Month: January 2011

Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we dive into the ocean of truth! We’ve been looking lately at the topic of Christian sound bites. Unfortunately, we Christians can toss out platitudes as well that show a lack of serious thinking on our part.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a Christian be hesitant to say something critical because you’re not supposed to judge. I also don’t know how many times they’ve told me that I don’t need to say something critical for the same reason.

Why? Jesus said “Judge not.” Unfortunately, this has fed into our victim mentality culture where people are seen as incredibly fragile. Someone’s feelings are more important than the truth of a matter. You can say what you want, but just be sure you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, unless they’re orthodox evangelical Christians. They’re open game.

When Jesus gave that command, he was referring to hypocritical judging. If you have a plank in your eye, then you are not authorized to remove that speck from your brother’s eye.

Consider when you say you’re not supposed to judge. In doing so, some judgments have already been made. For instance, you have made a judgment that Jesus is a reliable authority figure and someone whose advice you should trust. (Heck. Just by becoming a Christian, you have made a judgment)

Second, you have made a judgment that the person you are telling to not judge has in fact judged. You cannot tell them that they are not to judge then without having done so yourself.

Third, you are also making a moral judgment. You are judging that the act of judging is something that is immoral. Once again, the problem with this is the same as above. As soon as you say something about it, you’re guilty.

I recall one Christian asking me about the Westboro movement and saying “Well I don’t want to judge.” We were in my former roommate’s apartment at the time and so I said to her “Is your car downstairs?”

“Yes.”

“Are the doors locked?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She realized then that she’d been caught in a trap. She locked the doors because she judged that there were some people out there who might want to steal her car and the best way to prevent that was by locking the door.

We make judgments like this all the time. We judge when we marry. We judge when we choose a school for kids. We judge when we choose a babysitter. We judge the best way to get to the store when we drive. We judge what we will spend our money on.

If we say we have no right to make moral judgments, then we can no longer call evil evil and condemn it. We cannot say that there is a difference between someone like Mother Teresa and someone like Adolf Hitler.

We also cannot make the judgment that Jesus is the only way to salvation and Islam is not a way to salvation. We cannot judge that Christianity is a true worldview and that atheism is a false worldview.

All of this in the name of so-called tolerance, but rest assured that those who want us to be tolerant are not as tolerant of us as they want us to be of them. Unfortunately, Christians are buying into the victim mentality cop-out.

Does this mean all judging is good. No. John 7:24 tells us to make a righteous judgment and not judge by mere appearances. We should also avoid an attitude of judgmentalism. Some of us, self included, have a tendency to see the worst always and go straight there. We need to get past that.

Let us be sure however, the idea of “You’re not supposed to judge” is not what Jesus had in mind and to teach it does a disservice to him.

Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Lately, I’ve been looking at Christian sound bites. Bad argumentation is a problem wherever we see it and sadly, Christians can be quite guilty of it. I’m going to look at one tonight that does parallel what we covered last night.

Suppose you’re debating with a fellow Christian on a topic not explicitly discussed in the Bible. An example could be something political. Of course, what I’m about to say could apply to something in the Bible as well unfortunately. You have made your point and your opponent has no argument so they just say “Well you need to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show you.”

Pride once again, and one of the worst kinds, a spiritual pride. This person wants you to pray because they’re sure God will back them if you ask.

For the sake of argument, it could be that this person is entirely right in their position, but they’re just too lazy to develop a good argument. Let it never be thought that because someone uses one of these sound bites as a cop-out in a debate, that they are wrong in their point. It just means they’re being intellectually lazy.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit helping us understand Scripture has not meant the Holy Spirit will tell us what a text means. It means the Holy Spirit will convict us on the meaning of the text. Otherwise, the job of commentators would be much easier and we’d never need to really wrestle with the text. God actually wants us to work to understand Him and His Word.

I also think that with decision making, the Holy Spirit is never to just decide for us. That can happen, but it is extremely rare. On the other hand, I think it’s entirely appropriate to pray that the Holy Spirit will give us wisdom in decision making so we can make a pleasing decision.

The kind of thinking we see today actually can lead to troubles for many Christians. Some people leave the faith because they don’t have the experiences they think they’re supposed to be having. I have wondered in churches when a vote comes up before a board and we’re asked to vote the way the Holy Spirit is supposedly leading, why it seems the Holy Spirit can’t make up His mind. Why is it we are to give the way we feel the Spirit leading? Why can’t we instead hear a sermon on 2 Cor. 8-9? Rather than wisely decide how we should vote or give, we just say “Hey God. Can you just tell me?”

Like last time, the person making this claim is being prideful. They have been lazy and instead of admitting they don’t know, this time, they’re actually punting to God and saying God will justify their laziness. It’s also dangerously assuming a hotline to God that many cult leaders have claimed to have.

This objection reminds me of what Francis Beckwith once said. “”If they can’t win with logic, they’ll trump you with spirituality.” As I said yesterday, holiness should not be used as a weapon. If you can’t win the argument, then say you’ll be glad to go back and study. Laziness is not an excuse and we should not use God to excuse our laziness.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’re spending our time looking at Christian Sound Bites now. Tonight, I’m going to take a look at the line given by many a Christian who says “I just believe what the Bible says!”

We’ve all seen this happen before. Suppose you and a fellow Christian are debating eschatology. You make an argument and your opponent responds by saying “I just believe what the Bible says”

That can sound good. That can sound holy. It gives the impression that nothing more can be said. The exact opposite is true.

To begin with, if you are a Christian, the Bible should matter to you. If you are told that your opinion goes against the Bible and you can be shown that, then that should be enough for you to change it. However, in a debate like this, it is not a question of “Should we believe what the Bible says?” That’s agreed on. The question is “What does it say?”

The position is also not holy. It’s prideful. When you use this, you are automatically telling your opponent without reason that they do not believe what the Bible says as opposed to you who does. Upon what grounds do you get to make a charge that you are the holy one and your brother or sister the one living in rebellion?

This is just a cop-out and it’s one of the worst kinds too. It’s a cop-out to holiness. Holiness is important, but it is not meant to be used as a weapon. In fact, if you truly have holiness, you would not want to use it that way. You would want to, if you believe you’re right, rationally convince your fellow Christian to see the error of their ways.

In reality also, something can be said to this. When you are told this, you can say “Yes. That is a fine and noble thing to do. Would you care to go to the text with me and demonstrate that that is what the text says?” After all, the person is begging the main question assuming that that is what the text says. You could even grant that if you are shown that that is what the text says that you will freely change your mind.

None of us like to be shown up. This is a reply intended to make it seem as if you haven’t been shown up and are acting “spiritual” instead. Why not admit you are wrong? To paraphrase one of my friends, maybe we should all be more open to what the Bible could say and rather than have to commit ritual suicide, be willing to admit the other side could have a point.

We wouldn’t accept it if an atheist gave a cop-out of a similar nature in a debate. Why would we want to pull one on a fellow Christian? It would be better to study and learn more about the opponent’s view, rather than to build up the sin of pride in your life.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I really don’t like that what I’m including tonight is under the topic of Christian sound bites. However, I decided to put it here because Christians are the ones who usually take the Scripture text more seriously, as they should. However, there are proper ways to settle disputes on how a text should be interpreted.

This is not one of them.

Many of us have done it. Imagine laying out a case for how you interpret a text of Scripture only to hear “Well that’s just your interpretation!” Never mind the work you might have put into coming to an understanding of the text. Your opponent is using this as if it addresses you.

The first thing I want to say in response to this every time is “Yes. That is my interpretation. Thank you for pointing that out.” Of course, you can also, if you are aware of it, point to other exegetes who hold to the same interpretation. The point of saying “That’s just your interpretation!” is just that that doesn’t tell if the interpretation is right or wrong.

Now we should all know that the text of Scripture does not error. However, as has been said and demonstrated numerous times, our interpretations can error. You can read a commentary by a Calvinist or Arminian, a futurist or a preterist, a young-earther or an old-earther. We all know we have our share of in-house debates and we all seek to point to the text.

Who’s right? Of course, we all believe we are. The only reason you hold to an interpretation of a text is because you believe that is what the text says. When interpreting a text, that does not mean you agree with the text, though we should agree with Scripture. It just means you’re saying “This is what the text means.” Whether it’s true or not comes afterwards.

What I am stating here applies not just to Scriptural text, but all texts, even oral or body language. My wife can act in certain ways that let me know she wants to spend some time with me without ever saying a word. My offline friends also know my penchant for sarcasm and when I say something with a certain tone in my voice, they know that I should not be taken in a literal sense.

What do we do? The first thing to realize is the meaning of the text lies in the text itself. You do not find meaning and put that into a text. You draw the meaning out of the text that the author meant to put into the text. You can try to think about what the author had in mind, but all you have direct access to is the text.

As I said earlier, other factors can play a part. Is the text originally in another language? Go back and look up and see what the word meant in that language. Many ideas can often be lost in translation. One of my favorite examples is the 1 John 4 passage of “Perfect love casts out all fear.” It sounds nice to us, but the Greek use of the word “ballo” for “casts out” indicates more like a barroom bouncer throwing out hard an unwanted guest. It definitely enriches my understanding of the passage!

What is the social context? For instance, when you read about marriage in the Bible, you are reading about a male-female unit establishing a family, but you are also reading about an institution that was often arranged by parents and meant to link up two families more than two individuals.

The world of the Bible was very different from the world as it is today. We can easily place our own time and mindset onto the text. Ancient societies did not live as we do today however. They were not individualistic but relied on the group for identity instead. Can that affect how you read the text? Absolutely!

Why would someone go to all this work? Simple. They want to know what the text means. Does that mean that all texts are cut and dry? No. Some passages are very hard to understand. (Usually, these are the ones commentators skip over.) The way to reply to “That’s Just Your Interpretation!” is to ask where it’s wrong. You want to know if you’re wrong don’t you? I hope so.

Make sure you know your opponents’ side. Why do they believe what they believe? Knowing your opponent’s interpretation is as important as knowing your own. It should be the case that if you need to, you could stand before an audience and give a presentation on the other side and why it should be believed.

The sound bite as given however gets to a more postmodern view as if each interpretation is as valid as another. That doesn’t mean that you can’t see the merits a contrary interpretation has. What we need to realize is that the text really does mean something. To argue this way is to just be lazy and say someone’s opinion is just that only instead of addressing if it’s right or wrong.

And as Christians, we need not be lazy concerning Scripture.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve spent a lot of time lately looking at atheist sound bites and now, I’d like to turn my attention to Christian sound bites. Why? Because I’m against bad argumentation no matter where it comes from and that includes Christians giving bad arguments. God is not glorified by bad actions. Neither is he glorified by bad arguments.

I know this one will be highly controversial, but I’d like to write about the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. To begin with, let us consider the position from the point of God. I will begin by asking this question.

Is God Lord of all creation by nature?

If you answered “No”, move to the head of the class.

“That’s ridiculous!” some of you say. “Isn’t it true that he is Lord of all?!”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“Then isn’t He that by nature?”

No. The reason is that what God is, He has to be naturally, but He did not necessarily have to create. God could have willed to not create ever. It could have just been for all eternity the fellowship of the Trinity. No angels. No men. No animals. Nothing else. God would still be all that He is by nature.

Now once He does however create, he establishes a relation by creation to his creatures. Because of His position to them, He is their Lord. This position however does not change anything in the nature of God. God does not gain anything by being your Lord and if you never existed God would not be at a loss. However, by being the servant of God, you gain greatly and by not being the servant of God, you lose greatly.

Our relation to God does not change Him in the least. It changes us. We need to restore a divine holiness to the relationship and realize that no relationship we have on Earth can truly compare to it. Consider the four loves. Your relationship with your marriage partner cannot compare to it. Your relationship with your family cannot compare to it. Your relationship with your friends cannot compare to it.

Instead, we’ve treated the position we have with God practically casually. Hebrews tells us that we can boldly approach the throne of grace to be sure, but that does not mean that we necessarily march in like we own the place. We are still coming to one far greater than us by nature and we come with reverent submission.

The danger is that our relationship with Jesus is so different and we treat it as if it was similar. Just today, I read of an ex-Christian who left the fold saying he didn’t feel that personal relationship that everyone else in the church claimed to feel. Don’t tell me then that this kind of thinking focusing on our subjective experiences does not have an effect. It does!

Jesus never promised us a feeling. In fact, he promised us suffering more than anything else. How often do you hear that spoken of? Jesus did not command us to feel love or joy. In fact, that would be difficult. Suppose you were sad and I came up to you and said “I order you to feel happy!” I could even stick a gun to your head and say “If you don’t feel happy, I will blow your brains out!”

You couldn’t do it. Now I could do some things for you that might be able to bring about a feeling related to the state of happiness in you, but I could not make you feel happy. I am of course not against feeling happy. I also do not believe we can perpetually feel happy. There are times we should feel negative emotions and allow them to speak.

Jesus did command us to be holy however. We don’t hear that worked on. Holiness is something very much objective. You have a clear goal. Christlikeness. You are either getting closer to it or moving away from it. What about how you feel? Act first and let the feelings come later.

You wouldn’t want to base your relationship with other people on how you felt would you? As one who recently had surgery, I am sure there were times people did not really feel eager to help me in my time of need, but did so anyway. I do think my wife could be a great exception. Somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me that when I had to wake her up in the night to help me walk to the bathroom or to give me medication that she felt a joy in helping her husband.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument however that she didn’t one time. What does she do? She does the right thing anyway. She gets up and helps her husband out. If the feeling comes, great! If not, oh well. Doing the right thing is more important than getting the feeling of doing the right thing.

Another way this relationship is different is communication. If I don’t understand something about my wife or she doesn’t about me, then we can openly ask each other. It could be we don’t even know the reasons for why the other is asking, but we can still ask.

Many Christians treat prayer as a two-way street. The Bible never does. Am I saying God can’t talk to us? No. However, I’m also not saying it’d be normative. God could raise your loved one from the dead, but somehow, I don’t suspect many of you are going to the burial site with that news and just waiting.

If you believe God has spoken to you and you have not fallen down proclaiming your unworthiness, I doubt it was God. I plan to write more on this in the future with the use of punting to God in another blog.

The Bible defines our relationship as being at peace with God now. He’s not turned against us. We have united ourselves to Him. We have become a part of the covenant with YHWH and this is a sacred position to hold. We are not to treat it casually. We ought to be able to spend all of our days in wonder and amazement that we are pronounced forgiven, and I am just as guilty of not doing this.

It’s my hope that we will drop this term as it tends to lower God down to our level instead of realizing He is the high and mighty Lord. I am not saying Christians who use this term don’t believe that. I’m saying the terminology however can easily lend itself to that thinking.

We shall look at another sound bite tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I’m going to take a brief respite from atheist sound bites to give a brief case for Christian environmentalism. Why? Readers of last night’s blog will know I presented a link to my wife’s blog that she has started. It is called Evergreen Glades and it is the blog for Christian nature lovers, which should be all of us.

My wife is quite saddened that it seems like the new age movement is doing more to take care of the Earth than Christians do. Now I’m not one who believes in global warming and neither one of us are supporters of PETA. My wife loves animals, but she also knows that if it comes between an animal or a human, the human has to come first. We are different by kind and not just degree.

However, the Bible tells us we were put on the Earth to be in charge of it. We are also told in Proverbs 12:10 that a good man cares for his beast. When Noah entered the ark, he had a number of animals with him. When the Israelites were to lay siege to an enemy town, they were given specific instructions on how to tend to the trees in the area.

All of creation is good and we should celebrate that. The Bible uses animals as examples to us as well. We are told if we are sluggards to go to the ant and watch. Jesus tells us that we need not worry if we observe the birds in the sky and the flowers in the field. God takes care of both of them. Numerous Psalms look to the creation and view it as a cause to praise God.

My wife is the strong one in this area. I’m not. I don’t like being away from the wonders of modern technology. She wants to see each of the dogs that our neighbors have. (That is also another difference. She’s a dog-lover primarily. I’m a cat-lover.) I realize when this happens that this is a deficiency in me however rather than a deficiency in nature.

Taking care of the world around us doesn’t mean being a tree-hugger or buying into environmental disaster scenarios. God is in charge of this Earth. However, knowing he’s in charge doesn’t mean we don’t fulfill the Great Commission in evangelism. It also shouldn’t meant that we just ignore the planet and say “God will clean it all up.”

I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, but I am willing to recycle and we take our bottles every Sunday to a place near our church to recycle them. I am quite cautious to make sure I don’t litter. Is there really any excuse for throwing trash out the window as you drive rather than just waiting until you get to a trash can?

None of us also want to be caught in the New Age and worshiping nature. The secret to escape this however is not to love nature less. It’s to love God more. The problem with the New Agers is that they don’t look beyond nature. They take nature to be God. They should celebrate the wonder of nature and realize the awesomeness of the God that it points to.

We Christians on any ethical duty should be putting to shame the rest of the world. We should have the new agers wanting to do as good a job preserving nature as we do. Those of you who are scientists and such should celebrate every day that you get to explore the wonders of creation somehow and get to know the God behind it, who He is, and why He did it this way.

If you’re a fan of my blog, and I hope you are, then I ask you to become a fan of my wife’s as well. She will not be blogging every day, but your support of her in what she’s doing will be a great encouragement to her. Keep praying for us as well. We’re still in a tight situation as neither of us have a job due to no one hiring me yet. God has provided thus far, but we would like to see a job come up. I would love to work for my money.

Thank you for your support thus far of Deeper Waters and again, please be a fan of Evergreen Glades.