Category: Faith

Sam Harris Podcast Interview with Bart Ehrman – Part 3 – Withering Sun

Some seed falls on hard rocky ground. It grows up fast, but its roots are shallow. When the heat of the sun comes, the plant shrivels and dies.

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In previous installments, I have written two blog articles on my observations regarding an interview of Bart Ehrman by Sam Harris on What is Christianity. Bart Ehrman is an agnostic, New Testament scholar at Princeton, and Sam Harris is one of the so-called “new atheists”. In the first article, I relate portions of Ehrman’s story about his “loss of faith”, and I question whether he really had anything but a very shallow idea of faith to begin with. In the second installment, I talk about a certain wooden fundamentalism that continues to be apparent in how Ehrman sees the Bible. It’s a kind of all or nothing approach. Previously, he accepted all of it; now he accepts none of it.

Before moving on to other observations, I want to stop and raise a couple of points related to the portion of the interview already covered. First of all, I want to go back to the comment made by Ehrman about the charismatic youth leader who influenced him in a local Campus Crusade for Christ chapter. Erhman describes the “sinner’s prayer” he recited as an induction. The same youth leader urged him to go to Moody Bible Institute if he wanted to be a “serious Christian”.

Erhman was obviously influenced by this charismatic youth leader. Many of us are similarly influenced by charismatic people that we meet along the way. Some of us are influenced to do things that we might not otherwise do and which have no lasting import to us when we leave the circle of that influence.

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Sam Harris Podcast with Bart Ehrman – Part 1 – On Being Born Again

While the interview of Bart Ehrman by Sam Harris was an exercise in the pastor preaching to the choir, some interesting insights into his journey are apparent from the discussion.

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I recently listened to a podcast interview of Bart Ehrman by Sam Harris on What is Christianity? Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and professor at North Carolina who, famously, journeyed from self-described fundamentalist Christian to self-described agnostic as he graduated from Moody Bible Institute, to Wheaton College, to Princeton.  Sam Harris is one of the so-called “new atheists” who have been evangelistic in their atheism. Following are some comments and thoughts that I have about the interview.

The first thing that strikes me is Sam Harris’s statement about approaching a subject with which he is familiar as if he were not familiar with it and getting re-acquainted with the subject. This, of course, is a good, scholarly and open-minded way of approaching any subject. What strikes me, though, is that this exercise for Sam Harris isn’t really what he makes it out to be.

Sam Harris is an atheist, and Bart Ehrman is a former believer, self-described agnostic. In that sense, Harris is not approaching Christianity from an unfamiliar position. He has brought into his studio someone who thinks the same way he does. Ehrman came preaching to the choir. It would be far more interesting for Sam Harris to adopt the same approach with a scholarly believer.

That aside, as I listened to Bart Ehrman tell his story, a couple of things immediately jumped out at me. One is that he describes his “born again” experience as a kind of social induction into a group (like pledging for a fraternity or something) orchestrated by a charismatic youth leader. Then he comments that he was “supposed to have been changed”, but he “wasn’t sure from what”.

These statements are telling. First, Ehrman doesn’t describe an experience with God, but an experience with a group of people to which he was drawn, presumably, by the “charismatic” youth leader. He wanted to be part of the group. Anyone who has had a born again experience knows that this is not an apt description for the experience.

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Under the Sun

We chase after those carrots. When we catch one, there is always another carrot to chase.

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“What advantage does a man have for all the work he has done under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:3). The Book of Ecclesiastes is sobering, though it is one of my favorite books in the Bible. I was drawn to it in college because of the candid assessment of life that it reveals. That candid assessment was refreshing to me as a young adult as I surveyed life and my place in the world.

We work most of our lives to earn a living, to keep up appearances, to obtain things, to advance our station in the world, to keep our yards neat and clean. We go about our labors often without much thought for why we do it. I don’t mean that we don’t have goals. Of course we do, but our goals are temporal.

I am reminded of the carrot attached to a stick mounted on the harness of a horse. We chase after those carrots. When we catch one, there is always another carrot to chase. Often we don’t achieve our goals, and we are left unsatisfied as a result. The truth is, though, even when we do achieve our goals, we are rarely satisfied by having attained them.

The author of Ecclesiastes takes a step back from the busyness of life, as I was doing in college. The author contemplates the arc of life, the beginning to the end, and asks what it all means. We rarely do that. But, if you stop to think about it, what is the point? We labor and toil on this Earth through our 60, 70, 80 or more years, but for what? What do we get in the end?

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Jesus in Our Midst

Whether we see God working in our lives may depend on the assumptions we make from our expectations and our experience.

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Reading from Luke 24:13-21.

That very day two [men] were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

This encounter took place after Jesus was publicly seized, tried and crucified. These men were discussing the events that everyone was talking about – the death of Jesus.

Jesus had stirred up the hopes and dreams of the people in the region, including these two men, but that hope ended abruptly and shockingly just a couple of days ago.

Jesus was a controversial figure in the first century. He was born into a world that was ripe for his coming. The last of the Hebrew scriptures was written about 300 years prior, and the thrust of the last of those scriptures, the prophets, anticipated the coming of a Messiah.

The first century Palestinian Jews believed this Messiah would be a king that would rescue Israel from Roman rule and reestablish a Jewish Kingdom in the promised land, rekindling the glory of their heritage.

But Jesus defied the expectations.

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Becoming Mindful of God

The benefits of mindfulness and prayer are proven in the secular and spiritual worlds.

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Depositphotos Image ID: 48782201 Copyright: danr13

The March 2018 issue of the Illinois Bar Journal includes an article by Ed Finkel, an Evanston based freelance writer. The subject is mindfulness for attorneys, inspired by presentations given by Naperville business and estate planning attorney, Mark Metzger. This all may seem too professional and industry-based for this blog, but it got me thinking.

First of all, the legal profession is where I spend a large chunk of my time every week, week after week, month after month, year after year. Finkel correctly notes that the practice of law is a highly stressful occupation. Other occupations also have their share of stress, of course.

We experience stress often in our everyday living as well. The stress of strained personal relationships, financial difficulty and burdens, raising children, and many other kinds of stress weigh upon us. We all feel stress from time to time.

So what does mindfulness for lawyers have anything to do with a blog on navigating by faith? Quite a bit, it turns out.

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