sunday.

Gauss and the Gospels
The latest issue of American Scientist arrived today, and the first article (Membership in Sigma Xi required.) was on the story of Carl Friedrich Gauss, the great mathematician, who supposedly solved a busy-work problem as a school child with amazing speed.

Here is the opening of the article:

Gauss's Day of Reckoning
A famous story about the boy wonder of mathematics has taken on a life of its own
by Brian Hayes

Let me tell you a story, although it's such a well-worn nugget of mathematical lore that you've probably heard it already:
In the 1780s a provincial German schoolmaster gave his class the tedious assignment of summing the first 100 integers. The teacher's aim was to keep the kids quiet for half an hour, but one young pupil almost immediately produced an answer: 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 98 + 99 + 100 = 5,050. The smart aleck was Carl Friedrich Gauss, who would go on to join the short list of candidates for greatest mathematician ever. Gauss was not a calculating prodigy who added up all those numbers in his head. He had a deeper insight: If you "fold" the series of numbers in the middle and add them in pairs—1 + 100, 2 + 99, 3 + 98, and so on—all the pairs sum to 101. There are 50 such pairs, and so the grand total is simply 50×101. The more general formula, for a list of consecutive numbers from 1 through n, is n(n + 1)/2.
The paragraph above is my own rendition of this anecdote, written a few months ago for another project. I say it's my own, and yet I make no claim of originality. The same tale has been told in much the same way by hundreds of others before me. I've been hearing about Gauss's schoolboy triumph since I was a schoolboy myself.
The story was familiar, but until I wrote it out in my own words, I had never thought carefully about the events in that long-ago classroom. Now doubts and questions began to nag at me. For example: How did the teacher verify that Gauss's answer was correct? If the schoolmaster already knew the formula for summing an arithmetic series, that would somewhat diminish the drama of the moment. If the teacher didn't know, wouldn't he be spending his interlude of peace and quiet doing the same mindless exercise as his pupils?

There are other ways to answer this question, but there are other questions too, and soon I was wondering about the provenance and authenticity of the whole story. Where did it come from, and how was it handed down to us? Do scholars take this anecdote seriously as an event in the life of the mathematician? Or does it belong to the same genre as those stories about Newton and the apple or Archimedes in the bathtub, where literal truth is not the main issue? If we treat the episode as a myth or fable, then what is the moral of the story?

The questions that Dr. Hayes asked, I have also asked about the Gospels. As we look into his article the parallels between a tradition transmitted via print and a tradition transmitted verbally until written down and canonized are striking. The key here is his penultimate question, “Or does it belong to the same genre as those stories about Newton and the apple or Archimedes in the bathtub, where literal truth is not the main issue?” The stories are to be illustrations of the character of the subject via a representative action. Any serious student of the Gospels realizes that they are not written as historical documents, but rather as presentations of events to illustrate to the readers and convince them of Jesus’ nature and the nature of God. In this light the story is analogous to the the story of Jesus in the temple, answering the questions of the priests and scribes.

Dr Hayes goes on to say:

After reading all those variations on the story, I still can't answer the fundamental factual question, "Did it really happen that way?" I have nothing new to add to our knowledge of Gauss. But I think I have learned something about the evolution and transmission of such stories, and about their place in the culture of science and mathematics.

Dr. Hayes then searches for all the versions of the story he can possibly find and finally traces it back to a document written one year after Gauss’ death. He makes the following comment:

Incidental details from this account reappear over and over in later tellings of the story. The ritual of piling up the slates is one such feature. (It must have been quite a teetering heap by the time the hundredth slate was added!) Büttner's switch (or cane, or whip) also made frequent appearances until the 1970s but is less common now; we have grown squeamish about mentioning such barbarities.
What's most remarkable about the Sartorius telling of the story is not what's there but what's absent. There is no mention of the numbers from 1 to 100, or any other specific arithmetic progression. And there is no hint of the trick or technique that Gauss invented to solve the problem; the idea of combining the numbers in pairs is not discussed, nor is the formula for summing a series. Perhaps Sartorius thought the procedure was so obvious it needed no explanation.

He then continues with a long analysis of the various versions of the story, when certain items appear and disappear, and even has a chronological table of all the versions and their key content.
To me, these remarks are essentially identical to remarks I have read in commentaries on the Gospels and their origins, the added and missing parts, the speculations on motive for writing a particular version.

And then Dr. Hayes makes this interesting statement:

If you think it utterly implausible that two or more authors would come up with the same example and the same method, then Bieberbach himself is disqualified as the source. A full millennium before Gauss and Büttner had their classroom confrontation, essentially the same problem and solution appeared in an eighth-century manuscript attributed to Alcuin of York.

A case of the same idea occurring over 1000 years before the story took place. Again I am struck by the parallel to the Bible, where much of the New Testament has its origins in the Old, and often is a simple restatement of the same idea from the Old Testament.

Dr. Hayes anticipates my punchline with this:

Tellers of a tale like this one seem to work under a special dispensation from the usual rules of history-writing. Authors who would not dare to alter a fact such as Gauss's place of birth or details of his mathematical proofs don't hesitate to embellish this anecdote, just to make it a better story. They pick and choose from the materials available to them, taking what they need and leaving the rest—and if nothing at hand suits the purpose, then they invent! For example, several authors show a familiarity with Bell's version of the story, quoting or borrowing distinctive phrases from it, but they decline to go along with Bell's choice of a series beginning 81297, falling back instead on the old reliable 1-100 or inserting something else entirely. Thus it appears that what is driving the evolution of this story is not just the accumulation of errors of transmission, as in the children's game "whisper down the lane"; authors are deliberately choosing to "improve" the story, to make it a better narrative.

For the most part, I would not criticize this practice. Effective storytelling is surely a legitimate goal, and outside of formal scholarly works, a bit of embroidery on the bare fabric of the plot does no harm. A case in point is the theme of "busywork" found in most recent tellings of the story (including mine). It seems we feel a need to explain why Büttner would give his pupils such a long and dreary exercise. But Sartorius says nothing at all about Büttner's motivation, nor do any of the other 19th-century works I've consulted. The idea that he wanted to keep the kids quiet while he took a break is entirely a modern inference. It's probably wrong—at best it's unattested—and yet it answers a need of readers today.

At this point Dr. Hayes article and I part company. He is interested now in dissecting the algorithm that Gauss supposedly used, and what variants can be found on it. What I think is important is we have a clear example of the point I have tried to make many times in other posts that over time there is considerable alteration of the objective facts of a story to enhance the underlying moral or truth being presented. Additionally, I will state that such a circumstance is not bad. It makes it difficult or even impossible for those of us who are interested in trying to recreate the objective reality behind a story, but the metaphorical truth of the story remains and is emphasized by such changes and embellishments.

Just as Gauss’ biographers wished to present him in the most positive light, and to make all the stories about him shine with his genius, so did the evangelists that wrote the Gospels, wish to present Jesus as the Savior and the Messiah. In order to do so, they changed the order and details of events, put words in Jesus’ mouth, and spliced Old Testament scriptures into their narrative. This is not to disparage them. The Gospels serve their purpose, they inspire and lead us to behavior akin to that of Jesus. That they use metaphorical rather than objective truths to do so does not diminish their value.

Sunday Notes--4/2/2006

2006-04-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

Jesus' Humanity
It often appears the fact that Jesus was human is lost in the tremendous emphasis given to the divinity of Jesus in most Christian liturgies, in particular because of the salvation theology that depends on Jesus being the literal Son of God. As a consequence Jesus exemplary behavior is not taken as humanly possible, but rather as an example of divine perfection--the unattainable goal that nevertheless must be striven for. Such an approach can provide a covert comfort when we fail to live up to the standard, "After all, Jesus was divine."

The divinity of Jesus is a before and after life issue. It occurs in the stories of the conception by the Holy Ghost, and in the stories of the Resurrection and after. During Jesus' life everything he did was done as a complete human, but no more than a human. It creates a logical inconsistency if it were otherwise. We would have been given an example that we were doomed to fail to follow. How many people will follow a command or set of commandments with no hope of achieving the defined end result? The idea that Jesus approached everything he did strictly from the stance of being human and not divine is central to the sermon I am giving on Good Friday. It concerns Jesus' decision to surrender to the mob in the Olive Grove, and the importance of Jesus' humanity when making that decision.

I do not ascribe to the idea that Jesus knew he was the literal Son of God. He refers to himself in the Gospels as "the Son of Man." For those of you who wish to quote verses from the Gospels that supposedly show Jesus knew he was the literal Son of God, I recommend you look at my next comment which is on the Gospels. In a nutshell, those verses may have been added later and ascribed to Jesus.

Some comments on the Gospels
The Gospels are for Christianity what the Torah is for Judaism. They are the core teachings around which everything else is constructed. The Epistles form a commentary perhaps analogous to the Talmud, but not nearly as detailed or extensive. When I was growing up, I learned that the Gospels were written in the order Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Since I started studying the Bible, I have learned that most scholars now consider Mark to predate Matthew. Prior to that rearrangement, Mark was considered a poor copy of Matthew, since it is about half the length of Matthew. Now it is considered that Matthew and Luke were aware of and made copies of Mark's Gospel and then edited it and added their own material. In the case of John, these edits and amendations are considerable.

Shelby Spong in one of his screeds against Biblical literalism, basically considered the Book of Mark to be superstituous junk. He carried on about Mark's reporting of demons being driven out, and miracles being performed. My own take on Mark is that he is a simple reporter, trying to tell the story of Jesus, the most important man in Mark's world. Unlike the other Gospels that worked to create a version of Jesus that emphasized their world view, I think Mark was simply telling what he knew. Though none of the Gospels are considered to be historical documents, in the sense of being a chronicle, I think Mark's, being written within 20 years of Jesus' death, may come the closest to historical accuracy.

One of the important things to always remember about the Gospels, is that they are a record of oral history that was told for 20-50 years before being written down. If anyone has played the game, Gossip or Telephone, they understand the reliability or lack thereof of oral traditions. The core message may get through, but the details are greatly altered. Actually Mark may be based on an older Gospel that is hypothesized but no record of which has been found.

Matthew and Luke both borrowed heavily from Mark, and the similarities are so great among the three that they are called the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew and Luke are the sources for the Christmas story, and Luke is the source for the stories of the conception of Jesus and of Jesus as a boy astounding the Scribes in the Temple. Mark and John both start with the Baptism of Jesus, and both tell the story similarly. It is almost as if Matthew and Luke heard a nice story and decided it would be a good addition to the tale of Jesus. The post-Markian Gospels have a goal of demonstrating Jesus' greatness in one way or another. Matthew and Luke use stories that show divine presence, and John emphasizes Jesus' majesty.

Of the four Gospels, John is my least favorite. Especially in his descriptions of the post-resurrection events, I find a flavor of telling fish stories, and in fact one of them is a fish story. I also find a not-too-subtle self-agrandizement. Traditionally the Book of John and Revelations are attributed to John, the Apostle. I find the constant self-references in John to "the disciple whom Jesus loved" both annoying and egotistical. So Jesus didn't love his other disciples? Of the four, I would consider John the most likely to put his own ideas into the mouth of Jesus and report it as if Jesus had said it.

Sunday Notes--3/26/2006

2006-03-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

Moses and the Serpent
This week's Old Testament lesson created a lot of questions and few or no answers at the Men's Breakfast this week.

Numbers 21:4-9
4 From Mount Hor [the Israelites] set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way.
5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."
6 Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.
7 The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for hte people.
8 And the Lord said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten whall look at it and live."
9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

First a general comment: understanding the Pentateuch, (or Torah), is extremely complex, as witness the Talmud, which is a commentary on the Torah and is many times greater in size than the Torah. Part of the problem is determining how much is truly historical, and how much is changed with time and telling, and how much is additional for purposes of spiritual meaning. Considering there are only six verses, there is a wealth of complexity.

There is a problem of theodicy, since the writers of Numbers considered EVERYTHING to be under the control of God, and therefore to some purpose. So what was the purpose of punishing a miserable people further with serpents? There is a problem of whether there is a violation of the prohibition of the worship of idols, with the brass serpent on a pole. For that matter if there is no food and water, why do they detest the "miserable food?"

Taking the cheap shots first, verse 6 sounds rather like an impatient parent that tells the kid, "Quite crying or I'll give you something to cry about. You don't like the food--how about poisonous snakes." Putting a brass serpent on the pole is a way of providing a solution for the problem without getting rid of the problem. [Resembles left/liberal solutions to problems.] But it also serves as a reminder that they could be punished again, much as a parent may keep a paddle visible or easily accessible [I grew up when it was OK to spank your kids.].

Taking it a level deeper, blaming God for the serpents is due to the belief that He does everything. If we remove God as doing everything, in other words, natural evil is outside His control, then the serpents just happened, and maybe around the time of nasty food. [Another common problem in this area is that the further back in time we go the more it gets compressed in the telling. Centuries become a few years or even less in the story.] To deal with the problem of worship of an idol, we can split hairs and say that looking upon the idol is not the same as worshipping it. It is merely following God's orders. He would not have the Israelites worship any God other than Himself. And besides, there is no indication that there were any prayers or petitions given to the idol. One simply looked at it, if one were bitten.

One of the pastors at the breakfast had read in a commentary, that there was a parasitic worm, that was the size of a snake. This worm would bore into the skin of the legs, and the only way to remove it was to take a stick with a split on the end, and grab the end of the worm, twist it around the stick, and pull it out. The brass serpent on a pole may be the oral tradition of a representation of the cure for the problem--a way to show people how it was done.

John in the Gospel for the day, John 3:14-21, directly references the story saying that Jesus was lifted up on the cross in the same manner that the serpent was lifted up to save life, in this case spiritual. [I am becoming fascinated by the recurring themes in the Bible. I interpret them less as sequence and historical repitition than as borrowing to fill out a story line.]

I don't have a final conclusion on this story. In keeping with my beliefs, I think the serpents, whatever they were, were simply bad luck, an amoral hazard having nothing to do with the Israelites complaints. As for the brass serpent, the interpretation of the parasitic worm works, but I don't find it overwhelming. It is something I would like to read about further on my own. It seems plausible but not compelling without more evidence.

Sunday Notes--3/19/2006

2006-03-21T18:01:00.000-08:00

Forgiveness
I have posted on this before--turning the other cheek and forgiving. The interpretations I provided in previous posts focused on the relationship between the forgiver and the forgiven. But in turning the other cheek there is a more subtle issue that was emphasized at the men's retreat this year--in turning the other cheek one is making a point that one has not gone away, one is still there to be dealt with. There are instances where it actually becomes a form of agression and one that can hardly be answered.

An example is in order: one has a fight with ones signficant other, not just a shouting match, but one of those deadly go for the jugular kind of things. After a period of time (a few minutes to several hours) the person attacked goes about showing they love and care as if nothing had happened. What is the agressor left with? Evidence they have hurt? Do hurt people take care of those that hurt them? (In this case, yes, but there are other circumstances) Evidence they have won? Nothing has changed. Self-righteousness over the counter-attack? There was no counter-attack. Somewhere, if the agressor is normally sane, they are faced with the excesses of their attack, and the need to make amends. Done appropriately this is powerful stuff.

Sunday Notes--3/12/2006

2006-03-13T19:05:00.000-08:00

Right Questions, Wrong Conclusions
Question: Is there a God?
My Answer: Yes.
Question: Prove it.
Answer: It can't be proven.
Conclusion: If it can't be proven then it doesn't exist. angngt! NOT!
Other Conclusion: Whether it can be proven or not, I believe He exists.
Secondary Conclusion: If He exists, then He is all powerful and made everything. angngt! NOT!

For the first mistake, failure to prove existence does not constitute proof of non-existence. For the second mistake, assumption of properties does not make them so.

Encapsulated in the two mistakes above is the essence of the ID/Evolutionism debate. The one side denies God for lack of objective proof, and the other side and attempts to justify their assumptions with science. The difficulty with both sides is that belief in God neither requires Him to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, nor does it negate anything that has been demonstrated by science and the scientific method.

The difficulties appear when one tries to deal with morality. Those who commit the first mistake, end up with a moral vacuum that must be filled in some way from outside their system, since the creation of ethics cannot be done with the scientific method, Daniel Dennett not withstanding. Those who commit the second mistake end up with all the difficulties of Theodicy and the problem of natural evil.

Hence the middle ground of my beliefs. God exists and provides a quiet, moral direction when we look for it. He has provided his prophets with answers and lessons through the ages. He does His work by suggestion and guidance not by force. Experiencing that guidance can be overwhelming, to the point of not arguing, at least at the time. But there is always the choice of not agreeing and the consequences of the choice.

An Interesting Speculation
Note to the unwary: I am often heretical and would have been burned many times over in the Middle Ages. This next bit is as heretical as I have ever been in the past. You have been warned.

Let us suppose that what we refer to as God, is the sum of all the souls that have died and were generally good. Let us furthere suppose that over time as more souls enter the union, they bring additional knowledge and wisdom, which is integrated across all the entities in the Godhead. This would imply that as time progresses, God would become both wiser and possibly more powerful.

But what would be the power of God in such a case? Based on what I have written previously, it would be an increasing power to convince people to do right. The ability of souls to communicate with the living is limited both as to strength of interaction and the number of people who are receptive. In the cases where the person is receptive but unable to detect extremely weak interactions, a God of increasing strength would have increasing influence.

My own view of history is that overall, mankind is becoming more moral. Because of the nature of human beings, that progress is very uneven over time, place, and belief systems. But that parallels my hypothesized increase in the strength of God. So, is the increasing goodness of man due to an increasing influence from God as He becomes more powerful?

Sunday Notes--3/5/2006

2006-03-05T10:24:00.000-08:00

That I am writing Sunday Notes again may be the best indication I have regained my health.

On Christian Behavior:
Today we were going into Bob Evans for breakfast after church, and we passed a group of people obviously in Sunday Church Wear--suits and flowered dresses. They were having a serious discussion just to look at them, and one of them had a sheet of paper showing with multiple colors of highlighter on it, green, yellow, and pink. My wife has some of the sharpest ears I have ever come across, and she said they were discussing kicking someone out of the church, and quoting scripture.

On the surface of it, this is very troubling to me. It may be that the person was so heretical or defiant in his/her beliefs that there was no doubt that the ejection should occur, but in that case I would expect there to be no debate. Since there was a debate, I would venture that it was more a matter of they didn't like this person for some reason, were trying to find justification for what they wanted to do, and knew at some level they were wrong.

It never fails to amaze me, that, as forgiving and as open as Jesus was to those who were sinners, so many people who claim to follow his teachings are so self-righteous and judgmental. The group mentioned above was today's example. The church I belonged to before my current church needed to evangelize to stay alive, yet what they wanted was only people like themselves. They never stopped to think that the people like themselves were already church members, and that Jesus had a reputation of associating with undesirables--tax collectors, laborers, prostitutes or at least women of less than sterling virtue. Evangelism requires allowing those not like oneself into association, not sitting in judgment on them.

We host the homeless families in two weeks at our church, and my wife and I were talking with another parishoner about including the families in our Lenten supper, instead of providing a separate meal for them. My wife related that other churches that do this do it in such a way as it is a thorough humiliation. They make them come to the Lenten supper, then point them out specifically as the homeless families, make them server themselves first, and make them eat up front where everyone can see them.

THIS IS NOT CHARITY OR BEING KIND TO THE POOR, as Jesus commanded. Our Gospel lesson last week discussed how one should hide ones prayers, and fasting, and giving, so that the reward was in Heaven, not the praise of those on earth. To do as these churches have done is to say, "Look how good we are," not to give in a charitable manner. They used those in difficult straits and embarassed about it to further their own self-image. Another version of this was Ted Turner about a year or two ago, when he made a big splash about how he was going to give many millions of dollars to charity over 10 years. The press lapped it up and made headlines of the total. Truth to tell, many other extremely rich persons give that much every year and say little or nothing about it.

Virtue is in doing what is right quietly, because it is right, not because it makes one look good.

Belonging to a Church
We belong to a small- to medium-sized church (about 120 families). We know everyone that attends regularly, and many of those who come less frequently. We are active and enjoy the companionship of the church members. What struck me though, was that when I was sick, the church rallied around me in so many ways. There were constant prayers for my progress, visits to the hospital, get well cards, phone calls, and emails. When I returned to church the obvious joy that everyone felt that I was well-enough to come to church, was almost overwhelming. Whatever part one wishes to credit for it, I think this attention had the effect of helping me get well faster.

The upshot is that if one belongs to an inclusive and loving church, and works within it as best one can, one will be repayed in greater measure than was put in. It doesn't happen because it is expected, it happens because people are basically good and want to do the right thing. Church is a place where one gives as much as possible, willingly, without consideration for a return. When the crunch is on, what is given will be returned many fold as necessary.

Sunday Notes--Dec 11, 2005

2005-12-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

One Sunday morning an old Wyoming cowboy entered a church just before services were to begin.

Although the old man and his clothes were spotlessly clean, he wore jeans, a denim shirt and boots that
were very worn and ragged. In his hand he carried a worn out old hat and an equally worn out bible.

The Church he entered was in a very upscale and exclusive part of the city. It was the largest and most
beautiful church the old cowboy had ever seen.

The people of the congregation were all dressed with expensive clothes and accessories.

As the cowboy took a seat, the others moved away from him.

No one greeted, spoke to, or welcomed him. They were all appalled at his appearance and did not
attempt to hide it. The preacher gave a long sermon about Hellfire and brimstone and a stern lecture on
how much money the church needed to do God's work.

As the old cowboy was leaving the church, the preacher approached him and asked the cowboy to
do him a favor. "Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask him what He thinks
would be appropriate attire for worship."

The old cowboy assured the preacher he would.

The next Sunday, he showed up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, shirt, boots, and hat.
Once again he was completely shunned and ignored.

The preacher approached the man and said, "I thought I asked you to speak to God about what was appropriate attire before you came back to our church."

"I did," replied the old cowboy.

"If you spoke to God, what did he tell you the proper attire should be for worshiping in here?" asked the
preacher.

"Well, sir, God told me that He didn't have a clue what I should wear. He said He's never been in this
church!"

Sunday Notes--11/27/2005--published 4/12/2006

2005-11-27T14:11:00.000-08:00

Render unto Caesar
If there is any outstanding message to my postings on religion, the command from Matthew, "Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's" would be it.

The intanglement of religious leadership in politics will be the downfall of the church in America. It will gain them neither rewards in Heaven, respect on Earth, nor additional membership and the saving of souls for God.

I received the latest issue [Nov, 2005, bk] of The Lutheran magazine, the official monthly publication of the ELCA, yesterday in the mail. The very first item in the ....
was a note that the Presiding Bishop and the 65 bishops of the synods had signed a letter asking for removal of the tax rebates for the rich and applauding the continuation of the food stamp program.

These putative Christians applaud the raping and pillaging of non-Lutheran pocketbooks to support their personal political priorities. Not satisfied to exhort the membership to charitable work and giving, they petition Congress to force others to conform to their vision. Without their titles, they are 66 ordinary people petitioning Congress. They have misused their position as leaders of believers to carry a political weight that they should never have.

In addition to the subordinating of religious belief to political action, they practice socialist economics as well. Just who do they think provides the bulk of the funds they run their churches on? The little guy? Give me a break. I have seen church finance details. Most churches depend on a few very well-off and generous patrons to provided the bulk of their funds, and certainly the extra funds when special needs arise. Now they want to penalize and punish the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Since I don't qualify as a traditional Christian, I hope there is some re-education and remorse before these people are admitted into Heaven.

Sunday Notes--11/06/2005

2005-11-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

The Beatitudes
Matthew 5:3-12:

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be fcalled sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against your because of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Luke 6:20-23:

20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you, on account of the Son of Man.
23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

When I was an atheist I intepreted the Beatitudes as a call to become abject doormats. I condemned the teachings as being counter to my Randian vision of egoistic Man. And in truth, they are counter to such teachings in which being blessed for being unassertive is considered rewarding weakness. In the context of Jesus' time, I think Ayn Rand would have had to side with the Romans and the Scribes and Pharisees, despite her avowals of the independence of the individual. For the Romans, Scribes and Pharisees were the egotistical, self-sure men.

She (and I at that time) failed to understand that in these words, Jesus was saying, "To yourself be true. If you are down-trodden, you will overcome. You may not be immediately rewarded, but if you live a life of virtue, you will eventually be rewarded." Jesus realized that the outcasts have value and with them he built a great religion, based on the value of the person to God, not on their supposed holiness in observing the law. He was not glorifying lowliness, but rather comforting those who suffered from lowliness. It is far too tempting to take these words at literal face-value rather than seeing the allegorical nature that Jesus always used when speaking.

In a society that essentially espoused might makes right, Jesus was trying to make the point that not being mighty could be right, that there was no condemnation in appearing to be weak or mild. It is very important to remember that though Jesus said the meek would inherit, he did not say the strong would not. He did condemn those focused exclusively on this-worldly rewards, but did not catagorically exclude the strong from the rewards of virtue.

On Abortion
This says some things better than I would ever imagine.

Sunday Notes--10/30/2005

2005-10-31T15:20:00.000-08:00

Luther and the Reformation
This was Reformation Sunday, when we celebrate Luther's creation of the Lutheran Church. This note is not meant to be a scholarly analysis or necessarily a totally accurate analysis of the impact of the Reformation. It is some generalities of what I see as the impact of the Reformation on Europe and the world.

There is almost a perfect storm character about the Reformation. We have the Roman Catholic church appearing to be quite corrupt with the selling of indulgences, and in effect conducting an extortion racket with the confessional. There were German rulers that were restive under the domination of politics by the church, and there was Luther who believed that the only religious truth was based solely on scripture.

Luther survived the Diet of Worms only by being protected by the local ruler (Gray moment, can't remember the details). But by placing the confession of sin into a direct communication with God, he introduced personal responsibility into living sinfully. No more hiding what one did by not telling the priest. He also made forgiveness a function of God's Grace not a function of works or money. Lutheran pastors declare the forgiveness of sin through God's Grace, but do not give that forgiveness directly. He also removed the power of the RC to control politics, because ex-communication no longer had power.

Though there has been a distortion of this theology to the point that simply declaring belief in some denominations is the same as being saved, accepting the Grace of God is a two-way street. When one accepts Grace, one then will work to live as good a life as possible, not to earn the Grace but in gratitude for that which cannot be earned.

There is a fundamental shift in life style when one accepts Protestantism. I have read articles in the past that show that in third world RC countries, when the Protestants come in, there is a fundamental change for the better. In particular, an acceptance of responsibility by males to support their families and drop the machismo act. I think it hinges on the removal of the priest between a person and God. God is there and God knows--all the time. He is not just someone you deal with on Sunday.

Sunday Notes--10/16/2005

2005-10-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

Today I delivered the sermon for both services. Here is the Gospel text I based it on:

Matthew 22: 15-22
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.
17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is is righ to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?
19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,
20 and he asked them, “Whose portrait is on this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Sermon Text

Today’s Gospel lesson is one on which I have thought a lot over the last couple of years. I have seen many instances of it’s not being observed, and thought a lot about how it should be observed. I am very excited to be able to talk about it today.

To review part of the Gospel lesson for today—
[Jesus said,]
19 “Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,
20 and he asked them, “Whose portrait is on this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Jesus was answering a specific question that was trying to put him in the position of preaching defiance of the government of Rome. But like everything that Jesus said, the meaning goes far beyond “pay your taxes.” This meaning has importance for us especially in today’s world. We will explore that meaning this morning, but first, let us pray.

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” There are two important extensions from this, do NOT give to God that which is Caesar’s, and do NOT give to Caesar that which is God’s. Or in other words, keep politics out of religion and religion out of politics.

Caesar represents the government at all levels. It provides rules for day-to-day living. These rules or laws tell us how to interact with each other peaceably and what to do if we don’t

God includes the churches and their membership. He provides the moral standards by which we judge and guide our lives. The Bible gives us the principles by which we are to live our lives, what we can do with knowledge and what laws are just.

The main difference is that the rules of God are absolute, the rules of Caesar are compromises.

Today we are engaged in two religious wars, one is against radical, militant Islam. The second war is with atheism. This second one is almost never recognized as a religious war—the goal of the atheists is to wipe out all traces of Christianity from public life. In one case it is religion trying to control politics and in the other politics trying to control religion.

The war with militant, radical Islam is a religious war. The Jihadists have clearly and publically stated that their goal is to replace all societies with that of Sharia Law, law contained in the Koran. Sharia is totally incompatible with free societies as we know them. The ultimate authority in Sharia law, both religious and civil, is not the government, but a group of religious leaders. Iran today is an example of this, and Afghanistan before the over throw of the Taliban was another. This is the most obvious example of giving to God (or in this case, Allah) that which is Caesar’s.

An example closer to home is the attempts by religious groups in Texas to force the statements in biology textbooks that the Creation story must be considered an alternative to the theory of evolution Unlike voluntary prayer it is forcing the schools to make a religious statement. To some believers this is a desirable state of affairs. Like the radical Islamists, they want their vision to control everything. This is the giving of that which is Caesar’s to God.

From the other side of the issue, there is a huge cross on Mount Soledad in the City of San Diego, and there is a legal battle going on to have it removed. Just recently the City of Los Angelos had a cross removed from the City Seal. Both of these events were supposedly on the grounds that their presence promotes religion. These crosses do not promote religion; they are simply reminders that the two cities were founded by missionaries. There was the removal of the Ten Commandments from a courthouse in Alabama. Again this was a historical monument, since all of our law comes ultimately from the Ten Commandments.

There are daily articles about school systems banning any symbols or even words that might have even a distant religious meaning, if they are from Judaism or Christianity—it is OK if it is muslim or buddhist, or any non-Judeo-Christian belief. A coach recently resigned because he was told he could not hold voluntary pray before football games. In all of these examples, we see a persecution of God and religious belief by secular forces. It is a forceable giving of that which is God’s to Caesar, in the sense that religious expression is being destroyed by political action.

Jesus did not try to directly overthrow the Romans or the Scribes and Pharisees or to deal with them politically. Yet, it has become very common for church leadership to become involved in politics as church leaders and not as individuals. The politicians meet with the church leaders because they see them as speaking for their parishioners. This activity takes the membership of the church in total, which is a thing of God’s, and places it in the service of politicians and activists looking for support for a cause, regardless of the members’ beliefs or desires. This is giving to Caesar that which is God’s.

What is the role of God and religion with respect to Caesar?

Various forms of this question are often brought up at the men’s breakfast. The answer we arrive at is that scripture is meant to apply to us as individuals not our political institutions. If we are good individuals, then the political institutions that represent all of us will be good as well. We want our political institutions to reflect our morality, but that is not achieved by direct religious interference.

First and foremost, we must pray for God to help provide guidance and solutions. I can attest to the power of prayer at an individual level from my own life. The power of collective prayer is even greater. When we pray for God’s help to solve a problem or overcome an evil, the prayer will be answered, if we have faith that God will answer it. In my experience, God’s answer is not what I expect, but is always better than I would have imagined. If we pray for a particular solution, we may be disappointed, since God may see that particular solution as not the best. It is up to us to ask for help then trust that God will provide that help. When the help comes we must also be open to seeing it as the help we asked for.

I will also say the role of God and religion is the guidance of the people individually to express themselves collectively in a moral way. If we are to have free will, we must be free to understand and accept God’s message for ourselves. We may use our churches and their leadership for guidance. The church may state that its doctrines consider some event or set of events to be wrong or evil. They may state that their belief does not support given legalities. They may condemn behavior, but they do not have the right to propose specific remedies or endorse particular candidates in the name of the organization, because the remedies and candidates are political not religious. The rules of God are absolute, the rules of Caesar are compromises.

If we, as members of a church, have a common belief in the immorality of a practice, it is our right to voluntarily abstain from that practice. It does not give us the right to enforce that abstinence on others of different belief. We may campaign as individuals or members of a secular, political organization to create changes in law. That we are motivated by religious doctrine does not destroy the validity of our efforts. All of us have a base of belief that provides our moral stance. In the world of politics, all such stances are equal, as long as they do not violate a common moral base, e.g., do not kill, steal, or lie.

If we want the world to be a better place, we must do it by living our beliefs and providing an example for the rest of the world. In so doing we can convince others to join us. Again, Jesus did not try to directly overthrow the Romans or the Scribes and Pharisees. He simply lived what he believed, and by his example brought about a complete transformation in the relationship of people to God that eventually provided the moral code we have today.

By rendering unto God our lives and devotion to his word and to the example of Jesus, we may then render correctly unto Caesar our desire to improve the world as individual people.

Let us pray:
May God grant us the courage and the patience to live and follow his word in the world and work for its expression in all we do. Amen.

Sunday Notes 10/9/2005

2005-10-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

Next Sunday I will be delivering the Message at both services. Here is what I originally wrote for that purpose. It has changed considerably since then.

First version of the message for 10/16/2005

The Gospel lesson for the day:

Matthew 22: 15-22
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.
17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is is righ to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?
19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,
20 and he asked them, “Whose portrait is on this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

The original draft of my message:

19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,
20 and he asked them, “Whose portrait is on this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

In light of many things going on in the world and our country today, I consider these three verses, at the time, one of the most important set of verses in the Bible.

Now, let me ask a question: How many people have milked a cow by hand?

How many legs were on the milking stool?

What does a milking stool have to do with our verses? We will discuss that and more after we pray.

Let the words of my mouth, the meditations of our hearts and the thoughts of our minds be acceptable in your sight, oh God. Amen.

Back to our milking stool, I think of our society and culture as being like a milking stool, sturdy, solid, and resting on three legs which means it never wobbles—three legs are always stable. But what do the three legs represent? This is where our verses come in—one leg is government as represented by Caesar, and the second is Religious belief and morality as represented in the verse by God. We will talk about the third leg a bit later.

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” There are two important extensions from this, do NOT give to God that which is Caesar’s, and do NOT give to Caesar that which is God’s

So restating slightly we can say, do not bring politics into religion and do not bring religion into politics. This does not mean politics should have no morality or that there is no place for God in public life.

It has become very common for churches today (or rather their leadership) to become involved in politics. The leaders meet with high profile politicians. There is no doubt in my mind that they use their positions as the heads of churches to obtain these audiences. The implication was that they are speaking for their parishioners. It is common in the leadership of the Council of Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church (not just the Pope, but many US Cardinals and Bishops). This activity takes the membership of the church in total, which is a thing of God’s, and places it in the service of politicians and activists looking for support for a secular cause. Even if the parishoners voted on a desire or a wish that they are discussing, the document that expresses that desire or wish, was political in nature. It addresses what is a secular, not a religious, problem.

Other examples come from outside the church, the City of San Diego is having a fight over the removal of a huge cross on Mount Soledad, on the grounds that its presence promotes religion, and the City of Los Angelos had a cross removed from the City Seal for the same reasons. Here we see what I consider a persecution of God and religious belief by secular forces. It is based on the false idea that the First Amendment creates a separation of church and state. Actually all it does is state that no particular religion may be established as a national religion. Over the years of some very torturous decisions at all levels of the courts, this has become a cry of separation of church and state and the attempted removal of all evidence of religion from public life. Here we see a forceable giving of that which is God’s to Caesar.

An opposite example is the passage of the rule a few years ago by the Kansas State Board of Education, that evolution would not be taught in public schools. In this case it was pressure from religious conservatives forcing their particular doctrines into the government-run school system. Where before we had the giving of that which is God’s to Caesar, now we have the giving of that which is Caesar’s to God. It replaces publicly debated and established law with religious doctrine. God is now in direct control of the government, for at least part, if not all, of its functions. Extreme forms of this are the existence of Shiria law in Iran and its former existence in Afghanistan. To some believers this is a desirable state of affairs. I would argue it is a violation of God’s wish for us to practice our morality freely and voluntarily—a destruction of free will.

What is the role of God and religion vis-à-vis Caesar? It is the guidance of the people individually to express themselves collectively in a moral way. If we are to have free will, we must be free to understand and accept God’s message for ourselves. We may use our churches and their leadership for guidance. The church may state that its doctrines consider some event or set of events to be wrong or evil. They may state that their belief does not support given legalities. But they do not have the right to propose specific remedies in the name of the organization, because the remedies are political not religious. If members of a church have a common belief in the immorality of a practice, it is their right to voluntarily abstain from that practice. It does not give them the right to enforce that abstinence on others of different belief. They may campaign as individuals or members of a secular, political organization to create changes in law, but not in the name of the church. That they are motivated by religious doctrine does not destroy the validity of their efforts. All of us have a base of belief that provides our moral stance. In the world of politics, all such stances are equal, as long as they do not violate a common moral base, e.g., do not kill, steal, or lie.

Now it is time to talk about the third leg of our stool. When Jesus lived in Galilee, the society had many trained people to produce food, clothing, furniture, buildings, roads, and aqueducts. The skills were highly technical in many instances, but were learned primarily by passage from father to son or master to apprentice-- leavened bread, fermented wine, planting, harvesting, iron-making, carpentry, weaving, etc.. Their existence was taken for granted, because there was no formal organization of the knowledge, nor formal structures to produce the creators of material goods. It was not until the Renaissance, with its development of secular universities and guilds, that technical knowledge came to be recognized as a thing of itself. The culmination of this is today’s society that pays great homage to science, scientists, inventors, and innovators. This is the third leg of our stool—science and technology—which existed in Jesus’ time but was taken for granted.

But what are the proper relationships of science to religion, or, to create an icon for science as in our verses, Einstein to God? There are many things found in science that are not reconcilable with the Bible, if it is interpreted literally. That makes neither the Bible nor science wrong. Read any mainline protestant scholar, and you will see that the Bible is true in the moral sense, even if not always perfectly accurate in the historical or scientific sense. The biggest conflict comes with the Genesis story of creation vs. the Theory of Evolution. We shall return to that in a bit.

Let’s look at the nature of science for a minute. Science is a means of learning about the world that is designed to obtain the most valid information about it possible. It uses a process called the scientific method which allows for any discovery by one person to be checked by anyone else that wishes to. It is a method for collecting and organizing facts about the world around us, and then inferring other things about the world from those facts. Those inferences are then tested in new ways, and over time a body of knowledge builds up of related, demonstrated facts.

Science has a second activity, that of interpreting the facts in larger scale forms called theories. A theory is a way of providing a explanation for the factual findings that can then be used to predict other findings. It is the above inference activity on a larger scale. One such theory is the Theory of Evolution. This theory states that when the available information in biology and geology is combined, it is plausible that all living things on this earth evolved over four billion years from very primitive single-celled organisms, which in turn came from inanimate chemicals.

Obviously, this is in direct conflict with the account in Genesis, and there have been many Biblical literalists that have tried to demand that evolution not be taught in the schools (The Kansas State Board of Education was just the most recent example) and tried to build what was called Creation Science, which selected scientific findings and tried to interpret them or distort them to fit the Genesis account. We could call this a rendering unto God that which is Einstein’s.

But what is disturbing today, is that scientists are using their knowledge of the world to argue that there is no need for God, that Naturalism—the knowledge of the natural, factual world only, is all that is needed. A rendering unto Einstein that which is God’s.

When the term Naturalism is used it generally means Scientism—or science as a belief system. But, one thing that science cannot do validly is provide moral guidance. Science is neutral, and when coupled with evil, we see things like the Nazi death camps, and when coupled with good, we see the life-saving advances in medicine and improved agriculture. So Naturalism is not all that is needed.

Yet today we are seeing what amounts to a holy war being waged between so-called evolutionists and the proponents of an interpretation of science called Intelligent Design. Those on the evolution side are using science to claim there is no God, and those on the ID side are claiming that it shows there is a designer, which generally means God. I think that is a misuse of God. I firmly and wholeheartedly believe in God and that He is the ultimate source of good in mankind. With respect to the physical world, we don't know and cannot know. Science can neither prove or disprove God, whether used by IDers or secularists respectively. I think both parties are off in the wrong directions when trying to use science to support or diminish God. As the old testament makes abundantly clear, God said, "I am that I am." He needs no support and cannot be diminished.

Caesar—provides rules for day-to-day living agreed upon by us &/or our representatives. Guided by values and expresses our values

God—provides the moral standards by which we judge and guide our lives

Science—The knowledge to obtain all the things we need to live. Deals strictly with the material world.

Bible tells us how to live our lives, what we can do with knowledge and what laws are just.

Laws tell us how to interact with each other peaceably and what to do if we don’t

Science tells us what is in the world for us to use and finds ways for us to use it. It is a system for acquiring facts, cataloguing them, and learning the interactions among them.

Render Obedience to the law
Careful study and thought to science
Love, gratitude, and obedience to God.

Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, render unto God that which is God’s, and render unto Einstein that which is Einstein’s.

Let us pray:
May God give us the strength, courage, and wisdom to follow His way, study His world, and live in harmony with one another. Amen.

Sunday Notes--10/2/2005

2005-10-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Gadarine Swine as told by another blogger
I generally read this blog for its look at the world from a waiter's perspective. Usually it is relatively light-hearted. This post was one of the best presentations of the Gadarine Swine story that I have seen. Definitely go read it.

Sunday Notes--9/25/2005

2005-09-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

A new ID argument
Dr Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, posted a very different argument in favor of Intelligent Design. It did not depend on the interpretation of scientific data, and was more in the tradition of classic philosophy which draws upon experience common to everyone for its arguments. It was a very interesting effort and quite a challenge to create a response to it. I did so and published it last Thursday here. For those who have an interest on either side of this question, I encourage you to go read it, but warn you it can be heavy going at times.

An overview of the ID controversy as normally presented
Evolution applies to just the emergence and differentiation of life on earth. Cosmology applies to the origins of the universe as a whole. Evolutionists, of which I count as one, though a theistic one, see life starting from the soup of chemicals that was created on the earth as soon as there was liquid water. The chemicals are preferred products of high energy impacting collections of methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, and water. The precursor molecules that we find in living organisms today can be found in many places in the galaxy around forming star systems and in our solar system around the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. It would appear it is impossible for the pre-cursor molecules of life not to occur.

The mechanisms to get from the molecules to life are speculative but are being demonstrated a bit at a time in laboratories. As we find living organisms in stranger and stranger environments on our own earth, the possibilities of life starting from various scenarios increases. Once life has formed, the mechanisms by which it diverges into all the species become far less speculative and more demonstrable. The competition for the necessary resources to maintain life become the controlling factor; those changes that lead to better acquisition and utilization of resources become fixed in the subsequent generations. This is what is meant by survival of the fittest. The phrase is not just a jingoistic reference to might makes right.

The IDers attack evolution at several points, one is the transition from non-living to living. They insist that it cannot be done. Another is the so-called Cambrian explosion of species. They say that before that there is little to no evidence of living forms, and suddenly all the major phyla appear. There are some possible counters to that argument. Another argument is that the probability of the elements coming from random and forming a living human are astronomical, greater than the age of the universe. This argument amounts to a gross abuse and misuse of both statistics and the scientific data. A fourth major argument is the so-called complexity argument, that certain complex systems cannot function if only one of their parts is missing, so therefore they had to be created all at once. Again I consider this a distortion of the situation. One final argument that is often stated is that there are no transition species. I will be posting a rebuttal to that one in the next several days.

When it comes to cosmology, the current reigning theory is the Big Bang with inflation. Here there is major speculation constrained by what we actually do know about physical law. From astronomy, we infer that the universe is 14.5 billion years old. We find no way to extrapolate any known data to a time before that point. Also from astronomy, it would appear that the entire universe was a single dimensionless point of infinite density at that time that suddenly expanded (the Big Bang) and continues to expand to this day. The physics at this point becomes pretty exotic. Because the universe has an average density of matter that is very smooth on a universal scale, it has been postulated that there was a sudden inflation of the universe shortly after it formed from the Big Bang, and this is called the inflationary scenario.

My own view of this is that we really don't know, and are speculating on inadequate data and incomplete theory. Much of it depends on both quantum mechanics and relativity, both of which I have some problems with, since they are being used in ways that may not be appropriate.

I have no idea from where the point of infinite density, from which our universe sprang, came. I would rather say, "I don't know," than put God there as a gap-filler. This is a form of what is dismissingly called God-of-the-gaps. God is used to explain all that is currently not explained. I think that is a misuse of the concept of God. I firmly and wholeheartedly believe in God and that He is the ultimate source of good in mankind. With respect to the physical world, we don't know and cannot know. Science can neither prove or disprove God, whether used by IDers or secularists respectively. I think both parties are off in the wrong directions when trying to use science to support or diminish God. As the old testament makes abundantly clear, God said, "I am that I am." He needs no support and cannot be diminished.

An important observation on Ezekiel
Today's First Lesson was from Ezekiel 18:1-4,19-29. The lesson presents an extremely significant change in Judaic attribution of guilt and God's displeasure. Up to this time, the Jews rose or fell as a people on the perceived collective sinfulness or lack thereof for the entire people. In Ezekiel we see that sinfulness will be punished on an individual basis. The sins of the father will be punished, but if the son is righteous, he will not be punished. This removal of collective guilt presages the message of Jesus by almost 600 years.

Sunday notes--08/21/2004

2005-08-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

ID and Science
My friend, the AnalPhilosopher, has a very nice post on the ID vs. evolution debate. Here is an exerpt:

Many of those who oppose ID are dogmatic in their insistence that science provides only naturalistic explanations. I have seen no convincing argument that it must (or should) be so limited; and I've seen at least one plausible argument (by Richard Swinburne) that it should not be so limited—that the standard methods used by scientists not only do not lead to atheism, but lead to theism. Not that this clinches the matter, but the word "science" means knowledge, not naturalistic knowledge. To assert that science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic explanations is to beg the question against those who believe otherwise. It is conceptual legislation.

The Trinity
God—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three in one, is one of the fundamental beliefs of the Christian religion and is stated in the Athanasian Creed. As stated it is a paradox, because it states that God, a single entity, is also and at the same time three distinct entities. Additionally there is a second very deep problem, that of the Son who is God Incarnate as human. Both of these problems have been pursued at some depth by Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, and in my religious archive there are still operative links to his posts on the Trinity. Unfortunately, I printed his series on Incarnation but never linked to it. Bill is trying to solve the problems in good analytic philosophical style by trying to find some way in which these two paradoxes can be resolved, or barring that show conclusively that they cannot be resolved.

In my style, which has been validly called avoiding the problem by my blogospheric Godfather, the AnalPhilosopher, I want to approach this in a way that removes the paradox but also does not fit the Athanasian Creed.

[WARNING, heresy may follow.]

I want to start with a milking stool. There is a particular reason for this, a milking stool is a seat with three legs. Generally it is built quite ruggedly, with the seat being about two inches thick, and the legs up to two inches in diameter. Often they are set as tenons into holes in the bottom of the seat and without spreaders, the whole thing being quite solid and fairly short.

What I would like to do is to reinterpret the concept of the Trinity as being God and His manifestations to us. In so doing we will need to imagine a milking stool that has one leg of the three made from a different wood. In my case, I like the entire stool from white oak, a most hard and durable wood, with the off-leg made of hickory because it is also hard, though not as hard as white oak, and very resilient. What I have done is remove the three distinct entities requirement from the concept. It is one entity viewed three different ways.

The seat represents God in His unknowable parts, and the legs those parts made manifest to us. The first oak leg is God as we see him working in the world directly, or in the case of those like me who do not believe He works against the laws of nature, as we imagine him to be in general (only a small part of the whole, which we cannot comprehend.) The second oak leg is the Holy Ghost, or God as he works directly on us as individuals. The third leg, the hickory one, is the Son. Since I do not believe in Jesus as divine, I think of it as equally strong but different. It is the strongest union of the Holy Ghost and man that has occurred in history. Or to put a different way, Jesus was the most open channel to the ideas that God thought mankind should have, or the greatest of the prophets.

Perhaps we are like the story of the blind men looking at an elephant, where each could perceive one part of the beast, but none could conceive the whole. So we also see God as
a being, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son, but have an intuition that it is all one though we cannot perceive the oneness correctly.

Sunday Notes 08/14/2005

2005-08-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

Rendering unto Caesar

Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”--- Matthew 22: 15b

From an article in the Weekly Standard daily online edition comes this quote:

THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA ("ELCA") is the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, with nearly 5 million members. The ELCA's highest legislative body is its Churchwide Assembly, which convenes every two years. The ninth such Churchwide Assembly has just ended. Yesterday, the Assembly adopted a resolution calling upon the ELCA's members, congregations, and agencies to "participate in the churchwide campaign for peace--Peace Not Walls: Stand for Justice in the Holy Land. . . ."

The article focused on the implied inaccuracies in both it and the actual inaccuracies in a supporting article in the Lutheran magazine, the import of which was to support the Palestinians unqualifiedly at the expense of the Israelis. I do not want to discuss the content of this article, but rather the existence of the resolution itself and other related phenomena.

In a nutshell, this resolution should never have been brought up for consideration. It has become very common for churches today (or rather their leadership) to become involved in politics. The ELCA, of which I am a member, has seen its Presiding Bishop, Bishop Hansen, meet with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, when he was in office, and with Kofi Annan. There is no doubt in my mind that he used his position as the head of one of the largest mainline Protestant denominations, and one of the few that is growing, to obtain these audiences. The implication was that he was speaking for five million parishioners. The implication of the resolution quoted above is that it speaks for five million parishioners as well, since it was the product of the Churchwide Assembly. As the article points out, there are sufficient grounds to suspect it actually does not reflect the church as a whole, when its full implications are considered.

Another example that, as we shall see, is the inverse of the above, is the passage of the rule a few years ago by the Kansas State Board of Education, that evolution would not be taught in public schools. In this case it was pressure from religious conservatives forcing their particular doctrines into the government-run school system. Extreme forms of this are the existence of Shiria law in Iran, its former existence in Afghanistan, and its current promulgation in Canada.

Returning to the verse from Matthew, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” There are two important extensions from this, do NOT give to God that which is Caesar’s, and do NOT give to Caesar that which is God’s. To make explicit the message, in this passage Caesar is the proxy for all of government and its functions, and God is, of course God, but also all that is part of religious belief and practice. So restating slightly we can say, do not bring politics into religion and do not bring religion into politics. We will discuss this last statement in depth, it does not mean politics should have no morality.

Our first example, renders unto Caesar, that which is God’s. (Biblically I always think in King James language; it was what I was raised on.) Bishop Hansen is not the only cleric afflicted with this problem. It is common in the leadership of the Council of Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church (not just the Pope, but many US Cardinals and Bishops). The example takes the membership of the church in total, which is a thing of God’s, and places it in the service of politicians and activists looking for support for a cause. In the process, it abrogates the free expression of the persons represented, the vote not withstanding. They voted on a desire or a wish, but the document that expresses that desire or wish, was political in nature, and deceptive. It even addresses what is a secular, not a religious, problem—the political situation in Israel.

The other examples render unto God that which is Caesar’s. They abrogate publicly debated and established law with religious doctrine. God is now in direct control of the government, for at least part, if not all, of its functions. To some believers this is a desirable state of affairs. I would argue it is a violation of God’s wish for us to practice our morality freely and voluntarily—a destruction of free will.

What is the role of God and religion vis-à-vis Caesar? It is the guidance of the people individually to express themselves collectively in a moral way. If we are to have free will, we must be free to understand God’s message for ourselves. We may use our churches and their leadership for guidance, but not for pronouncement. If a pastor or priest urges a political action from the pulpit, or publishes a political statement in the name of the church, he has erred. He has the right to present his personal position, as an individual, but not to state the collective political will of the church.

The church may state that its doctrines consider some event or set of events to be wrong or evil. They may state that their belief does not support given legalities. But they do not have the right to propose specific remedies in the name of the organization, because the remedies are political not religious. If members of a church have a common belief in the immorality of a practice, it is their right to voluntarily abstain from that practice. It does not give them the right to enforce that abstinence on others of different belief. They may campaign as individuals or members of a secular, political organization to create changes in law, but not in the name of the church. That they are motivated by religious doctrine does not impugn the validity of their efforts. All of us have a base of belief that provides our moral stance. In the world of politics, all such stances are equal, as long as they do not violate a common moral base, e.g., do not kill, steal, or lie.

Though I would never advocate the diminishing of churches and denominations—they have far too much value, as I have written in the past—we must remember that they are human institutions led by humans, even as they are inspired by God. It is in the nature of institutions to want to increase their scope and power, and it is in the nature of leaders to do the same. This is true of both the secular and religious world. The politics of the town council are the same as the politics of the local parishes, and the politics of the Federal Government have their parallels in the politics of the nationwide denominational leadership. It is our task to keep these institutions and leaders from over-reaching and to remain devoted to building the faith and guiding the faithful. For if we don’t, eventually we will have neither the political freedom that permits religious freedom, nor the freely-given and joyful worship of God.

Separation of church and state not only means that the state must leave the church alone, it also means the church must leave the state alone.

Sunday Notes--08/07/2005

2005-08-08T19:28:00.000-07:00

What is the Sabbath for?
The seventh day of the week as a day of rest extends in Judeo-Christianity all the way back to the beginning in the Genesis stories, "On the seventh day, God rested." It then became a commandment, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." Thus a day of rest also became a day of worship. From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday practicing Jews rested and worshipped God (Yahweh). As time went on, and cultural conflict arose, the Torah and then the Talmud defined more and more precisely what was work and what was not.

When Christianity arose, the early Christians attempted to observe both the Sabbath and their own day of worship, Sunday, the day that Jesus arose from the dead. This became more and more burdensome, until finally they dropped the observance of the Sabbath. Even today, the Sabbath is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, not Sunday. Like the Jews, Christians for years had very defined ideas of what was work and what wasn't. They were a bit more flexible, but even in the 19th century, good Christian farmers took care of their livestock before sunup on Sunday and after sundown. There were also blue laws on the books enforcing Sunday closings of businesses.

As time has gone on, and our culture has become more secular, the blue laws have quietly been disappearing. Some remainders can still be seen in the laws concerning the consumption of alcohol on Sunday.

Over time the day of rest became a day of worship and now appears to be heading towards becoming just another day off from work, but not necessarily a day of rest. From a six-day work week, we now have a general five-day work week, and it appears to beheading for a four-day work week. In some computer shops three-day and four-day work weeks alternate for twelve-hour shifts.

So for many of us, Saturday and Sunday (the Sabbath and its Christian substitute) have become days to catch up on what we didn't get done during the week, or to do the longer projects, yard work, house repairs, etc. Some of us run side businesses duing that time or work extra jobs. If we do something that resembles rest, e.g., go to a ball game or eat out, it requires that someone else work on Saturday or Sunday to supply the activity. However, those who work on the weekend are generally given another day or days off during the week.

Yet, we actually do need a Sabbath or its substitute. Activities in either synagogoue or church can fall into the classification of types of sin and our remorse for them. In actuality, an examination of that which we have done and whether it is sinful or not. It also provides a renewal of the community of people we worship with, and a chance to express our faith and practice its rituals with others.

As for the day of rest part, that seems to be provided usually by our work schedules. Rest is essential, but many of us remain busy seven days a week. If there is a change of activity for one or two of those days, it might provide mental rest, at least. But there are many changes of activity that do not provide mental rest, just mental stress in a different format. In such a case, to have at least a few hours in worship becomes even more important.

To remember the Sabbath is to give us a much needed mental, emotional, and physical rest and opportunity to heal.

Sunday Notes 07_31_2005

2005-07-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

Miracles
Today in church the Gospel lesson was the story of the feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fishes. This is one of the most quoted miracles of the Bible, and I think it is worth discussing for a number of reasons. First of all, how miraculous is it, and concurrent with that question, how accurate is the story? The second bears directly on the first. There is also the issue of what are the miracles of the Bible and how do we deal with them. I have posted on this twice, here and this quote, "Another consequence is that reports of miracles that appear to violate laws of nature would fall into made up events, misconstrued events, mis-reported events, or the use of a law of nature undiscovered to date. ".

First, however, let’s look at a story that I would consider qualifying as a modern miracle in the Biblical sense. Our pastor related this as being true. A pastor had the very strong urge one morning to buy a dozen barbequed chickens. This urge was strong enough that he did as he felt he should. He then started on his calls for the day. As it turned out, everywhere he went that day there was someone who needed one or more of the chickens—an elderly couple too sick that day to cook, a needy family without food, etc. In one sense there is nothing miraculous about the story, after all it was just the pastor giving out food. What is outside the normal concepts is the phenomenal coincidence of the pastor buying the chickens in the first place. The way the story goes, he didn’t go buy a chicken each time he found out someone had a need. He bought them all ahead of time. I can testify as to similar kinds of events in my life in the last few years. It is not that per se they are miraculous, but the necessary coincidences for them not to be are so outrageous, it is easier to accept some external guidance as assisting. From my viewpoint, Biblical stories that have this flavor can indeed be true and factual.

The difficulty with the Gospel lesson today, is that laws of physics are broken. This is something that I interpret as either having been misreported, or not observed properly. Since all four Gospels report this story, we are fairly safe in assuming something occurred. So first let us see what each version of the story says.

In Matthew 14:16-21, there are 5000 people and five loaves and two fishes, and at the end there are 12 baskets of left-overs.

In Mark 8:1-10 there are 4000 people, seven loves and a few small fishes. There are seven basketsful afterwards.

In Luke 9:12-17 there are 5000 people, five loaves and two fishes. The people are seated in groups of 50. There are twelve baskets left

In John 6:5-13 It is again 5000 people and five small barley loaves and two fishes that a boy has. Again there are twelve baskets left over.

Since Mark is the earliest-recorded of the Gospels, and also has the smallest numbers of people and largest number of loaves and fishes, I would like to start from that version. The first thing I question is the head count. For the areas in the Bible, four thousand people is a lot. Let’s say they pack them together, so that each person has a space 3 ft by 2 ft. (6 sq ft). That’s a total of 24,000 sq ft or 150 X 150 ft minimum. We’re talking half an acre or more here of solid people. With no amplification, I seriously doubt all but the front rows would hear Jesus speak. Actually I would be more believing of a tenth that amount or 400 or so people. That would still be a very large crowd.[1] [2]

Now let’s look at the food situation. For even 400 people, finding food in the local village is not a likely occurrence. This is several times more people than live there. Since the crowds had been following Jesus, possibly for some time or even days, I suspect that they were prepared to provide for their own nourishment. As a consequence, I look on the loaves and fishes as a “pump-priming” type of exercise. By showing the way with sharing the food they had, the disciples opened the lunch bags of everyone to sharing, and as a consequence everyone ate.

But just because we have brought the story from the incredible to the believable does not mean that we have removed the miraculous nature of it. The miracle is not, as most people accept, in the multiplication of loaves, mysteriously. It is in the creation of an environment of sharing among strangers. This is an example, par excellence, of the Christian doctrine of loving ones neighbor, even if a stranger, as oneself.

However, we still have not exhausted this story, for there is a metaphorical aspect as well. The version we used today (NRSV) states, “And all ate and were filled;…” In some way I interpret that as not just everyone had a full belly, but also a full spirit. That all were spiritually filled by the healing and preaching.

[1] It is notable in modern times that the size of crowds is often judged by partisans to be far greater than it really is. Usually it is by a factor of 2 to 4, but in the case here with the distortions of the oral tradition, a ten-fold increase in size over 20 or 30 years would not be surprising.
[2] It is also possible to come into the head count from a different direction. How many people could hear Jesus when he did preach? Again at best we get a few hundred, or even less. Somehow it seems to me that anything more than a few tens of people would come to the notice of the Roman authorities. A crowd of thousands would be threatening on the face of it, and would be dispersed.

Sunday Notes -- 07/24/2004 (the latest it's ever been)

2005-07-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

Sinned Against:
One of the commonest ideas in liturgy is sinning against God. During the opening of the service we have a general confession in which we always repent for sinning against God. Yet we hardly ever say we sin against each other. When we do wrong things to each other, we repent or are remorseful, but it always comes out as a sin against God, apparently under the command to love one another. It puts the definition of sin, at least operationally, as a violation of the laws of God.

In one of my early posts, I defined sin as, "...that which harms either oneself or others." The implications of that definition are that one can sin not only against God but against oneself and ones neighbors. Emotionally this may be more compelling, in that we are now needing to directly receive absolution from ourselves or our neighbors for our sins. We can't pass the buck to God and let him absolve us without our completely facing what we have done.

In a practical sense we cannot be continually asking our neighbors for forgiveness for every little thing, although in polite society we do say excuse me for the small mistakes we catch ourselves at. Generally this is sufficient. For the larger sins, it may require more, including legal procedings. But once these are done, it should count as absolution and forgiveness. (See here for forgiveness).

Peddling God
While heading for Chicago with my wife and daughter, we passed a new church being built. It was another of these large, architecturally noticeable buildings that are springing up, and it struck me that this is part and parcel of a phenomenon that I call "Peddling God". Religion is marketed as a feel-good, a place to belong, an emotional cathersis or an emotional support. I have attended some of these churches and have watched others on TV. There is one on Interstate 75 just north of Ohio Exit 29. That one is especially noticeable, it has a large statue of Jesus from the waist up with his arms raised in the air on the back of the pond. It is 60 feet tall, and has two fountains that spray as high as his arms. We call it "Touchdown Jesus." This church also advertises on TV.

The problem I have is that mass-marketing religion means that the product peddled has about as much quality as most mass-marketed items. One may rationalize that it is better that the consumers of such have some religion rather than none, but does such a religious structure create a change in life and life style, or does it simply provide a veneer of feel-good that allows people to "feel" that they are "saved" and continue with their lives unchanged. During the week they can screw over their fellow man and on Sunday have an emotional catharsis and feel that they are OK.

I have problems with churches that are too big--Ones in which the chief pastor doesn't know all his congregation. I attended one such when shopping for a church in Pennsylvania. It was a good church to get lost in. The music program was outstanding, but the rest of it left me spritually dissatisfied. I think the most effective form of evangelism and worship is by individual invitation and in small to medium churches. One becomes a member of a community--complete with all the diversity of any community. The politicians, the self-servers, the self-efacing, and all the rest. And all of them becoming part of one's world, and supporting one another like an extended family.

The intolerance of religion
Dymphna at The Neighborhood of God, posted this little ditty today. She was making a powerful point about some so-called Christian adoption agencies that would not Catholics adopt babies from the agency. This really does show how some denominations approach others. You will need a clothespin while you read it.

Jesus Loves Me (But He Can't Stand You)

I know you smoke, I know you drink that brew
I just can't abide a sinner like you
God can't either, that's why I know it to be true that
Jesus loves me--but he can't stand you

I'm going to heaven, boys, when I die
'Cause I've crossed every "t" and I've dotted every "i'
My preacher tell me that I'm God's kind of guy; that's why
Jesus loves me--but you're gonna fry

God loves all his children, by gum
That don't mean he won't incinerate some
Can't you feel those hot flames licking you
Woo woo woo

I'm raising my kids in a righteous way
So don't be sending your kids over to my house to play
Yours'll grow up stoned, left-leaning, and gay; I know
Jesus told me on the phone today

Jesus loves me, this I know
And he told me where you're gonna go
There's lots of room for your kind down below
Whoa whoa whoa

Jesus loves me but he can't stand you . . .