Remembering that sometimes things change

A devout Jew in the first century BC would have gone to the synagogue every Sabbath to hear teaching and readings from the Scriptures. Each week, men from the community would rise to read from the books of the Law and from the prophets who foretold a Messiah, scribes and respected elders would explain the meaning of these Scriptures to the people, and then they would all go home as another week cycled on past, as the people and the weeks had done for generation after generation. One imagines a middle-aged man and his family, from Capernaum, say; godly, careful to observe the Sabbath, there every week to listen as the old scrolls are opened and the thinning grey beards move over them in patient explanation. He might sit on the same bench where his father had sat, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, as they listened to the same words, promises so old they predated the worn stone walls around them. So they waited. And then, one Sabbath, someone from the audience rose to speak in the usual way, and the most unexpected thing happened: what they had been expecting. “They went into Capernaum; and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and began to teach. They were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”

One of the world’s greatest lies is that nothing ever really changes. Sure, Eve, eat that fruit–God may not be happy, but really, what’s the worst that could happen?

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Zeno of Elea and understanding ultimate reality

Zeno of Elea was one of history’s first recorded philosophers, living about four hundred and fifty years before Christ. Zeno is remembered for creating paradoxes, such as his famous argument that it’s impossible to ever arrive at a destination. The difficulty, Zeno explained in what is called the “dichotomy paradox,” is that before one arrives at the destination, one must travel half the distance there. Yet, as soon as one arrives at that halfway mark, there’s a new halfway distance which must be traveled before you can get to the destination. And so on. Since any distance, even the very shortest, can be halved, there’s always a half-distance to travel before one can arrive at the destination. With an infinite number of halfway points to reach before the destination, it does seem as if logic demands the conclusion that you can never get there.

One suspects that Zeno may not have been popular in high school, but my point in bringing him up is not to complain about dead Italian philosophers, but to illustrate an unfortunate tendency that most of us have when thinking about theological uncertainties. As an example, consider the question of how God can justly punish us for our sins (thus implying we are guilty for them) despite the fact that human nature is fallen and therefore we cannot help sinning.

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About modesty

I read an article recently which explained that the Christian ideal of female modesty justified sexual assault by making a man’s self-control the responsibility of the woman. My interest today isn’t in offering a lengthy rebuttal to that argument. In fact, I’ll confine myself to noting the Lord’s scathing response to King David over his adultery with Bathsheba, regardless of how he might have been tempted beforehand by her decision to bathe in plain sight of the palace. Clearly, divine appreciation for “she made me do it” excuses hasn’t increased since Adam tried it. Strawmen aside, though, the article’s underlying perspective that encouraging modesty means putting on women a responsibility that rightly belongs to men is one that I’ve seen frequently echoed in recent discussions among Christians.

In some ways, it’s an appropriate correction. There have certainly been segments of evangelical Christianity which have, in practice if not usually in theory, placed very disproportionate responsibility on women for maintaining sexual purity. I still recall hearing a young lady matter-of-factly describe how, when her boyfriend groped her while they were kissing, she would always swat his hand to help him remember (apparently unsuccessfully) not to do it again. It didn’t seem to occur to either of them that the fellow himself might need to exercise some self-control, perhaps with accompanying reading from Matthew 5:30 for motivation. And it’s absolutely heartbreaking to hear some women describe growing up terrified of predatory males whose inevitable lustfulness it was the girl’s job to prevent by becoming a social nullity swathed in protective layers of cloth. So, yes, absolutely: if we forget that the biblical model for men is Joseph with Potiphar’s wife, not David with Bathsheba, then we have gotten things badly off-balance. However, it’s awfully hard to avoid overshooting the mark as the pendulum swings back, and I’m afraid we may be seeing that happen.

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Naturalism and morality: The only thing that’s wrong is everything you know

In my post a couple weeks ago, I considered whether naturalism is as exclusively and objectively scientific as its proponents suggest. We saw that naturalists typically begin with an a priori assumption that there is no God, which, if true, would mean the naturalistic worldview is true by default. Since the nonexistence of God is an unprovable starting point rather than an empirical conclusion, the naturalist’s foundational assumption is, in a sense, unscientific. However, it would be unwise to press that point too far. If we want to challenge the naturalistic worldview, we need to offer something more compelling than “but you can’t prove God doesn’t exist.”

There are two main ways in which a Christian can respond to the challenge of naturalism. The first is to avoid the sphere of science altogether and focus on other reasons for belief in God. After all, if theism is true, naturalism must be false, across the board. To the degree that faith or experience or historical evidence or anything else give reason to believe there’s a God, naturalism is undermined. The Holy Spirit crying with our spirit “Abba Father” offers an absolute refutation of naturalism before even a shred of scientific evidence is considered.

If naturalism is false, though, we can expect it to falter even in the scientific realm. And if there’s further evidence which might sow seeds of faith in someone’s life, why not offer it? This brings us to the second possible response to naturalism, attacking it on its own ground.

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A bit of theodicy from alien-invasion sci fi

I went to see Edge of Tomorrow yesterday (that sounds more confusing than I expected) and thought it was one of the better movies I’ve watched recently. The movie is set amid an alien invasion during which, for rather obscure science fiction-y reasons, Tom Cruise’s character finds himself trapped in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over. Every time he is killed, his life resets back to the day before, which he then re-experiences until he’s killed again, because that’s what happens in an alien invasion. (Edge of Tomorrow is basically Groundhog Day if the groundhog was millions of aliens trying to exterminate all human life.)

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The almost-realism of “Game of Thrones”

The internet informs me that, on the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, an outmatched Good Guy fought a Bad Guy. The gallant and nimble Oberyn dueled the massive and seemingly invincible “Mountain,” flurrying spear strokes and shouting accusations of past rape and murder against his heavily-armed opponent. Despite the odds, Oberyn fought his way to unlikely victory, wounding and then stabbing The Mountain through the chest. The exhausted victor turned away, vengeance secured, and then The Mountain lurched from the ground, smashed Oberyn’s face with a punch, then grabbed the smaller man and forced his fists into his head until it exploded.

Game of Thrones is widely praised for its gritty realism.

In fact, that’s among the most consistent and loudest of the critical plaudits for Game of Thrones, which is currently HBO’s second most popular show ever, with around five million weekly viewers. Unlike other shows, we’re told, in which the good guys are always good and the bad guys are always bad and the good guy wins and rides off into the sunset, Game of Thrones paints a more complex picture where nobody’s really good and the bad guy usually wins. The last time the show was in the news, a few months ago, was when a once-unlikable character who had been slowly redeemed and humanized unexpectedly committed an attack sufficiently vile that there’s really no way to describe it without nausea. Because realism, you see. (Also hundreds of pages of free advertising for Game of Thrones, but let’s not be cynical.) In the world of Game of Thrones, the page is black and the whites are chalk outlines waiting to be smudged or brushed away.

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Is naturalism ideology or science?

It’s almost always a simplification to point to a single ideology as being “what the culture believes.” With that caveat, however, it is not inaccurate to say that the opinion-makers of America–academia, media, scientists, etc.–have nearly unanimously embraced the naturalistic worldview. While even its supporters struggle to define naturalism precisely, at its heart is the simple idea that everything in the world (both what exists and what happens) can be explained through purely mechanistic cause and effect. Everything from planets to animals to ideas is ultimately the product of a chain of exclusively material “dominoes” stretching back into the unknowable past. The theory really came into its own in the 19th Century, as Darwinian evolution purported to fit the diversity and apparent design of biological life into that same impersonal progression of cause and effect.

Naturalism matters to a Christian because it is what is left over when theism is discarded. Throughout history, humans have assumed there are two fundamental sorts of “stuff” in the universe: mental/spiritual existence (things like gods, angels, ideas, and values) and material/physical existence (things like elements, molecules, and atoms). Christianity and most other theistic worldviews assume that the spiritual existed before and was the cause of the material: “In the beginning was the Word… All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Atheism, on the other hand, by definition cannot accept a preexistent and creative Mind. This leaves the atheist with a world in which everything begins with impersonal, material being; naturalism, in other words.

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When your child sins

Teens do a lot of astonishingly foolish things. They also do a lot of sinful things, and one of the great challenges of parenthood is the question of how to react to the inevitable foolishness and sin that come with learning how to be a man or a woman.

It’s easy for our love for our children (more charitably) or our pride (less charitably) to make us expect a sinlessness from them that we know is beyond our own reach. Every one of us could list persistent sins with which we’ve struggled for years: pride or lust or gossip or lack of faith. We can think back to sins we’ve committed that nauseate us with their selfishness or perversion or rebellion. The Christian is never satisfied with anything short of holiness, but we also recognize that sanctification is a process and the presence of sin does not nullify the promise of salvation. “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.” Your children are born sick, just like you. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t need a Savior.

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Feeling what God feels

As anyone who’s ever been cut off in traffic knows, our emotions aren’t the best guide for our behavior. Whether we’re doubting God’s goodness or struggling to turn the other cheek or fighting the urge to check out the girl in the bikini, the gut-level pull is often in the wrong direction. However, even though feelings shouldn’t point the way when we make our decisions, they can’t be ignored either. Holiness is much easier if it goes with the grain of our emotions rather than against it.

When I’m browsing the web and stumble on a pornographic popup ad, I can choose to close it regardless of what I’m feeling. It’s certainly an easier choice, though, if Christian anger and pity over violated innocence are there to counter the baser emotions the ad is meant to arouse. When my church goes to minister at a local nursing home, I can and should make myself go along even if I struggle to feel anything but revulsion for the unfortunates wasting away, but I’ll do more good if the choice grows out of genuine affection and sympathy. 

Which raises an interesting dilemma, because there’s really nothing I can do to directly change my emotions. A good argument can change my mind and a teeth-gritting choice can shift my will, but, at any particular moment, the best that can be done with my emotions is to overrule them. That’s not to say our emotional composition cannot be changed–it’s just a longer process, more like shaping a bonsai than like turning a steering wheel. And since our emotions are so closely tied up with our moral decision-making, it’s worth thinking about how our feelings can be included in the process of “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.” There are a few things that we can do. 

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Show, don’t tell

Your children badly need to see your faith making your life unpleasant.

You see, real things make demands upon us. A puppy is not the same as a stuffed animal, and even a little child can feel the difference when a play date is cut short to go home and take Fido out for a walk. When my wife was a little girl she had a paper cutout “husband” with whom she played at times, and then at other times she would pack him away in a drawer. That’s not an option with her real husband–I may need to talk, or need dinner, or need a hug, even when she’s tired and out of sorts. Even something as basic as gravity tells us it’s there by restricting what we can do. Real things disrupt your life.

In some parts of the world, Christian children hear their parents telling them God is real by hand-writing copies of the one village Bible, or gathering in hidden rooms to worship, or being carted off to prison or death because they will not deny their Lord. In America, we tell our children God is real by having an Easter egg hunt.

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