2009 May | Fallen and Flawed

This explains why conversations with non-believers can be so frustrating. It’s like talking to a vertical corpse. [I'm sure they feel the same way about me.]

More importantly, though, and this is my point, if I get sucked into the slipstream of argument and debate and don’t move to a graceful articulation of the good news–I’ve failed.

What Does It Mean to Be Spiritually Dead?

At a recent conference John Piper unpacked what it means to be dead apart from the new birth:

1. We are by nature children of wrath. Ephesians 2:3

2. We love darkness and hate the light. John 3:19-20

3. We have hearts that are hard like stone. Ephesians 4:18-19

4. We are hostile towards God, unable to submit or please him. Romans 8:7

5. We are unable to accept the gospel 1 Corinthians 2:14

6. We’re unable to come to Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:3 and John 6:65

7. We are slaves to sin. Romans 6:17

8. We are slaves of satan. Ephesians 2:1-2

9. No good thing dwells in us. Romans 7:18

To anyone who cares, this is bad news.

What the New Birth Doesn’t Mean

However, though I count myself on the side of the spiritually living, there is a work of sin that remains in me even though I have been born again.

In fact, I don’t think I go a single hour without offending God.

But here’s the deal: That can either devastate me…or it can move me to adore and embrace Christ even more…

Because as bad as the bad news is, it is glorious to get it right because there is a glorious remedy: The new birth.

So, as Tim Challies said in his summary of Piper’s new birth sermon, “when we properly understand our own badness, we see Christ more gloriously.”

And don’t miss this: I don’t feel myself becoming gloriously more holy. No. I feel myself becoming gloriously more grateful. More humble. More passionate to share the undeserved gift I’ve received.

My Shameless Articulation of the Good News

Perhaps you’ve noticed by now, but there’s a pattern to my 10 Questions with an Atheist series. It looks something like this: First interview. Second, articulation of the Gospel.

Mind you, this isn’t by design. It’s by compulsion.

The first time it happened, I rolled out an unflinching dedication to readers who care enough to share the Gospel with the spiritually blind.

The second time it erupted into a simple, but elegant confession of my boundless gratitude for the Gospel.

Bottom line: It just feels so right to follow up an atheist interview with the proclamation that Jesus is my savior. Our savior.

Unbeliever: What I Want You to Know

If you are a non-believer, I want you to know this: I have no delusions about winning you over.

I know better than that.

There’s no silver bullet in my apologetics toolbox that will take you out of your atheism. That’s one of the reasons I don’t spend much time mastering classical or current arguments.

It fundamentally comes down to this: The Holy Spirit freely gives life. And it only happens through the living and abiding word of God.

It’s that Word that brings about faith–not a sophisticated cosmological argument–and it is only through that Word that we are awakened to receive Christ and believe him.

How to Lose Readers and Subscribers

Naturally, there’s a good chance that I lose some subscribers with a post like this. A good chance I turn away some readers.

Suicide in our market-driven culture, yes. But I don’t care. It’s Christ and Christ crucified.

In Jesus’ own ministry, he didn’t widen the Gospel–he narrowed it. And trust me, I wish it were different. My task–the preacher’s task–is impossible.

That’s why it needs to be empowered by God. Not me. Yet through me. Through my articulation of the Gospel God awakens dead souls.

And that is a remarkably humbling thing to know. Don’t you think?

Tags: Birth, Christ, Dead, Regeneration

10 Questions with an Atheist: John Loftus

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | Atheists, People | 111 Comments

**Part of the 10 Questions with an Atheist series.**

John Loftus was a philosophy instructor at a secular college when he decided to walk away from Christianity.

It wasn’t easy.

The only thing Loftus had known since he was 18 was learning, teaching and defending Christianity.

During that time he had chased several divinity degrees and a PhD. Launched an apologetic journal. Sat under William Lane Craig. Even served as Senior Minister at Angola Christian Church in Indiana from 1987 to 1990.

But in the space of five years–1991 to 1996–Loftus endured a major crisis, crawled through boxes of new information and searched for the caring, loving Christian community that just wasn’t there.

It was these events that convinced him to reject Christianity. This is his story.

1. How would you describe yourself: atheist, agnostic or skeptic? Explain.

Thanks for wanting to learn from me. I appreciate this and would hope other Christians would follow your example rather than just blasting people like me.

Let me state for the record that I consider myself first and foremost a freethinker who especially approaches all religious claims with skepticism. All such claims are extraordinary and so they require a lot of evidence before I will believe them, just like evangelicals do with Catholic claims of miracles at Lourdes.

Skepticism is not a belief system. It’s an approach to truth claims, a reasonable one at that. Skepticism is founded squarely on the science of human nature, psychology, and the science of culture, anthropology, for starters.

We human beings are woefully illogical and gullible and trusting. We adopt the beliefs of the culture within which we were raised. We don’t understand things very well. What we believe we prefer to believe. We don’t see things correctly. What we see is filtered by what culture we were raised in.

We won’t even seriously consider we were led to believe something that is false. In fact, we may be personally offended and think anyone who disagrees is ignorant or stupid. That’s how entrenched some cultural beliefs can be. To see this argued for I recommend Jason Long’s book, the Religious Condition. See my review.

Based on these scientific studies we should be skeptical about what we believe. We should be skeptical about that which we were taught to believe. We should test claims and see if they have independent corroboration through science.

If after approaching a truth claim with skepticism it passes muster, then the skeptic has good reasons to accept it. So the skeptic does accept certain claims to be true. No one can be skeptical of everything. It’s just that each truth claim he tests for himself must pass the test of skepticism.

Such skepticism has led me to atheism. There are no supernatural entities or forces at all, although since I cannot state that with a measure of certainty I’m best described as an agnostic atheist.

2. When did you know you were an agnostic atheist? Did it scare you or was it a non-issue?

The process I went through was long, almost thirteen years. I went through several stages representative of the history of Christian theology itself, until I came to my present position today.

I questioned the Biblical accounts of creation, then Genesis 1-11, and then other portions of the Bible began falling like dominoes. I became a deist, an existential liberal, a full blown agnostic and then an atheist.

What finally tipped the balance for me was why there didn’t seem to be a reasonable initial solution to our existence. The best explanation for this state of affairs was that it happened by chance. An eternally existing fully formed triune divine being who has never learned anything did not explain anything at all for me.

While I was relived to come to this conclusion, the initial process was the most agonizing. It was indeed scary because of the eternal threat of hell. So I had to be very sure I was correct, so sure that I would be willing to risk the threat of hell if I was wrong. And I do. That’s how sure I am Christianity is a delusion. That should say something I think.

And I had invested so much time and money in my education with a hopeful career and many Christian friends that it was also scary to decide to leave that community and my goals.

It can be a painful thing to leave the faith. We like our comfort-zones. We don’t want to leave a community of friends. They won’t come with us. We leave alone. It’s literally like a divorce. I then had to reinvent myself.

3. Ever suffer persecution as an agnostic atheist?

I am personally attacked every single day because I argue against Christianity. That’s why I am forced to moderate comments on my blog.

I want a decent respectable discussion of the ideas that separate us or none at all. If it is opened up for anonymous comments the Blog would degenerate into a name calling free for all on both sides.

It appears that some Christians feel personally attacked because I disagree with their ideas and that’s a non-sequitur. Since I begin my book as a “tell all” account of my personal life they have used that information to personally malign me at every occasion they can.

My initial reactions to such abuse were polite but then degenerated as I wallowed in the mire with them. I’ve since become inured from such attacks and I ignore them for the most part.

It would seem that the Christians who do so probably cannot deal with my arguments so that’s the only thing left they can do. There are several blogs dedicated to maligning me personally and hardly ever seriously engage my arguments. One intelligent Christian wrote me about one such blog writer: “You clearly have gotten under his skin and he clearly feels that he cannot take you on intellectually or else he would make each blog post a critique of your work – either that or he is childish.”

The way I have been verbally attacked leads me to think that if they had the political power of the church during the Inquisition they would’ve lit the fires that burned me at the stake while singing “Kumbaya.”

4. What do you want to accomplish with your life?

I have several personal, private goals, like being happily married to my wife Gwen until death do us part. She’s perfect for me.

Other than that I want to change the religious landscape in America bit by bit, one person at a time. I think we’d be better off without religion, especially the fundamentalist kind. I really do, although it’s probably never going to go away.

I do think that just as the liberalizing tendencies have changed Christianity down through the centuries, they will continue to do so into the future. As such, fundamentalists will be forced to choose to live in the backwoods without having much political power.

What’s interesting to me is how Christianity is debunked in every generation but rather than admit their debunking and leave the fold Christians reinvent their faith in light of skeptical arguments.

The Christianity of today is not like the Christianity of a hundred years or a few centuries ago or like the earliest varieties of Christianity in the beginning few centuries. The Christianity of tomorrow will not look like the one that exists today, either. They will think their version is the correct one and that the Christians of today were wrong about several things, possibly significant things. Too bad we cannot compare those Christianities because they are not here yet.

You see, since death ends my life I must give everything I can to the present one. That’s all I have. And I want to make a difference for my children and their children and their children because I care about them. I do not want it to be said in the future that I didn’t do my best for my future great- great- great- Grandchildren. I want them to remember me with fondness for what I did for their future.

And it’s too bad that if I’m right about death no one will ever know that I was, because we won’t wake up after death to realize that death ends it all.

We go where dogs and parasites and sharks go when they die. Any account of heaven that leaves all other living creatures out of it is seriously deficient, but then having mosquitoes and skunks in heaven would be deficient as well.

5. Who are your heroes? Why?

My wife. She’s my main encourager and motivator. My rock. She believes in me like no one else.

My intellectual hero by far is Bart D. Ehrman. He is dismantling evangelical Christianity like probably no one has ever done in any generation. He has the knowledge and the recent tools at his exposure.

And he treats Christianity with respect. He writes both scholarly and popular books. My philosophical heroes on a very short list in modern times are Michael Martin, William L. Rowe, Paul Draper, Keith Parsons, Theodore Drange and J.L. Schellenberg. My heroes in the recent past are Bertrand Russell, and J.L. Mackie.

When it comes to debunking Christianity one of my heroes of the past is Thomas Paine, and in the present day I must mention Dan Barker, my friend.

Among Biblical scholars of today Hector Avalos and his efforts stand head and shoulders above others. I also respect the efforts of Edward T. Babinski (who first encouraged me), Robert M. Price, and Richard Carrier.

David Eller, an anthropologist, is the one voice that should take atheism into the future. He should be one of the main spokespersons for atheism. There are others.

And not to mention the so-called “New Atheists,” I appreciate the way they have grabbed the attention of believers in America. Like many minorities of the past someone had to stand up before the world and say unabashedly with force that the Emperor has no clothes on. I appreciate their courage and conviction.

Now people are looking seriously at our claims and there are even shelves for atheist books in major national bookstore chains because of them.

6. What would you like to accomplish with your blog?

I think I already answered that in question #2. Needless to say I believe the Blog will outlast me and be a force for debunking Christianity long after I’m gone, as long as there is an internet.

I want to treat Christianity with respect while I debunk it as a delusion, i.e., as false.

Believers with doubts now have a place to be able to learn from us and express themselves in a respectful environment. In the church doubts are not expressed, nor are questions encouraged. So they have little option but to look on the web for answers, and you know the answers we’ll provide them.

7. What’s your favorite part about being an agnostic atheist?

My favorite part is being able to do what’s right because it’s right and not because I have to find a Biblical passage that tells me it’s right. I can think for myself.

I don’t have to try to justify what I do from the Bible. I don’t have to try to justify why I never tithed the whole ten percent (Christians do not do this by far–as a former minister I know they don’t), or why I never spent enough time in prayer, or why I did not give thanks for everything, or why I did not evangelize all of the time, or why I didn’t do more in response to my belief that God sent his son to atone for my sins.

And I no longer have to gerrymander what the Bible says in order to make the unreasonable and improbable believable. I never could figure out how Jesus could be 100% God and 100% man, nor was there any cogent way to understand how Jesus atoned for my sins, nor do I have to try to justify why there is so much evil in the world if there is a perfectly good and omnipotent God, nor do I have to justify my belief that women are equal to men from the Bible, or why slavery was okay in the Bible but not now, or why genocide was a command that a perfectly good God who cares for every individual person commanded.

8. Are there any Christian concepts that you respect?

You mean distinctively Christian concepts, don’t you, since we all share many other concepts and ideas. There are no distinctively Christian concepts that I accept. The ones I do accept I do so because of other reasons.

I think marriage should be monogamous between two committed people. I think it’s better to tell the truth and to forgive people who do you wrong. I fully accept democratic capitalism, the rights of all people to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness until someone harms another person or group, and I support the first amendment, for starters.

But when it comes to respecting distinctively Christian ideas, it’s hard to do. I do treat these ideas respectfully, but I do not respect them at all. I do recognize certain Christian scholars who are experts at mental gymnastics and I marvel at the contorted reasoning they use to support these ideas, so I respect their intelligence at defending delusional beliefs, yes.

But the beliefs themselves are complete and utter hogwash, most notable Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology, which if that was the very first issue he ever wrote about in his career would probably have been ignored even by most Christian scholars.

There are, though, several major Christian thinkers who have proposed what I called the “Six Major Ideas That May Help Save Christianity From Refutation in Our Generation,” (some others are mentioned in a comment by Heyzeus7 below mine).

I have to respect Christian thinkers who can do this for their faith even if I think what they defend is utterly false.

9. Does it irritate you when Christians try to share their faith with you?

Not at all, unless they simply quote the Bible to me and refuse to think about the ideas they believe based on what they quote. Bible thumpers are complete ignoramuses and do irritate me.

10. Were you ever a Christian? Would you go back?

This first question is a double-edge one. On the one hand I believed the Bible and trusted in God’s salvation, studied what I thought was his word, prayed daily, and sought to share my faith, yes. I was a Christian in the same sense that any believer you know, including yourself, professes faith in Christ.

But on the other hand, from my perspective today, I was never a Christian, if by that one means someone who was actually in a saved relationship with God-in-Christ. I was never Christian in the sense that there is no truth to Christianity.

If being a Christian means that I had a personal relationship with God-in-Jesus Christ, then I never had such a relationship, for such a supernatural being is based upon non-historical mythology. There is no divine forgiveness because there is no divine forgiver. There was no atonement because Jesus did not die for the world’s sins. There was no God-man in the flesh to believe in. My petitionary prayers were nothing but wishful hoping.

And this goes for any professing believer, too. You are not a Christian, either, because there is no Christ, no Messiah, no God-in-the-flesh, no Holy Spirit regeneration, no devil and no heaven to go to when you die.

Would I ever go back? Not to evangelical Christianity, that’s for sure. I left that for good.

Your Turn

John, I want to thank you very much for taking the time and being so frank and honest. This was a very compelling and rewarding read. Anyone have any questions, comments or concerns? Have at it.

Tags: Atheist, Believe, Christian, Christianity

The Curious Secret to Understanding the Bible

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | Bible | 8 Comments

We all want to do it–make sense of the Bible that is. Yet, most advice we get runs along the lines of “ask God to help you.”

That’s good advice, but there’s more to it than that.

Far too much of what we read in the Bible is odd, hard or abstract. We read about the Light, the Son of Man, the Kingdom of God–all useful concepts. But what do they mean?

As a result, it’s hard to wrap your mind around what the Bible’s actually trying to say to you.

I’d like to change that. I’d like to introduce you to three simple principles that will help you unpack the Bible.

These three principles arise because of the curious secret that the Bible is a plain, historical, consistent communication of God to men.

Behind the sixty-six books written by multiple authors over thousands of years is an organic unity unique to Christianity.

And because of this unity we can approach Scripture with these three principles and make sense of what once seemed so strange and obscure.

Principle 1: Look for the Simple, Native Sense

First, we must unpack the native–or natural–sense of what we are reading. This is called the principle of simplicity.

Here’s how it works.

Every word in the Bible is to be taken in its plain, ordinary meaning. We want the natural and obvious meaning to the people speaking and hearing those words.

That means what is simple and straightforward is always to be preferred to subtleties and complexities. It’s like the Occam’s Razor of Bible interpretation.

But this is not the same as looking for the literal meaning. Sometimes the natural is figurative rather than literal. Take Nicodemus’ response to Jesus’ claim that a man must be born again:

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

It’s obvious Jesus was using a figure of speech here. But Nicodemus took it literal. The same goes for Jesus’ favorite form of instruction, the parable.

When reading a parable, it’s not legitimate to press the details. The point behind a parable is to illustrate one main lesson. A good example of a parable is the Good Samaritan found in Luke.

In this parable, don’t make the inn stand for the church and the two denarii stand for the two sacraments. If you do, then you’re guilty of making the text mean something the speaker never intended it to mean.

However, with an allegory you can draw many points from the the similarities. The vine and branches in John 15 are a good example of an allegory. In allegories, the details always deserve deeper study.

So, how do you figure out if a passage is to be taken literally or figuratively? Simple: use your common sense. Ask yourself what the native intention of the author or speaker was. What the simple purpose of that passage was.

If you do that, you’ll uncover the meaning behind every passage.

Principle 2: Look for the the Original, Historical Sense

The unique thing about Christianity is that God chose to reveal himself in a precise historical context. That means as we read Scripture, we need to ask ourselves what is the historical context.

We also need to keep asking ourselves: What did the author intend to convey by this? What is he actually asserting? What will his original hearers have understood him to have meant?

In other words, biblical writers should be allowed to speak for themselves.

So, as you read, you need to determine the situation, style, language and culture in which the writer wrote.

Situation. Who wrote it and to whom? What were the circumstances? For what reason?

Style. What is the literary genre of each book? Historical? Epistle? Gospel? Poetry? Wisdom literature?

Language. What is the original language of the book? What do the words mean in that language? How can my own language change the meaning of what I’m reading?

Culture. What social customs changed or stayed the same? More importantly, what is the point behind emphasis on certain social customs? In the case of Paul and veiled women in church, the point was marriage headship and the authority of the husband.

Principle 3: Look for the General, Harmonious Sense

Even though the Bible is a library of books written by dozens of authors, it is in fact the word of God expressing the mind of God. Thus, it possess an organic unity.

And if there is an organic unity, then all Scripture should jive with other Scripture. This is the principle of harmony.

The principle of harmony simply says to view Scripture as a whole. To let Scripture interpret Scripture. Here are two tips to help you do that:

1. Understand each passage in its immediate context–the paragraph, chapter and book in which it is embedded.

2. Understand each passage in its distant context–the total biblical revelation.

The immediate context gives each verse it’s specific meaning. It answers the question: How does this verse dovetail into the book’s particular message?

The distant context gives each verse its general meaning. It answers the question: How does the verse dovetail into God’s full, historical plan of salvation?

Conclusion

One thing to note before I finish: never read a Bible verse.

If you want to know what a particular verse means, at least read the paragraph before and after it. Better if you read the entire chapter. Best if you read the whole book.

To wrench a text from its context is an inexcusable blunder. You can avoid this mistake if you learn to see the Bible as a whole. And to read each text in the light of all.

Tags: Bible, Historical, Interpretation, Meaning, Sense

The 5 A.M. Secret: How to Balance Blog and Family

Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | Blogging, Christian Living | 6 Comments

I have a FULL-time job. A family of four. A close-knit group of friends. And a robust blog writing schedule.

That seems to impress some of you.

What’s my secret? Simple. Call me at 5 in the morning…

Or 9:00 P.M. on a Friday night.

True, I don’t have a social life. Am rather dull. Fond of solitude and books.

But all my leisure time–meaning children are asleep and the wife is folding laundry or out with the girls–is spent with my nose in a book. My hand on a pencil. And a notebook on my lap.

And you know what? I wouldn’t want it any other way.

At some point, usually early in the morning, I sit down with the laptop and knock out a blog post or two.

Trust me: I’d love a short cut. But in all my years of writing, I’ve found the only shortcut is truly the long way: hard work.

And the way I see it, if you work harder than everyone else…you learn more about your craft. You become faster, stronger, smarter.

Even happier.

About the Beatles Malcolm Gladwell said, “Talented? Absolutely. But the Beatles also simply put in more hours than anyone else.”

It helps that I love what I do. From family to work to friends to blog. And I keep a ruthless focus on ONLY those four. It’s a planned neglect of everything else.

Christ naturally gets the bulk of my time, attention and adoration. But when I’ve got down time, I crack open the books, sharpen the pencils and hunker down for some good, old-fashion work.

Fallen and Flawed

Quick and dirty guide to living a vivid, meaningful Christian life

Archive for May, 2009

31 Biblical Facts about Man’s Spirit

Dead: Our Condition Apart from the New Birth

What Does It Mean to Be Spiritually Dead?

What the New Birth Doesn’t Mean

My Shameless Articulation of the Good News

Unbeliever: What I Want You to Know

How to Lose Readers and Subscribers

10 Questions with an Atheist: John Loftus

Your Turn

The Curious Secret to Understanding the Bible

Principle 1: Look for the Simple, Native Sense

Principle 2: Look for the the Original, Historical Sense

Principle 3: Look for the General, Harmonious Sense

Conclusion

The 5 A.M. Secret: How to Balance Blog and Family

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