Randal Rauser's Blog, page 145

I am Evel Knievel: A Review

There’s a fine line between courage and foolhardiness.

Or maybe there isn’t.

After watching the 2014 documentary I am Evel Knievel I’m not so sure anymore.

The film tells the story of one of the cultural icons of my youth. Bob Knievel grew up in a rough western town — Butte, Montana — one of those wayward youth who was, as they say, “known to police”. Determined not to spend his life laboring deep in the mines surrounding Butte, Bob eventually settled on something more glamorous: the life of the daredevil.

Enter Evel.

Evel began to build his show in the mid-1960s culminating in a daring jump over old cars or boxes of snakes, whatever was available and sure to hold the attention of an audience. His breakout moment came after the budding entrepreneur secured a high-profile jump outside dazzling Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, on New Years Eve, 1967. Evel cleared the jump … and then flew off the bike, bouncing and flipping like a rag doll until he came to rest unconscious on the ground. And a legend was born.

It’s difficult to pick the height of Evel’s career. It could be the 1974 “jump” over the Snake River Canyon, for which Evel traded his standard Harley Davidson for a rocket. (The chute deployed early, leaving Evel to descend into the canyon below.) Or it could be his ill-fated 1975 Wembly Stadium jump over thirteen buses, or his comeback six months later when he jumped over fourteen buses in Ohio. (Personally, my favorite moment is the brawl with the Hells Angels in Los Angeles. Forty Hells Angels may be tough but they are not tougher than 20,000 angry Evel fans.)

The jumps may have brought the fame, but the licensing deals brought the money. In the mid-1970s toys and comic books emblazoned with Evel’s trademark image were the biggest sellers (I remember playing with the toys and reading the comics).

But it was all to come crashing down (if you’ll pardon the pun). Evel was a hard drinker and a notorious womanizer. When a man wrote a tell all expose, Evel retaliated by breaking his arms with a baseball bat. The licensing deals disappeared, Evel was no longer featured on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. And then a divorce from his long-suffering wife. By the 1980s the aging daredevil was all but broke, financially, that is. Of course, he was also broke physically: The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Evel as the world record holder for bone fractures (433 fractures by late 1975, but who’s counting?).

By the mid-2000s, in near constant pain and suffering from several medical conditions, Evel decided he needed to change his life. In 2007 he was baptized by Robert Schuller on the Hour of Power. Shortly after he died. At his funeral at the arena in Butte, Evel’s final words were read out to those gathered. After recalling all those he had hurt and offended he closed with these simple words: “I’m sorry.”

Dan Fincke endorses An Atheist and a Christian Walk Into a Bar

Justin Schieber just tweeted an extended endorsement for An Atheist and a Christian Walk Into a Bar courtesy of Dan Fincke. Ever mindful of my readers, I have reposted it below with Dan’s introduction.

And who is Dan Fincke? He’s an academic philosopher (PhD, Fordham University), an award winning teacher, a blogger (at Camels with Hammers), and an entrepreneur who has been teaching his own non-credit philosophy classes online for three years. In short, he’s a trained philosopher, an educator, and a populist (in the best sense) so this endorsement means a lot. So here it is, an introduction followed by an extended endorsement.

* * *

I just sent in my blurb suggestion for An Atheist and A Christian Walk Into A Bar, co-written by Justin Schieber and Randal Rauser. I expect them to only use a tiny bit of this (if anything). I just wrote it this long because it was too difficult for me to figure out which point I was willing to sacrifice. I figured I would let the publisher decide what was most valuable or what portion of what I said complements rather than repeats what others are saying, etc. I also didn’t worry about erring on the side of repetition as, again, at least it gives them choices.

Anyway, that caveat about why this is so long aside, here’s how I would recommend  An Atheist and A Christian Walk Into A Bar:

“An Atheist and a Christian Walk Into A Bar should launch a genre. It’s a book that balances accessibility, rigor, and probing creativity, with the potential to mainstream the sophistication and constructive insight of academic philosophy of religion often sorely missing from the preachers and polemicists who hog most of the attention in the theism/atheism debate. It’s vital that Christians and atheists alike see what happens when their favorite talking points get deftly countered by philosophically skilled and knowledgable people on the other side. It’s also crucial that the legion of people who want to disparage argument between believers and non-believers as inevitably pointless, destructive, or intolerant see just how instructive and illuminating it can be to read a constructive and careful back and forth about the philosophy of religion. By modeling superior arguments in philosophy of religion and a superior approach to arguing, this book has the potential to move its readers’ future debates about religious and secular ideas to an advanced starting point and to improve how those debates proceed from there. And by modeling a superior approach to presenting the philosophy of religion debate, hopefully it will inspire more co-written books in which authors don’t get away with the unchallenged monologuing and the one-sided presentations that only serve to reinforce the comfort of the faithful or the unfaithful but rather are forced to up their game, show how well they can respond to scrutiny of their ideas, and risk that members of their own side might struggle with the strength of their opponents’ arguments. Theists and atheists should read this together and pick up their conversations where the chapters on topics leave off, and other philosophically informed theists and atheists should starting writing more of their books together, following this one’s model of constructive criticism, collaboration, and debate.”

On God and Volcanoes

I’ve been fascinated by volcanoes since May, 1980. We were outside playing during recess when the late spring sky began to snow. Except it wasn’t snow, it was ash from the recently exploded Mt. St. Helens. (Living in south central British Columbia, we were a good day’s drive away from the volcano. But that was close enough.) According to the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), the Mt. St. Helens eruption just barely qualified as a 5. By contrast, the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa was far larger: it measured a six on the VEI and it claimed over 36,000 casualties both from the immediate effects of the explosion and the tsunamis that resulted.

Over the last few days I have enjoyed reading Simon Winchester’s 2003 book Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (New York: Harper Collins). The book tells the story of a volcanic explosion so monumental that it has worked its way into the public consciousness like few natural disasters in modern history. To give you a scale of the eruption, consider this fact: the sound — described as “the roar of heavy guns” — was recorded 3000 miles away on the island of Rodriquez near Africa. Winchester observes, “the 2,968 mile span that separates Krakatoa and Rodriguez remains to this day the most prodigious distance recorded between the place where unamplified and electrically enhanced natural sound was heard and the place where that same sound originated.” (260) That’s equivalent to hearing an explosion from New York while walking down the street in Los Angeles.

Winchester’s book is a melding of history and science, but I read it with an eye for theology and philosophy. As you can imagine, there is an ancient and rich mythology of volcanoes:

“In very early times this wonderment was answered, inevitably, mainly by religion and the making of myths. Volcanoes were hills occupied by temperamental gods: They could be appeased by frequent sacrifice. The appeasing flesh could be that of a young human (a small child thrown every twenty-five years into the crater of a particular Nicaraguan volcano, for instance, would guarantee its quietude) or an animal (Javanese today toss chickens into the crater of Mount Bromo–superstition still plays an important role in East Indian attitudes toward their volcanoes.” (300)

The science of plate tectonics which finally brought the nature of volcanoes into focus only emerged in the mid-1960s. Interestingly, Winchester quotes from the last major book to be published on Krakatoa, a book that was published in 1964 just prior to the completion of this science and the advent of real geological understanding. Winchester observes that “The book begins to speak in terms of ‘The Demon’ going in to ‘press the attack,’ his ‘searching fingers boring into the defenses,’ and the ‘pent-up energies of time’ and ‘primeval forces’ readying themselves to do battle. One can hardly blame him [the author]. Neither he nor anyone else had an inkling of what really caused Krakatoa. And that was hardly his fault: he was simply a very few years too early.” (311)

These quoted passages nicely illustrate why many atheists insist on claiming science as their own. When we don’t understand a physical process, we search for another explanation, one in terms of mind. We may literally place a raging deity within the mountain. Or, if we believe we’ve become too sophisticated for such mythologies, we will retreat to anthropomorphized, quasi-poetic speech of demons, searching fingers, and primeval forces.  But if we press on, the demons and gods dissolve into the slow grinding forces of convection and subduction. The ghost has been exorcised, and all that remains is the machine itself, terrible, and awesome, in all its glory.

A Conversation with Atheist/Humanist Blogger Sincere Kirabo

I recently participated in an enjoyable dialogue with atheist and humanist blogger Sincere Kirabo. The conversation was just posted at his blog, “Notes from an Apostate” and you can read it here.

Doubters and Questioners

Today I was reading through Cormac McCarthy’s Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form, (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2006). It’s a simple play that features a conversation between two individuals, “White” and “Black” pondering the great questions of existence. It’s a short play that can be read in a couple hours and it’s well worth your time. (Thanks to my friend Lars for recommending it.)

While there are many quotable lines in the play, I was struck by the following exchange in which Black identifies himself as a questioner in contrast to the doubter:

WHITE: Are you a heretic?

BLACK: You tryin to put me in the trick bag, Professor.

WHITE: No I’m not. Are you?

BLACK: No more than what a man should be. Even a man with a powerful belief. I aint a doubter. But I am a questioner.

WHITE: What’s the difference?

BLACK: Well, I think the questioner wants the truth. The doubter wants to be told there aint no such thing. (Sunset Limited: A Novel in 30-1)

On the Use of People to Benefit Other People: A response to Jason Thibodeau

In my review of John L. Schellenberg’s book The Hiddenness Argument I offered the following scenario as a possible reason why God would choose to defer the initiation of personal relationship with a non-resistant nonbeliever:

“It is possible that in the decade during which she is an atheist, Liz will bring many resistant nonbelievers to a greater understanding of absolute goodness, an understanding which provides a crucial step for those individuals eventually becoming non-resistant and then later moving into a personal relationship with God. And counterfactually, had God revealed himself to Liz at an earlier time, her witness as a theist would have been rendered ineffectual for these particular individuals that God wanted to reach. (Perhaps they would have tuned out Liz’s evangelical Christian preaching about the personal absolute goodness, but they carefully assimilated her preaching about impersonal absolute goodness.) Thus, God providentially delays revealing himself personally to Liz because he can reach people through Liz’s state of nonbelief that he would not be able to reach through Liz’s state of belief.”

In the discussion thread for the follow-up article “On Divine Hiddenness: J.L. Schellenberg Responds to My Review” Jason Thibodeau offers the following rebuttal to that scenario:

“Here is one reply to your objection, Randal: In the example, God is using Liz merely as a means to further the goal of bringing more people into a relationship with God.

‘God providentially delays revealing himself personally to Liz because he can reach people through Liz’s state of nonbelief that he would not be able to reach through Liz’s state of belief.’

“Even when the goal that is sought is of such high value (as it would be in this example), it is morally wrong to use a person in such a way. The problem is that Liz has not consented to God’s using her in this manner. Furthermore, it is also difficult to see how Liz could rationally consent to being so-used. After all, for her to consent, she would have to forgo for ten years the greatest possible good for a human being. Further, the plan requires that Liz not consent. It is not just an accident that Liz cannot consent, it is built into the scenario. Thus God’s plan involves using a person in such a manner that her consent is not possible. This is not morally acceptable.

“Now, perhaps one might think that Liz’s consent can be sacrificed given the value of the end goal that God seeks (that is, bringing more people into a loving relationship with him). However, this reply cannot succeed. This is because the goal can be reached in a way that is consistent with acknowledging Liz’ dignity.

“God could, if he wanted, reveal himself to Liz when she is 20 rather than 30. He could let her know that he would like her to join him in his efforts to reach out to atheists. For this plan to succeed, Liz must not reveal that she is a believer (otherwise the atheists might be unlikely to pay attention to her arguments). Instead, she should focus her efforts on bringing non-believers to a greater understanding of absolute goodness. The opportunity to play such a crucial role in God’s plan is one that Liz could rationally consent to, should consent to, and would consent to. Therefore, God can make Liz a part of his plan and achieve the same goal without using Liz merely as a means. Given that it is wrong to use people merely as a means and in ways to which they could not rationally consent, this is the plan that God would have to choose. Thus, contrary to your analysis, If God exists, Liz would not be in a state of non-resistant non-belief in God for ten years.”

The core of Jason’s objection is as follows: “Even when the goal that is sought is of such high value (as it would be in this example), it is morally wrong to use a person in such a way. The problem is that Liz has not consented to God’s using her in this manner.” (emphasis added) Jason later adds, “the goal can be reached in a way that is consistent with acknowledging Liz’ dignity.”

To sum up, Jason apparently believes that it is morally wrong to use a person without their personal consent to benefit others because that is a violation of that person’s dignity.

Of course, the objection only works if one accepts Jason’s Principle. I don’t accept it, and thus I don’t believe Jason’s objection to my rebuttal to the hiddenness argument succeeds.

But why do I reject Jason’s Principle? Ahh, that’s the question, isn’t it?

Simple, I can produce counter-examples in which an individual may use a person without their personal consent to benefit others without violating that person’s dignity. Indeed, I believe the Liz case is just such an example. I don’t think Liz’s dignity is violated in this scenario at all, and Jason’s intuitions that the matter is otherwise lack probative force for me to rethink my intuitions in the matter (sorry Jason, but that’s the way it is!).

Having said that, is there a way to move this beyond a stalemate? Certainly. Here is another scenario for those who find Jason’s Principle intuitive to rethink that support:

Jones has two children, Billy and Bonnie. Billy is autistic and he needs the soothing strains of violin music to calm down. Bonnie plays the violin and she practices every day. Jones requests that Bonnie practice in the evenings when Billy is home rather than the mornings when Billy is in therapy. That way, Billy can benefit from the soothing effect of the music.

When Bonnie is eighteen and preparing for college her father takes her aside. “Bonnie,” Jones says, “Remember how I asked you to practice in the evenings all those years? The reason I asked you to practice in the evening was because the music soothed Billy. And now look at him. Over the last few years as you’ve played Billy has emerged from his shell and has come to enjoy a rich emotional and social life that would have been unavailable to him had you practiced in the mornings.”

Has Jones the parent committed an immoral act by failing to secure Bonnie’s consent to practice in the evening as a benefit to her brother? I don’t think so. On the contrary, Jones is fully within his rights as a parent to require Bonnie to practice in the evening in a way that benefits her brother. And it would be proper for Bonnie in retrospect to look upon those difficult evenings of practice with a deepened joy and satisfaction in the recognition that her playing had benefited her brother so wonderfully.

By the same token, God is fully within his rights as creator and sustainer of all things to postpone a personal relationship with Liz by a decade in a way that benefits other people. And just as Bonnie can now appreciate the way that her practicing benefited her brother, so Liz can appreciate the way that her struggles with belief benefited those she encountered.

On Divine Hiddenness: J.L. Schellenberg Responds to My Review

A few days ago I posted my review of philosopher John L. Schellenberg’s fine book The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God. Professor Schellenberg emailed me a response this morning and he has agreed to have it posted here. So without further ado, here is Professor Schellenberg:

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I’ve now taken a longer look at your review. Thanks again for the kind words, and for the signs of charitable intent. Thanks also for mentioning ‘ultimism’ and (one aspect of) its significance. That term is the tip of a submerged iceberg. I mean the larger part of my work in philosophy of religion. Because this hasn’t received as much attention as my work on hiddenness — in my opinion, at least in part because people in our part of the world are still quite non-philosophically obsessed with things theistic — it is often assumed that I’ve been hammering away at hiddenness all these years. But in fact that topic has received less than one-third of my time in philosophy, and I would regard the other work as more important.

As for your objection to my hiddenness argument: it is cleverly developed. But, first, you mistakenly present it as an objection to premise 2. Given how the relevant terms are defined, 2 is necessarily true, and 1 is your proper target. Second, there is, curiously, no attempt — either in your review or in the discussion at your blog — to determine how, from within the resources summarized in my book, I might seek to deal with this objection. (Given the previous point, one must now say “…with this objection, regarded as an objection to 1.”) As it happens, the book supplies more than one way of arguing that such a move is unsuccessful — I won’t spell these out here, since it was to avoid doing this sort of thing that I wrote the book! I do see heavy reliance in the blog discussion on thoughts opposed to the argument, such as the thought that a possibility of the sort required will be quite easy to come by, and the (related) thought that the hiddenness argument is best construed non-deductively. But coming before any real engagement with what the book suggests in support of itself, such moves are in danger of begging the question.

There is a general point here. This is that critical interaction with a philosopher’s work is fully charitable and likely to further inquiry only when, exercising intellectual empathy, one takes into account how the criticism and its prospects are likely to appear to that philosopher. Unfortunately, the point is applicable fairly generally too. So you needn’t feel that I have only you and your blogging companions in mind when making it!

Fundamentalism sells … and moderation is a voice crying in the wilderness

Last year I was interviewed on the nationally syndicated radio show The Firing Line with Michael Brown to talk  about my then new book Is the Atheist My Neighbor? It was a very enjoyable interview and surprisingly Brown didn’t really push back on my thesis despite the fact that he is a Christian conservative.

Nor was Brown the only occasion where I received a warm welcome from a Christian conservative radio show. At the time I had another congenial interview with Christian conservative commentator Mike Dutko. Like Brown, Dutko is a fixture of conservative Christian American talk radio. Despite this fact, Dutko was thoughtful, congenial, and broadly receptive toward my thesis.

Evidence of lasting change, a shift in the landscape, a new advance in understanding and dialogue?

Don’t bet on it.

Yesterday I received the following email from Michael Brown’s ministry promoting Ray Comfort’s new movie on atheism:

That email summarizes well the non-impact of Is the Atheist My Neighbor? on the wider cultural conversation. Apparently Christians generally prefer thinking atheism is merely a delusion with no intellectual credibility. Thus even if folks like Brown and Dutko embrace more nuanced categories in a single one-on-one conversation, in the wake of that conversation it is all too easy to retreat to the traditional binary oppositions.

In retrospect I probably shouldn’t be that surprised. The real lesson for me in the last year is that it isn’t just Christians who prefer Ray Comfort. Atheists do as well. I naively believed that atheists would be interested in the argument of Is the Atheist My Neighbor? but instead the book was roundly ignored. Indeed, it even managed to court hostility from some atheists. (See “Apathy, Hostility, and Is the Atheist My Neighbor?”)

As I have already noted (more than a few times!) I sent out more than a dozen review copies to atheist bloggers and podcasters who had agreed to review the book. Yet, not one of them went on to write a review. I guarantee if you sent those same atheists a copy of Ray Comfort’s newest book, you’d get at least a few angry reviews.

Case in point, look how many atheists prefer to read about Ken Ham’s creation museum and Ark Encounter rather than the nuanced and thoughtful work in theology and science that is produced by scholars like John Polkinghorne, Philip Clayton, R.J. Russell or Nancey Murphy. 

To be sure, there are exceptions on both sides, but the exceptions are dwarfed by the masses who prefer simple, stark categories, carnival barkers and black/white caricatures.

And so it is with a ridiculous new film like Comfort’s The Atheist Delusion. Conservative Christians rally their morally-indignant and self-confident base behind it. Meanwhile, atheists rally their morally-indignant and self-confident base against it.

In other words, fundamentalism sells … and moderation is a voice crying in the wilderness.

The Hiddenness Argument Revealed: A Review

J.L. Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God (Oxford University Press, 2015).

The writer of Ecclesiastes famously opined, “There is nothing new under the sun.” It’s a sentiment that might seem at times to characterize the field of philosophy of religion. To be sure, there are new advances, but new arguments for or against God? Now that’s a rare thing indeed.

And yet, just over twenty years ago Canadian philosopher J.L. Schellenberg did develop a novel argument against God’s existence. Commonly called “the divine hiddenness” argument (though Schellenberg prefers the simpler moniker “the hiddenness argument”), the core datum is surprisingly simple: “the existence of God invites our belief less strongly than it would in a world created by God.” (vii) Based on this feature of the world — the apparent hiddenness of God — Schellenberg argues that God does not exist.

Schellenberg initially developed this argument in his 1993 monograph Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Since then, the hiddenness argument has spawned a voluminous literature, a clear indicator that it has caught the imagination of atheist and theist alike.

The Argument

Now Schellenberg has written an accessible introduction to his argument and the wider debate it has spawned. While The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s new challenge to belief in God is intended for a general readership, Schellenberg does not sacrifice rigor or precision on the altar of accessibility.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about the argument.

Chapter 1 begins with “Some Basic Tools” to orient the non-philosopher to the field. For example an “argument” is a piece of reasoning: “Not that philosophers don’t ever fight and have arguments. But they’re supposed to avoid this by giving arguments–careful reasoning for their point of view….” (2) Schellenberg goes on to discuss the importance of validity (logical form, including modus ponens and modus tollens) and soundness (truth). This material may seem rather basic for some, but there is an economy and clarity in Schellenberg’s writing that makes this fruitful material even for the philosopher who can discover precise new ways to convey basic concepts. If his classroom is anything like his book, Schellenberg must be a great teacher.

In chapter 2 Schellenberg lays out a “conceptual map” for the book that focuses on two concepts: hiddenness and ultimism. Schellenberg acknowledges that the term “hiddenness” is potentially misleading in that “what’s hidden exists.” (14) Thus, the concept might seem to presuppose theism. The real question is whether the apparent hiddenness of God is best interpreted as God actually hiding or whether, in fact, it supports the conclusion that God doesn’t exist.

And what of ultimism? Schellenberg explains:

“Ultimism … is the general claim that there is a reality ultimate in three ways: in the nature of things (metaphysically), in inherent value (axiologically), and in its importance for our lives (soteriologically). And that’s all it says….” (18)

Ultimism concerns the most basic or fundamental facts of reality as regards these three areas. Western monotheism presents one theory of ultimism, namely one which seeks to ground the nature of things, inherent value, and salvific significance in the nature of an absolute personal being. But there are other ultimist theories. Thus, the theistic question is whether the ultimate reality is best explained in terms of a personal being.

As an aside, Schellenberg’s concept of ultimism is very helpful and I wish more Christian apologists would come to terms with it. How common it is to find Christian apologists assuming that atheism is committed to nihilism or some other bleak view of the world. But atheists are free to pursue impersonal ultimist theories as surely as theists pursue personal ultimist theories.

In chapter 3, aptly titled “Why so late to the show?” Schellenberg considers why the hiddenness argument was not developed prior to his ground-breaking work. Schellenberg includes an interesting survey of anticipations of his argument in intellectual history and also discusses the relationship between hiddenness and the problem of evil. As he notes, these problems need to be distinguished. While suffering is a problem (i.e. a state of disvalue) whether God exists or not, the same is not true of nonbelief in God, for this is only a problem if God does exist: “The hiddenness argument in its very specific emphasis on nonbelief doesn’t require nonbelief to be bad at all.” (31)

Schellenberg begins to unpack the argument in chapter 4. He starts with some personal background, noting how he grew up in a Christian home on the Canadian prairies where atheism was all but unthinkable (35). Eventually, questions began to present themselves as young Schellenberg wrestled with the apparent religious ambiguity of the world. As a Christian he was faced with the fact that “honest doubt about God is possible.” (37) But this didn’t seem to make sense. If God desired to share with his creatures “a conscious, interactive, and positively meaningful relationship” (38), why would God leave room for doubt about his very existence? These troubling observations gradually formed into the kernel of a skeptical argument:

“If there was good reason for God to prevent religious ambiguity, then this very evidential situation might be disambiguating, showing that all things considered–that is, with the fact of ambiguity included in the evidence–the world wasn’t religiously ambiguous but instead spoke clearly against the existence of God.” (37)

To be sure, Schellenberg wasn’t naively assuming that God is obliged to behave like the overbearing aunt at Thanksgiving dinner who pinches your cheeks before enveloping you in a bear hug.  In other words, God may very well remain at some distance from us, like a still small voice, allowing human creatures the space to develop a relationship on our own terms. But God will nonetheless be available to those looking to find him. And yet God seems to be unavailable — hidden — from many people who earnestly desire a relationship with him.

Over the next fifty pages Schellenberg carefully assembles an argument, step by step, from this puzzling datum of divine hiddenness, culminating in a summary presentation of the argument on page 103:

(1) If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person.

(2) If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.

(3) If a perfectly loving God exists, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists (from 1 and 2).

(4) Some finite persons are or have been nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.

(5) No perfectly loving God exists (from 3 and 4).

(6) If no perfectly loving God exists, then God does not exist.

(7) God does not exist (from 5 and 6).

In chapter 8 Schellenberg offers some clarifications of the premises and some brief responses to objections.

The book then concludes with a brief word on the way forward under the title “After Personal Gods.” Schellenberg writes: “Ultimism is too impressive an idea for us rightly to suppose it exhausted by personal gods.” (121) In short, one may still believe there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But if Schellenberg is correct, a personal God is not among them.

Evaluating the Argument

Schellenberg’s intent was to write an introduction to the hiddenness argument that is accessible, brief, and vigorous (ix). The Hiddenness Argument is all those things, but I think the adjective that best describes it is elegant, as in gracefully refined. Like a wooden banister that has been worn perfectly smooth by hours of 2000 grit sandpaper, so the sentences and paragraphs of this book are worn smooth by years of reflection on the topics addressed therein. The result is a model of philosophy of religion, a concise and elegant work that is ready to unsettle, encourage, and ignite a passion for philosophical reasoning in the reader.

And what of the success of the argument itself? Schellenberg observes, “I don’t assume that every well-functioning intellect, after reading the previous chapters of this book, will be pointing unwaveringly toward atheism.” (104) I count myself in that camp. While Schellenberg has masterfully articulated an elegant argument that is logically valid and has plausible premises, I am unpersuaded.

Since the hiddenness argument is logically valid, if I want to avoid the conclusion I will need to deny at least one of the premises. In this review, I will challenge premise (2):

(2) If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.

Before progressing, we should get a sense of precisely what Schellenberg means by “personal relationship.” He defines the concept as follows: “a conscious, interactive, and positively meaningful relationship.” (38) He also adds that it encompasses “the general and familiar idea of positively meaningful interaction between persons that they are aware of experiencing.” (40) Thus, for Schellenberg, if a person is to have a personal relationship with God, that person must be conscious of God and the fact that they are in relationship with God, and this entails that the person believe the proposition “God exists”. Consequently, any person who denies the proposition “God exists” is not in a personal relationship with God.

My first concern comes when I reflect on the relationship of a developing child to their parent. There is no doubt that a parent/child relationship should normally develop to the point where the young child is aware of the parent as a person with whom the child is in relationship. In other words, a parent/child relationship should grow to the point where it constitutes what Schellenberg calls a “personal relationship.”

But even so, that relationship is existentially significant for both parties long before it ever becomes a personal relationship by Schellenberg’s definition. This is important because while the non-resistant nonbeliever lacks a personal relationship with God, it does not follow that this individual lacks an existentially significant (or even a soteriologically effective) relationship with God.

So here’s the first question for us. Could something similar to the parent/child relationship be true of the relationship between God and truly non-resistant nonbelievers? Could God be in existentially significant relationships with human persons that have not yet developed to the stage of personal relationship?

Before proceeding further, let’s note that there is an obvious problem with the analogy I just proposed. The small child only lacks a personal relationship with the parent because they are cognitively undeveloped (e.g. an infant) or cognitively deficient (e.g. mentally handicapped). But the non-resistant nonbeliever who desires to know if God exists is not like this. They are cognitively capable of grasping God’s existence and they want to know if God exists. So why would God not reveal his existence to these individuals, thereby allowing this existentially significant relationship to advance to the status of a full-fledged personal relationship?

Before addressing that question, let me point out that an existentially significant relationship that lacks the dimension of personal relationship is not as limited or impoverished as you might think. Consider the case of Liz, a young lady who doesn’t believe in God but who does believe in what she calls “absolute goodness” (a view on the spectrum of impersonal forms of ultimism). Liz seeks to cultivate virtue in accord with this absolute goodness that she believes enlivens the universe and provides purpose and significance to human life. Shortly after her thirtieth birthday God will reveal himself to Liz at which point the existentially significant relationship that Liz has with the Almighty will graduate to a full-fledged personal relationship. In that moment Liz realizes that her belief in “absolute goodness” was in fact, a belief in God. In other words, she now recognizes that the absolute goodness in which she believed is a person.  This is undoubtedly a critically important advance in her understanding, but note that it is indicative of continuity (Liz always believed absolute goodness exists) as much as discontinuity (Liz comes to believe that absolute goodness is personal).

But why would God wait until Liz’s thirtieth birthday to reveal his personal existence to her, especially when she was non-resistant the entire time? The simple answer is that God would do so if he had morally sufficient reasons to defer that revelation.

Like what, you ask? Here’s one possible scenario. It is possible that in the decade during which she is an atheist, Liz will bring many resistant nonbelievers to a greater understanding of absolute goodness, an understanding which provides a crucial step for those individuals eventually becoming non-resistant and then later moving into a personal relationship with God. And counterfactually, had God revealed himself to Liz at an earlier time, her witness as a theist would have been rendered ineffectual for these particular individuals that God wanted to reach. (Perhaps they would have tuned out Liz’s evangelical Christian preaching about the personal absolute goodness, but they carefully assimilated her preaching about impersonal absolute goodness.) Thus, God providentially delays revealing himself personally to Liz because he can reach people through Liz’s state of nonbelief that he would not be able to reach through Liz’s state of belief.

So far as I can see, scenarios of this kind are certainly possible, indeed, in my view they are plausible. Moreover, they appear to me to offer morally sufficient reasons for God to defer revealing himself personally to non-resistant nonbelievers like Liz. Consequently, I remain unpersuaded by premise (2).

That said, let me conclude this review on a positive note by reiterating my admiration for The Hiddenness Argument. This book deserves careful study and it belongs on the shelf of every person interested in questions of theology and philosophy of religion.

If you benefited from this review, please consider up-voting it at amazon.com.

Thanks to OUP Canada for a review copy of this book.

What would Jesus say to Caitlyn Jenner?

This is the plenary address I gave in May at the 2016 FCA Canadian National Convention.

* * *

Good evening! I am truly honored to be joining you here at the FCA Canadian National Convention to speak on a topic that I assure you I have never addressed in public before: What would Jesus say to Caitlyn Jenner?

Caitlyn Jenner attends the 2016 Vanity Fair Oscar Party (Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Who is Caitlyn Jenner?

For starters, who is Caitlyn Jenner?

Well, to talk about Caitlyn, we first need to talk about Bruce. As a child of the 1970s, I knew of Bruce Jenner. Everybody knew of Bruce Jenner. Winner of the gold medal in decathalon at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, he was lauded as an “all-American hero” and the “world’s greatest athlete,” one who had carried the pride of a nation as he shamed the Soviets in the midst of the Cold War.

As for me, as a small child I may not have understood the decathalon or the Cold War, but I knew Bruce Jenner as the hero immortalized on the box of cereal I ate at breakfast.

Fast-forward thirty years and Bruce Jenner returned to the public spotlight, albeit under somewhat less glorious circumstances. This time Bruce appeared as patriarch and stepfather to the tempestuous socialite children of his third wife, Kris Kardashian on a reality television program.

But even if reality TV was a long way from the Montreal Olympic Stadium, Bruce remained the senior statesman of sport, endurance, and the indomitable American spirit.

And then came the bombshell last April. It turns out that Bruce Jenner, Olympic gold medalist, all-American hero, and world’s greatest athlete had long concealed a deep dark secret. It’s called gender dysphoria, a term which refers to the ongoing experience of significant dysphoria or distress with one’s biological and socially recognized gender. To put it bluntly, all his life Bruce Jenner had never been happy with his male gender. All his life he had understood himself to be female.

But on that memorable April day, Bruce wasn’t simply announcing his dysphoria to the world. He was also announcing his intention to address it by transitioning, socially and medically, to becoming a woman.

A couple months later came the July Vanity Fair cover which introduced the remade one-time Olympic star to the world with the simple declaration, “Call me Caitlyn.”

The story of Caitlyn Jenner is not, however, simply the latest entry in the salacious twenty-four hour news cycle. At a symbolic level, Caitlyn’s story also embodies deep cultural trends toward redefinitions of sexuality, gender and personal identity, trends which many Christians believe are deeply opposed to a biblical and Christian view of the world.

The transgender issue is simply one of several issues that are included in an ever lengthening list of letters. LGBTI: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersexual. If you don’t know what all those terms mean, at least know that this broad coalition demands rights and recognition for sexual minorities that are seen to have been long censured and marginalized by the church and wider culture.

The challenge is not simply the transgender individual, or even the wider LGBTI community. Rather, the issue is the Christian witness to a world that often seems to be moving further away. Forget ships passing in the night. Increasingly we seem to be ships moving in completely opposite directions.

All this presses the question: how do we live Christian faithfulness to this world to which we’ve been called? How do we interact with the LGBTI community?

And what, after all, would Jesus say to Caitlyn Jenner?

What are (some) Christians saying?

Before we get to Jesus, let’s consider what some Christians have been saying. As you can imagine, the Christian reaction to Caitlyn has been decidedly negative, bordering on outright hostility. Popular Christian blogger Matt Walsh wrote an article for The Blaze titled “Bruce Jenner is not a woman. He is a sick and delusional man.” In other cases, the response was dismissive and sarcastic. Mike Huckabee, then a nominee for the GOP nomination for president, commented as follows:

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”

Whatever else you might think of Bruce or Caitlyn Jenner, it seems to me that Huckabee’s equation of the enduring pain and confusion of gender dysphoria to a flip excuse to get into the girls shower shows extraordinarily little by way of compassion or understanding.

Over the last year I have heard similar sentiments to those of Matt Walsh and Mike Huckabee shared time and again within the Christian community.

Here we find a kind of dismissiveness and hostility that, in its ugliest and most troubling forms, is sometimes expressed in outright hatred. In 2004 Jimmy Swaggart said the following of homosexuals in a sermon: “I’m gonna be blunt and plain. If one of ‘em ever looks at me like that I’m gonna kill ‘im and tell God he died.”

Granted, Swaggart’s sentiment may be extreme, but few can doubt that the Christian church’s response to the gay and LGBTI community has often ranged somewhere between stern disapproval and outright hostility. Philip Yancey notes in his book What’s so Amazing About Grace, one homosexual man he interviewed who observed pointedly: “As a gay man, I’ve found it’s easier for me to get gay sex on the streets than to get a hug in the church.”

Let’s pause there for a moment. Is this true? Is it really that difficult for a gay man or a transgender woman to get a hug in church? Of course, it depends on the church. But in many churches, the answer, surely, is yes.

Christianity and the Culture War

But perhaps you can forgive the church for this state of hostility. You see, remember those two ships I mentioned? The ones that are sailing away from one another? The church and culture? Well, they’re not just sailing away. They’re also firing incendiaries back at one another.

In short, the ships are at war, a culture war. In an article titled “Are Christians losing the culture war?” Os Hillman writes:

“In 1997 Ellen DeGeneres kissed a woman on national television. This led to a new strategy from the gay community. Come out in the open, portray a positive image, go into arts and entertainment and media as scriptwriters and actors and penetrate mainstream by showing healthy gay relationships on TV so that America will be desensitized to their aversion to the gay lifestyle.”

Hillman goes on to offer strategic directives to guide the church in defeating the gay agenda and winning the culture war.

So in the view of Hillman and many other Christians, we’re at war with the LGBTI community. It’s a culture war. And when you’re at war, hostility to the enemy is a predictable by-product.

And yes, that means that hugs are tough to come by. You don’t hug enemies.

Beyond the Culture War

I do agree with Hillman and other Christians that there are some significant differences in the beliefs, lifestyles, and goals of those within and without the church. But I disagree that a culture war is a helpful or accurate way to think about that difference. Certainly not if it is the primary way.

The problem is that I don’t see Jesus prepping us for a war with the world. Rather, I see him calling us to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19), to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16), to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to invite the stranger in, to give clothes to the naked, to nurse the sick, and to visit those in prison (Matthew 25:35-6).

The early church understood this well. In the mid-fourth century the pagan Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate worried openly about the way that Christians were winning over the hostile Roman Empire with their acts of love and compassion. He says:

“[Christianity] has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the …  Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.”

Now let’s put this in perspective. Julian is writing mere decades after Christians were being actively imprisoned, tortured, and executed for their faith. He writes as a Roman pagan who worshipped the ancient Roman gods. If ever Christians had grounds to judge a group their enemy, it was here, with the pagan Romans that had persecuted them. And instead, Christians chose to care for the poor and marginalized, not only of those within their community but those of their Roman persecutors as well. And so successful were they that the great pagan emperor Julian is shamed by their actions.

The early church understood well the old saying that the church is the only organization that exists for the sake of its non-members. Or as the sociologist might put it, the church exists not simply for the benefit of its in-group members, but also for the out-group, the outsiders, those who don’t belong.

In Jesus’ day, the in-group included the religious leaders, Pharisaical teachers of the law, members of the Herodian class. The out-group included the reviled and despised: tax collectors, prostitutes, adulterers, the handicapped, lepers, the poor and disenfranchised, the Samaritans, and so on.

Jesus wasn’t in a culture war with these people, with this out-group. Far from it: they came from far and wide to spend time with him. They sought him out. They loved him.

The church’s outgroup today includes many: secularists, Muslims, atheists, and yes, members of the LGBTI community.

And just as the fourth century church followed Jesus in loving those on the margins, so we are called to do so as well.

Our call is not to take up arms, but to extend our arms, not close our fists, but open our hands, not bar the door, but invite the other in. We are called, in short, to hospitality.

But what is hospitality?

Today we think of hospitality as inviting good friends over for dinner. But in the biblical vision, that which gripped the church, hospitality was very different. It centered on welcoming the outsider, the stranger, the outgroup. It welcomed the prostitute and the pagan, the tax collector and the Samaritan.

That was the ideal, anyway.

Sadly, the reality throughout church history has often been very far from that ideal. The fourth century church may have loved people to the chagrin of Julian the Apostate. But not every church has loved the marginalized as it should.

Failure to Love

I lived for two years in England while completing my PhD. During that time my wife and I visited a country church. As we walked through the quaint little church, we noticed that each pew had a little door at the end, and each door had a little lock. I asked the vicar about the doors, and he explained that the best pews in many English churches used to be rented monthly to the wealthier patrons. Often these private pews would include a brass plaque announcing the resident family of each pew. They also often included doors with locks, presumably to keep out the riffraff. I later learned that English pews were being rented as late as 1970.

Later, while studying this topic, I came across the description of a poor, unchurched Englishman who described the one time he darkened the door of an English church. “I did go once,” he wrote, “but the people were all shut in, and the folk in the boxes looked at me as if I had got in without paying: so after walking up and down several times, like a man in a station trying to get a seat when the train is full, I went home.”

How the heart of God must grieve at our locked and labelled pews.

Today, we may not have locked doors at the end of our pews, at least not literally. But how many invisible doors do we have in our churches and Christian communities which keep the outsiders at bay?

And how often do we fail to extend the hospitality to which we’ve been called?

Two years ago while on vacation I visited a church with my family. As we walked in the front doors a large sign declared: “You are awesome!” Well thanks, I thought, you’re not so bad yourself. We walked in the sanctuary and joined the singing. After twenty minutes, the pastor invited the congregants to welcome each other to church. Although we were surrounded by people not a single person made eye contact let alone shook our hands. For two minutes we stood their dumbly as people around us greeted, hugged, and chatted with one another.

Suddenly I didn’t feel so awesome anymore.

And if it’s often tough for the visitor, one can only imagine the challenge for a person who is visibly gay or transgender.

Philip Yancey offers the following observation:

“Every gay person I interviewed could tell hair-raising tales of rejection, hatred, and persecution. Most had been called names and beaten up too many times to count. Half of the people I interviewed had been disowned by their families. Some of the AIDS patients had tried to contact their estranged families to inform them of the disease but had received no response. One man, after ten years of separation, was invited home for Thanksgiving dinner in Wisconsin. His mother seated him apart from the family, at a separate table, set with Chinette plates and plastic utensils.”

I can’t help but think here of a passage from Brennan Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel:

“The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.’ ‘What are you complaining about?’ said God. ‘They won’t let Me in either.”

Jesus at War

While the sinners, the wayfarers, the ragamuffins, the outgroup, while they loved Jesus, make no mistake, he was at war.

But he was at war not with human beings. He was not at war with sinners. And he’s not at war with LGBTI people.

Jesus was and is at war with the devil. In Acts 10:38 Peter observes that Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil”. As he delivered people from bondage, he beat back the devil’s hold in the world.

As his ministers went out to proclaim the kingdom Jesus exulted that he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18).

And as I John 3:8 succinctly states: “from the beginning the Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”

Jesus didn’t come to do battle with sinners. He came to free them from the devil. In Hebrews 2:14-15 we read:

“14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

And as Paul observed in Ephesians 6:12, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.

At War with the LGBTI Community?

At this point let me introduce an imaginary objector. He says: “Wait a moment. It may be true that in the grand sense we are ultimately at war with the devil. But isn’t it also true that very often those who are in bondage to the devil are also actively opposed to Christ? And thus, as we battle the devil, so we are battling his children. After all, in John 8:44 Jesus denounced his enemies by saying: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.” Jesus denounced those who opposed his ministry as children of the devil keen to fulfill the devil’s desires. Given that fact isn’t it appropriate to think that we are in a battle with advocates of the LGBTI community insofar as we believe they are promoting a worldview counter to the teaching of scripture and the kingdom of God?”

In short, isn’t there a sense were we really are at war with the LGBTI community?

The short answer is yes. I do agree that there is a sense where those who are in bondage to the devil are at war with the kingdom of light. But having said that, let me make two essential follow-up points.

First, keep in mind whom Jesus is addressing in John 8:44. He isn’t speaking here to outsiders, those on the margins, the ordinary suspects, the usual sinners. Rather, he’s speaking to insiders, to religious leaders, to those who fancied themselves Abraham’s children. That which was true of first century Israel is true of the church today as well. In other words, those who fancy themselves insiders may in fact be working directly in opposition to God’s kingdom. And that’s a fact that should humble us all.

The English Christian writer Harry Blamires, a younger contemporary of C.S. Lewis, talks about this sobering fact in his book The Christian Mind. He writes:

“the discerning Christian knows that a cunning or intelligent man may lead a life of almost diabolical pride, in which he strives in every moment to minister to the desires and vanities of his own inflated self—and yet may pass for a respectable, law-abiding citizen. Indeed he may rise to a position of eminence in the world by the persistent and subtle practice of the most calculated self-service. He may become a judge, packing off poor men to jail with words of stern condemnation ostensibly reflecting the indignation of righteous men, and yet he may be, by virtue of a cancerous inner self-centredness, the greatest sinner, essentially the most evil man, ever to have entered the courtroom in which he sits—though its dock has accommodated a stream of murders, thieves, and perverts for the last fifty years. The Christian mind cannot overlook this possibility.”

Let’s say it again: the nature of the human heart is such that the greatest visible followers of God may be those most opposed to his kingdom.

So while we can remain open to the sense that we can be at war with members of the LGBTI community, we need to add with equal speed that we can be at war with the demonic elements of our own Christian communities. And as Paul memorably recognized in Romans 7, even of our own sinful nature.

Let me make one more point on the motif of battle before moving on. While Jesus could indeed construe his interaction with fallen human beings as a battle, the means of battle for those who follow Christ is revolutionized by Jesus. As we march into battle we adopt a cruciform shape, taking up our cross as did our Lord. And as he prayed forgiveness for those who persecuted and opposed him, so that remains our call as well. That’s what it means to do battle as we bring the life-saving message of the gospel, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. In Jesus’ topsy turvy world, war is carried out by acts of love.

Steps to Love

If we are called to extend hospitality to others, this is because of a prior call: the call to love. That’s why I really appreciate the title of New Testament scholar Preston Sprinkle’s new book, People to be Loved: Why Homosexuality is not Just an Issue.

While we are called to love people from the LGBTI community, I think it is important to be honest about two particular challenges to this call to love.

Christians (often) don’t know how to relate to the LGBTI community

The first challenge is the fact that, truth be known, quite often many Christians find it difficult to love people from the LGBTI community.

Philip Yancey honestly admits as much in What’s so Amazing About Grace? where he honestly shares the deep shock he experienced upon discovering that his close friend Mel White was homosexual.

In the 1980s Mel White was a leader in the Christian community. He taught theology at Fuller Seminary and he was a ghostwriter for famous Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But he was also homosexual and had struggled with this deep, dark secret since his early teens. Yancey describes his own shock and confusion when Mel revealed to him his dark secret. Yancey reflects:

“I did not know one gay person. I knew nothing about the subculture. I joked about it and told stories about the Gay Pride Parade (which marched down my street) to my suburban friends, but I had no homosexual acquaintances, much less friends. The idea repulsed me.”

Well, Philip Yancey is surely among the more gentle, humble and Christlike Christians you are likely to meet. And yet he is honest enough to admit that the very idea of having a homosexual acquaintance or friend repulsed him.

Are you repulsed by the thought of a homosexual or transgender friend?

Let’s be honest with ourselves and recognize the personal obstacles that prevent us from recognizing that members of the LGBTI community are, as Preston Sprinkle says, people to be loved.

For many Christians, the key problem here is a distinction between sin and capital SIN. Lower case sin is what we do, and while it is wrong we don’t view it as placing us beyond the pale of love and forgiveness. By contrast, capital S SIN is especially offensive and evil and disgusting.

Here’s a capital S SIN if ever there was one: pedophilia.

In the film The Woodsman actor Kevin Bacon delivers one of his bravest performances as he plays a pedophile named Walter who is attempting to reintegrate to society and yes, to do the right thing. And yet, he continues to struggle with his own deep-seated sexual attraction to children.

It’s not an easy movie to watch, and Walter is not easy to like or to empathize with.

In a memorable review of the movie, film critic Roger Ebert poignantly observes, “We are quick to forgive our own trespasses, slower to forgive those of others. The challenge of a moral life is to do nothing that needs forgiveness. In that sense, we’re all out on parole.”

Truer words have rarely been spoken by a film critic. We are all out on parole. And if we understood the depth of our own sin, brokenness and alienation from God, we’d probably be less likely to ask, “how can I love that person?” and more likely to ask “How can that person love me?”

Do you remember when Rob Bell’s book Love Wins came out several years ago? When it did it ignited a firestorm of controversy because Bell seemed to be flirting with the doctrine of universalism, that all people may one day be saved by Christ, that nobody will be eternally lost, that eventually God may save everybody into heaven.

There are many good biblical and theological reasons to be skeptical of Bell’s hopeful thesis. But there are also bad reasons, and the very worst I saw was by a well-known Christian leader who said, if universalism is true then Nazis will be in heaven, and so will murderers, and rapists, and pedophiles like Walter.

Yes, and so will you and so will I. But who decides what is the forgivable sin? Don’t we all tend to draw the line of loveable and forgiveable in such a way that it works to our favor?

And yet, we are called to love all as Christ has loved us.

Love is not Acceptance

This brings me to the second problem with loving the outgroup. I find that often Christians are worried that extending love and acceptance of a person entails love and acceptance of the choices that person makes in life. But of course, that isn’t true.

My mother and father were married in 1967. On their first Christmas together, they decided to start their marriage out on the right foot. While my mother prepared a huge spread – turkey, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, fresh baked bread and pie – my dad drove their old van to downtown Edmonton until he found several homeless men standing around. My dad pulled over and offered them Christmas dinner at his house. Ten men piled into that van and enjoyed several hours of food and fellowship at a warm and inviting suburban home.

By inviting them to dinner my parents weren’t confirming the choices they’d made in life. They simply wanted to extend Christ’s love.

Let me give you another example. Rosaria Butterfield was a lesbian English professor in the late 1990s when she wrote a letter to her local newspaper complaining about the Promise Keepers event that was coming to town. She received a response from a local pastor in town.

But Pastor Ken didn’t denounce her as a sodomite who was living against nature. Instead, he invited her over to his house for dinner to visit. And that initiated a journey of relationship building with Ken, his wife, and their Presbyterian congregation which transformed Rosaria’s life and is told in her bestselling book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.

To love people is not to agree with them. But it is to make space for them. To allow them to be heard. To extend hospitality and build relationships and bridges.

Ed Dobson is a self-described a fundamentalist Christian minister. You might expect, then, that he would be among those angrily toting protest signs at gay pride parades. Instead, in the height of the AIDS crisis Dobson made it his mission to reach out to the gay community of his native city, Grand Rapids, Michigan with a special focus on those stricken by this terrible illness. Dobson observed: “If I die and someone stands up at my funeral and says nothing but, ‘Ed Dobson loved homosexuals,’ I would feel proud.”

Personal Transformation

Thus far I’ve been describing the call of the Christian to love members of the LGBTI community as a rather one-sided affair in which we need to extend hospitality to others out of love for them.

But it is never one-sided. When you open yourself up to interaction with others you open yourself up to being changed in the process. That’s certainly the message that comes through in Philip Yancey’s complicated and challenging relationship with his friend Mel White.

I have not had many experiences with members of the LGBTI community, but as often as not, the experiences I have had have provided me with grounds to reconsider my own walk with Christ. Allow me to provide you with a couple examples.

The first is from the year 2000 when I was living in London, England. I remember the day well. I got onto the Tube – London’s subway – and squeezed into one of the last seats available on the crowded car. Sitting across from me were two homosexual men. One had his arm around the other and his hand in the other’s lap. They looked happy and I looked on with a mixture of discomfort bordering on disgust. At the next station the doors swung open and an elderly lady – seventy years or more – got onto the car. She looked around clearly scanning for a seat. Thirty pairs of eyes – mine included – looked blankly back.  To be fair, it wasn’t that I was openly refusing to offer my seat. Rather, it’s that it honestly never occurred to me to do so.

Suddenly one of the two gay men from across the car jumped up and warmly offered his seat while his friend flashed an inviting smile , waving her over and patting the seat. Immediately the Parable of the Good Samaritan flashed across my mind and I recognized myself as the teacher of the Law or the Levite too busy to stop and help. And there, right there, were two good Samaritans.

Fast-forward five years and I’m eating dinner with my wife and young daughter at Buddy Wonton Chinese Restaurant in Edmonton. Buddy Wonton has large plate glass windows and we were eating our meal right up against one of those windows. Suddenly a homeless man who was trudging by on the sidewalk stopped, sidled up to the window, and began staring through the glass looking at my plate of food.

This is the point in the story where I tell you that I got up and ordered an extra plate, right? Wrong. I waited impatiently for a couple minutes and then waved my hand dismissively in an invitation for him to “move along”. Immediately he snapped and the look of hunger was replaced by pure rage. “I’m going to kill you!” he screamed, pointing at me mere inches away on the other side of that plate glass window. “You. I’m going to kill you!”

I sat there stunned and embarrassed while the entire restaurant looked on, quietly chewing their chow mein as they took in the impromptu evening show.

There was a lesbian couple sitting a few tables away. The one lady was short and stocky with a brush cut. As I sat helplessly, she suddenly jumped up from her chair and walked outside to confront the man. She strode up to him and pointed a wagging finger at him. I don’t know what she said but after thirty seconds or so his shoulders slumped, he turned, and shuffled away. She came back into the restaurant and sat down with her consort to return to her meal.

A short time later we paid for our bill. And to my eternal shame, I never even said “Thank you”.

Conclusion

We began this talk with an individual’s pronouncement of gender reassignment which signaled a deeper cultural war between the Christian church and the LGBTI community. As we have proceeded I have encouraged us to recast our relationship to the world from that of cultural warfare to outreach, friendship, and love in emulation of Jesus Christ.

With all that in mind, I want to conclude with an illustration of the powerful impact of love from the ministry of Pope Francis, the beloved leader of the Catholic Church. As a Baptist, I have my share of theological disagreements with Francis. Don’t get me wrong. But I confess I have also been challenged by him.

In his first year in the pontificate, Pope Francis received many awards of distinction. But I have no doubt that the most surprising came from The Advocate, a well-known, public interest LGBT magazine which has been in print since 1967. The Advocate is the world’s leading activist LGBT publication.

Every year The Advocate has chosen to honor a person of the year who has supported the gay community. And in 2013 it chose Pope Francis.

Now one thing you need to understand immediately. Pope Francis has said nothing in his pontificate to revise the church’s teaching on homosexuality. That makes it all the more surprising.

So what earned him the title of person of the year? The cover of the magazine includes the following quote from Francis: “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?”

In case you’re wondering, Pope Francis is saying nothing here about the moral status of homosexual acts. Rather, he’s reorienting the conversation toward the call for all people to be transformed by Christ.

This fact was not lost on The Advocate. In the article on Francis they admit that “Pope Francis is still not pro-gay by today’s standard.” What drives the award is not a shift in doctrine but rather a “stark change in rhetoric”.

As the article concludes the writer summarize the main point: “Pope Francis did not articulate a change in the church’s teaching today, but he spoke compassionately….”

Like St. Francis, we don’t need to articulate a change in church teaching to speak compassionately.

With that we can return to the question with which we began:

What would Jesus say to Caitlyn Jenner?

To be honest, I’m not sure what he would say and I always want to be careful about undue speculation. But if I don’t know exactly what he would say, I have a good idea what he would do. He would reach out in love.

Just as he reached out and loved the tax collector, and the woman by the well, and the Samaritan, and the leper and the woman caught in adultery, and you and me.