Category: Reason

Who Decides Proper Christian Theology?

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This YouTube video (the Church of Oprah Exposed) is tremendously disturbing. Is this video representative of what happens when the group or community gets together and decides proper theology? Rex Miller indicates we should trust our people to be on a hero’s journey searching for truth and significance in life (my interpretation of what I heard at a recent conference), but what happens when influential people like Oprah with her “experts” and credibility redefines who Jesus is? Is there no standard anymore within the Christian community?

I see this like Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code confirming in the minds of skeptics that Jesus really is the charlatan they always thought he was; because “now we have proof – Dan Brown’s research claims its truthfulness right on page one.” When is the print media of the Bible a true standard in this generation? Or is proper theology lost and we just have to keep diversifying the church (liberal vs. conservative, infant baptism vs. believers’ baptism, health and wealth gospel vs. theology of the cross, cheap grace vs. costly discipleship, gay bishops vs. homosexuality is a sin, etc.). While denominationalism divides the church (often times for good reason regarding non-essentials or preferences) we still can agree on who Jesus is in our foundational beliefs.

In Beauty and the Beast, the village is storming the castle in order to kill the beast. The cartoon musical has a great line, “a hundred Frenchmen can’t be wrong, so kill the beast!” Just because a larger group gets together and says Jesus is NOT only one way to get to God, doesn’t make it proper or acceptable Christian theology.

I read this article this morning in Our Daily Bread:

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman warns us of the danger of a world of information overload. He reminds us of a chilling futuristic vision—Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which describes a world thoroughly flooded with information. But that data is manipulated so that none of it has any significance.

A glance at the Internet or a magazine rack hints that we are living in just such a culture. We’re drowning in a sea of information often marketed by the unscrupulous. We need discernment to choose wisely whom we will listen to.

In John 6, Jesus delivered His “I am the bread of life” message (v.35). It was a sermon so controversial that, at its conclusion, many of His followers went away and stopped following Him (v.66). They chose to stop listening to the voice of Christ. When Jesus challenged His disciples as to whether they would also walk away, Peter wisely responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (v.68).

In a world swamped with confusing and contradictory information, we can, like Peter, turn to Christ for wisdom. He cuts through the words of confusion with words of life.  — Bill Crowder

So, here we are in the information age, so much information we often find ourselves in information overload (24 hour news, thousands of magazine choices, more web pages than Google can count, non-stop commercials telling us what we need in order to live a satisfying life). I wonder if the church needs to be more in the business of helping people make sense of the world around them; we need interpretation more than additional information.

Read what my friend Chuck Warnock has written on the topic.

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What is a Christian?

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I read a Homelife Magazine article this week by and about Tullian Tchivijian (Billy Graham’s prodigal grandson who admits defeat) called a magnificent defeat at the hand of God. He discusses that as a teenager he rebelled against all he knew to be right and was sucked into sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll… now jump to the present, he is currently founding pastor of New City Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 

 

As I read, my first question was… “What?” Did this guy know who his grandfather was? Did this not influence him at all? Billy Graham was/is God’s ambassador to sitting presidents, heads of state as well as the common people all over the world, who preached the message of the resurrection to more people than the apostle Paul could ever had hoped for. Yes, he knew; and that’s why his life went awry.  

 

A great quote from the article: 

 

“The problem between knowing about God and knowing God is as massive as the Grand Canyon. That distance, that separateness, is something that must be resolved.” 

 

That’s why his life was bankrupt. Now back to my original question, “What is a Christian?” We have all heard various definitions: 

o    One who believes in the resurrection of Christ

o    One who trusts in Christ for his salvation

o    One who believes a certain set of propositional truth

o    One who participates in an organized church

o    One who follows the teachings of Jesus or the Bible

o    One who tries to live by the Ten Commandments

o    The list goes on…

 

Another amazing quote from the article: 

 

When my kids ask me, “Dad, what’s a Christian?” I always answer, “A Christian is one who can say, ‘As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, 0 God. My soul thirsts for God”‘ (Ps. 42:1-2). A Christian is someone who hungers for God more than anything else; more than health, wealth, status, good looks, or a spouse. Make no mistake: What we love is a surer test of who we are than what we say. Actions are much easier to fabricate than affections. 

 

That’s the point of HeartQuest 101, to love God more than anything else; to find that pearl of great price and risk everything to get it; to risk getting out of our comfort zones; to step out of our boats of mediocrity and experience water-walking with Jesus (a story from Matthew 14).  

 

This lifelong journey is a quest of the heart, to actively search for God in order to bring a sense of meaning and purpose to this life, then to bring honor and glory to our Creator and Sustainer of this world. So, how does your life reveal the love of your life? If we claim Christ has that number one spot, how does life lived out back up our affections?

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Why Does Atheism Reject God?

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Dinesh D’Souza takes on leading critics of the church from E.O. Wilson to Richard Dawkins, from Sam Harris to Christopher Hitchens, extolling how Christianity is at home in the arena of science and philosophy and can offer a recipe for lasting happiness in a disillusioned world. While considering the book, I found this review very insightful, An Argument Against the Atheists:

 

“Today’s Christians know that they do not, as their ancestors did, live in a society where God’s presence was unavoidable. No longer does Christianity form the moral basis of society. Many of us now reside in secular communities, where arguments drawn from the Bible or Christian revelation carry no weight, and where we hear a different language from that spoken in church.”  That is the opening salvo from author Dinesh D’Souza in his new book, What’s So Great About Christianity. 

 

Why does atheism reject God? This is the part I found fascinating, especially since it has been my conclusion for years!

 

Al Mohler writes: D’Souza’s strongest analysis comes when he considers the true character of the new atheism. It is, he suggests, a “pelvic revolt against God.”  In other words, it is a revolt against Christian morality — especially sexual morality. This is not a new observation or argument, but D’Souza makes it exceptionally well: 

 

My conclusion is that contrary to popular belief, atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it is a moral revolt. Atheists don’t find God invisible so much as objectionable. They aren’t adjusting their desires to the truth, but rather the truth to fit their desires. This is something we can all identify with. It is a temptation even for believers. We want to be saved as long as we are not saved from our sins. We are quite willing to be saved from a whole host of social evils, from poverty to disease to war. But we want to leave untouched the personal evils, such as selfishness and lechery and pride. We need spiritual healing, but we do not want it. Like a supervisory parent, God gets in our way. This is the perennial appeal of atheism: it gets rid of the stern fellow with the long beard and liberates us for the pleasures of sin and depravity. The atheist seeks to get rid of moral judgment by getting rid of the judge. 

 

I have thought this for years, not so much the sexual immorality part, but the fact that modern atheism wants to be accountable to no one. That statement sounds as if atheists are evil people, desiring to eliminate all moral codes. Not true. As a recent media report puts it, atheists want to spread the message that “we’re good people, just not God people.”  

 

In the new book, unChristian, the author states that modern apologetics do not work in our postmodern relativistic society. Christianity just does not “click” using logical rational arguments for God’s existence. I believe we all evaluate the facts as we see them and choose to believe what we do based upon our interpretation of those facts. For atheism, I can’t help but think D’Souza’s point is valid.

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The Origin of Time and Could God Really Exist?

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I read a lecture by Stephen Hawking about Space and Time Warps. It’s not that I had extra time on my hands (no pun intended) but because of a comment on my post regarding Blind Faith or Logical Reasons to Believe God Exists. His comment was that the laws of physics break down prior to the Big Bang, so the state of things prior to the singularity is irrelevant because there is no standard for measuring them. It’s a great observation and shows he is a well-read person.

In another lecture on the origin of the universe, Hawking says,

“The General Theory of Relativity and the discovery of the expansion of the universe shattered the old picture of an ever existing and ever lasting universe. Instead, general relativity predicted that the universe, and time itself, would begin in the big bang.”

In the Space and Time lecture, Hawking addresses time travel, technology, wormholes, warped space, and even what I call “Back to the Future” issues. Hawking says:

We thus have experimental evidence from the bending of light, that space-time is curved, and confirmation from the Casimir effect, that we can warp it in the negative direction. So it might seem possible, that as we advance in science and technology, we might be able to construct a wormhole, or warp space and time in some other way, so as to be able to travel into our past. If this were the case, it would raise a whole host of questions and problems. One of these is, if sometime in the future, we learn to travel in time, why hasn’t someone come back from the future, to tell us how to do it.

As a fan of the Sci-Fi Channel, the lecture was definitely interesting for me, but the quote above caught my attention… Hawking, who is perhaps the greatest scientific mind in our generation, admits we have only “experimental evidence” in what he addresses.

Rather than comment on my previous post, I thought a new post regarding this new topic was in order.

If laws of physics break down prior to “creation” of the universe as we know it, does not the Bible also claim to reveal the same information? Genesis 1:2 says that prior to the creation singularity the earth was formless and void, which many biblical commentators would translate “chaos.” OK, let’s leave the Bible out of this since many people do not see it as an authoritative document.

I find myself looking more at the philosophical side of arguments to “prove” God’s existence. The argument from creation (the cosmological argument) states that since science and philosophy would indicate the universe had a beginning (therefore not eternal), and for the universe to have a beginning it would have to be caused by something outside of the known universe. Since infinite regress is not possible, the universe must have been caused by an uncaused, always existing, eternal Being (which many people call God).

As far as the Big Bang and life on this planet, the logical first question would be, “Where did the elements that caused the Big Bang come from?” Hawking’s lecture on Life in the Universe does not seem to address this concern, rather stating, “The early appearance of life on Earth suggests that there’s a good chance of the spontaneous generation of life, in suitable conditions. Maybe there was some simpler form of organisation, which built up DNA.” To me it takes more faith to believe that something spontaneously comes from nothing, unless God (the first uncaused cause) is part of the equation.

But as I read Hawking’s lecture, I was amazed at the wonder of the universe and how much we cannot even fathom. Then came my next logical question, “Since this universe is so vast and complex, and great thinkers like Hawking can communicate such complex ideas, does this not logically indicate that there must be a Designer of all of this?” For example, a walk along the beach might reveal interesting sand designs caused by the waves. On the other hand, if I notice “Billy loves Suzie” written in the sand, I must assume this information came from a literate person who is capable of loving someone else. There is complexity in the message that assumes there is an intelligent sender of the message.

So, when we see the complexity of this universe, or even of the human body (made up of nerve cells, brain cells, skin cells, bone cells, all different from each other, yet similar) we must assume there was an intelligent Designer (which we may call God). Evolution does not explain how life moves from a simple cell organism to what we see in the complexity of, let’s say, an eye. Can the eye and an optic nerve be the product of time + chance?

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that the amount of usable energy in a closed system (like the universe) is decreasing, which means that everything tends to move from order to disorder, complex to simple, life to death. This is why we have to paint the house every few years, things run down rather than get better over time.

To me, this teleological argument also points to a beginning for the universe. And since the universe has a wonderful and complex order, there must be a Designer that set it in motion at some point in the past. Laws of physics do not need to break down before the Big Bang if we recognize a Creator that not only created matter, but also time and space as well.

Blind Faith? It’s a leap of faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), but when one chooses to believe in God after proper research, it is anything but blind.

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Blind Faith or Logical Reasons to Believe God Exists?

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The drought in Atlanta brought out people of faith to the capital steps to pray for rain. Across the street, the Freethought Society protested. I remembered from school, America stood for freedom of religion, but today it is being reinterpreted to mean freedom from religion, like religious expression should never be in the public arena. It appears that you can have “free thought,” but if your free thought leads you to believe in God, you’re parallel to a mindless devotee bowing down before a wooden idol.

 

With the rise of atheism in the media, many conclude that Christians believe in God as a crutch or an escape from reality. For some needy reason they choose to believe in an imaginary concept of God based on blind faith. But there really are solid logical arguments that would indicate it takes more faith to be an atheist. Take this one for example:

The cosmological argument simply states that the universe is limited in that it had a beginning and that its beginning was caused by something beyond the universe:

  1. The universe had a beginning.
  2. Anything that has a beginning must have been caused by something else.
  3. Therefore, the universe was caused by something else, and this cause was God.

Scientific evidence strongly supports the idea that the universe had a beginning. The view usually held by those who claim that the universe is eternal, called the steady state theory, leads some to believe that the universe is constantly producing hydrogen atoms from nothing. It would be simpler to believe that God created the universe from nothing. Also, the consensus of scientists studying the origin of the universe is that it came into being in a sudden and cataclysmic way (the Big Bang). The main evidence for the universe having a beginning is the second law of thermodynamics, which says the universe is running out of usable energy. But if it is running down, then it could not be eternal. What is winding down must have been wound up.

 

But beyond the scientific evidence that shows the universe began, there is a philosophical reason to believe that the world had a starting point. This argument shows that time cannot go back into the past forever. It is impossible to pass through an infinite series of moments. It is like moving your finger across an endless number of books in a library. You would never get to the last book. Even if you thought you had found the last book, there could always be one more added, then another. You can never finish an infinite series of real things.

 

The same goes toward “the beginning of time.” Infinite regress is impossible because there is always one more book on the shelf. So, time must have begun at a particular point in the past, and today has come at a definite time since then. Therefore, the world is a finite event after all and it needs a cause for its beginning. **

 

Norman Geisler puts it this way:

  1. Finite, changing things exist. For example, me. I would have to exist to deny that I exist; so either way, I must really exist.
  2. Every finite, changing thing must be caused by something else. If it is limited and it changes, then it cannot be something that exists independently. If it existed independently, or necessarily, then it would have always existed without any kind of change.
  3. There cannot be an infinite regress of these causes. In other words, you can’t go on explaining how this finite thing causes this finite thing, which causes this other finite thing, and on and on, because that really just puts off the explanation indefinitely.
  4. Therefore, there must be a first uncaused cause of every finite, changing thing that exists. 

Since the universe very plainly had a beginning, it must have been caused or started by something uncaused, which is God. But why do people reject God so strongly? I believe that if we recognize the existence of God, it means that we are accountable to something higher than ourselves. This is not acceptable to anyone who bows to no One.

 

** From Norman Geisler’s When Skeptics Ask.

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Differing Theology

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A friend of mine put this together years ago. I like the comparison because it allows me to see how one group within the body of Christ might see Christianity quite different from another. For an example, one person might feel he or she will strut into heaven wearing their golden crown all ready to rule and reign with Christ, while another would come before our resurrected Savior, bowing in humility ready to cast any golden crown at his nail-scarred feet.

Theology of The Cross

Suffering Servant

Human Free Will

Divine Self-limitation: God guides and Sustains

Human Free and Responsible for Sin

Priesthood of the Believer: Separation of Church/State

Mode of Atonement: Revelation, Reconciliation

Election: Predestined All to Salvation in Christ

Biblical Authority: Dynamic Inspiration Interpreted by the Holy Spirit

Faith by Encounter

Primarily – Luther

Theology of Glory

God of Glory

Divine Sovereignty

Divine Determinacy: God is in control of events

Humans Not Free But Responsible for Sin

Theocracy

Mode: Substitution, Ransom, Redemption  

Double Predestination: Some to Bliss, Others Not

Biblical Inerrancy: Literal, Mechanical, Verbal

Faith by Assent

Primarily – Calvin

Compiled by Harold Penick, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisvillle KY

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