theology
Don't know much about... anything!
Last night I took the opportunity to visit Conversation Cafe, a discussion group at a local coffeehouse that is led by my pastor. The guest speaker for the night was Rick, the minister from the local Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. It was, to say the least, an interesting night.
Rick is an older single man who has a fascinating life story. He has at various times in his life been a New York City taxicab driver, a journalist, a lawyer, and a teacher, in addition to being a minister for the past 15 years. He shared some of his beliefs and perspectives on spirituality, and it was quite a grab bag. He is an agnostic, but chooses to believe that God exists. He is happy with belief in things that he can see, feel, touch, and quantify, but is really unwilling to make truth judgements outside of that experience.
Rick told us that UUs are “sin shy”; they would acknowledge that there is some human behavior that just seems “evil” and that we can’t explain any other way, but that for most human actions that seem to be “sin” there is some other more useful explanation for their behavior, be it conditioning, circumstance, or something similar. He told us that the UU church has no creed, which is “actually harder than having a creed”, because you have to figure things out for yourself. Each person at that church can define God to be whatever they want God to be.
There was a decent bit of discussion throughout the night, but I felt like on the key questions he either didn’t understand quite what we were asking, or was quite skilled at dodging them. I tried to ask about one major conflict I saw in his thinking; maybe I didn’t phrase the question well. But I was trying to ask this: in one breath you say that God is whatever you make him to be, that your observations and reason are the definers of truth and reality for you. But in the next breath you admit that you are human, with a finite understanding, uncertainty, and weakness. Isn’t there a conflict there? Doesn’t that make your “truth” weak and uncertain? Doesn’t that make God weak and uncertain? I’m not sure he really understood the question; basically he just agreed that yes, he is human, and uncertainty is part of the human condition.
My heart breaks for this man who is so close to understanding some things, but still so far away. He spoke very candidly about having, in years past, a drinking problem. And it frustrated him greatly, because he saw it as a “moral failure”, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. Thinking of it as a moral failure “wasn’t useful” and “didn’t take you anywhere”. So he associated with some folks who encouraged him to see the drinking problem as a sickness rather than a moral failure, and he decided to accept that “truth” since it was useful, and allowed him a path to move on. Rick is so close; if only his eyes were opened to see that he is right, that sin (aka “moral failure”) is a dead end, and that we as humans are stuck. If only he could understand that the reason Jesus came, died, and rose again was to solve that sin problem. My prayer for Rick will be that he can come to faith in a God larger than his understanding, and know the grace that is greater than all our sins.
How far do we go to be "relevant"?
That’s the question that the InternetMonk asks in a column over the weekend. His summary:
The Gospel is relevant. Our methods can’t be irrelevant, but they have to allow the relevance of Christ to come to the forefront.
Amen, brother.
reasonable theological concern, or overly picky?
I was thinking through some songs that we haven’t sung for a while in church, and this issue came to mind, so I thought I’d share it here. One of my main criterion when selecting songs for the church to sing (and I plan the music for almost every week) is that they be theologically sound. This manages to disqualify a substantive number of modern praise songs, and a surprising number of older hymns from our hymnal. I might go so far as to say that this is my primary criterion. Certainly there are others; singability is right up there. But theological correctness has got to be at the top of the list.
So we come to today’s topic: the old chorus “Create In Me A Clean Heart”. The text is pretty much straight from Psalm 51:
Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.
Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Thy presence oh Lord,
And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation,
And renew a right spirit within me.
My theological nit is with the fifth and sixth lines. When David penned these words some 1500 years before Christ, the threat of having the Holy Spirit taken from him was quite a real one; he had seen a similar thing happen to Saul when Saul rebelled against God. At that time the Holy Spirit didn’t indwell all those who believed in God, but God specifically directed the Spirit to rest on certain people at certain times. But now we’re after Pentecost, and so those that believe are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit remains as a seal of our salvation. We’re not in danger of having God take it away.
So on to my theological question. While I love the submissive attitude of the first part of this chorus, I have real questions about singing those two lines, because I think they represent a fear or concern that we shouldn’t have. Is this an appropriate distinction to make? Or am I being overly picky? Your thoughts are appreciated.
Things aren't right
I’ve been reading several different books recently, and a discussion with Becky last night brought a bunch of them together in a way that helped clarify my thoughts a bit. Hopefully I can bring some of that clarity into this post.
As a person who grew up within the church and has been a believer for as long as I can remember, one of the things that’s been most difficult for me to understand is this: why would a non-believer be motivated to become a Christian? What’s the appeal? Now, you Calvinists out there will tell me that God has ordained it and its irresistible. I don’t want to get into that argument. I don’t disagree with you… much. But I’ve just never understood the appeal of the message to non-believers who are living basic, normal lives.
Last night Becky and I were talking over the passage from Acts that had been part of our reading for the day. (I don’t want that to sound too much like we’ve got it all together - we’re trying once again to get daily devotions started, and it’s tough, as always.) Becky’s comment on Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 was that it sounded wild, far-out, hard-to-believe… why would anybody be attracted to that story? It is a good question. Why would anybody be attracted to the story of a man who claimed to come from God, be God himself, who died, purportedly rose from the dead, etc? Qui bono? Who benefits?
That got me started thinking through some of the C. S. Lewis I’ve been reading lately. Actually, I’m reading The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi Jr. This Harvard professor compares and contrasts the lives and teachings of C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. It’s a good book, especially for those seekers who want to reason through the issues. Mostly it whets my appetite to go back and read Lewis again, Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man, God in the Dock… good stuff. Anyway, back to my thought process.
Readers of Mere Christianity will remember that Lewis' starting point for reasoning that there is a God is an argument from conscience; he argues that each of us has an inborn moral compass that understands that there is a moral standard. Right along with that is the fact that each of us transgresses that moral standard on a regular basis, which causes us problems with our fellow man and internal guilt.
So what’s the appeal of the gospel message? I’m starting to think that I’d start it off like this: “Things aren’t right.” I think that’s a place we can all agree on to start. Things aren’t right in the world, and things aren’t right with me personally. This causes pain, grief, guilt, death. Now let’s look at the grand sweep of the redemptive story that runs from Genesis to Revelation. God creates everything. Man corrupts it. Things aren’t right. Now here’s the beauty of the message: the whole rest of the story is about God’s work to make things right again. That is the message of the gospel.
Once we understand that, then we can get into details. Sin requires a sacrifice. Jesus once for all became that sacrifice in our place, and then conquered death by rising from the dead. One day He will establish a perfect kingdom, one where sin is done away with and things are right.
Now that’s a story I can get excited about. And I can understand why that story would resonate with the unbelieving world. We all understand things aren’t right. May God allow those unbelievers around us to to understand that He holds the solution to the problem.
The process of the Christian life...
Was reading today and found this wonderful quote from Martin Luther describing the process of the Christian life. It challenges and encourages me…
This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.
sticking to our guns
Ned Rice has a great column today on NRO where he makes a strong argument that the folks whining about the lack of liberalism in the new pope should suck it up, think about what they’re saying, take their beliefs (and the church’s beliefs) seriously, and then pack it up and leave if they’re really that unhappy. The column deals specifically with the Roman Catholic church, but I think the ideas are applicable to any person complaining about their church’s beliefs.
The whole column is worth reading, but I’ll copy a few of the choice lines here.
…a truly liberal Holy Father might have moved the Church towards the proverbial, doctrinal hat trick: allowing actively gay men to be Catholics, then ordaining them as priests, and then allowing them to marry their male partners. There’s a name for churches that condone that sort of thing, and that name is “Episcopalian.”
…if you believe that your church was literally founded by the Son of God, based on principles he personally handed down to His followers (as Catholics do), why would you make your church’s doctrine conveniently open to revision by its flock? It’s like deliberately designing a bucket with holes in it, then wondering why it won’t hold any water.
So if you think this or any other pope is just plain wrong on celibacy or homosexuality or anything else big, and this upsets you so much it interferes with your spiritual life, you’d be well advised to find yourself another church. Otherwise you’re like the orthodox Jew who, in light of recent developments, has taken it upon himself to decide that it’s all right for him to eat pork. You can be an orthodox Jew, and you can eat pork. You’re free to do either one. But folks, you just can’t do both. There are names for Catholics who don’t accept that they can’t do certain things and still receive the sacraments, and one of those names is Senator John Kerry.
And last but not least…
Warning of the “tyranny of relativism” that’s become so pervasive, Cardinal Ratzinger argued that it’s better to be guided by time-honored principles of morality than to be endlessly buffeted about by the myriad whims of conventional wisdom in the name of “freedom.” With the clear implication being, if you don’t like these principles the rest of us here have agreed to live by, maybe this isn’t the Church for you. Or as my Dad used to say during dinner, if you don’t like what we’re serving here, try next door.
Good stuff.
nowadays the world is lit by lightning
Peggy Noonan (one of my long-time favorite columnists, and a devout Roman Catholic) has a column today on OpinionJournal in which she crafts a tale of a group of Cardinals discussing and thinking over the qualifications for the next man who would be pope. I think she manages to hit on some of the characteristics that really mark a great leader.
(Now let’s not let this get into a discussion on the theology of the RC church, or the relative merits of whether or not John Paul II was a believer… that’s not the point. He was a great man and leader regardless.)
In Noonan’s piece, a rather hardened and cynical old Cardinal is trying to understand why so many people felt so devoted to JPII, why this outpouring of devotion for an old sick man who was constantly telling people what they should/shouldn’t do in regard to moral issues… what was the appeal? And then comes a moment of realization. She writes:
Maybe–maybe . . . Maybe people, being imperfect and human, live whatever lives they live but deep in their hearts–way down deep and much more than they know–they actually notice when somebody stands for truth. And they actually honor it. Maybe that’s why in all the big modern democracies they’d burst into tears when John Paul came by, when he was visiting America and France and Germany. Maybe they knew they were not necessarily living right themselves but they were grateful–they were grateful on behalf of civilization!–that there was a man like him among us. They recognized him and honored him in their hearts. And then word came that he’s dead and suddenly their hearts told their heads: Get on the train and go honor him. Because he adorned us. Because he was right. And we can’t lose this from civilization, this beacon in the darkness.
I think she hits it here: “they actually notice when somebody stands for truth. As a believer, I have Christ in me and I am called to live his truth. And as a person, I respond similarly when I see it in others. The qualities of a life well-lived, lived to uphold the truth. People like JPII. People closer to home, like Bob Dye, who has led the local Youth for Christ chapter for 35 years and radiates Christ through the community every day. People… just normal people, but who live out Christ’s truth every day.
Near the end of Noonan’s story, the Cardinals are in discussion about the qualities that will be needed in the new pope. One argues that the need a holy, devout man. Another argues that they also need a “rock star” - someone with an image and personality that will appeal to the younger generation. Then the voice of wisdom kicks in from a third.
“It would seem our duty is to choose a great man who is not necessarily a dramatic or endearing figure. The Holy Spirit will give him voice. Our time will need greatness. ‘For nowadays the world is lit by lightning.'”
OK, so she’s quoting Tennessee Williams with that last line… but the point remains. The flashes of lightning that illuminate the world will be those that come from the hearts of the faithful. Thanks, Peggy, for the reminder.
Foolish?
“God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools … and He has not been disappointed.”
This insight was voiced by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently while addressing a Knights of Columbus gathering. Scalia is a staunch Catholic, and while I won’t agree with all of his religious beliefs as part of the Roman Catholic church, he has this one exactly right. Paul wrote about this in First Corinthians chapter 1:
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
As Christians, we are constantly told by the world today that we are stupid for believing what we do.
Aren’t you smart enough to know that evolution is the way it happened and that creation is a myth? Are you so stupid as to believe that there is a God who is all-powerful? Have you yet to gain the understanding that we are the ultimate arbiters of what is moral? Come on, how stupid can you be?
At times I find it disheartening; at times only frustrating When I gain the correct perspective, then I can finally look past the insults and criticism to realize that I have a knowledge (through no merit of my own) that they don’t have, and regardless of how they ridicule me, it is still my duty to proclaim what I know to be true.
I look at it this way: if I were walking by somebody’s house and saw it burning, they’d want me to come tell them so they could escape. But what if I was walking by and somehow knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that their house was burning, even though they didn’t understand why. Wouldn’t I still have the moral imperative to tell them? If this were the case I would also be trying anything in my control to try to help them to understand how I knew.
In the case of my beliefs, they won’t be able to understand unless the Spirit enables them to respond to the message. However, I still have the moral imperative (and the command from God) to keep speaking the message, even if I am called a fool for saying it.
Here’s where I have to do some self-evaluation. I generally don’t like to be thought a fool. (Who does?) While I’m not willing to go change my beliefs so people won’t think I’m stupid, I too often keep my mouth shut when I really shouldn’t… thus providing the impression that I’m not a fool, when if I told them what I believed, they’d think I was. I think I need to open my mouth more. I’ll have to pray for the boldness to do it.
Scalia again:
“If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.”
Consider yourself challenged. I know I am.