Archive for April, 2009
Wrong Thoughts about God: 5 Dangerous Conclusions
**Part of The Nature of God series.**
You have a problem. An overwhelming problem.
That overwhelming problem is called God…and what you think of Him.
See, the most revealing thing about a person is his idea of God. How God acts. Thinks. Behaves. Responds.
What a person says about these things exposes what they believe about God…whether it’s truth or error.
Problem is, perverted notions about God soon rot the mind in which they appear…corrupting a person’s basic theology.
This corruption then leads to a monstrous sin:
“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” Romans 1:22-23
So, if you are looking for a god who William P. Young, Tom Cruise or Swedenborg will endorse…you won’t find him here.
What you will find is a historical and biblical description of the nature of God. In other words, a description of God based on fact–and not imagination.
Why Is This Important?
The meaning of many elements of the Gospel depend on the kind of God whose acts you think they are.
In fact, every essential Christian teaching is dependent for its validity on the orthodox doctrine of God. And low views of God destroy the Gospel for all who hold them.
That’s why A. W. Tozer warns, “the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself.”
When the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God and when the weightiest word any language can speak is its word for God what those thoughts and those words are ARE of paramount importance.
Thinking the wrong thoughts about God can lead to dangerous, unsettling conclusions. Here are five.
1. We can’t recognize false gods without knowing the true God.
A study of the attributes of the true God is essential to the fulfillment of the apologetic task of defending the true God and the true faith.
2. Theological error has eternal consequences.
Our ideas about God have deeper, wider and longer consequences than mere political or cultural ideas. They have eternal consequences as well.
3. Our spiritual growth is dependent upon our concept of God.
Disregard a biblical study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life. You can waste your life and, more importantly, lose your soul.
4. A commitment to the less than ultimate is not ultimately satisfying.
Your problem is not that you want to be satisfied. Your problem is that you are far too easily satisfied.
5. Modern Christianity is failing.
Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can correctly define God or the Gospel.
My ultimate aim in studying and writing about the essence of God–whether on his grace, justice or the Trinity–is two-fold:
1. To know God better.
2. Weighty doctrine is the antidote for weak-mined Christians.
I can relate to the writer who wrote Psalm 119. He wanted to understand God’s truth in order that his heart might respond to it and his life be conformed to it.
My life and my heart have expanded enormously from a simple study of God’s nature. I hope your heart does, too.
Regarding point no. 2, John Piper says in his book History’s Most Spectacular Sin that Paul saw weighty doctrine as a way to put fiber in the backbone of wimpy Christians.
I feel the same way.
So the main point of writing about these great biblical truths is not information for your head…but application to your heart and your life.
In the end, great biblical truths will keep you from drowning when the sea surge of trouble and error relentlessly roll at you.
10 Questions with an Atheist: Luke Muehlhauser
**Part of the 10 Questions with an Atheist series.**
When Luke Muehlhauser was 19, he got depressed.
He confesses he probably got depressed because all he did was work at Wal-Mart, download music and watch porn.
Mind you, Muehlhauser is a pastor’s son. Born and bred under Christian parents, education and church services.
His struggle was honest and continued for the next 3 years through the help of his father, friends and an enviable bent to understand his Christian faith.
But ultimately, it just didn’t make sense.
Book after book and discussion after discussion, Muehlhauser couldn’t cling to his belief in the existence of God.
Muehlhauser celebrates his deconversion, but also relishes his 22 years as a Christian. In fact, he feels it allows him to “approach believers with true understanding.”
On his blog Common Sense Atheism, Luke makes a point of criticizing atheists as much as he does theists. A weak argument is a weak argument no matter who it comes from.
In addition, he maintains an impressive list–448 and counting–of debates on the existence of God.
Luke, thank you for your time. And thank you for your thoughts.
1. How would you describe yourself: atheist, agnostic or skeptic? Explain.
I’m a skeptic because the vast, vast majority of truth claims on any subject are false. I’m also a gnostic atheist because I “know” gods don’t exist the same way I “know” fairies don’t exist. I can’t prove the non-existence of either, but I’m pretty sure they don’t exist, having looked at the evidence. But all beliefs come in degrees (see: Bayeseian reasoning). A creator god is extremely improbable already, but an all-good, timeless, spaceless, magical god who sent himself to earth to sacrifice himself to himself to appease himself is even more improbable. In contrast, I’m pretty agnostic about the existence of Buddha, Jesus, Apollonius of Tyana, and Yeshe Tsogyal as historical persons: I just don’t know.
2. When did you know you were an agnostic skeptic? Did it scare you or was it a non-issue?
On January 11, 2008 I admitted to myself I could not believe in God. That decision came slowly, and it was terrifying. I’d been taught that without God, life was meaningless and miserable. I did everything I could to believe. For every atheist book I read, I read 5 books by the best Christian apologists (Craig, Swinburne, Plantinga, Moreland…). But in the end I had to admit I had no better reason to believe in God than to believe in fairies. Only much later did I find out that there is plenty of joy and purpose without God.
3. Ever suffer persecution as an agnostic skeptic?
No.
4. What do you want to accomplish with your life?
Travel, learning, deep relationships. There are also some open issues in meta-ethics to which I’d like to contribute.
5. Who are your heroes? Why?
No heroes live up to the myths we create around them, but… Norman Borlaug saved a billion lives by studying how the world really works and applying his knowledge. Gandhi worked out the details of a radical option for human progress. Jon Stewart, Charlie Brooker, and Nassim Taleb are criticizing destructive systems in entertaining and successful ways.
6. What would you like to accomplish with your Common Sense Atheism blog?
I’d like to show why theism is nonsense, and why most of what is said by atheists is also nonsense. I criticize bad atheist arguments very often on my blog.
7. What’s your favorite part about being an agnostic skeptic?
That’s like asking, “What’s your favorite part about not believing in fairies?” So instead I’ll tell you what my favorite part about being a critical thinker is. I no longer fear the truth. I’m no longer worried that new discoveries will overthrow my dogmas – because I have none. I am always excited by the truth, even when it overthrows something that is precious to me.
8. Are there any Christian concepts that you respect?
Everything specific to Christianity is pretty bad. But I admire some values from earlier traditions that also make their appearance in certain flavors of Christianity: non-violence, generosity, love…
9. Does it irritate you when Christians try to share their faith with you?
No.
10. Were you ever a Christian? Would you go back?
I was a Christian for most of my life. I would go back if I found good reasons to believe.
Bonus question: I’ve heard atheists don’t embrace Peter Singer. What’s your take on Singer? Thumbs up or down? Explain.
Singer is popular for his work on animal rights, but he would be less popular if people knew Singer thinks it’s okay to kill retarded kids. At the meta-ethical level he defends evolutionary ethics, which is absurd and rightly dismissed by Christian apologists. At the normative level he defends preference utilitarianism, which is unworkable. I’m glad he gives so much to charity, but I say thumbs down. If you want to read a decent atheist ethical philosopher, try Alonzo Fyfe, Peter Railton, or Geoffrey Sayre-McCord.
Luke, thank you for your time and your honesty. I especially appreciate your openness.
Now, anybody have any comments or questions for Luke? Ask away. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Hard Questions: How to Make Sense of the World
At the base of your all your thoughts…all your contemplations about God, yourself and the world around you…is a worldview.
What’s a worldview?
A worldview is nothing more than a set of assumptions which you hold about the basic makeup of your world.
So, what is YOUR worldview?
One way to get at it, according to James Sire in his book Naming the Elephant, is to see it as your essential, rock-bottom answers to seven basic questions.
You might find answering these questions rewarding. Even gratifying. Then again, you might find what you uncover puzzling…
Possibly even traumatic.
However, I believe it’s very important to take the time to carefully answer these questions. Self-analysis can lead you to a more vivid, meaningful life.
I mean, what could be more important than discovering what you believe about God, the universe, yourself and the world around you?
IS there anything more important? I don’t think so. But you decide.
So, take some time right now to answer these questions–whether in the comments, on your blog or on paper–and get to the bottom of your worldview.
1. What is prime reality–the really real?
2. What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?
3. What is a human being?
4. What happens to a person at death?
5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?
6. How do we know what is right and wrong?
7. What is the meaning of human history?
In the end, you’ll probably find you fall into one of two camps: super naturalist or naturalist. God exists or only the universe exists…
One pushes for a sufficient reason behind the universe. One is satisfied with the universe. (See, theist and atheist alike are theologians.)
During a debate with Christian philosopher F. C. Coplestone, agnostic Bertrand Russell said, “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all.”
And that’s just the way it is. Brute reality.
And even though theists like me who see God as the self-existent sufficient cause for the universe take it one step further and say, “God is just there…and that’s all,” like the naturalist I have to conclude, “That’s just the way it is.”
Brute God. Sort of.
Ultimately, our worldview doesn’t prove whether we are right or wrong. It just identifies the orientation of our heart. What’s yours? I’ll share mine next week.
Does Evil Point to God’s Perfection?
**Part of The Nature of God: A Quick and Dirty Guide series.**
Did you know that your recognition of evil suggests there’s an ultimate standard for evil?
In other words, you have to know what is imperfect to know what is perfect.
So then, what is perfect? And how do we define perfect?
More to the point–and a little harder–what is good? And how do we define good?
What Is Good?
Good as an adjective means kind, adequate, convenient, useful, valuable, suitable, competent and safe.
Goodness in human beings means something admirable, attractive, praiseworthy or generous.
Think acting in good conscience.
When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy. Oscar Wilde
Good as a noun means “to diminish or reduce pain or increase happiness or prosperity.” Reminds me of Bentham’s utilitarian view.
The Jeremy Bentham Guide to Morality
If there is no objective standard for good, then we have nothing to go on that would define good outside of man. We only have ourselves to go by.
Jeremy Bentham, who was a moral hedonist, said morality should be based on “the greatest happiness of the greatest good.” (Moral relativism is inevitable, by the way.)
To discover the degree or amount of pleasure any one action would cause, Bentham suggested a utility calculus. Variables consist of intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and extent.
Here’s a couplet to help you remember:
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure–
Such marks in pleasure and in pains endure.
In the case of a car accident with multiple injuries, the utility calculus amounts to triage. In the case of pleasure, it amounts to something totally different.
The Parable of a Sex Affair
Imagine you are a married journalist visiting India. You take a swim in a nearby pool. You see a half-naked woman in the water moving toward you. It’s obvious she’s a prostitute. You have two possible solutions:
1. You have sex with the prostitute.
2. You avoid sex with the prostitute.
Sleeping with her would provide certain and immediate pleasure. But it’d be short-lived. Plus, you risk catching a venereal disease. Or getting the woman pregnant. Or getting caught. And if you get caught, your wife gets hurt.
The utility calculus might tell you not to have sex with her. But there’s a twist.
Not sleeping with her would provide certain, short term pain. But the pain would not last, nor would it haunt you. Yet, there still remains a value judgment: would you get caught?
Because you are in India and your wife is not, India provides the perfect scenario: you are a stranger in a remote land and the likelihood of punishment is low. It really just depends on how sensitive you are. And depends on motive.
That’s why we must dig deeper and seek a different standard–a standard outside of ourselves. We can’t determine what is good for ourselves, otherwise we have to allow Stalin or Hugh Hefner or child rapists to stand in our company. The child rapists says, “I raped her to increase my happiness.” If you are a relativist, can you argue with that?
See, we know outrageous moral degradation is wrong. It’s the subtle nuances that get overlooked.
Can We Know What Good Is Without Someone Telling Us?
We can’t use statistical outcomes to determine morality because at any point a society could still be dead wrong with their assumptions. Overwhelming majority vote doesn’t make child prostitution right. We must look for something outside of ourselves.
But how do we find it? And how do we know what it is once we’ve found it? How do we know it is good and not evil?
My argument is we can’t know what is good without the Law, that is, the Word of God. Paul said, “On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law.”
God planted consciences in us so that when we sin we sink into secrecy and shame. We are defensive and aggressive when in sin. So when we are not shameful and defensive, we must be doing good, right? Close.
The core issue comes down to “what is sin?” Because when we know what sin is, we can then know what good is: the opposite of sin.
Here’s How to Know What Sin Is
We all sense we know what is wrong with the world. We can sense child abuse is wrong. Genocide is appalling. Cyclone Nargis barreling through 250,000 people, bad.
We know that diseases that ravage the body into a corpse is wrong. An earthquake snatching a hundred thousand women and children and men, wrong. Terrorists butchering people alive for their faith, wrong.
We know all this is wrong.
But how do we know it’s wrong? We know what is imperfect…but not what is perfect. Why is that? Why do we have this sense of imperfection? Of something gone wrong?
Here’s why: We cannot know the imperfect unless we know the perfect. Thus, there must be a perfect standard. Could this perfect standard be the ultimate Moral Lawgiver?
Anselm argued that since we know things that are more or less perfect, there must be a most Perfect by which we know this.
In the Bible we learn God is morally impeccable:
The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He. Deuteronomy 32:4
His perfection follows from his infinity: he is an infinitely perfect Being. Flawless and excellent.
Now think of God as the just judge.
The Biblical judge is expected to love justice and fair play–and to loathe all ill treatment of one person by another.
On the other hand, an unjust judge is one who has no interest in seeing right triumph over wrong. This person is by biblical standards a monstrosity.
Evil That Offends God
We all agree what repulsive evil is. What we disagree on is the evil that offends God because it ends up being very subtle.
Let me show you what I mean.
God posses a holy jealousy and a morally perfect character. The former is what gives God zeal to protect and preserve his own holiness. The latter is the absolute moral perfection that pervades the character of God.
Thus, offending a holy God is not hard. We do not need to murder or rape to offend God. Merely ignoring him will do the trick. Sin–moral rejection of God–can happen easily.
Why should he not love us unconditionally–and just back off? Good question. But who said God has to love the way we love?
The Unchanging Standard of Goodness
Theism affirms that God is an unchanging Being. So, he must love in an unchanging way. That means God can be perfectly just and perfectly loving at the same time–provided it is not on the same person at the same time. In other words, his wrath rests on all unrepentant sinners and his love on all repentant sinners.
This does not mean there is a change in God.
In his Systematic Theology Norman Geisler says that God always manifests wrath on unrepentant sinners and always manifests love on the repentant. The only thing that changes is that the person–by repentance–moves from under one attribute to under another.
To say God changes, is a category mistake–comparing a changing thing with an unchanging being.
Besides, for God to change is to admit some imperfection in his being. And to admit that there is some imperfection in his being is to suggest a perfect standard to judge his imperfection by.
So then, what is that standard, if not God himself?
Conclusion
The unjust implies the Just. Evil implies good. We get our sense of evil because we have a sense of good. We can bring that sense of good into sharper focus by studying God, since he is the ultimate standard of good. And once we do this, we can learn two things:
1. Pleasing a holy and just God is a whole lot safer than alienating him.
2. God will one day defeat evil.
When we learn about the ultimate standard–the perfection of good–we discover that God can’t let evil prevail. He is both omnipotent and holy: he cares that evil exists and he has the power to do something about it.
And as hard as it sounds, we have to trust his reasons for not vanquishing it now. That is what it means to surrender.
13 Quick Facts on Swedenborgianisms
If I was ever to bail on orthodox Christianity, this is where I’d land…just so I could have the name: Swedenborgianism.
Sounds so seductive.
Less like a cult and more like a retreat for exhausted celebrities.
It’s founder, Emanuel Swedenborg, was a rationalist and mystic who absorbed the writings of Descartes, Locke and Kant…
He then interpreted the Scripture through their combined worldviews.
What emerged was a deeply speculative philosophical system of theology couched in redefined Christian terms and buttressed by visions, dreams and trances.
1. Emanual Swedenborg was born in Stockholm, Sweden on January 29, 1688. He died 85 years later in London on March 29, 1772.
2. Unlike most cult founders, Swedenborg was an intellectual powerhouse. He wrote a gazillion books. He invented a new stove, a magazine air gun and methods to manufacture salt. He drew plans for a flying machine and water docks. He even tried to build a submarine.
3. In 1745 he received a vision to become “both seer and a revelator of the things of the spiritual world.” In fact, 1743 to 1749 proved to be productive in terms of dreams and visions.
4. He debated theology with Cicero, St. Augustine, Luther, Calvin and St. Paul, whom he bitterly opposed.
5. In fact, Swedenborg rejected the books of Paul, Peter, James, Jude and Hebrews…leaving only the Gospels and Revelations as orthodox.
6. The launch of The Church of the New Jerusalem took place in London in 1788, 16 years after Swedenborg’s death.
7. Men have to be 21 to join The Church, women 18. But only after studying the writings of Swedenborg for about six months.
8. The ghost of a dead Dutch ambassador once told Swedenborg that a goldsmith he’d hired stole some money and hid it in a secret bureau drawer. This turned out to be true.
9. He butchered the historical view of the Trinity by rejecting Christ as God and relegating the Holy Spirit to mean “divine sanctity.”
10. Swedenborg wrote that angels in heaven doubled over and vomited whenever someone on earth mentioned man’s damnation and Christ’s death as what reconciled them to God.
11. He believed after death that only the soul continued on. The body remain in the grave.
12. Jesus Christ’s Second Coming, Swedenborg asserted, took place in the eighteenth century…thus, The Church of the New Jerusalem.
13. Arthur Conan Doyle claimed Swedenborg was a medium who practiced clairvoyance.
By the way, if you are a Swedenborgian, please say “hi” and let me know if I got my facts straight.
**Part of the Quick Facts on Christian Cults series.**
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