Category: Culture

An Inkling of Transcendence: Lewis and Tolkien

Some say today that science is the study of everything that exists. If Lewis, Tolkien and Williams were millennials today, they would “call BS”.

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“[His] father had taught him to absorb doubt and disbelief into his beliefs.”

This statement from the book, Inklings, by Humphrey Carpenter, is spoken of Charles Williams, who was a regular participant in the informal discussion group, the Inklings, formed by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien at the University of Oxford, England. The group met at various times in Lewis’s classroom and a local pub from the late 1930’s to 1949. Charles Williams was an early member of the group and continued as a regular until his death in 1945. Williams grew up “a devout churchman” but was encouraged by his father “to appreciate the force of atheistic rationalism and to admire such men as Voltaire and Tom Paine”.

Lewis, of course, was an atheist when he arrived and began teaching at Oxford. His journey from materialism to agnosticism to Christian theism is chronicled in his autobiographical work, Surprised by Joy. Tolkien was already a Christian when Lewis joined him as a professor at Oxford, and Tolkien influenced Lewis in his transition to Christianity. Williams came along later. These men were attracted to each other as much by their love of language, literature and poetry as their faith, though their views on literature and faith often diverged sharply.

These three men, and others who joined them, were powerhouses of thought and creativity. CS Lewis, of course, wrote many books from fiction to philosophy. JRR Tolkien wrote, perhaps, the greatest mythological series of the 20th century in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Charles Williams, though lesser known, was a prolific writer, literary critic, publisher and student of English literature who could recite hundreds of passages from sheer memory.

They influenced each other, despite their very distinct differences, and their collective influence has been felt by generations from their day to ours. They were Christian men, believing very authentically in the Bible as scripture, but they were also fierce academics who held their faith up to the rigors of intellectual exercise.

Continue reading “An Inkling of Transcendence: Lewis and Tolkien” →

Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 5 – Racism

God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

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This is the last in a series of five blog articles on the question: whether the Bible is sexist and racist? The subject was introduced in Part 1. We tackled sexism by looking at the overarching theme of the Bible on men and women in Part 2 and by looking at how Jesus treated women in Part 4. We tackled racism in Part 3 by looking at the overarching theme of the Bible on diversity. Finally, we view racism and diversity through the life of Jesus and His followers in this part 5.

Jesus doesn’t tackle the issue of racism or diversity directly, but He lived in a complicated time. He was Jewish, living in a tight-knit Jewish community, which was governed and ruled by foreigners, the Romans. The Jews had a history of living alongside foreigners and were at various times throughout that history governed by them against their will.

Many of the foreigners were very closely related, like the Samaritans, who were of Jewish descent, and the Canaanites before them. The northern kingdom (Israel) and southern kingdom (Judah) split and became foreigners to each other.

The Jews in Jesus’s day believed there were only two types of people: Jews and everyone else (Gentiles). They seemed to have forgotten that the very first words God spoke to Abraham, when He chose to bless Abraham and his progeny, was that God would make a blessing to all the nations. (Genesis 12:1-3) God didn’t choose them simply to bless them, but to bless all nations through them.

Jesus was that blessing. Jesus is traced back to Abraham. He is from the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the root of Jesse’s seed, father of David. Jesus is the Promised One.

Jesus also claimed to be God in the flesh, so, how Jesus viewed others is the key to understanding what the Bible says about racism and diversity.

Continue reading “Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 5 – Racism” →

Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 4 – Sexism

Though Paul is often accused of being misogynistic, we find that he carried over a similar view of women from Jesus, declaring that there is neither male nor female in Christ.

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I have been exploring an answer to the question: whether the Bible is sexist and racist. The discussion was introduced in Part 1, sexism was tackled in Part 2 by looking at the sweeping theme of the Bible in dealing with men and woman, and an overarching view of what the Bible has to say about racism was addressed in Part 3. In both cases, I started at the beginning, where the Bible expresses poetic form God’s ideals and purposes in creating humankind.

Regarding sexism, Genesis provides a glimpse into God’s motivations, intentions and purposes for men and women. God created an idyllic habitation for men and women to live in harmony with Him and nature, but He allowed people to have free will. In fact, it was part of the plan.

Free will introduced the possibility that people would choose their own values over God’s values and go their own ways. We are told Adam and Eve, the first people (or representative people) did choose their own way, and that choice introduced sin into the world.

Sin means “to miss the mark”. The “mark” would include, among other things, God’s values. People have chosen their own values over God’s values, and the result is that we live in a world in which God’s values are distorted from what He intended. But what are God’s values?

God created men and women as counterparts who, together, reflect the image of God. Neither one is valued higher than the other. We see that God intended them to be fruitful and multiply, to diversify, and not to hunker down in one place with one language in a homogeneous civilization. God wanted diversity.

These are the overarching themes of the Bible. We see them in the penultimate vision of heaven that John describes in Revelation 7:7-9.

The Old Testament is largely the story of how God chose one people through whom He intended to bless all the nations of the world, but His chosen people continually chose to go their own way. They largely did not reflect God’s values in the way they lived.

The Church, today, is not much different in its failure to reflect God’s values in they way they live. Paul says, though every man may be a liar, still God is true. (Romans 3:4)  We can’t judge God’s values by what we see people doing – even church people.

In fact, only one person in history, we are told, truly reflected all that God is – Jesus. Jesus was “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and the “exact representation of His nature”. (Hebrews 1:3) Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)  In this segment, therefore, we will look at what Jesus said and did that can be applied to the subject of sexism.

Continue reading “Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 4 – Sexism” →

Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 3 – Racism

“There is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him.” (Romans 10:12)

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This is the third part in a series on whether the Bible is sexist and racist. We introduced the question in Part 1 and explored whether the Bible is sexist in Part 2 by going back to the beginning, back to the creation story, where God introduces us to the crown of His Creation, Adam and Eve. We will explore what the Bible reveals to us about God’s view of racism in this Part 3 of the series before turning to what Jesus had to say about sexism in Part 4 and racism in Part 5.

As we try to understand what the Bible has to say about racism, I want to go back to Adam and Eve again. They are depicted in the Bible as representative of the human race. Genesis, therefore, has application not only to gender relations but to race relations as well.

In Genesis we will look at clues for what God intended when He created the world and the people in it,. Then we will go to Revelations to glimpse how things will ultimately be when the redemption of the world is complete and God’s purpose is fulfilled.

This sweep, from Genesis to Revelation, from beginning to end, will show us the big picture on how God sees views race.

Continue reading “Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 3 – Racism” →

Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 2 – Sexism

If anything, Genesis 2 suggests that men need help, and Eve is to Adam what God is to mankind.

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Racism, sexism and oppression are themes in the story of man’s relations to other men (and women) throughout history. Many people today have the enlightened notion that the Bible perpetuates those old tropes from the Bronze Age and that modern men and women who have progressed by our will to advance know better. But is that really true?

We introduced the question, “what the Bible says about sexism and racism”, in Part I. In this second part in the series, we look at what the Bible reveals to us about sexism. In Part 3, we begin to explore how the Bible addresses racism. In Part 4, we observe what Jesus reveals about sexism, and Part 5 tackles racism through the life of Jesus and what he taught.

Regarding sexism, the Bible first reveals God’s view of the interrelationship of men and women at the very beginning, back before sin entered the world. In Genesis, we are told God created Adam and Eve, the first (or representative) people, and we get a glimpse, there, of what God intended. Genesis gives us critical clues on how God views men and women in their original, intended state.

Continue reading “Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 2 – Sexism” →