Disposable Jesus

Another relevant re-post from 2011.

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Stephen Prothero published a thoughtful blog on our culture's "disposable Jesus."

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/11/my-take-poll-on-bin-ladens-death-reveals-a-disposable-jesus/?hpt=C2

One of his examples is the "Golden Rule:" most Americans say they believe we should treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves (though that's not just a Christian teaching).  Even when specifically applied, a small majority agreed that we should not do anything to enemies that we would not want done to American soldiers.

But less than half of white evangelicals agreed to that belief.  "In other words," observes Prothero, for a majority of white evangelicals, "when Jesus said, 'So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets' (Matthew 7:12), He didn’t really mean 'everything.'  He thought there should be an exception in the case of waterboarding your enemies."

This is what Prothero calls our "disposable Jesus:" the operative attitude that Jesus is not so much the sovereign Head of the Church as a useful pawn for OUR opinions...and can be ignored when He contradicts them.  I'd add that this attitude also manifests itself in the treatment of truth (who Jesus said He IS), particularly among followers of the politicized Church.

I have limited interest in heresy-hunting, and the conspiracy-mindedness that goes with it.  Heresies and conspiracies are certainly both "out there."   But time spent searching them out seems to me a complete waste, and conspiracy-mindedness is forbidden to us (Isaiah 8).

I doubt that conspiracies, even those which are real (most aren't), mislead and destroy anywhere near as many Christians as does "disposable Jesus" thinking.

It's again a question of thinking in Kingdom terms.  In the Kingdom, the King's word is law.

Amen !!

Where We Shop

Chuck Colson's remarks about Ayn Rand raise a question.

I'm appalled at where many Christians "shop" for ideas.  We have Jesus' Own endorsement of scripture: that God's word is truth (John 17:17).

. . . Why would CHRISTIANS shop anywhere else ?

Yet many "Christian" websites and e-mails endorse and promote ideas from controversialist and partisan sources.  The general run of "Christian" information pressed on me daily as "the Christian view" traces back not to the Bible, but to Ayn Rand, Glenn Beck, Fox News, WorldNetDaily, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart News, anonymous "conservative" bloggers, and even less Godly sources (if such a thing can be imagined).

In the nature of our form of government...more importantly, in the nature of spiritual warfare...it's a given that manipulative lies will exist.  In the nature of mankind, there will always be those who CHOOSE to believe and promote such lies.

The question is why so many CHRISTIANS are among them ?

Ultimately, the only answer is because they choose to.  Receiving "the love of the truth so as to be saved" (II Thessalonians 2:10) is a choice.

When we want shoes, we go to a shoe-store.  We go to a candy-store when we've decided we want to buy candy.  We shop in a place where we can find what it is we want to buy.

Christians who "shop" for their operative ideas someplace else than the Bible show they're not really looking for Truth.   When they CHOOSE instead to browse the shelves in places where lies are sold, it's because they want to buy lies.  They will find what they are looking for, and they will "buy" it.

God guarantees so: "For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false..." (II Thessalonians 2:11)

Chuck Colson on Ayn Rand

The next two posts are from a former blog.  Posted in 2011, they still seem relevant today.

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Several years ago, Chuck Colson was already warning about the attack on Christianity in America represented by "conservative" leaders' embrace of Ayn Rand's "philosophy:" a warning he posted on a hard-core "conservative" website. That attack continues: most recently embodied in the 2012 budget formulated by Representative Paul Ryan, an avid follower of Rand's ideas.  Ronald Reagan, the "conservative" idol, also testified to Rand's influence on his thinking, as have many other "conservative" leaders.

Colson's remarks are worth re-reading.

http://townhall.com/columnists/chuckcolson/2007/10/16/the_legacy_of_ayn_rand/page/full/

"In his new memoir, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan reminds us that author Ayn Rand is still influencing the world. He credits her with turning him into something more than a 'math junkie.'

"Greenspan is not alone. A 1991 Book-of-the-Month Club and Library of Congress survey asked members which book had most influenced their lives. As expected, the Bible finished first. Unexpectedly, Rand’s most famous book, the novel Atlas Shrugged, finished second.

"Fifty years after its publication and 25 years after Rand’s death, Atlas Shrugged is still read everywhere from college campuses to Wall Street. Given its popularity and its impact, Christians ought to be acquainted with Rand’s work and, especially, her worldview.

"As theologian John Piper puts it, Rand’s work manifests a 'complete rejection of a divine or supernatural dimension to reality.' The absence of God causes Rand to get human nature wrong as well.

"In Atlas Shrugged and her other writings, Rand articulated a philosophy she called 'objectivism.' Among other things, objectivism teaches that man’s 'highest value' and 'moral purpose' is his own happiness.

"By 'happiness' Rand meant 'rational self-interest.' For her, 'virtue' consisted of doing what 'secured' your life and well-being.

"Where did that leave altruism and self-sacrifice? As vices. For Rand, altruism and self-sacrifice represented a betrayal of what should be a person’s 'highest values,' that is, his life and well-being. Similarly, justice would be possible only where you never sought for nor granted unearned or undeserved results, 'neither in matter nor in spirit . . .'

"But without altruism and self-sacrifice, how do people relate to one another? Ayn Rand says through exchanges that promote mutual advantage, what she called a 'trade.' In other words, as if each of the parties were businesses, not people.

"Rand’s inversion of biblical norms had predictable results: Scott Ryan, who wrote a book on Rand’s philosophy, called objectivism a 'psychologically totalitarian personality cult that allowed Rand . . . to exercise personal power over [her] unwitting victims.' He cites, for example, the way she manipulated 'her own unemployed and dependent husband' to get him to agree for her to have 'an adulterous sexual affair.'

"We’re not talking here about personal flaws or merely human weaknesses. As Ryan puts it, these abuses are 'demonstrably connected to Rand’s own "philosophical" premises'—that is, her worldview.

"Rand and her followers, you see, lived in a way consistent with her worldview. But you can hardly regard a philosophy that exalts selfishness and condemns altruism as the basis for a good society.

"That’s why it is so important for us as Christians to understand our Christian worldview and to be able to contend for it, because it gets God right, and it gets human nature right, as well. You can find that worldview in the one book that out-ranked Atlas Shrugged."

For the Non-Spiritual

I've been entirely one-sided in my comments.  I've thought of my audience...admittedly a very, very tiny audience...as people who know scripture, and listen to hear the Spirit.  So I haven't tried to address any others.

But that's not God's way.  He sends rain on the just and the unjust.  He sent His Truth into the world, to rub shoulders with the righteous and unrighteous.

He acts that way in mercy.  In the world as He's created it, the unjust can't live without rain.  Even those who love lies want their car-mechanic to tell them the truth when he says he repaired those dangerous brakes; and the doctor, when he says there's no cancer.

God puts "clues" out there, even for those who don't read scripture, or listen to the Spirit.  Reality itself reflects Him, in ordinary experience, to those who will pay attention to His "clues:" even if we want to believe those are "natural," or "secular."

So this post is addressed to the Non-Spiritual, especially the Christians among them.  This is one of God's "secular" clues to you:

what did you expect from a sleazy New York businessman ?

Who We Worship

He's all-knowing and all-wise.

He says what will happen, and it happens because He says so.

His enemies are absolute evil.

He alone rules.

Everything that exists relates solely to Him.


I'm talking about God.

Any similarity to the man entering the White House is entirely in his own mind.

Everything I Know: God

The start of a new year is a good time to take personal stock: especially a new year bringing as many spiritual dangers as this one.  It's what Christians are commanded to do:  check ourselves to make sure we are "in the faith" (II Corinthians 13:5), and that our works show it (Galatians 6:4).
 

So what do I really know in 2017 ?

I know this much: God is sovereign.  He rules over all things.  I don't have a quick verse of scripture that says exactly that...all scripture says exactly that.  All creation says exactly that.  All experience says exactly that.

God's sovereignty grounds all creation and experience in its definitive and defining relationship: all things in heaven and earth are subject to Him.  God's supreme and unchanging I AM opens to us what reality truly IS.  So I understand Psalm 111:10, that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

The first wisdom we learn is how infinitely little we know.  How could we not, when God is the Teacher ?  But we have His promise we only need ask Him, trusting He is "in charge" (James 1:5,6).

Trusting too in His goodness.  Wisdom is more than what we know; wisdom is a moral quantity, "good" in the likeness of the One Who created it.  He is good to "give to all generously," life as well as wisdom.  "Good" would hardly seem a strong enough word: but it's the word Jesus attested describes God, and God Alone (Mark 10:18, Luke 18:19).

God alone is good.  God alone is wise.  God alone rules, in goodness and wisdom.  He is absolute and entire (the Biblical word for which is "perfect"), nothing less nor other than Who He IS.  Everything He touches, shows it: and everything shows more than His "touch:"  everything shows the infinitely wise and good craft of it's Maker.

A Scripture for This New Year

And He was also saying to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming,’ and so it turns out.

 

And when you see a south wind blowing, you say, ‘It will be a hot day,’ and it turns out that way.

 

You hypocrites !  You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time ?

 

And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right ?"  (Luke 12:54-57)

 

 

Jesus' words seem especially significant this year, when we're told that lies and unrighteousness will "make America great again."

 

God says unrighteousness will never produce good results.

 

 

Please join me this year in heeding what Jesus says:

 

"...analyze this present time."

 

"...judge what is right."

Revelation: Skepticism is wisdom

God hasn't given me permission to study Revelation for some years.  Quite a difference from when I was a "notional Christian" (in Barna's wonderful descriptor): back then, Revelation was the only part of the Bible I really cared about and studied.

Partly that was because my family loved to talk Revelation.  When we got together, we swapped and argued new interpretations of Revelation we'd heard or read.  Revelation was always the most interesting, exciting, and important thing God had said.

But it's not just Christians ("notional" or otherwise) who want to understand what the Bible says about the last days.  That desire seems widespread in our culture.  It's probably not just sales to Christians that put Hal Lindsey's books, or the "Left Behind" series, on secular best-seller lists.

God hasn't given me permission, or the insight, to read Revelation for some years.  I'm sure He will at the right time.  'Til then, one more theory about the events and players of the end-times won't be missed.

But until He gives me the Spirit's wisdom to understand Revelation, God has given me the wisdom of skepticism toward the thousands of interpretations that exist.

Revelation deals with end-time spiritual and political events and personages through intensely obscure imagery.  So the book is an open invitation to anyone confident in his own cleverness, to "discover" the hidden meaning he wants to find.  Deception (starting with self-deception) is virtually guaranteed any "interpreter" who comes to Revelation with his own religious or political axe to grind: and most do. 

Traditional interpretations especially have to be tested.  Interpretations of Revelation by Protestants (the branch of Christianity from which most end-time speculation comes) virtually all identify the major end-time personage, Revelation 17's woman seated on "seven mountains" (sometimes incorrectly translated "seven hills"), as the Catholic Church.  This interpretation has come down to us from the first Reformers, and has 500 years of tradition behind it.  But there's good reason to suspect their interpretation may not be based entirely on objective hermeneutic principles.

In outline, the standard Protestant interpretation is that the woman, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH,” is the end-time religious deceiver, and persecutor of true Christians ("drunk with the blood of the saints").  That's a valid reading, as far it goes.  And the Reformers undoubtedly saw themselves as the "true Christians" of that scripture (don't we all ?) in their battle against the corrupt Medieval Papacy.  That too was probably valid in their time.

Taking that interpretation beyond those two facts, however, we run into problems.

The woman is seated on the Beast which has seven heads.  Scripture specifically says interpretive "wisdom" is that the seven heads are "seven mountains."  Rome was traditionally built on seven "hills:" and that was close enough for the Reformers to identify the woman in Revelation 17 as the ROMAN Catholic Church: as most Protestant interpretations still do.

One problem of that interpretation (leaving aside the possibly-significant distinction between "mountain" and "hill") is that other cities of the New Testament Mediterranean world were known as cities built on seven mountains or hills: Athens, for example, and Jerusalem (Mount Scopus, the Mount of Olives, and Mount Zion: Old and New: among them).

Or if Rome is the city indicated in Revelation 17, there's a  problem for contemporary interpretation that Rome is also the "seat" of other world geo-political entities: the government of Italy, for example, or the "global think-tank" Club of Rome (prominent in many "New World Order" conspiracy-theories).  If either became more instrumental in persecuting true Christians in the still-future end-time God's describing: as either could: they might well be viable possible identities for the woman of Revelation 17.

For contemporary interpretation, there's also the problem that other world cities built on seven mountains or hills are centers of false spirituality.  Tirumala, India, for example, home of Vishnu's Temple of the Seven Hills, which claims to be "the most active place of worship in the world."  Even San Francisco, another city traditionally on seven hills, could be said in some ways to have a false spirituality "footprint."

There are additional reasons to be skeptical of the "Harlot = Catholic Church" interpretation.  The Vatican Hill where the Catholic Church is headquartered is not one of the traditional seven hills of Rome; and is, in fact, on the other side of the Tiber from those seven hills.  Rome was, at the time of Revelation's composition, the city of Imperial political power; and a religious center only secondarily.  Rome was certainly not identified with the Catholic Church, which didn't yet exist.

The standard "Evangelical" interpretation also fails to tell us how the seven heads which are seven hills are also seven kings (as are the 10 "horns" of the Beast on which the Harlot is seated); or about what it means that she is also said to be seated "on many waters."  A coherent working interpretation should consist of more than a single equivalence isolated from everything else in its context.

Especially when that single equivalence is itself questionable.  The certain identification is scripture's: the woman of Revelation 17:5 bears an inscription that identifies her as "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."  Revelation 14:8, 16:9, 18:2, 18:10, and 18:21 repeat that identification, as "Babylon the great," "the great city, Babylon" and "Babylon, the great city."
  
Revelation unmistakably identitfies "the great city" as "Babylon."   That is the understanding in which we must take the additional references to "the great city" in Revelation 16:19, 17:18, 18:16, 18:18,  and 18:19 (and indeed, the context of each of those verses show they likewise refer to "Babylon").  Revelation is thoroughly consistent in naming "Babylon" as "the great city."

It therefore seems honest interpretation to understand Revelation 11:8's reference to "the great city" as also denoting "Babylon."  The bodies of Christ's two great end-time witnesses "...will lie in the street of the great city...where also their Lord was crucified."  Knowing Christ was crucified in Jerusalem (another city seated on seven mountains) should give us pause in accepting the standard "Evangelical" interpretation that Rome is Revelation's "Babylon."

God hasn't given me Spiritual insight sufficient to say the woman of Revelation 17 is not the Catholic Church.  That may even be the true interpretation, exactly what God desires we understand from those verses. But He's given me skepticism about that interpretation, sufficient to keep me from the presumptuousness of certainty, until the Spirit speaks.

If He wants me to know who's who in Revelation, He'll show me, at the time He chooses.  My job 'til then is to listen: and to test what I hear.

Amen.

Boiled Down

Year's end seems a good place to "analyze" the times, as Jesus said to do in Luke 12:54-57.

He says there we should judge by "what is right."

That's certainly Jesus' word to our time, when 80% of "evangelicals" voted their belief that unrighteousness would "make America great again."

Here's godly commonsense:
Lies and unrighteousness will NOT make America great again. 
God guarantees it.

Their vote raises questions about those who've been deceived.

Don't people who know God, know He hates pride, and lies, and unrighteousness ?

Do people who know God hates pride and lies and unrighteousness choose to follow someone whose spirit is pride and lies and unrighteousness ?

Do Christians think they can follow such a man and not follow his spirit ?

But the defining question is whether politicized American Christians can tell the difference at all between righteousness and unrighteousness.

If not,

what good is their "Christianity" ?

The context in which Jesus tells us to "analyze" the times is His announcement that He has "come to cast fire upon the earth," and to bring "division" (Luke 12: 49-53).

That seems to me the context of these times.

Jesus is bringing division in our times, separating those who can perceive, and will follow, righteousness from those who will not.

Amen.

Boiling It Down

Sometimes you get a lightning-strike insight.  An idea comes "out of the blue;" about something you're not even consciously thinking about; whole and complete and right (the Biblical term for which is "perfect").

Those are the kinds of moments that probably gave rise to the word "inspiration:" an idea is literally "in-spirited" to our minds.  That's probably still as good an explanation of the phenomenon as anything cognitive science has come up with.

But more often  we have to meditate on a matter, concentrate to think it through, if we want to come to the wisdom of it.  I think of that process as "boiling down" a matter to get its essence.  

Every question comes before us with its own details, antecedents, examples, implications and repercussions: some of which are always irrelevant, contradictory, or misleading.  We can't deal rightly with any question until we think clearly about its core reality.

But that kind of meditation is necessary, in whatever mode an idea comes.  Even "lightning-strike" inspirations need to be analyzed, and tested.  There are more spirits at work, in the world and in human hearts, than just the Holy Spirit.

That's where our input makes a difference.  We don't come to wisdom by our knowledgeability of the details, or our skill in logic.  God is the sole source of wisdom: whatever other personal cleverness we cobble together is "worldly wisdom."

We make the difference in which we will get, by what we choose to accept.  The bench-mark we set ourselves makes all the difference.  Right understanding is righteous: wisdom is a moral quantity.  My takeaway is that the Spirit, in Person and in scripture, is the only infallible Standard by which righteousness and wisdom can be accurately measured.

My experience is also that the Spirit's wisdom is the only thing which ultimately works in the real world God created.  It's no good trying to play hockey with a tennis-racket.

We choose the standard by which we will think, and by which we measure our thoughts.  That is our deliberate part.  But it doesn't feel like something extraneous imposed on the process.  It feels like a natural fit.  I consider the Spirit, as Inspiration and Standard, is how God intends, and crafts, every human being's mind to work...if they will.

"But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him."  (James 1:5)