Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Wanted: A Point of Reference

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Traffic LightWhen you are sitting at a stop light in your car and see motion out of the corner of your eye, there are two responses. The first is to push harder on the brake pedal and the second is to look at a lamp post, building or some other stationary object to see if your car moving.

To gauge your own movement requires a fixed object as a point of reference.

In the same way, ethics or morality are only valid if there is some point of reference by which behaviors can be compared. There can be no discussion about ethics if there is not a shared moral code by which to judge.

If you start with the premise that there is no God and all that we see is a result of time plus chance, then statements about morality and ethics can only be expressions of preference since there is no basis on which to declare any particular behavior right or wrong.

It appears that a majority of those who espouse the mantra that “there are no absolute values” have not thought through the implications of this belief. If there are no absolute values, then there can be no real discourse to solve conflict. Conflict would then be resolved by the stronger dominating the weak. Do moral relativists really want to live by the evolutionary code of survival of the fittest? If this premise is true, on what basis would the Columbine shooters or the Virginia Tech shooter be condemned? Were they not doing what their DNA told them to do? Were they not pursuing what they thought was the best course of action? On what basis would Hitler or Stalin be condemned? Were they not doing what they thought was best for their respective countries?

Thankfully, these men have been almost universally condemned, but on what basis?

Tim Keller makes the point that if you start with a premise and the results are not in accordance with observed reality, the premise should then be reexamined. We can observe that a majority of people do not live as though there are no absolute values. We collectively value human life. We define some behavior as criminal and punish those who pursue it. Observed reality is that we do define some behavior as wrong, therefore the premise must be wrong.

There is something in humanity that seeks to know where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Naturalism cannot explain this, nor can it provide a means of drawing that line.

But, if we start with the premise that we are here as a result of a creator God and that He has revealed to us universal principles by which we should live, then we have no problem explaining the desire for standards. In addition, such a God provides the point of reference by which the standards can be established. The premise of a creator God seems to better explain observed human behavior.

Surgery

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I stand before my maker,
becoming unmade and then made again,
sometimes yielding, sometimes fighting,
but always under the surgeon’s knife.
Which is greater, the pain of being shaped
or the pain of being left as I am?

Actions speak louder than words

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megaphone2 “Actions speak louder than words” is a proverb whose over use sometimes masks the truth it contains. I read in Genesis 15:6, that Abram (soon to be Abraham) “believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” In Habakkuk 2:4, it says, “righteous shall live by his faith.”

All through Scripture we find that faith ( belief) and righteousness (action) are tied together. What we do comes as a result of what we believe. Therefore, what someone does is a good indication of what they believe.

For most of us (or perhaps I am only speaking for myself) this is a mixed bag. We have areas where our correct belief leads us to good practice, and then there are areas where our belief is week or misguided and we flip-flop like a fish on the dock.

For example, most of the time I am confident in God’s love for me and that confidence spills over into my relationships. When I have this confidence, I have freedom in relationships and I am not devastated if criticism comes my way. Then there are other times when I lack that confidence and I hear criticism in statements that are not intended to be critical.

The point of this is that the phrase “actions speak louder than words” should be used not so much for assessing others as for assessing myself. When my actions are not what I like them to be, I need to be honest about what belief (or unbelief) is underlying those actions.

One of my favorite prayers in Scripture is found in Mark 9:24 where a father cries out to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” This a pretty good starting place for positive change.

Checklist for Christian Service

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white_flag What qualities must be present in the believer to be used by God to build His Church? Here is the list as I see it:

  • Complete surrender to God

That’s it. One item. Everything else follows nicely after surrender.

Paul gives us a description of what this kind of surrender looks like in Philippians 3:8–11 (ESV)

8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul surrendered everything he had been prior to his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road. This surrender laid the foundation for the ministry that Paul was to have. Earlier in the same letter (Philippians 2:5-11) Paul points to Jesus as an example of one who surrendered his will to the father.

I am not writing this as one who has achieved this. It would be more accurate to say that I want to surrender and am in the process of doing so. The words of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 come to mind as they seem to express this desire as a prayer:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

I am finding that as I learn to surrender control and follow God’s lead, there is peace in the midst of uncertainty. I’m learning to be OK with not seeing how it all fits together. I’m learning to be OK with leaving people and events in God’s hands. I’m beginning to better understand where the extent of my responsibility ends and be content with the piece that God gives me to do.

Here’s to raising the white flag . . .

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