Tag: Christianity

Mockery of the Offense and the Offended: the Opening Ceremonies in Paris

I want to be offended, but, I am caught up short by Paul’s admonition not to judge the world at this time – while people may still be saved.

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Paul famously says in Roman 1:20 that people everywhere are without excuse in their denial of God and suppression of the truth because God’s invisible attributes and His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen and are understood through the creation. This is one of the most often quoted verses in the first couple of Chapters of Roman.

I have often quoted Romans 1:20 as a defense of the faith to unbelievers, but Romans 2:1 catches my eye today. It begins with same phrase, “Therefore, you are without excuse….” Except this verse is clearly directed to an audience of Roman believers.

I wonder how I have missed the parallel nature of this statement to believers. Just as nonbelievers are without excuse in their unbelief, Paul says believers are without excuse in a different sense:

“Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge practice the same things.”

Romans 2:1

I have to admit my own tendency to focus on Romans 1 and Paul’s statements that the world is without excuse, because God made himself known, and people in their depraved minds chose not to honor God, embracing sin instead. I tend to focus on the list of sins, including men and women trading natural relations for unnatural ones.

It seems that the world focuses on those things as well. Christians and non Christians alike, and this list of sins has become become a dividing line in the ongoing battle of a “culture war” that wages in the United States.

While Romans 1:20 and the list of sins that follow it seems to have captured our attention, I wonder today why we seem to glossed over what Paul says in Romans 2:1?

The parallel nature of the two verses demands some attention. We dare not focus on one half of the equation to the exclusion of the other half of the equation.

Paul says in Romans 1:14 that he is a debtor to Greeks and barbarians and to the wise and the foolish because the Gospel has the power for salvation. (Rom. 1:16) The righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel from faith to faith. (Rom. 1:17)

Then, Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth (Rom. 1:19) because God has made it plain to them…. Therefore, they are without excuse.

Paul doesn’t stop there, however, and neither should we. In Romans 2, Paul starts out saying that people who judge others are also without excuse! On whatever grounds we judge others, we condemn ourselves because we practice the same things.

This is a sobering statement, and one which we ignore to our detriment and the detriment of the preaching of the gospel.

Again, it’s important to note that Paul is talking to the believers in Rome. He is not talking to heathens and barbarians and people who are given over to their carnal desires.

Five chapters later Paul talks personally about believers’ struggles with sin (Romans 7:15-20), doing the things we don’t want to do and not doing the things we know we should do. Paul is brutally honest about the fact that sin is still a problem for the believer. If anyone ways he is without sin, he makes God out to be a liar! (1 John 1:10)

Of course, believers should resist sin and learn to overcome it. This is a lifelong process, and we only overcome by the work of the Holy Spirit in us as we yield to His direction in our lives.

Yet, the holiest of people – Paul – admits to failing from time to time and giving into or returning to some form of sin. It doesn’t what what the sin is. The sin that causes us to stumble may be different for each one of us. That fact is that we sin, even though we don’t want to sin anymore.

The import of this for the believer, Paul is saying, is that we, should not adopt a judgmental attitude toward anyone. Not even to those who God has given over to their carnal desires. In judging others, we condemn ourselves, says Saint Paul. Paul also days,

“What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?”

1` Corinthians 5:122

The timing of this fresh revelation from my daily scripture reading is interesting. My social media feed has been full of judgmental tirades over the opening ceremonies at the Paris Olympics. I did not watch them, but I have certainly become aware of how everyone feels about those ceremonies, particularly Christians.

I know I am late to the discussion, but I have resisted the temptation to jump into the fray. It seems there is much to be offended about, yet the parallelism of Romans 1:20 and Romans 2:1 gives me pause. The judgmentalism of offended Christians screams for a response.

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St. Augustine on the Literal Meaning of Genesis

How Augustine read Scripture in light of experience and reason.

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People cite the great church father, Augustine, in defense of the view that the earth is only thousands (rather than billions) of years old. Indeed, I believe this was (more or less) Augustine’s view, based on the science and knowledge that was available to him in the 5th Century when he lived. Augustine believed the earth was young.

That isn’t the end of our understanding of Augustine, though. To understand Augustine, we might be aided by a basic review of the mythological, philosophical and scientific views that were prevalent in his world at the time.

According to my inquiry on Bing Co-Pilot, the mythology of the time didn’t attempt to date the age of the earth. Science (such as it was) also had not established a position. Philosophy, however, provided two opposing views.

The philosophical camps were led by Aristotle and Lucretius. Aristotle argued that the earth was eternal, and Lucretius argued that the earth formed relatively recently (based on a lack of records prior to the Trojan War). (The Trojan War dates to the 11th or 12th Century BCE.) Thus, the two competing views in Augustine’s day were 1) eternal earth or 2) young earth. There was no inkling in Augustine’s time that the earth might be very old, but not eternal.

Interestingly, Aristotle’s view of an eternal earth shifted to an eternal universe, and that view became the accepted scientific view that lasted well into the 20th Century. This was Einstein’s view when he developed the Theory of Relativity.

The past eternal view of the universe was only debunked and rejected by the scientific consensus in the second half of the 20th Century, and then only very reluctantly. (Even now, some scientists demonstrate a desire to find support for a past eternal universe, but support for that view seems to get thinner and thinner as time goes on.)

In the uncertain stew of mythology, philosophy, and science in the 5th Century, Augustine acknowledged that a literal, 6-day reading of the creation story in Genesis is not an irrational interpretation. That is basically how he put it.

He didn’t endorse that view, however. He thought the better view was that the “days” in Genesis 1 do not correspond to earthly (24 hour) days. Even in his exploration of a “literal” reading of Genesis, Augustine incorporated allegorical nuance.

Augustine did not believe that “literal” and “allegorical” meanings were mutually exclusive, and neither did most of the early church fathers. What Augustine and the early church fathers meant by the “literal” meaning of Scripture was what the people who wrote the original words literally meant and how the audience to whom they communicated understood them.

In this effort to understand what the writers meant, the early church fathers assumed that the original meanings included metaphor, symbolism, and literary devices. None of the early church fathers (that I am aware of) argued for the modern sense of strict literalism in the interpretation of Scripture.

Though most early Christians believed literally in the historicity of the biblical accounts (to use a modern term), they also accepted the richness of allegorical meaning in Scripture at the same time. In fact, the metaphorical meaning of Scripture was assumed to be the deeper, more spiritually significant meaning.

Augustine (along with Clement of Alexandria and Origen) ultimately rejected the calendar-day view of the Genesis creation story in favor of instantaneous creation with a kind of day/age view of the creation passage in Genesis. The great Jewish theologians, Philo and Hilary of Poitiers also took this view that God created the earth instantaneously.

We should recognize that the day-age view that Augustine and others preferred was probably not the consensus, but it also wasn’t considered heresy. The theology and the philosophy were unsettled, and science had not yet developed as we know it. The Church allowed for robust disagreement on the age of the earth, because it was not considered essential doctrine.

I should stop here, at the risk of pointing out something you already know, and look at the meaning of the Hebrew word, יוֹם (yom). This word is translated into the English word, day, in Genesis 1. As with most Hebrew words, yom has many nuanced meanings and applications, both literal and figurative. The various meanings include:

  • Day, as opposed to night
  • Day as a division of time
  • Day as defined by evening and morning
  • Day as in a time (like harvest)
  • Day as in an age or epoch of time

In addition to the definitions, most Hebrew words have both literal and figurative meanings and applications. Thus, Augustine’s position that the days in Genesis can be read to mean an “earthly” or “ordinary” day did not exclude the idea of applying them more figuratively. That duality is consistent with the way Hebrew words and Hebrew language works. This built-in literal/figurative duality of Hebrew words informed the thinking of the early church fathers.

Augustine is famous for preferring allegorical readings and applications of Scripture. In his early two-volume work on Genesis in which he took issue with the Manicheans, Augustine explored the position that the days in Genesis are seven epochs of redemptive history corresponding with seven stages of the Christian life. (See Did Augustine Read Genesis 1 Literally? by Gavin Ortlund citing De Genesis contra Manichaeos 1.23.35-1.25.43, in Augustine, On Genesis, 62-68.)

When Augustine set out to write a “literal” interpretation of Genesis, he didn’t mean what people today might think he meant. Even his “literal” reading of Scripture was not strictly literalist. It was an attempt to understand what the original writers (literally) meant and what their audience understood it to mean.

Science in St. Augustine’s day was not advanced enough to weigh in on the age of the earth, but Augustine was a strong proponent of understanding facts and objective truth. The science of his day, for instance, had settled the spherical shape and circumference of the earth. That the earth was round and even the size of the perimeter of the earth was well established and understood among academics since before the time of Christ. (It is purely a myth, for instance, that Columbus had to convince people the earth was not flat.) Augustine’s view of scientific knowledge and its relationship to Scripture is what I want to highlight here.

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The Uncertain, Vital Value of Personal Experience with God

Atheists are not alone in being skeptical of personal experience. And with good reason, but….

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In a conversation on the Unbelievable? Podcast, Coming to faith through Dawkins – Part 2: Is there a new New Atheism?, Alex O’Connor (a/k/a the Cosmic Skeptic) commented about the book, Coming to Faith through Dawkins. He agreed that the most interesting aspect of the book is the prominence of story and experience, but he finds it unconvincing for the same reasons.

In case you don’t know, the book is a compilation of the stories of twelve people who were influenced by Richard Dawkins in their journeys from atheism to belief in the God of the Bible. Dawkins, of course, is one of the original (and most vocal) of the “new atheists. Thus, the title and subject matter of the book is ironic, intriguing, and not a little controversial.

O’Connor’s critique of the people whose stories are recounted in the book is that they seem to focus on their personal experiences. He says he is not convinced by the personal stories because they focus too much on personal experience and too little on syllogisms, rational arguments, and logical processes in their coming to faith.

This statement, as we shall see, is not a little ironic. O’Connor, though, expresses the modern western sensibility about personal experiences that are discounted and dismissed in favor of more objective evidence.

To be fair, many of the stories in the book recount the intellectual paths people trod on their way to faith, though the stories do not rigorously lay out the arguments, logic, and proofs. We shouldn’t be surprised by that, as the book focuses on peoples’ stories, and people’s stories are personal experiences.

Each of these journeyers from atheism to faith found problems, errors, bad philosophy, and nonsensical statements in Dawkins’s positions that led them to question his underlying assumptions (which were their underlying assumptions also). This, itself, was a rational process. The intellectual problems they saw in Dawkins’s positions made them skeptical of his skepticism.

O’Connor’s critique of the experiential nature of the stories might be discounted on that basis, but I want to focus on something else. This critique came up in the second of two segments. I want to go back to the first segment and contrast his critique with another statement O’Connor made to get to my point today. (See Coming to Faith through Richard Dawkins Part 1)

When asked what might convince him of the existence of God in the first segment, O’Connor said (without hesitation) that personal experience would be the most likely thing. Therefore, the critique O’Connor made in the second segment (complaining of the overly experiential nature of the stories) is ironic in light of O’Connor’s own admission that personal experience might be the one thing that could convince him that God exists (if he had such an experience).

This incongruity in O’Connor’s criticism about personal experience, and the value of personal experience in what we believe, is the thing I want to explore today. Atheists are not alone in being skeptical of personal experience. And with good reason. But personal experience is, nevertheless, vital to our human understanding of anything.

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Gospel Shoes

The art of music has a way of moving us and conveying messages that might not be as well received more directly and bluntly spoken

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Blindfaller by Watchhouse

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? ….
God will judge those outside….

1 corinthians 5:12,13

Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians while urging them to deal with sexual immorality in the church that was so bad it would not have been tolerated by pagans. (1 Corinthians 5:1)

I am reminded of these words that Paul wrote as I listen to Gospel Shoes by the folk/Americana group, Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) from Chapel Hill, NC. This isn’t a “Christian” song written by people who profess to be Christian, but it speaks with poignancy, clarity, and tenderness. This version is particularly well done:

 Some set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose
Drift about their good times, slivers in their boots
Some walk the straight and narrow, only passing through
Trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes

The opening stanza of the song contrasts the “pagans” of the world with the “Christians” (more or less). Andrew Marlin (the writer of the song) may put it another way. He might say that he is contrasting “normal”, average, typical people with “religious”, church-going people.

To be fair, the caricatures of religious people do not accurately describe most of the people in my church (or in any church I have gone to, for the most part). BUT, those caricatures do have some elements of truth to them about some people, or some segment of people, who are religious in our society.

Those who “set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose”, are living this life for all it can give them because they believe this life is all there is. They “drift about their good times” because they have no particular aim, meaning, or purpose. They are looking for whatever fun and pleasure they can get, though they accumulate “slivers in their boots”.

Those who “walk the straight and narrow, only passing through”, are the religious people, of course. They are people who profess to believe in a better life after death, “trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes”.

The term, “gospel shoes”, finds some resonance in Isaiah:

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”

Isaiah 52:7

The word, “gospel”, of course means “good news”. The feet are beautiful of those who say “God reigns!” because it is news of peace, good tidings, and salvation. Or so it should be. Paul says, our feet should be “fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”

Ironic, isn’t it? That Paul in talking about the “armor of God” includes “shoes” made of the “gospel of peace”. (Ephesians 6:15) It’s no wonder that we send mixed messages out into the world. But, that isn’t the “fault” of scripture; it’s our misunderstanding of it and of the upside down nature of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached.

The armor of God does not protect us against people (flesh and blood) but against dark spiritual forces. (Eph. 6:12) We are not intended to use the armor of God as a weapon against people.

Of course, some people often don’t want to hear about God. They don’t want to do be accountable, so the news of God is not “good” to them. The people who set their heads to swimming, who think they have nothing to lose and drift about the good times, however, are bound to gather slivers in their boots.

Drifting through life doing “whatever feels good” inevitably results in hardship and heartache. These are people, however, for whom God emptied Himself to become human in Jesus and for whom Jesus gave up his life, dying on a cross. He didn’t come to condemn them; he came to save them. (John 3:16-17)

Those slivers in their boots are problems that will fester and get worse. People often do not wake up to the folly of our youth until we have accumulated more hardship, difficulty, and pain than we can handle. And sometimes, those slivers cause problems that linger for a lifetime.

God who loves “those people” so much that He gave His son for them. He loves them no less than any religious person in the world, no matter how devout. Thus, God desires to reach them with His Gospel, the good news that there is a way for them to avoid the pain of their own doing and judgment that inevitably follows this life and enter into relationship with the God who created them and loves them.

As I recall Paul’s words to the Corinthians, I am struck that we often seem to have gotten things backwards. Instead of loving the world and seeking to reach them with the good news, we condemn the world and preach judgment.

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The Surprising Value of the Concept of Sin

The idea of sin makes people feel uncomfortable, and people blame sin for making them feel bad about themselves.

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Many people bristle at the Christian idea of sin, and many people fault Christianity for its emphasis on sin. Richard Dawkins criticized Christianity in his book, The God Delusion, that it’s all about sin, sin, sin. His sentiment seems to be a popular one.

As a long-time Christian, I have a “robust” view of sin not just because I have robust respect for the Bible. I see sin in myself, and I see it in mankind, generally. I see it as a fact, like gravity, that makes sense of the foibles, failures, and futility of people and human systems I see in the world.

Not that people are incapable of doing good. Even who do not believe in God can do good. Even in doing good, though, I believe most of us do it good “selfishly” – because it makes us feel good; because of peer pressure; because we want people to honor us; because we want other people to be nice to us; or simply because of the utilitarian ideal that it makes the world a better place for me and my tribe to live in.

Most people, I assume, would be uncomfortable with my assessment. Maybe what I see in myself shouldn’t be “projected” onto other people. Maybe I am right, though. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t think it is a fair assessment.

I think one issue people have with the idea of sin is that they don’t know what to do with it. It doesn’t fit into an evolutionary paradigm that celebrates the progress of humanity from primordial ooze to ape to rational being.

Absent a cosmic redeemer, people have no “solution” for sin. Reject the One, and the other makes no sense. Many people don’t want a cosmic redeemer interfering with their self-determination (even people, ironically, who believe we have no self-determination, because we merely dance to our DNA).

People don’t see any “value” in sin. The idea of sin makes people feel uncomfortable. They blame the concept of sin for making them feel bad about themselves. When people measure their goodness against others, they either feel shame or self-righteousness, because they see themselves as better or worse than others.

People blame judgmental attitudes, intolerance, lack of empathy for others, and a host of other evils on the Judeo-Christian concept of sin.

On the other hand, do people who have rejected the Christian concept of sin stop feeling bad about themselves or stop being self-righteous? In my experience, no, they don’t.

Abandoning the idea of sin doesn’t seem to help people not feel bad about themselves, and it doesn’t stop people from being self-righteous. People still compare themselves to others. People still struggle with self-image, and some people still seem to think themselves morally superior to others even after rejecting the concept of sin.

The Christian vocabulary that includes sin has no place in alternative cultural constructs, like cultural Marxism, and the host of critical theories that flow from it. Judgment of others, however, is baked into those constructs, and virtue is signaled for group approval in ways that seem, to me, just as inimical as any bad church environment.

People are shamed and labor under judgmental attitudes perfectly well without the help of Christianity. In fact, I believe the shame and self-righteousness is even worse because other cultural constructs lack the Christian concepts of redemption, grace, and forgiveness.

But, I believe in sin simply because it makes sense of all my experiences and everything that I see in people and the world that is run by people. I have never thought of sin as a value proposition, other than to think that sinfulness is generally bad. I have certainly never thought of the idea of sin as good!

Until now.

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