Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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The rejection of a made-up God

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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.

Toward the conquest of fear

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We have nothing to fear - FDR

In his first inaugural address, Franklin D. Roosevelt used the oft quoted phrase, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The first time I heard this quotation, I thought it rather silly since there are many things to fear. But as I’ve gotten older (I hesitate to say matured), I see the wisdom in this.

In the New Testament, the verb phobeo (fear) is used as an imperative 62 times (list).  If I counted correctly, 59 of those instances the command is used in the negative; we are commanded to not fear. In the 3 remaining uses of phobeo we are commanded to fear God.

Why does God tells us so many time to not fear? It is because we are prone to experiencing fear. Fear is a powerful, if short term, motivator. Since it is so powerful and since we have an enemy, it should not surprise us that The Enemy uses fear as one of the primary weapons in his arsenal. That is why Peter tells us to “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)

In this election year we see fear used as a campaign tool. The ads tell you about all the bad things that will happen to you if you elect the other guy. Political commentators make a lucrative income by playing to these fears. We as believers must not give in to them. We can’t panic. God has not given up control.

In 1 John 5:4 we are told that our faith is able to conquer the world. That faith is rooted in an understanding of the nature of God. We can be confident in God’s ability to remain in control and complete his plan for the world. His love and justice will not be thwarted by any scheme of the enemy.

If that is the case, then why do we fear?

I am not a trained counselor so you may think my answer to this question is simplistic. If so, I ask your pardon. Yet I have a sense that we fear because we do not understand nor appropriate God’s love and power. The Apostle Paul proclaimed this great love for us when he penned these words:

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:4–9, NASB95)

God made us alive, raised us up and seated us with Jesus Christ. By his resurrection, Jesus displayed his destruction of the most powerful source of fear that the Enemy has, that is death.

So I must remind myself, if Jesus has conquered death, what could be worse than that? If God is master over death, can he not get me through whatever trial that comes my way? Yes he can. I simply need to live as though this is true despite what my fears tell me.

The temptation of anger in response to militant atheism

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In Rhode Island, Jessica Ahlquist has been the front for a lawsuit against her school district. The result of the lawsuit is that the school must remove the School Prayer
from their walls. It is also reported that threats have been made against the girl and she has been the target of verbal abuse. A photo of the prayer pulled from the linked article is shown at right.

I understand the anger at and frustration with a court system which is increasingly opposed to Christianity. I understand how difficult it is to see a militant minority run roughshod over what has been the foundation of our culture for over 200 years. So I get the anger and the desire to lash out.

I feel the need to remind myself and others of a few things in response to this.

  • James reminds us that we are to be “slow to anger” because “the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” (James 1:19-20) Nothing of eternal value will result in responding in anger.
  • Matthew 22:39 tells us that the second great command is to love our neighbor. Jesus used the story of the Good Samaritan to illustrate who our neighbor is. This girl in Rhode Island is our neighbor and we are commanded to love her.
  • Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1 that apart from Christ we are spiritually dead. We should not be surprised when spiritually dead people make spiritually dead choices.

Certainly threats and abuse toward Jessica are the wrong response on both a practical and a moral level. They accomplish nothing of temporal or eternal value.

The response of the Apostle Paul when he encountered the paganism of the Athenians is instructive here. Luke records in Acts 17:16 that Paul was provoked by the city full of idols. He was not provoked into anger, but provoked to respond with a defense of Christianity and a presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

God changes people from the inside. It is of little use for us to force change from the outside. So to do legal battle over a prayer on the wall seems like a futile effort.

We should, however, take events like this as a wakeup call. Parts of the church have engaged with the culture to the extent that their form of Christianity is almost indistinguishable from the society around it. Other parts of the church have so disengaged from the culture making themselves doctrinally pure, but irrelevant. Neither extreme puts the church in position to be effective in making disciples, the mission given to the church by Jesus.

If we live out the two great commands to love God and our neighbors, if we do this well, then we can trust that God will change us and he will use us to change our culture. Jessica needs God’s love and she needs our love, not our anger. She has plenty of that already.

Thoughts on Prayer inspired by C. S. Lewis

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C. S. Lewis ends his essay entitled The Efficacy of Prayer in a collection entitled The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays with these words:

“If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.”

School PrayerIn the article, Lewis builds a case that while there is mystery in prayer, one thing we do know is that prayer is not a means of tapping into a genie god that gives us whatever we want. By its very nature, a petition is a request of someone, a request that can be granted or denied based on the wishes of the one being petitioned. We are not guaranteed the request and a denial does not indicate a lack of love on the part of God.

To support his point that a denial does not indicate a lack of love, Lewis uses the example of Jesus in Gethsemane. In Matthew 26 and Mark 14 we find Jesus praying to avoid drinking the cup of God’s wrath on our behalf. He feared the suffering that was to come, yet was resigned to follow the father’s will. It was God’s will that Jesus would go to the Cross to accomplish the Salvation that was planned from eternity.

God, in his mercy and wisdom, does allow us to participate, through prayer, in the accomplishment of his will. In the course of that accomplishment, we are sometimes privileged to see answers to prayer that defy explanation as coincidence. Often it is those who are young in the faith, parying with innocent boldness, who see the most striking answers to prayer. Their immature faith is nurtured by these prayers.

In contrast to this, it seems that mature Christians are sometimes stretched in their faith by trials when it seems as though God is unwilling to grant their petition for relief. God, in his wisdom knows where the believer is and what he can handle (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). Paul prayed three times to be relieved of his “thorn in the flesh,” a petition that was not granted (2 Cor. 12:7). In the case of Paul’s thorn, God thought it necessary to allow it to remain to increase Paul’s understanding and dependence upon the grace of God.

I am encouraged in that when I find myself in circumstances which seem desperate, and in which God seems to delay in responding, I am better able to remember that I am not abandoned. I can also be confident that God is using the circumstance to build spiritual strength in me.

The desperate posts in the battle can be lonely and hard, but God knows what he’s doing and he chooses well. Why then am I so reluctant to volunteer?

What about you?

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