Getting caught in the blame game – Part 1

Posted on March 3, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

I am neither brilliant nor a philosopher so I make no claims toward brilliant philosophy. Yet I have observed a behavior in humans that I would like to explore. This being a presidential election year, examples of this behavior abound. I am writing about the behavior of blaming others. Where does this need to blame come from?

My question is this: if naturalism, the belief that we are products of natural processes and not the product of divine intervention, is true, they why is there so much effort wasted in finding someone to blame whenever anything goes wrong?

I have a puppy which displays normal puppy behavior. Specifically she likes to chew things and dig. Even when she chews things that are unacceptable (such as human fingers and clothing) I see no sense of remorse in her or the need to blame anyone for the behavior. Another dog of ours felt the need to chase a skunk and displayed no remorse when he came back to the house bearing an odor from the encounter. He ran right into the house as if nothing was wrong or out of the ordinary.

In the case of dogs, one could argue that they act in the way they are wired to act. While humans can change that behavior somewhat, the extent of change is limited. The bulk of their behavior is determined by their DNA.

Humans have the distinction of not only being able to understand and respond to what is, but having a sense of what ought to be. Chance and genetics might explain what is, but they cannot explain why we often think that things should be different than they are.

If we believe that what we are is determined by our DNA, then why bother assessing blame? Why spend so much effort in figuring out who made the mistake, who made the bad choice, who pushed the wrong button?

I will take it one step further. We send future executives to colleges and graduate schools that teach them that they are products of evolution and that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong. They are taught that they make their own rules and no-one can tell them how to live. Then when they live this way in the business world we throw them in jail because they violate insider trading laws or cook the books and bilk millions out of unsuspecting investors. Is this not a double standard?

Why all the angst in the recent “occupy” micro-movement? If Wall Street executives are doing what they are programmed to do, why bother to protest? If naturalism and evolution are true, on what basis are you protesting anyway? On what basis are you claiming unfairness if there are no absolute standards of right and wrong? If strength and cunning are the means of survival, then why protest when the strong and cunning violate the weak and ignorant?

This post will be continued in part two where I will explore how the Bible speaks to these issues and provides a reasonable explanation of what we observe in humanity.

This post is continued in Part 2

The God of new beginnings and second chances

Posted on March 1, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

Failure is a part of daily life. The best we can do is to keep the failures small, but failures they are none-the-less.

The question is not whether we will fail, but how we will respond to failure.

Every motivational speaker will tell you that the best way to respond to failure is to pick yourself up and keep moving. Learn from the failure and move forward. There is some truth to this. Yet our moral failures require more than just getting up and trying again.

Even a casual reading of the Sermon on the Mount will provide the understanding that from God’s point of view, sin is an internal process that sometimes works it’s way into outward behavior. The sin of lust can sometimes lead to adultery. Inappropriate anger can sometimes lead to murder. The moral failure happens before the external action.

The Bible records the colossal failures of some of the heroes of the faith. Abraham twice lied about his wife and nearly caused international incidents on both occasions. Isaac perpetrated the same lie about his wife with similar result. David committed adultery and covered it up with murder. Peter denied Jesus three times. Paul began his career as a bounty hunter bringing Christians to persecution and death.

All of these men, like us, have experienced failure. They each have also experienced forgiveness and restoration. They were in relationship with the God of second chances. God promises to forgive when we confess and repent (1 John 1:9).

The restoration of Peter in John chapter 21 is illustrative of this. Not only did Jesus restore Peter to fellowship, he gave him a ministry of caring for the church that was about to be born. Tend my lambs is what Jesus commanded Peter to do. Jesus did not excuse Peter’s behavior but gave him the opportunity to move beyond it. Not only did he get to move beyond it, he was also able to be a key figure in the growth of the early church.

I should point out that the major difference between the Peter of the courtyard (Matthew 26:69-75) and Peter the street preacher (Acts 2:14 ff) is that the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples (including Peter) and empowered them for ministry.

God uses our failures to help us to learn humility and dependence upon him. This humility and dependence is the foundation on which the ministry can then be built. Perhaps failure is the only sure path to humility.

Since our God is the God of second chances and he has given us the opportunity for restoration, we need to be the people of second chances. Being the knuckleheads we sometimes are, we are bound to hurt each other. When this happens we need to forgive as Paul instructs to do in Ephesians 4:32 which reads, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” We are to forgive as we have been forgiven.

Too often in the church, people are labeled as a result of some event in their lives and not allowed to recover from that failure. Unfortunately there is some truth in the criticism that the “church is the only organization that shoots its wounded.”

There is nothing so heinous that cannot be forgiven by God and we should not be slow to practice that same forgiveness. My guess is that if we did a better job of forgiving, our stress level would go down and our church attendance would go up.

Toward being a peacemaker

Posted on February 28, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

Toward being a peacemaker – #11 in the Sermon on the Mount Series

Blessed are the peacemakers

According to the Bible, human history began in peace and will end in peace. The middle part has been a little rough.

John Lennon asked us to give peace a chance, but how can we do this? Even if you define peace as the absence of war, humanity does not have a very good track record. According to Will Durant, out of 3421 years of documented history, there were only 268 years without war at the time of his writing. That means that roughly 92.2% of the time, some part of the globe was in open hostility. With the rise of Islamic unrest in the Middle East, this percentage is likely to rise rather than fall. Human history cannot bear out any assertion that man is capable of producing peace, John Lennon notwithstanding.

To be a peacemaker first requires that one be at peace. Even Muddy Waters knows that you can’t give away “what you ain’t never had.” Man has not been at peace since our initial rebellion against God as recorded in Genesis 3. Beginning with that initial rebellion, man has been at war with God, his neighbors, his world and himself. The external conflict is a product of the conflict within. Until that internal conflict is resolved, there is no chance of anything better than a superficial peace.

Paul tells us in Romans 5:1 that the path to peace with God is through Jesus Christ. It is by being justified by faith in Jesus that peace can be obtained. This is the first step to being a peacemaker in the sense that Jesus presents in Matthew 5:9.

In 2 Corinthians 13:11 Paul tells us to “rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” Elsewhere Paul tells us to live in peace with one another (1 Thess. 5:13).

If we accept God’s provision in Jesus Christ for fixing the vertical relationship with God, it will then allow us to work on the horizontal relationships with our neighbors. I do not think that it is possible to over emphasize the two Great Commands that Jesus catalogs in Matthew 22:37-40. Love God; love your neighbor. They must be done in that order.

It seems obvious, in light of these verses that a peacemaker cannot be self-focused. I am not at peace with God or my neighbor when I am focused on my wants, my needs or even my rights. A true peacemaker is one who surrenders to God and trusts in him.

A peacemaker is one who is redeemed and justified by faith in Jesus Christ, who is actively developing his relationship with God and who is actively seeking to share that relationship with those around him. A peacemaker is one who takes seriously the call of Jesus to make disciples in Matthew 28:19-20. For it is only as a disciple that I can begin to know peace.

They will be called children of God

Paul tells us in Romans 8:14 that all who are being led by the Spirit of God, are sons of God. The author of Hebrews tells us that God disciplines us as sons (Hebrews 12:7).

By being in relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we are adopted into God’s family. We have become sons and daughters and will be treated as such. This verse emphasizes that one of the hallmarks of a son or daughter of God is that he or she will have a legacy of peacemaking. When we are at the end and stand before Jesus, we should be able to hear him point to that legacy as evidence of our relationship with him.

A call to action

Even as I write this, I am convicted that I do not take every opportunity to be a peacemaker that is presented to me. I am often self-focused, insensitive or insecure. To be a peacemaker, I should have a strong desire to share the good news of Jesus Christ with anyone who hasn’t heard it.

Not only does our peacemaking have a passive component, it should have an active component also. Let’s make it active and see what happens to our churches and our communities.

The rejection of a made-up God

Posted on February 26, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

If you are going to reject God, please be sure that you have an accurate understanding of who you are rejecting. Carol Hoenig’s article in the Huffington Post entitled Santorum Reminds Me Why I Wrote ‘Of Little Faith’, is an example of the rejection of a caricature of Christianity.

The God that Mrs. Hoenig has rejected appears to be a genie-in-a-bottle god who is supposed to do what we want if we display enough faith. This type of belief does not stand up because it will eventually be disappointed. God does not exist to do what I want; it is the other way round. This genie-in-a-bottle god is not the God of the Bible.

Whether they were taught to me or I misunderstood what was being taught, I absorbed many wrong ideas about God and Christianity while growing up in the Church. I do not think that I am alone in this and apparently Mrs. Hoenig’s experience is similar. The question I would ask of Mrs. Hoenig is that when she was studying the Bible on a regular basis, was she doing so to hear from God or was she studying to support her beliefs? There is a big difference between the two.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 12:1-2 that we come to Scripture in need of transformation. Our minds and thinking are not aligned with reality about God and who we are before him. We have to make a choice when approaching Scripture to be open to what it is really saying or to only hear what supports our preconceptions. The theological words describing these two positions are exegesis (ex – out of) or eisegesis (eis – into). In other words, we can draw from Scripture what it means or we can read into it what we want it to say.

This is not a new problem. In his epistles, the Apostle Paul was dealing with those who distorted what he was saying. The Old Testament prophets offered correction to Israel’s misunderstanding and misapplication of the law. Jesus contended with the Pharisees who misinterpreted Scripture to the point that they did not recognize their Messiah when he appeared.

I am not shocked at Mrs. Hoenig’s reaction to what appears to be a feeble, man-centered pseudo-Christianity. When we want to prevent a disease, we inoculate a person with a weakened form of the disease so that immunity can be formed. Our Enemy is aware of this tactic and uses it in a spiritual sense all the time. What better way to prevent belief than to expose people to an inadequate, uninformed, feeble Christianity? Sadly, there are many in “ministry” that are willing accomplices in this tactic of Satan. As a result, the “Christianity” that many reject has very little to do with Jesus Christ.

G. K. Chesterton wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:22-23 that many who purported to be speaking for God will be found to have been operating with no relationship with Jesus Christ. It is not surprising therefore that many who operate under the banner of Christianity are deceived and deceive others.

It is incumbent upon anyone who rejects Christianity to first understand who it is that he is rejecting. Sadly, most reject a caricature such as that presented by Carol Hoenig in the Huffington Post.

Please make an informed choice.