The Roots of Christian Differences on Moral Issues

Posted on February 4, 2024 by salooper57

A wide variety of stances exists among self-professed Christians regarding the ethical and moral issues of our time, even though most of them Christians would agree that the Bible is an authoritative source for instruction on the virtuous life. How people who claim to base their beliefs and behaviors on the same source can differ so dramatically is part of a long and complicated story.

That story may go back to the first centuries after Christ, but for brevity’s sake, we will pick it up with the early 19th century biblical critic, philosopher, and theologian F.C. Baur. Immersed in the philosophical thought of G.W.F. Hegel, he looked at the Bible through a dialectical lens which sharply divided the theology of the Apostle Paul from the teaching of Jesus.

Fast-forward to another German theologian who was born almost a century later: Martin Dibelius. While Baur believed that Jesus’s views differed radically from the Apostle Paul’s and later Christianity’s, Dibelius believed that Jesus’s views cannot even be ascertained with any certainty.

This idea that a breach occurred between Jesus and the next generation of Christians, particularly in Pauline churches, has gripped biblical interpretation for generations. Jesus, as seen by Protestants who followed Baur and Dibelius, was a revolutionary who never intended to instruct his followers on how to live in society. Why bother? He thought society was about to be overthrown by the establishment of God’s kingdom.

Furthermore, this radical Jesus taught his followers to expect his return within their own lifetimes. So, the kinds of ethical instruction he gave – turn the other cheek, love your enemy, give sacrificially – were only intended for use within the Christian community, and that for a brief time. When Jesus did not return as expected, the church was forced to turn to other sources for ethical instruction for living in the wider world.

To support this view, Dibelius points to the various “household codes” in the New Testament, found in Ephesians, Colossians, 1st Peter and elsewhere. These bear a resemblance to household codes that were part of the Greco-Roman world of the time, and particularly to those of the Stoics. According to Dibelius, Jesus’s “Christianity was unprepared for meeting [the needs] of Family and Fatherland” and was forced to borrow ethical instruction from non-Christian sources.

If he was right, if as early as the Apostle Paul, Christians were looking to secular society for their ethical instruction, then Christians are free to do the same today. They can, for example, look to the American Academy of Pediatrics for ethical instruction relating to children with gender dysphoria. Similar sources might be sought for instruction regarding same-sex relationships, abortion, immigration, and all the other hot-button topics of the day.

F. C. Baur’s views have largely been discarded, shipwrecked on the shores of later biblical scholarship. Dibelius’ contention that the Bible’s household codes were borrowed from the Stoics has been effectively challenged by John Howard Yoder, J.N. Sevenster, Rachel Held Evans, and many others. The content of the biblical household codes differs significantly from Greco-Roman codes and has its roots in Judaism and Jesus rather than in Stoicism.

This brief, historical survey of Christian ethical thought is obviously incomplete, but it makes an important point and raises a serious question. The point is that ideas are powerful and make a difference in the real world. How many people, even in the contemporary church, know who F. C. Baur and Martin Dibelius were? But their ideas have had lasting impact on how Christians approach today’s most vexing moral issues.

The question that is raised is this: If Baur and Dibelius were wrong to posit the existence of a theological chasm between Jesus and the Apostle Paul, if the apostolic writings are faithful to Jesus’s position on real world issues, does it not seem unwise to give contemporary moralists more weight than we afford the Bible?

We are at sea, sailing through the rocky shoals of contemporary morality, always in danger of shipwreck. Because the needle on the compass of today’s moralists never stops spinning, I choose to be guided by the wisdom of Jesus and his apostles.

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From Caricatures to Hope: The Doctrine of Judgment

Posted on January 27, 2024 by salooper57

Judgment is the missing doctrine of the twenty-first century church. In the 1960s, TV shows and comedy skits would sometimes portray a deranged man with a long beard and a white robe declaring “The End Is Near,” or some other threat of judgment. It was not uncommon in those days to see road signs and billboards warning people: “Prepare to meet your God.”

On Saturday morning cartoons, Elmer Fudd or Bugs Bunny or Wiley Coyote would die from a misfired gun, exploding bomb, or a fall from a cliff, then ascend to heaven to be judged. Religious tracts – one thinks of the ubiquitous Chick pamphlets from the 1960s – warned the unrepentant sinner of a sulfur and brimstone future.

But things have changed. We might be glad that these theological caricatures are not so common anymore, but it is not only the caricatures that have disappeared. So has nearly all mention of the doctrine of judgment. This is not a good thing, for one cannot discard the doctrine of judgment and remain a biblically faithful believer.

The noun “judgment” and its verbal cognate “to judge” appear over 150 times in the New Testament, and more than 500 times in the Old. The testimony of the Scriptures is that God will judge the world. The proclamation of the church, recited weekly by millions of Christians in the creed, is that Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

One cannot ignore the doctrine of judgment, but how can one live with it? For isn’t the doctrine of judgment about an angry God who exacts revenge on people just because they don’t believe in him? How can the infinite punishment of those who have committed finite sins possibly be fair?

That raises a second issue about judgment. It is not only the missing doctrine of our time; it is the misunderstood doctrine of our time. What we think we know about judgment is more firmly rooted in cultural sources than biblical ones. Dante’s Inferno and Michaelangelo’s The Last Judgment play a bigger rolethan the psalms and the prophets. For that matter, many people’s understanding of judgment has more to do with Elmer Fudd than with the apostles. Ours is a generation of Looney Tunes theologians.

These cultural tropes have led us to think of judgment as a fearful, one might say, “God-awful,” thing. No biblically informed reader would deny that Judgment Day bodes poorly for those who reject God, but a careful student of the Bible would emphasize that is only part – and not even the most important part – of the picture.

The doctrine of judgment is only secondarily about what happens to those who reject God. At its heart, the doctrine of judgment is about God making right everything that has gone wrong, including people. The doctrine of judgment abounds with hope. The earth, long tortured by abuse and misuse, will be restored to its Edenic origins. And people, tortured by injustice and their own sins and failures, will be made new.

Because we have so badly misunderstood judgment, the psalmist’s euphoria at the thought of it is baffling: “…shout for joy before the Lord, the King. Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.”

In the incredibly rich eighth chapter of Romans, St. Paul envision humans and all creation groaning in eager expectation of God making everything right. In Jewish thought, this meant that creation is longing for judgment. No wonder Paul included the doctrine of the judgment in his “gospel,” his announcement of good news.

N. T. Wright has written that “in a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance and oppression, the thought that there might be a coming day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be … a good God must be a God of judgment.”

It is time to recover – or, perhaps, to uncover – the hope-filled doctrine of judgment.

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The Love of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Love

Posted on January 13, 2024 by salooper57

In one of his best known passages, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For now we know in part.” Human knowledge is always partial. The greatest theologian has only partial knowledge, as does the greatest scientist and the greatest philosopher. Of course, the great theologians, scientists and philosophers understand that. It is the lesser theologians and scientists who don’t know that they don’t know.

Earlier in that same passage, Paul, himself a great theologian, says, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.” His choice of metaphors comes directly out of the setting in which he writes. He is sending this letter to a church congregation in first century Corinth, a large city and one of the ancient world’s leading centers of commerce. Corinth was famous for, among other things, its quality bronze mirrors.

Silvered glass mirrors, such as are used today, had not yet been invented. Though Corinth made some of the world’s finest mirrors, polished bronze produced a very imperfect reflection. Like the knowledge gained by looking into a bronze mirror, our current knowledge is always incomplete.

I suspect that in heaven, everyone will walk around with a red mark on his or her forehead. This has nothing to do with the mysterious “mark of the beast” mentioned seven times in the biblical Book of Revelation. No, this mark will come from flabbergasted saints hitting their own foreheads with the palms of their hands and saying, “Duh! How could I have missed that?”

In that day, all those arguments in which we were certain we were right – theological, political, social – will seem silly to us. When we were most right, there was still something wrong. We never did more than see, to borrow King James English, “through a glass darkly.”

Though we know only in part now, the apostle states plainly that “then I shall know fully.” Why will we know so much more then than we do now? Will we be smarter? Probably. Will we have access to more information? I expect so. Will we know more because we are no longer exposed to deception? Certainly. But there is another, more fundamental reason. We will know more because we will love more.

This passage, 1 Corinthians 13, is sometimes called a “Paeon to Love.” In it, St. Paul emphasizes the supreme importance of love in human life. Among the many ways that love transforms a human life is this: it brings with it knowledge.

People say that love is blind, but nothing could be further from the truth. Infatuation is short-sighted. Lust is blind. But love has 20/20 vision. Love knows. Aldous Huxley said we can only love what we know, but I think the opposite is true: We can only know – really know – what we love.

For example, people will only know God to the degree that they love Him. They can study the Bible, go to seminary, and earn a Master of Divinity degree, but unless they love God, they will never really know Him. Factual knowledge is important, but it is not a replacement for the knowledge of love. Without love, knowledge produces a dead and bloated dogmatism that drives people away from the faith rather than drawing them to it.

Not only can we not know God apart from love, neither can we know our kids, our parents, or our friends apart from love. The ancient Chinese sage Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy.” But, ironically, the only way to know your enemy is to love him, at which time it is possible he will cease to be your enemy. When Jesus directed us to love our enemies, he opened the door for us to understand them. Love enables knowledge.

In the age to come we will know even as we are known because we will love even as we are loved. And isn’t that what the Teacher told us: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Love, which is how God’s life in us relates to others and to everything, is the catalyst for true knowledge. Love is a way – it is the way – of knowing.

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Live Meaningfully in the Present by Learning from the Past

Posted on January 6, 2024 by salooper57

The biblical stories of saints and sinners are endlessly instructive for people wanting to live meaningful lives in the present, but there is a risk that we will miss what they have to teach us.

The danger is that we will approach these biblical characters with the assumption that they were not like us.  For one thing, they lived thousands of years ago, and weren’t people different then?  And for another, God actually talked to people back then, but he doesn’t talk to us now – at least, not in the same way. 

Very subtly, and without intending to do so, we can remove these people from the sphere of real life. They weren’t like us so, of course, we cannot be like them. It was a different world then, people were different, and God acted differently with them. 

St. James refutes this way of thinking when he says that Elijah, a towering figure among biblical characters, was “a human being like us.” Or, as an older version put it, he “was subject to like passions as we are.” He had feelings, cares, and worries, just like we do.  He had doubts.  He shared our strengths but also our weaknesses and frailties. 

At the height of his career, Elijah experienced a breathtaking victory, like a football player winning the Superbowl and being named MVP, or a diplomat brokering a comprehensive Middle East peace deal, or a candidate winning the presidential election. But within a short time, his world was turned upside down.

Elijah’s success had placed him in the crosshairs of one of the country’s most powerful leaders. He had wrongly assumed that his long struggle against oppression, injustice, and religious abuse was finally over. When he saw that it was not, he entered into the darkest period of his life. The man who was the epitome of faith and faithfulness suffered serious depression and was obsessed with negative thoughts.

The biblical text says that “Elijah ran.” He is not faulted for doing so; under the circumstances, it seems to have been his only choice. But thus began an alienation from the people who might have supported him and, as time went on, from all human society.

This kind of self-imposed isolation is common among those suffering depression. After he pushed away his last ally, Elijah lost hope. He reproached himself for not being a better person and wished that he might die. He began rehearsing all the things that were wrong in the world and in his life. His words may even betray a resentment the great man felt toward God himself.

The saint had feet of clay. In other words, to quote St. James again, he was “a human being like us.” Because of that, we can learn from him and especially from the way God interacted with him.

We can learn, for example, that self-imposed isolation is unhealthy, and this is especially true for those dealing with depression. People flourish in community. It is with others that one’s beliefs about oneself and even about God are refined, falsehoods discarded, and truth embraced.

It is helpful to see how God dealt with his discouraged servant. Rather than rebuking him, or even correcting him, God rested him. God understands that the connection between body and soul is complex and inviolable. An ill-used body and an unhealthy soul are often found together.

Besides giving Elijah time to rest, God gave him the opportunity to reflect on and articulate his hurts and fears. God did not rush to correct the wrong thoughts that Elijah expressed; he let him vent. Then he gently corrected the parts that Elijah got wrong, and he did this without any condemnation.

God also gave Elijah work to do, for God understands that humans need good things to do and to accomplish to be happy. Our first parents were given work to do in the Garden of Eden, and work will be a blessing for people in the age to come. It is an essential part of a flourishing life.

The biblical stories of God’s interactions with people are an instructional goldmine for leading a satisfying life. They merit careful reading and thoughtful reflection.

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A Biblical Model for Handling Church Conflicts

Posted on December 30, 2023 by salooper57

Anyone who has been around the church for any length of time has heard about church fights and church splits. Christians, it seems, are not much better than anyone else when it comes to handling conflict. They might even be worse.

The history of church conflicts is a very old one. It begins only a few short years after the birth of the church. The Evangelist St. Luke tells the fascinating story in his history of the early church, which we know as the Book of Acts.

At the time of the events in Acts 6, the church was headquartered in Jerusalem and comprised of Jewish people who had recognized Jesus as the Messiah. The church had not yet gone out to the world, but the world had come to the church. The growing and vibrant congregation in Jerusalem was comprised of both Aramaic and Greek-speaking Jewish believers.

One of the things that characterized the early church and made it attractive to outsiders was the way it cared for its poor, especially its widows. From the earliest time, the church kept a list of widows who qualified for financial and food assistance.

Being a widow in the first century Middle East was very different from being a widow in America in the era of Social Security. There was no safety net for widows, nor were there any jobs. Work options for women were extremely limited: doing wealthy people’s laundry or prostitution. Because the husband was usually the only bread winner, when he died there might be no more bread.

But in the church, widows were supported. If they lacked financial resources, they were placed on the widow’s list, which qualified them to receive food on a daily basis.

That is the backstory to the conflict in Acts 6. The Aramaic-speaking widows, the locals who were from Jerusalem, were receiving a daily allotment of food while the Hellenistic widows, who were Greek-speaking transplants to Jerusalem, were being overlooked. This caused the Hellenistic church members to complain that they were being treated unfairly.

Most of the church conflicts I have heard about over the years were like this one. They were not theological in nature. They didn’t begin because someone denied the truths of the Athanasian Creed but because a church member was slighted, or at least felt that way. Conflicts happen because people’s feelings are hurt, their views disregarded, their needs unmet.

These things happen in every group of people, including the church. It is naïve to think otherwise. Jesus as much as promised that this would be the case. He once said, “It is impossible that no offenses should come…” When they do come, as is inevitable, what we do next is what is important.

It is worth noting that in the early church, when the Hellenistic Jews were offended and lodged a complaint, the church’s leaders listened to the complaint and acknowledged its validity. They did not call what had happened a misunderstanding nor hire a lawyer to write a wordy apology that meant nothing.

Instead, the apostles brought the entire church together and said, in effect: “We have a problem. It is more than we alone can handle. So, let’s put together a team who will be able to make this right.”

The conflict became the starting point for an entirely new set of leaders in the church, people we refer to today as “deacons.” The apostles did not dictate how these new leaders should handle the problem; they merely set the standards for what kind of leaders were needed, let the church choose them, and then let them go to work.

One moral to this story is that church conflicts need not diminish the church. They can be the source of innovations and growth. We see this in Acts 6. After the church, with its new set of enthusiastic and spirited leaders, dealt with the conflict, the church was united, “the word of God spread,” and “the number of disciples increased rapidly.”

As a pastor, church conflicts always worried and disheartened me. Yet, conflicts can provide an opportunity for positive change, fresh insight, and growth if they are handled with faith in God and love for others.

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Magnificent Obsession or Academic Religion: The Wise Men’s Story

Posted on December 23, 2023 by salooper57

The Feast of Epiphany, held on January 6th, celebrates the revelation of Christ to the world. It commemorates the visit of the Magi, traditionally known as the “wise men,” to the Child Christ.

The origin of the Magi has been debated, but the earliest occurrence of the word is found in an inscription from the time of Darius the Great, the Persian King who plays a role in the biblical Book of Daniel. They are thought to have originated among the Median peoples in what is modern-day Iran.

The Magi were a tribal people, like, for example, the Pashtun people in Afghanistan. They were not merely wise men (as the King James suggests); they were a society of scholars who studied the stars and religious texts. They prepared sacrifices for worshipers.  They acted as priests.  Their role was not unlike that of the Levites in Israel.

At one time the Medes, of whom the Magi were a part, revolted against the Persian government and were promptly crushed. The Magians gave up their political aspirations and, from that time on, dedicated themselves to the pursuit of knowledge and religious truth. 

There are references to Magi visiting the tomb of Plato and accompanying the king of Armenia to pay homage to the Roman Emperor. Magi appear as court counselors and priests. Though the word later became associated with sorcerers and magicians (our word “magician” is derived from it), and still later with charlatans and swindlers, the Magi who visited Christ seem to be astronomers and seekers of truth.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the Magi are juxtaposed against Israel’s chief priests, and the pagan astronomers come out looking better than the priests. In the biblical account, the chief priests have answers the Magi seek, but fail to act on what they know. For them, the matter is academic. For the Magi, it is a magnificent obsession.

The Magi traveled something like 800 hundred miles to honor the one “born king of the Jews.” Most people in the first century hated travel. The weather was oppressive, the terrain was rugged, and the roads were dangerous. That did not stop these seekers from crossing mountains and borders to find Israel’s king.

Contrast that with the effort made by the chief priests. They knew where the king was to be born. They knew the Magi believed he had already been born and had traveled great distances to welcome him. They would need only travel about five miles. Yet, from what we can tell, none of them made any effort to see their king.

Are we more like the Magi with their magnificent obsession or the priests with their academic religion? The question is worth pondering. My wife and I are spending a couple of months in Waco, Texas, to be near our oldest son and his family. Waco has sometimes been called the “Baptist Vatican.” It is reputed to have the most churches per capita of any city in the U.S.

Yet many of those churches are nearly empty on Sunday mornings. Though Texas has a much higher church attendance rate than Michigan, where I pastored for 35 years, well over half of all Texans will skip church this week. In Michigan, that percentage is closer to two-thirds.

According to Lifeway Research, the average American owns 3.6 Bibles. That means the U.S. has about a billion Bibles. The Barna Group reports that 54 percent of Americans say the Bible contains everything a person needs for a meaningful life. Yet only one in three of us reads the Bible at least once a week.

It seems we fit better with the apathetic priests than we do with the inspired Magi. If our professed beliefs are not enough to take us to church on Sunday to worship the King or to our bookshelf to open a Bible, what good is our profession? Jesus, seeing the empty religion of his day, reminded people of God’s word from the prophet: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

If the Christian story is true, then it calls for more than empty professions. It calls for devotion expressed in intelligent, consistent action.

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What’s the Big Deal About Christmas?

Posted on December 16, 2023 by salooper57

Americans love Christmas. They plan for it, spend money on it – this year the average consumer is expected to spend over $1500 – and gather with family and friends to celebrate it. But few Americans understand why Christmas is such a big deal.

To understand what Christmas means and why it is important, we need to go back, way back. We need to go beyond Bethlehem and its mangered baby and travel all the way to Eden, for it was there that the Creator first became Immanuel. According to Genesis, God was with the first humans in a manner they could perceive and in ways that caused them to flourish.

God made the earth to be a place that would beautifully and remarkably sustain biological life. It was perfect. And on the earth, he made a place, the Garden of Eden, that was supremely suited to a particular kind of biological life: the human. He placed two humans, a man and a woman, in that ideal environment.

Biologically, he made the humans so that they could mate and multiply and fill the earth. Spiritually, he designed them so that they and all their descendants would resemble the Creator himself. He gave them characteristics that mirrored his own (appropriate to their biological form, of course) and bestowed on them the responsibility of serving as his representatives on earth.

God gave them dominion over everything on earth. His plan was to set up living images of himself – human beings – all over the planet. They were to lovingly care for the planet and for all its creatures on his behalf. Think of the earth and the universe as a kingdom, the Creator as king, and the humans as the king’s chosen regents.

As time went on the man and the woman, known to us as Adam and Eve, chose to go their own way, and their way was a long and disastrous detour. Instead of serving as the King’s regents, they chose their own path. They did not want to rule under God, they wanted to rule beside him.

They believed that they would be better off – happier, more fulfilled, more who they were meant to be – if they were autonomous. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit – the Bible does not say it was an apple – they were not acting like naughty children but like rebellious conspirators and, at least to some degree, they knew it. What happened in the garden was not a slip but a jump that turned into a fall.

God intended the humans to rule his world, but they were now at its mercy. Under God’s leadership, they were being groomed to rule, but when they stopped being subject to God, they became subject to fear and ruled by desire. On the very day of their revolt, there began a struggle between man and God, man and earth, and man and man. They were expelled from the garden, and the world began to fall apart. So did the humans. And, to all appearances, so did God’s plan.

The man and woman were expelled from the safety of the garden into the world they had defaced. Immanuel – the God with them of the Garden – was now the God away from them. And the separation they had introduced into that relationship also came between them. A new reality had been introduced into their world: distance. They were far from God, increasingly far from each other, and even far from themselves – the selves they were intended to be.

The humans rejected their Creator, and that is our shame. But the Creator did not reject the humans, and that is our hope. God promised to send Immanuel, the one who would bring people back to God so that the Creator and the created could be together again.

The story of the baby laid in a manger is part of this larger narrative: the story of the God who would rather die than live without us—who did die rather than live without us. For the story does not end in Bethlehem’s manger but continues to Calvary’s cross. And it is not over yet.

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Christian Nationalism: The Seduction of a Different Gospel

Posted on December 2, 2023 by salooper57

In an article from 2019, Newsweek summarized a Pew Research Center Study this way: “While Americans largely have a positive view of the role of religion in public life, they overwhelmingly want religious institutions to stay out of politics.” I do not know if that is an accurate summary of Pew’s research. It is, however, a sentiment that one hears expressed with increasing frequency.

The enemy du jour is Christian nationalism. The Speaker of the House of Representatives has been labeled a Christian nationalist and considered by some to be a threat to society, democracy, and interestingly, morality. Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, writing in Time, claim that Speaker Johnson is “a near perfect example” of a Christian nationalist, longing for a society that “revolves around patriarchy, heterosexual marriage, and pronatalism”—the promotion of high birth rates to avoid national decline.

According to Whitehead and Perry, the Speaker’s agenda will provide “certain citizens” – think white and Christian – “easy access to various civil rights and liberties, while others should be denied access.” In other words, in the kind of nation the Speaker of the House desires, white Christians will have it made. Everyone else will be robbed of their civil liberties.

Perhaps Whitehead and Perry are correct about the Speaker, although he has not, like other members of his caucus, identified himself as a Christian nationalist. But even if the Speaker is a hard-core Christian nationalist – the Time article provides insufficient context to prove it – that is only part of the story.

The Christian brand of nationalism is not the only one on the market, and all are determined to remake America after their own image. Secular nationalists want to reshape America just as much as their Christian counterparts. Their idea of a just society is based on a worldview that is atheistic, a morality that is postmodern, and a sexual ethic built on the alarmingly nebulous principle of consent. Their ideal society is characterized by gender equality, intellectual superiority, and reproductive rights.

Why are secularists allowed to be political while religionists are not? The fact is that our citizenry is comprised of both secular and religious people, and both are guaranteed the right to express their opinions politically. America is not, and has never been, a theocracy.

Christian nationalists have the same right to pursue their vision of a better society as any other nationalists, whether they are Jews, Muslims, or atheists. I do not object to Christian nationalism because of what it wants to do to America, but because of what it is already doing to the church. Naïve Christians are transferring their loyalty from Christ to politics, and they don’t realize it.

St. Paul would call the gospel of Christian nationalism “a different gospel.” It proclaims the present realization of the kingdom of God through political might. America, rather than the Church of Jesus Christ, is the proverbial city on a hill. Legislation takes the place of God’s Spirit in conforming people to the image of Christ – whether they want to be conformed or not.

In the gospel of Christian Nationalism, it is the blood of our men and women in uniform that saves us, not the blood of the Lamb. What strength does a Lamb have compared to a Navy Seal? Christian nationalism’s saints are soldiers. To honor soldiers is a good thing. To dishonor Christ, through neglect and inattention, is not. Christians give more than lip service to Christ. They give him their highest loyalty.

The problem, once again, is not that Christians want to shape society by legislation. That is their right and, in some cases, their responsibility. The problem is not even that some secularists want to silence Christians in the public square. Let them try.

The problem is that Christians themselves are silent about Christ. They would rather talk about politics than about Jesus. They display more confidence in the power of the president than in the power of God. They have been seduced by a different gospel.

That may be nationalism, but it is not Christian. Christians put Christ first.

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He Has a Certain Way About Him

Posted on November 25, 2023 by salooper57

In both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible speaks about “the way of the Lord.” The biblical writers frequently urge people to walk in God’s ways. What does it mean that God has a way?

The “way of the Lord” can denote the path God takes to get somewhere or the manner God chooses to accomplish something. In either case, the way of the Lord is often very different from the way people would naturally take. As God reminds people through the prophet Isaiah, “My ways are not your ways.”

God and humans once went the same way, but the Bible makes clear that their paths have diverged. This separation is recorded early in the biblical record when the progenitors of the human race knowingly rejected God’s way and chose another. The rest of the Bible tells the story of how God brings the two come back together.

The idea that humans have left God’s way, have sinned, and are lost was once assumed my nearly everyone in the West. People understood that they were sinners who needed forgiveness and ought to follow God’s ways. That cognitive framework has largely broken down.

It has been replaced by various philosophies of self-actualization in which the problem is not sin but ignorance or social injustice. The older, biblical understanding also viewed ignorance and injustice as dangerous evils, which contribute greatly to human misery. But it took these to be the result of a more fundamental evil: humanity’s dislocation from God.

What difference does any of this make? Just this: if we see ignorance as the primary evil, we will believe that humanity’s problem can be solved through education. This belief motivated twentieth century intellectuals in their efforts to construct a better society. Those efforts have not yet proved successful.

If we believe that injustice, rooted in systemic racism or in economic inequality, is the root cause of human unhappiness, we will want to dismantle the system and build a new one. But if racism and economic inequality are themselves caused by an older and deeper evil, whatever system we build will also need to be replaced.

That older, deeper evil is humanity’s rejection of the “way of the Lord.” Until they return to it, ignorance, racism, and economic equality will continue to ravage mankind. But how will people return to God’s ways if not through education and systemic reforms?

The answer is that they cannot, at least not on their own. They need help. And that help has been, and is being, given. The means by which this help is offered is told in the biblical story of redemption.

After describing the consequences of mankind’s choice to go its own way, recorded in Genesis 3-11, Scripture recounts the steps God is taking to bring humanity back to himself and his ways. This is the story of the Bible. It begins when God chooses one person, Abraham, to be the channel through which he will bless all peoples on earth.

God chooses Abraham “so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just…” Abraham’s family (later tribe, then nation) was supposed to keep, rather than leave, God’s way, as the first humans had done.

The rest of the Old Testament tells the successes and failures, but mostly failures, of that nation “to keep the way of the Lord.” The New Testament picks up the story with Abraham’s long awaited descendent Jesus. He not only keeps the way of the Lord but inaugurates a new non-ethnic people of God who will also walk in his ways.

God’s ways are mentioned throughout the Bible, but in Deuteronomy they are a constant theme. Chapter 10 elaborates on God’s ways, giving numerous examples: he “shows no partiality and accepts no bribes … defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien.”

We think of such things as ethical standards, but they are more: they are God’s ways. Those ways have proved too steep for us to travel, but God will help. That help comes through his Son, who is known as “the Way,” and his Spirit. 

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Life’s Detours: What You Need to Know

Posted on November 18, 2023 by salooper57

A reasoned defense of God’s goodness and love in the face of suffering and evil is known as a theodicy. Examples of theodicy can be found in the works of philosophers like Leibniz, Hick, and Plantinga. I cannot hope to add substance to their efforts, but I would like to offer an illustration.

Imagine taking a ride with Jesus in a 1966 Cadillac Coupe Deville convertible from New York to Los Angeles. A road trip with Jesus – wouldn’t that be great? You assume you know the way the Lord will take: I-80 to the Colorado line, I-76 to Denver, I-70 into Utah where you will pick up I-15 almost to San Bernardino. There you’ll get on 210 and follow it to 605 and then take Route 10 into L.A.

That makes sense. It is the quickest route. But the Lord knows about a billion things you don’t. He knows there will be traffic jams in Hoboken, Stroudsburg, Youngstown, Chicago, Des Moines, and twelve other spots, so he avoids them. He bypasses the hailstorm in White Haven. He knows there is a wonderful state park just off I-76 near Uniontown, PA, which you are going to love. And there is an ice cream parlor in Wooster, OH that he particularly likes. They have a dark chocolate ice cream with chunks of fudge, which Jesus says is the best in the world.

Jesus also knows that a 74-year-old man and his wife are traveling to visit their son who, unbeknownst to them, will die later this year. They will blow a tire on the south side of Bloomington and the man will have a heart attack while he is trying to get the lug nuts off. So, Jesus takes an alternate route that leads through central Indiana so that you can change a tire. And then, there is a waitress in a diner in St. Joseph, Missouri, a single mom with bills that are piling up, and whose ex is suing for full custody of their only child. She feels like she is losing her mind and really needs someone to give her hope – as well as a big tip – and you are just the person to do that.

Then there is the drunk driver outside Severance, Kansas. Of the thirteen people who notice him weaving, only you call 911. His arrest and brief incarceration are what lead him to sobriety. And there is a poet in a coffee shop in Oklahoma City who overhears one line of your conversation that sets his creativity on fire and someday earns him the title of Poet Laureate of the United States.

If you were to see that route plotted on a map, it would make no sense at all. But that is because you don’t know what the Lord knows. All you know is that I-80 is the most direct route between where you are and where you want to go.

Most people think they know the most direct route between where they are and where they hope to be. But why doesn’t God take that route? One’s whole life seems to have been a series of detours. Forcing one’s way along a chosen route often makes things worse, not better.

God’s ways, St. Paul insists, are impossible to understand. We will never guess them beforehand. We have a better chance of guessing the winning Powerball Lottery numbers, but even that would not make us as happy as we could be if we trusted God’s wisdom and love.

No one qualifies for the role of God’s counselor, though many people have applied for the job. I have often given the Lord recommendations and sometimes, I think, he has worked them into the plan. That’s called grace. But I could not be God’s counselor any more than a preschooler could counsel Albert Einstein on the development of Relativity Theory. I can’t see a trillion things at once, things present, past, and future. But God can.

Evil will always be a problem for a small God. But the God revealed by Jesus is not small. His knowledge and ability – and his goodness – exceed the fancies of our most imaginative writers and the speculations of our greatest philosophers.

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