Randal Rauser's Blog, page 138

Being a Baptist on Reformation Day

On November 4th I attended an ecumenical conference between Catholics and Lutherans which focused on commonalities and differences in anticipation of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation (October 31, 2017). I then spoke as the Baptist voice on an ecumenical panel. This is the text of my address.

* * *

I was raised in a conservative Pentecostal home where the ethical dilemma I faced every October could be summarized with a simple question: Is it okay to celebrate Halloween? Eventually that question was resolved and we now commemorate All Hallows Eve with a lit jack-o-lantern, faux cobwebs and a bowl of candy for the neighborhood ghosts and ghouls.

But now as a seminary professor, I realize that I have traded one October ethical dilemma for another. The question these days has become this: is it okay to celebrate Reformation Day?

Many of my Christian, and even Protestant friends think not. For example, one friend quipped recently that saying “Happy Reformation Day” is akin to saying “Happy Ash Wednesday.” The Reformation provides an occasion for lament, he says, not celebration.

I understand what my friend is saying. The origin and ongoing nature of the schism created by the Reformation is a matter for lament and a cause for ongoing ecclesial self-examination. Bruce Marshall put the point provocatively in a 2001 First Things article. He said,

“Only in the deliberate departure of the Spirit from the Church can we find an adequate explanation for the hardened durability of Christian division and the striking contentment of Christians with their shattered communal life.”

Strong words. Suffice it to say, this leaves me much more careful about greeting passerby with an effusive “Happy Reformation Day!”

At the same time, I can’t simply treat Reformation Day as a source for lament. For me it is also an occasion for a modest celebration, not because I celebrate schism, but because I like being Baptist. On balance, I think the world is better off with us around. And but for the Reformation, we wouldn’t exist.

However, we live in an age where denominational distinctives are rapidly diminishing in importance. I’m a member at Greenfield Community Church in south Edmonton. We used to be Greenfield Baptist Church. The name change was born of a church merger a few years ago. But it also represents a tacit admission that denominational distinctives aren’t what they once were.

While a cursory glance might see the diminishment of denominational emphasis as a sign of ecumenical advance, look closer and you can see that it is often ecumenism on the cheap, one that is sustained by little more than a disinterest in orthodox and orthopraxic particulars

As a case in point, some years ago I visited the Pentecostal Church of my youth on Mother’s Day. Incredibly, in the flurry of focus on celebrating mothers, the pastors forgot to mention that it was also Pentecost Sunday. It may seem shocking that a Pentecostal church would forget Pentecost, but increasingly this kind of generic ecclesial life is becoming the norm, at least in evangelical Protestant churches.

It seems to me that we should resist that kind of milquetoast ecumenism in favor of a more robust awareness and celebration of difference, one that recognizes the unique contributions and emphases (and limitations) that each Christian community brings to the wider body of Christ. As I said, I am now a Baptist. So what do Baptists bring to this community celebration of ecclesial difference?

The predictable answer is: Believer’s baptism. But if we want to understand the logic behind restricting baptism to believers (i.e. those who can make their own cognitive assent to the gospel), we need to turn to a deeper distinctive root of Baptist piety and conviction, that of soul competency.

Soul competency is rooted in Martin Luther’s famous statement of conviction at Worms where he proceeded based on conscience and reason to challenge the decisions even of popes and councils: “I cannot and will not recant,” he famously said, “because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen.”

In those words Luther expressed the conviction that a man or woman is fit to render his or her own judgment in spiritual matters. Since we are all equipped with reason and conscience, we must heed their deliverances carefully and draw the appropriate conclusions standing responsible before God.

With this idea comes a rejection of compulsion in religion, for the soul must be free to follow its own convictions. It cannot be compelled by an external force.

And so we find the modern plea for religious freedom arising in 1609 when Thomas Helwys wrote a letter to King James of England requesting for Baptists the freedom of worship. Helwys was imprisoned for his efforts but today religious freedom of belief is widely accepted in the West. And it owes much to the noble Baptist vision of soul competency.

This logic extends, in turn, to the rite of initiation itself. The Baptist reasons thusly: no one but me can make my decision for entry to the community of faith. Every individual must stand before God with the life he has lived and the choices she has made.

Consequently, baptism is restricted to those believers who can claim this act as a matter of personal will, intellect, and conscience.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge that soul competency is not the same thing as soul omnicompetency. The fact that every person is responsible before God to read scripture, make decisions, be baptized, and come to own their faith for themselves, this does not ensure that the judgments they make will all be good ones.

And all too often, Baptists have followed Luther’s willingness to divide for sake of conscience, sometimes to an absurd degree. Indeed, this Baptist tendency toward schism is immortalized in a famous joke from comedian Emo Philips. It goes like this:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.”

I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

“Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over. (Source)

The joke is funny precisely because of its resonance with real life. It’s true: sometimes Baptists can be like that, fashioning a faith of conscience so precise and arcane that few are left inside the church walls. I suppose the reasoning is that if Luther could judge a thousand years of popes and councils, surely I can judge the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879.

Well, maybe, but maybe not.

Soul competency is an essential idea, but it is also an unstable one, a point that John Eck made to Luther when Eck exclaimed:

“if it were granted that whoever contradicts the councils and the common understanding of the church must be overcome by Scripture passages, we will have nothing in Christianity that is certain or decided.”

Eck has a point. As much as we need to be responsible to our own reasoning and conscience, we still also need authority and the wisdom of tradition, lest each person merely be a slave to his or her own cognitive blind-spots and provincial attitudes.

So while I believe soul competency brings an important emphasis to the wider church, it is not without significant cost, and it is in need of a chastening counterbalance.

In conclusion, while I will continue to celebrate Reformation Day, it is with the sobering realization of how far there is yet to go, a sentiment perhaps best summarized in that old declaration, the Reformation Church is ever reforming.

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Sodden Dead Flies: How a bad experience at church can have long-term effects

What’s your sodden dead fly?

Often when Christians encounter a person who is very negative toward the church and Christianity, their initial response is defensive. However, my response is curious: what is it about this person’s history that has led to them taking this dour attitude? More often than not, there is a story behind the hostility, and we can learn it if only we take the time to listen.

These days, if you ask me whether I’d like a bowl of blackberries, the chances are I will decline politely. If you’re paying attention, you might even notice a thinly concealed grimace. It’s true: I’m not a fan of blackberries.

If you happen to be a lover of blackberries, you might be incredulous at my response. But hear me out. A few months ago I dumped a pint of blackberries into a strainer and rinsed them thoroughly. Then I put them in a bowl and started eating. After a couple minutes I was almost done when I looked into the bowl and saw along with the three remaining blackberries one sodden dead fly.

Blech.

I used to love blackberries but after that experience my tastes were altered. Now the thought of blackberries immediately brings to mind sodden dead flies.

This is a trivial example, of course, but that simply underscores the point: if a trivial negative experience can have such long-lasting and deleterious effects, one can only imagine the impact of some of the serious sodden dead flies that are the catalysts for people leaving the church.

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More than half of American Christians are now gay-affirming

I’ve been speaking a lot recently to various church and parachurch groups on issues pertaining to the LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual) community. To be sure, this isn’t because I’m an expert on such matters: far from it (indeed, very far from it). Rather, it is simply because these issues are among the most contentious ethical and social issues evangelicals currently face. And arguably the most contentious issue of them all concerns the traditional Christian prohibition of same-sex relations.

The Christian Church used to present a united stance on the traditional perspective. However, that is clearly changing. I met my first gay-affirming Christian when I moved to England in the fall of 1999. I remember at the time being completely confused by a Christian who was gay-affirming. Looking back, that response now seems positively quaint (or at least thoroughly provincial).

Every passing month seems to bring new Christians “coming out” as gay-affirming. And I’m not just talking mainline liberals here. That, of course, would hardly be news. What is particularly surprising is the surge in recent years of evangelicals with impeccable credentials becoming gay-affirming. To note one, Tony Campolo went public with a gay-affirming position in 2015. (I since heard anecdotally from a couple sources who have since met Tony that his invitations to speak at evangelical churches subsequently declined significantly, further evidence that many traditionalists still treat this issue as a litmus test for orthodoxy.)

Of course, Tony has always been on the “left” end of the spectrum, and his wife Peggy was already gay-affirming, so perhaps that isn’t too surprising.

Regardless, the latest high-profile entry on the growing list is definitely surprising. In October, the revered Christian philosopher and public intellectual Nicholas Wolterstorff also came out as gay affirming in a public address:

Wolterstorff’s talk predictably earned plaudits from some and strident condemnation from others. (For the latter see Wesley Hill’s article “Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Cheap Shots.”)

I suspect the periodic high profile conversions and controversies will continue among the intellectual elites. (For another example, in 2015 the outstanding young New Testament scholar Daniel Kirk was denied tenure at Fuller Seminary in large part because of his position on homosexuality and gay marriage.)

Here is the gay-affirming semi truck. We notice the high profile conversions (Campolo, Wolterstorff, Kirk, etc.) but not the darkened shift in mass opinion behind them.

But from my perspective, those high profile cases are merely the blinking lights on a semi truck that is baring down on the traditionalists. We stare at the lights and debate them without realizing the mass of opinion growing behind and with them.

As a case in point, in preparation for one of my recent talks I was struck by the statistics in a Pew Research study which chronicles the shift in opinion among American Christian groups on homosexuality between 2007 and 2014. Two statistics are particularly worth highlighting here. First, in 2007 44% of Christians in the United States were gay affirming, while in 2014 that share had risen to 54%. In short, more than half of Christians in the American church are now gay-affirming.

(Here’s the link for the study. I’m having some blog problems that prevent me embedding it: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/...)

But those are all mainline liberals, right? Hardly. And that brings me to the second statistic. In 2007 26% of evangelicals were gay affirming, but as of 2014 that number had risen to 36%. Let me underscore that for emphasis: more than one third of evangelicals are gay-affirming.

I know several Christian school teachers and the trend I hear anecdotally from them is that generally speaking, same-sex attraction is not a moral issue for them. They have gay friends and they simply don’t buy the rhetoric of the vocal traditionalists this is a defining moral issue for our time. Case in point, James Dobson once claimed:

“Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It [ same-sex marriage ] will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.” (Source)

Crazy rhetoric like this is blessedly on the decline, but you can still find it from time to time. While it may serve to marshal conservative forces, I suspect it also creates significant blowback among younger progressive Christians who are simply repelled by this paranoid and hypocritical attack on perceived outgroups. (Why hypocritical? Well, you could start with the fact that evangelicals appear to have a higher-than-average rate of divorce.)

Suffice it to say, all the evidence suggests that the trend will continue: that semi ain’t slowing down anytime soon.

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On Being Sorry for the Iraq War

A recent episode of NPR’s “On Being” with Krista Tippett featured a conversation with poet Natasha Trethewey and activist Eboo Patel on life after the current, incredibly polarized American presidential election. At one point Patel made some particularly insightful comments which are worth repeating here. I’ve copy-pasted that exchange from the full transcript which is available at a link below:

DR. PATEL: William Raspberry writes a column in which he says, “The smartest people I know secretly believe both sides of the issue.” And that was so striking to me. Because I was — the way I viewed the world at that point was, “I’m the smart one. You all are the dumb ones. My job is to figure out how to make you smart.” And the definition of “smart” was you thought like me.

MS. TIPPETT: Or how to make you see things my way, which is smart.

DR. PATEL: Yeah, exactly, right? And this notion of William Raspberry, who was, generally speaking, a progressive columnist was like — look, the smartest people I know choose the pro-life side and understand that there’s something else at stake. The smartest people I know are against the death penalty and understand that people who might be in favor aren’t crazy, that there’s a set of values, something at stake there.

I wanted to say one thing very briefly on this matter of justice. And I actually — my sense is actually justice and empathy, they’re in the Venn diagram. There’s a shaded area. But the more empathy one has and the more diversity one is in, the more one recognizes different definitions of justice. So, here’s my moment to this. Eight or 10 years ago, I’m speaking on a college campus, and I happened to be speaking with a man named Nechervan Barzani, who was introduced to me as an Iraqi leader

And as a good multicultural against the Bush administration progressive, my first instinct was to apologize to him for, quote, “the unjust war in Iraq.” And he looks at me, and he kind of shakes his head. And I think his English isn’t great, and so I repeat what I said. And I said…

[laughter]

DR. PATEL: This is a great insight into the mind of the Manichean, right? You don’t understand me because your English isn’t great, not because you disagree with me.

[laughter]

DR. PATEL: I said, “I want to apologize on behalf of the American people.”

[laughter]

DR. PATEL: All 320 million — for the unjust war in Iraq. And he looked at me, and he said, “I’m a Kurd. The only unjust thing about the war in Iraq is you didn’t do it 20 years ago.” And I thought to myself, how ridiculous that I didn’t even imagine that. And I mean, of course, this is over the next several years that I kind of unpacked this in my head. But how narrow a world did I live in that I thought that this was — now, I still believe the Iraq war was unjust, but I do I think that Nechirvan Barzani’s position, after having tens, hundreds of thousands of his people killed by Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare, that his position is not a reasonable definition of justice?

And what strikes me in reflection is, how come I didn’t imagine that? How come I didn’t play with the figure of Nechirvan Barzani in my mind in the dialogue? How is it that I had such a black and white vision of justice in the world? And I find that — I think that that is a problem in the hyper-diverse, 325-million jazz of a nation in which we live. (Full Interview Transcript)

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You can’t make America great again because it is now better than it ever was

This morning on Twitter Michael Brown posted the following image with this description: “This is something we can all agree on”:

Except I couldn’t agree on it. To be sure, I do agree with the importance of repentance. But I don’t agree with the Trumpian sentiment about making America great again. And this is because, for all its faults, America (like my country of Canada) is right now far more equitable and just than it ever was before.

So I asked Michael Brown: “Serious question: when was America better than it is now? It is presently better for women, handicapped, minorities, no?”

He replied: “Although there have been improvements for blacks & others in the last 50 years, in many other ways, we’re in steep decline.”

I don’t know about “steep decline”, but I do agree we are moving backwards in some cases. Nonetheless, if we want a balanced assessment of societal progress, we need to say something more about the improvements for those “blacks & others”.

Indigenous others

Let’s begin with one “other”, the indigenous community.

Take a look at this ad posted last year on Kijiji in Prince Albert,  Canada. (Within Canada, Kijiji is the equivalent of Craigslist):

Note how the ad specifies “No natives please.” Forty years ago that stipulation would not have raised an eyebrow. But today it is the cause for (nearly) universal condemnation, so much so that this lowly ad even made the national news in Canada. So while life for indigenous people in North America is hardly a picnic today, I think it is safe to say that for most the situation is far better than it was in the past.

The very fact that the propriety of calling a sports team the “Redskins” is now a matter of ethical debate is indicative of societal progress concerning the representation of minority groups.

Ugly others

Next, let’s consider another other: the physically handicapped and “unattractive”. As I pointed out to Brown in a tweet, up until the 1970s several jurisdictions in North America had ugly laws which allowed businesses to refuse service to people who were considered physically unattractive. Thus, for example, a man with burn scarring on his face could be refused service at Denny’s simply because other patrons didn’t want him around. How “great” is that?

Ethnic others

I grew up in southern British Columbia a couple hours drive from the town of Greenwood. During WW2 Greenwood was the site of a Japanese internment camp: more than one thousand Japanese Canadians were interned at this camp while having their life savings seized by the government, simply because of their Japanese ethnic ancestry.

The United States followed a similar policy concerning Japanese citizens and residents on the Pacific Coast: ultimately, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were detained in camps during WW2.

The opposite sex others

What about the lot of women in the past? As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Take a look at this 1970 ad for “Mr. Leggs” slacks:

This grotesque ad hearkens back to an age in which you could proudly boast of grabbing women by the “pussy”. Thank God that retrograde world of sexism and misogyny is a thing of the past. That said, it is most distressing to see it rearing its ugly head in this current election cycle. (One woman at a Trump rally this week insisted that the women who claimed the Groper-in-chief assaulted them needed to “grow a pair.” She did not specify which pair they needed to grow, but one thing is clear: such cavalier defenses of sexual assault are inversely related to societal greatness.)

Black others

Most people have a far better sense of the extraordinary improvements in civil rights over the last fifty years. Granted, there is still far to go, but few can doubt how far we’ve come. A few months ago I read John Howard Griffin’s classic book Black Like Me. In the book Griffin (a Caucasian writer) describes darkening the pigment in his skin and shaving his head and then travelling across the Deep South. His first-person accounts of experiencing bald racism and seething hatred still provides a deeply disturbing first-hand account from an outsider of what life was like for millions of disenfranchised African Americans.

Far from perfect, but still better than before

Neither America nor Canada is perfect. And as Brown would rightly observe, in some significant respects both of these western nations are in decline. That said, it seems to me that by most objective measures, including the treatment of various “others”, both America and Canada are on a slow but steady journey toward improvement toward the Good Society. Indeed, I’m willing to venture that overall we’re now better than we ever were.

So make America “great” again? No thanks, it’s pretty great as it is. But let’s keep working to make it better.

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Is the human species sufficiently unimpressive that it supports naturalism over theism?

Yesterday Jeff Lowder posted the following tweet:

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I replied:

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But Jeff disagreed:

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So if you hear a new heavy album and the guitars sound like they’re being played by second year guitar students, that provides a good reason to think the album wasn’t recorded by Metallica. Sure, all things being equal, that makes sense. (Having said that, I also know that Metallica is a creative band who are known to push the boundaries in all sorts of directions, so that may very well chasten my tendency to quick judgments.)

Is there more that can be said here? Yes, it turns out that Lowder was tacitly drawing on Paul Draper’s claim that humanity is (relatively) unimpressive and this fact better supports naturalism than theism. (Thanks to Joshua Parikh for helping clarify this point.)

So if we want to pursue this line of thought further, we should take a look at Draper’s reasoning. Here is a sampling:

“More importantly, if theism is true, then God is not only morally perfect, he is omnipotent and so could make many different sorts of intelligent life, probably infinitely many, including intelligent beings that are much more impressive than human beings. On single-universe naturalism, by contrast, one would expect that, if there is intelligent life, it will be relatively unimpressive. I want to emphasize the word “relatively” here, because I am not denying that human beings are impressive in many ways. But examined from the perspective of what is possible for an omnipotent being, we are, in terms of intelligence, a hair’s breadth away from monkeys. Again, one would expect this on single-universe naturalism because the more intelligent the life, the less likely it is that naturalistic processes would produce it. Of course, if one believes in God and, looking around, finds nothing more impressive than human beings, one will be forced to conclude that God wanted to make beings with very limited intelligence. But surely one would not have predicted this beforehand. There are indefinitely many different kinds of creatures that an omnipotent being would have the power to create and that, other things being equal, would be more valuable to create than humans. Antecedently, a God would be more likely to create these more impressive creatures than to create us.” (Source)

As we can see, Draper is arguing here that the currently available evidence of relatively unimpressive human beings is more to be expected on “single-universe naturalism” than on theism.

Regarding the first claim that human beings fit well with naturalism, let me just say I’m not convinced. For example, human beings have abilities to intuit synthetic a priori facts and moral facts, and neither of these extraordinary capacities seems likely on naturalism. As Pascal famously observed, “Man is only a reed, the most feeble thing in nature. But he is a thinking reed.” I’d say thinking reeds are pretty cool.

What about theism? If theism is true, would we expect God to create more impressive creatures than us? On this point I have four responses.

My first response is “not necessarily.” This point begins with the claim that God can be understood analogically to an artist. And artists regularly choose to work under self-imposed constraints. For example, the great artist Pablo Picasso is justly famous for the works of his Blue Period during which he generally limited his palette to hues of blue and green. A critic unfamiliar with Picasso’s oeuvre or his reasoning behind the self-imposed limitations of the Blue Period may not appreciate the unique quality of these works. They may believe that a true artistic genius worthy of the reputation of Picasso would utilize a broad palette of colors. And they’d be wrong.

For those of us who accept biological evolution, God chose to create under the constraints of evolutionary processes. That’s the divine equivalent of painting in a blue phase. So just as the works of Picasso’s Blue Period need to be assessed with an acknowledgement of the self-imposed constraints of the artist, so we should assess God’s creative works with an acknowledgement of his decision to create through the self-imposed limitations of evolutionary processes.

My second response is “maybe he did, and if he did we shouldn’t expect to know it“. In the last month cosmologists have now upped the number of galaxies in the universe ten-fold to two trillion. With two trillion universes and habitable planets perhaps numbering in the quadrillions, we are in no place at all to opine on the spectrum of impressive creatures that may inhabit this cosmos.

My third response is “we need to evaluate species within systems.” Earthworms may be relatively unimpressive on their own, but they serve the function of the whole system. Even if human beings are earthworms, we need to be evaluated for our role within the system on the whole. So what constitutes the system? Is it “Mother Earth” or the Solar System, the Galaxy or the entire universe? Good question. It seems to me that the more we understand about chaotic systems and quantum entanglement and countless other extraordinarily dynamic and relational dimensions to the cosmos, the more we need to see our place within the broadest conception of the system. And that in turn undermines our ability to evaluate our significance as a species in negative terms.

My final response is “God did create more impressive creatures.” They are called angelic beings, and apart from the fact that they are far more intelligent and powerful than human beings, we know little else about them. (Of course naturalists don’t accept that angels exist. But so what? Insofar as they’re trying to provide a defeater to theists, they need to deal with what theists believe exists. Of course, they could try to provide defeaters to the existence of angels, but until they succeed in doing that the point stands.)

In sum, I’ve provided a couple reasons to reject the claim that properly functioning human persons are unimpressive in a way that supports naturalism. And I’ve provided four reasons to undermine the claim that the existence of human persons should be surprising on theism.

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What does gay marriage have to do with packing Christmas boxes?

A growing number of Christian parachurch ministries are demanding that their paid employees and volunteers denounce homosexuality and gay marriage.

For example, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) recently attracted international attention with its request that all its employees who do not affirm its traditional prohibition on same-sex relationships voluntarily resign from the ministry (Source).

It seems to me that IVCF’s position is perfectly sensible given that its workers regularly offer Bible instruction and counselling to young people, and the nature of sexuality and range of ethical sexual conduct is certainly one of the key issues that those workers will be addressing on a regular basis. So it stands to reason that IVCF is well within its rights (indeed, one might think it is obliged) to ensure that its employees are upholding the ethical norms that shape the way it does ministry.

But in other cases, this prohibitive stance is much harder to understand. Consider, for example, the case of Franklin Graham’s ministry Samaritan’s Purse. Samaritan’s Purse recently started requiring its senior volunteers to agree to a document which requires them to reject same-sex marriage and a prochoice position on abortion. When Kay Cossar, a co-ordinator with the ministry since 1998, declined to sign the document, she was told she would no longer be allowed to volunteer to help send shoe boxes with toys to needy children (Source).

As I said, I understand and respect the logic behind IVCF’s decision. But I see no logic behind the decision of Samaritan’s Purse Canada. By all accounts, Ms. Cossar successfully fulfilled her mandate to help distribute toys to the world’s needy children. So what relevance do her views on gay marriage and abortion have to this mandate? The answer is as simple as it is obvious: none.

Believe it or not, it gets worse. This is how Jeff Adams, a spokesperson for Samaritan’s Purse Canada, explained the ministry’s position:

“The amendments include a specific mention that ‘human sexuality is to be expressed only within the context of marriage,’ that a marriage by Biblical definition is between ‘a genetic male and genetic female,’ and that ‘human life is sacred from conception to its natural end.'” (Source)

So according to Samaritan’s Purse, if you want to volunteer to pack Christmas boxes for needy children in the developing world, you need to believe that marriage is only between “a genetic male and genetic female.” I don’t know if Samaritan’s Purse is aware of genetic mosaics (i.e. people who have XX chromosomes in some cells and XY chromosomes in other cells). But according to this policy, if you believe that genetic mosaics should be allowed to marry, then you too are in direct contravention of the policy of Samaritan’s Purse, and thus you too are not fit to pack toy boxes for needy children in the developing world.

Let me be blunt: this is crazy, and the fact that a ministry like this requires this kind of specificity among employees and volunteers which is wholly irrelevant to their mission is one more example of the strange obsession evangelicals have with a very narrow range of ethical questions.

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Lights Out: A Review

Last night I finally got around to watching the summer horror hit Lights Out. The film grew out of this award winning 2 1/2 minute horror short from 2013 (also called Lights Out).

I have long been a fan of supernatural horror films, and Lights Out is provides a satisfying pastiche of familiar horror tropes including the following (caution: mild spoilers may be found below):

Big scary house with creaking hardwood floors
A mysterious door that won’t open … and then opens by itself
One person talking quietly to somebody else even though they are alone in the room (or are they?)
Mental hospital and creepy audio recordings from a therapy session
Bad-boy boyfriend lends aid to scared love interest (though one surprise is that he drives a Volvo SUV. Huh? Whatever happened to the 1970s Camaro?)
Eerie old photos and other spooky bric-a-brac found in a box which offer tantalizing clues for amateur detectives
Going into the dark basement to check the fuses (seriously, who would do that?!!)
Getting trapped in the basement (serves you right for checking the fuses)
People in danger inexplicably decide to split up (so they can be hunted individually?!)
Police arrive, guns drawn, thereby creating a (false) sense of security
One person sacrifices him/herself to the malevolent force in order to save others
Survivors sitting in the back of an ambulance with a blanket over their shoulders while police cars with lights flashing surround “the scene” (this is one of my favorite tropes)
A final subtle hint (e.g. a flicker of light) that all is not well … thereby leaving open the door for a sequel should box office receipts justify it
Oh yeah, and the completely gratuitous inclusion of creepy mannequins

Qoheleth said it best: “there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) But sometimes the old things can be shuffled in a way that they produce a movie that just may have you leaving the lights on.

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The rhetorical indulgences of some Christian testimonies

The other day I was listening to a recording of a gentleman giving a personal testimony of his Christian conversion. Just prior to the conversion he observed, “According to the world I had it all: money, fame, drugs, and sex.”

I’ve heard a thousand testimonies over the years that used similar language. But this time this familiar line of Christianese struck me. What is this “world” of which the testifier speaks, the one that says “having it all” means having “money, fame, drugs, and sex”?

To be sure, there is a common narrative in the wider secular culture (one that the church has by and large bought into by the way) which equates success with visible, material success. (Just think about two churches: Church A is in an old building and can barely meet its meager budget with an aging congregation of the elderly and poor street people; Church B has 1000 people, 15 pastors, two campuses, dozens of programs, smoke and laser shows, and a vast asphalt parking lot filled with luxury SUVS; which church would most pastors envy?).

But this testifier didn’t simply describe the familiar narrative of material success which has corrupted many within the church. Rather, he refers to a narrative that equates success with pure and unadulterated hedonism. And it is this pure, hedonistic gospel which is then attributed to “the world”.

The simple fact is that I know many, many non-Christians, i.e. those who are resident member of “the world”. And not one of them considers success to consist of “money, fame, drugs, and sex.”

As I said, this individual wasn’t anomalous. I reflected that over the years I have often heard Christians describe “the world” in these kinds of baldly uncharitable tones. Unfortunately, this description commits the Strawman fallacy, for this kind of grossly reductionist and self-destructive pure hedonism is relatively rare among those outside the Christian community.

So what’s the lesson here? Simply this: testimonies can be great things, but they shouldn’t be embellished with stock Christianese that caricatures and strawmans the views of others. Truth cannot be built on falsehood.

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Which is a bigger threat to the church: homosexuality or greed?

In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul describes several habituated behaviors that he warns will keep people from God’s kingdom:

9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Paul includes several behaviors in this list. In the last decade the one that that has attracted the most attention is that which is translated in the NIV as “men who have sex with men”, a translation of two Greek terms,  malakos  and  arsenokoites. As you may know, the debate over the translation of these two terms in the last thirty years has been highly controverted and politicized … to say the least.

Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality

That said, the mainstream scholarly opinion is that Paul is intending to condemn male homosexual acts. As Richard Hays explains, malakos is “pejorative slang to describe the ‘passive’ partners-often young boys-in homosexual activity.” Meanwhile, arsenokoites is “a translation of the Hebrew mishkav zakur (‘lying with the male’), derived directly from Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 and used in rabbinic texts to refer to homosexual intercourse.” Hays concludes:

“Thus, Paul’s use of the term presupposes and reaffirms the holiness code’s condemnation of homosexual acts. This is not a controversial point in Paul’s argument; the letter gives no evidence that anyone at Corinth was arguing for the acceptance of same-sex erotic activity. Paul simply assumes that his readers will share his conviction that those who indulge in homosexual activity are ‘wrongdoers’.” (See Hays, “Homosexuality: Rebellion Against God,” cf. Moral Vision of the New Testament, 382-83)

If that’s right then it would seem that Paul is warning that those who engage in homosexual acts in an ongoing unrepentant way thereby exclude themselves from the kingdom.

Why has homosexuality dominated the discussion?

I think there are two reasons why the debates over homosexuality and the interpretation of malakos and  arsenokoites have dominated the public square of discussion. The first reason is because their meaning has been disputed and people on both sides of the debate (i.e. the traditionalists like Hays and gay affirming revisionists like Justin Lee) are heavily invested in different ways.

The second reason is one that applies only to traditionalists: it is easier to focus on ethical topics that are not relevant to one’s own person or belief community. Most traditionalists are part of Christian communities which are not themselves gay-affirming and thus they do not have visible gay members. Consequently, that issue is kept safely at a distance and it is consequently a relatively safe matter for debate.

Contrast that with some of the other topics on Paul’s list … like greed.

What about other issues … like greed?

The North American church is full of greedy people. There are various possible metrics by which we might measure widespread greed. Let me offer two: the low levels of tithing and the popularity of prosperity preaching.

Let’s start with the case of tithing. According to Barna, 5% of the American population tithes (i.e. donates at least 10% of their income to churches and/or non-profit charities). This statistic rises to 12% among evangelicals, the most generous demographic group.(Source)

While evangelicals are to be commended for being relatively generous, that rate of giving is still pathetic. Even if you don’t think that Christians are obliged to tithe 10%, the fact that millions of Christians tithe far less (e.g. 2-3% of income) is a damning indictment of the relative lack of generosity.

Second, consider the widespread and enduring popularity of the health and wealth gospel led by folks like Creflo Dollar and the prosperity lite of “America’s Pastor” Joel Osteen. Preachers/teachers like these have best-selling books, churches in the thousands and tens of thousands, vast radio and television ministries, and multi-million dollar incomes. And they are fueled by millions of hopeful devotees who desire precisely that same degree of material success in their own lives.

These two data points provide good evidence that greed is widespread in the North American church.

Delusions of Greed

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of our greed is that we delude ourselves by condemning those who are richer or greedier than us. We judge our neighbor who buys a brand new BMW sedan but we are okay financing a two year old Honda Accord, even though we need to cut back our tithe to make our car payments (and our cell phone bill, and our mortgage, and …).

But we keep focusing on that neighbor and their new BMW rather than asking ourselves whether we really need that Honda Accord, and more specifically whether our current rate of material consumption is inhibiting our charitable giving.

Soren Kierkegaard warned about the danger of deluding ourselves by comparison with the wider group of which we’re a part. As he observed, no person left unto themselves would think they were meeting the demands of Christian discipleship: “But when there are 100,000, one becomes confused….”

That’s an understatement. Greed is a crisis situation in the church today. And yes, I include myself in that sobering indictment. And yet, who wants to hear a sermon or lecture or read a book indicting their patterns of material consumption? The fact is that it is more comfortable for most of us to hear a condemnation of the unrepentant homosexual lifestyle rather than the unrepentant greedy lifestyle.

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