A New Default

A new sit-com is scheduled to premier this evening. It is called “Living Biblically.” I will not see it, but I am 99% sure that I would not care for it if I did. The premise is about a man, who after some traumatic experience, decides to live his life according to the Bible. Apparently, what the comedy will revolve around is this main character’s efforts to work out a rigid understanding of Old Testament law in the modern day. (One spoiler alert suggests that he will chuck a rock at an adulterer. Something fun for everyone.)

The predictable sources are agitated. They will watch the show for the rest of us and keep us all advised as to what we should feel offended about. In the meantime, they will organize the obligatory boycotts of all the relevant advertisers.

I accept that these efforts may be well-intended attempts to preserve a Christian presence and influence in the culture, and I regret if my presentation to this point sounds a little condescending or overly critical. It’s just that after many years of the same old response to any movie, television show, play, piece of art, or children’s book that rubs Christians the wrong way, we may need to explore a new way of reacting. The visceral reflex of taking offense and attempting to exert pressure on Hollywood or the culture-at-large to behave themselves seems to be rather fruitless when all is said and done. They just keep misbehaving.

These thoughts began to take shape as I listened to an interview of one of the executive producers for the new show. He insisted that no offense or ridicule is intended. He just wants to explore the place of religion in an entertaining way. He also attributed part of his interest to the fact that he was raised Catholic. I entertained the possibility that he was being completely disingenuous when he said that no offense is intended. However, I also considered that I could extend to him the benefit of the doubt. That way I would not need to resent him for being deceitful. Still, I cannot escape the conclusion that he is being absurdly naïve. Believers ARE going to feel misunderstood, but should we not be prepared for that anyway? It is not exactly a “scoop” to learn that the citizens of the world will misrepresent the citizens of the kingdom.

Perhaps, a better default reaction than immediate protest is for Christian leaders and parents to gather their respective flocks – congregations, Sunday School students, children, etc. - and reinforce to them the wisdom of Scripture. The world cannot be expected to reflect the values and the sensitivities of those who are reborn of the Spirit of God. It is incapable of even understanding them. It follows, then, that we have no real foundation for feeling offended. It is not realistic to expect that the world's entertainment media will cater to Christian sensibilities.

... The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.  – 1 Corinthians 2:14

The world has no concept of the purpose of the Law of Moses; that it was a temporary arrangement for forging and protecting a holy nation. The world has no hope of understanding the “types” in the ceremonial law that pointed ahead to and found fulfillment in Jesus. The world has no basis for comprehending how the Law gave way to grace when it was nailed to the cross of Christ.

We must find a better default reaction to the world’s ridicule than simply fighting back with the world’s methods. These are legitimate and valuable teaching moments for our people. Besides, on those few occasions when our Christian protests do affect any change at all, those changes dissolve almost instantaneously. Perhaps, it is better to take the slap of insult on the cheek from the powers that be in the entertainment field and expend our energies in preparing ourselves to give meaningful answers to those we encounter who need such answers for real life questions.

The Elephant in the (School) Room

The roots of nihilism, the belief that nothing has meaning, rendering all values and absolute certainties as baseless, is typically traced back to the Stoics in the middle of the fourth century B.C. I submit that we can go actually go back a little farther, to the mid-tenth century B.C. Solomon, the third king of Israel begins Ecclesiastes with an observation that is repeated often throughout that book:

“… vanity of vanities, All is vanity.”  - Ecclesiastes 1:2 (ESV), or

            “… Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”  - Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NIV)

Of course, Solomon’s concept of nihilism existed within a limited sphere. It was restricted to a quest for meaning “under the sun.” Everything changed when “under the sun” gave way to a more transcendent view of reality.

Now all has been heard;
            here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
            for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
            including every hidden thing,
            whether it is good or evil.  – Ecclesiastes 12:13, 14

Solomon’s observation came from a well-informed place. He had sought meaning in pleasure, success, wealth, knowledge; just about every endeavor one can think of “under the sun.” In fact, with an I.Q. and resources matched by few, Solomon did not simply pursue such things, he achieved them all. Still, everything he attained added up to a big fat zero at the end of the day when the transcendent had been erased from his various quests.

Another school shooting has left a shaken nation searching for answers. Every argument for and against more gun control has been regurgitated. Every internet meme from both sides of that issue has been posted. Those who insist that the problem rests in our social values are tolerated but not particularly heard amidst all the competing noise.

Shout me down if you wish, but I lay the blame at the feet of a secularistic, evolutionary-based mindset that permeates education, media and, inevitably, the culture at large. God “has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The spirit of this age is doing all it can to eviscerate that awareness from man’s thoughts.

I can understand the need for the classroom to be a neutral place in terms of religion. I cannot quite wrap my head around why it must be a hostile place to the matter. When evolution is presented, quite generously, in the classroom as “science,” and design is banished from that same classroom as “myth,” there will be and have been consequences that must be faced.

Nothing could fuel a conclusion of meaninglessness in my heart more than the idea that my existence is the result of a series of chemical accidents. Nothing could make my life seem more arbitrary than thinking that truth and moral absolutes are just random constructs of various cultures. If eternity is gutted from human thought, society becomes a breeding ground for abhorrent misbehavior (that is, if any behavior can rightfully and objectively be judged “abhorrent”).

Would not a true nihilist so resent the restrictiveness of arbitrary constructs that he would either a) live only for the moment or, b) seek to destroy that which he resents?

Many who would never claim to be nihilists live only for the moment. They acquire wealth. They collect stuff. They worship entertainment and recreation. They may even achieve what Abraham Maslow in his famous hierarchy of needs called “self-actualization.” In other words, they become all that they have the potential to be.

Maslow published his hierarchy in 1943. It is interesting to me that in his later years, he began to explore a higher need, that of transcendence, a desire to reach the infinite. Could it be that even the fully self-actualized individual, at the end of it all asks, “Is this all there is”? If any man ever achieved self-actualization, it was Solomon, and his verdict was, “This is all vain emptiness.” It seems to me that the nihilist just beats the rest of his secular peers to the inevitable conclusion that they will each one day face: without God in the equation, everything really is meaningless.

I am no Solomon. I do not have his financial resources. I am bright enough to get by, but no one travels the globe to learn at my feet. I do not have his striking presence (Solomon’s folks were both quite attractive, so I am giving his genetics the benefit of the doubt.) In addition, I probably suffer from an overactive mind, and I am also a strong introvert. All of this causes me to wonder where I might be without a sense of the transcendent, that is, without a sense that I am connected to my Creator by the intermediary work of His Son.

If I were a little depressed, what would it take for me to descend into hopelessness and off myself? If I were a little obsessed, what would it take for me to take someone I “love” with me? If I were a little angry, what would it take for me to take out as many others as I can? After all, everything is meaningless. Life is cheap. Rules are arbitrary constructs.

Several years ago, the secular world poked fun at a faddish Christian mantra, “Jesus is the Answer,” by responding, “What is the question?” We should have been more prepared, for the questions are replete:

Is there a God? What is He like? Can I be on His good side? What does life after death hold? How should I live now? What is the ultimate meaning of life? What is my value as a human being? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

In Jesus, all of these are answered and many more.

Everybody's Somebody's Fool

I was doing some personal research on evangelizing and discipling persons with diagnosed personality disorders when I stumbled onto a cringe-worthy article. The author’s premise was that psychopathy is clinically measured by a certain ten-question test, which he proceeded to apply to the God of the Judeo-Christian heritage. His conclusion was that God is 80 percent psychopath. A few of his conclusions were based on what he considered to be God’s childish and conscience-devoid behaviors throughout the Old Testament.

Obviously, this came from an atheistic, anti-Christian source. My first inclination was to slip quietly away from my computer lest it go up in smoke. That was followed by a state of bewilderment over the hateful and blasphemous hubris of the author. However, when those initial reactions passed, would you like to know where my mind settled? I was taken back by the NAKED STUPIDITY of this writer. The following represents the questions I would have for him in a private conversation:

“Now, help me to get this straight. You are an atheist. You reject the existence of a single Creator of all that is. That means, of course, that no matter how much you pontificate to the contrary, you will NEVER offer a lucid explanation for intricate design within creation, for a reliable measure of right and wrong, or for the origin of a human conscience. Yet, you hypothetically (and condescendingly) allow for the existence of God so that you can measure His mental health. In the process, you make no allowance for any notion of His sovereignty or omniscience, i.e., His standing as ‘God,’ while you sit in judgment over His morality and behavior. Is that correct”?

As I sat in Sunday School yesterday, we were studying 1 Corinthians 1-2, touching upon the contrast between God’s wisdom and man’s wisdom. I was staying engaged as best I could, but the subject matter itself was causing thoughts of this article to fire through my brain. My burden to write became rooted in the desire to post a simple reminder that the world delights in attempting to make a follower of Christ to feel foolish. Paul could not have been any clearer in preparing believers to expect this from their contemporaries. Allow me to add this note of encouragement to Paul’s words: This world provides nothing that should cause you to feel foolish in the least, not when you consider that its sinister agenda is to make you feel stupid for trusting the Bible over the so-called wisdom of the age.

The greatest ploy to that end these days seems to be to pit faith in God against faith in science. That is actually a mantra in our day: “I don’t believe in God, I believe in science.” (It is interesting to me how many wannabe independent thinkers latch onto mantras, but I digress.) This is, of course, a false dichotomy. There is typically no conflict between what Sir Francis Bacon called “the book of God’s words and the book of God’s works”, that is, between scripture and nature. The controversy enters when the world’s wise men, in their attempt to cast off God, endeavor to make the case that their own faith-centered notions about origin are science when they are nothing of the sort.

Science rests on observation in the present. Distinct worldviews determine what any given man will do with the data he observes. The same rock that persuades one man that the earth is billions of years old compels another man to give glory to His Creator Who brought all things into existence in six days. Neither response lends itself to an empirical scientific conclusion.

So, why can intelligent design not work its way into school textbooks? Why do the so-called educational and scientific television networks, as well as most entertainment and news networks, simply push the evolution narrative so matter-of-factly under the guise of “accepted” science? There may be a number of reasons, but do not dismiss the most basic one, that man tends to dismiss God because the notion of God, especially, a moral Lawgiver and Judge, is not palatable to human self-will.

No one ultimately rejects the existence of God because he believes in science instead. Again, that is a false ultimatum. On the contrary, he will uncritically embrace a frame of reference that rejects God because to acknowledge that, “God is,” is troublesome on many fronts. He would prefer to believe that his own ancestors crawled out of primordial slime, billions of years in the past, than to believe that he must be accountable to a deity. And, when confronted with the statistical absurdity of his own evolutionary beliefs, he would rather slap onto the process another 30-60 billion years, hoping that the math might work out this time around, but it never does.

Too many believers are too easily shaken in their faith in God, not because of science, but because of the noise of this age. They fear that they might look foolish if they are too open to those around them about their faith in God. They might look for ways to blend the far-more popular notions of evolution with their Christian beliefs in an attempt to look less foolish. They do not realize that in some circles that may render them looking even more foolish.

That is the rub, Christian. You must decide in which circle you wish to reside. Does the judgment of this world about your intelligence really matter to you? The Bible teaches that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God and that the man who is persuaded in his heart that there is no God is the true fool. How difficult is it to wrap your head around that? Whose assessment of how bright you are means the most to you, that of your peers or that of your Creator?

Above all, never be rattled by those who think of you as a fool. Do not let them undermine your confidence. It should never surprise us that they would try.

… The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness,and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord

          so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.  - 1 Corinthians 2:14-16

Winging My Religion

The latter chapters of the book of Judges are described with a recurring theme: “In those days there was no king in Israel…” (17:6, 18:1, 19:1, 21:25). Twice, the thought is followed with this indictment of the times: “… everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” In the other two instances, the phrase introduces some of the darkest and strangest narratives about life in Israel that occur in scripture. The idea seems to be that if a king had reigned in the land, much bizarre behavior as well as much national descent into decadence might have been avoided.

The accounts of Israel’s mighty judges, raised up to thwart foreign oppressors, have all been told. Sadly, it seems that no matter how great a deliverance of the nation God had secured through one of these heroes, the people would soon forget His salvation as they slid even deeper into spiritual darkness. Chapters 17-21 record egregious sins that sprout from the spiritual darkness within Israel herself. One of these narratives is recounted in chapters 17-18.

A man named Micah steals a large sum of money from his own mother. He overhears her pronounce a curse on the dirty so-and-so responsible, and in his superstitious fear, he panics and comes clean. She responds with a forgiveness that is sentimental, but in no way redemptive. Mom dedicates her money to the LORD, which may appear noble at first glance, but she then instructs her thieving son to carve an image and cast an idol to the LORD, a gross abandonment of the Law of God. He sets up a shrine in his home.

What follows is one-step after another away from God’s revealed will. A homeless Levite (evidence of the breakdown of worship and obedience to God’s Law on a national scale) wanders by the house of Micah, looking for a place to stay. Micah hires the man to be his priest for his little shrine. There is no evidence that this Levite was from the priestly line of Aaron, but Micah must have figured, “Close enough.” The shrine, with its bogus priest become a bit of a community worship center for Micah’s neighbors even though the Tabernacle of the LORD was in Shiloh.

In the meantime, the tribe of Dan had never trusted God quite enough to dislodge the Canaanites from the land allotted to them. In their quest for an alternate piece of real estate, they passed Micah’s house and inquired of his “priest,” who promised them success. They scoped out a nice piece of land with a town called Laish and decided to set up their own city in its place. They returned to Micah’s house, stole his idols and rather effortlessly convinced his “priest” to sell his services to them. The Danites then returned to the land they had seen earlier, slaughtered the citizens of Laish, identified as “quiet and unsuspecting”(chapter 18:7) and leveled the town. They rebuilt the city and named it Dan, installing their bogus priest and his children as a priestly line and continuing to worship with the idols they had ripped off from the shrine of Micah.

As far as the players were concerned, all of this transpired in the name of YAHWEH as well as for His honor and with His blessing.

Sin, sentimentality and ultimate saturation in error is what happens when everyone does “what is right in his own eyes.” Israel was winging its worship of the LORD as though that were possible. The verdict of the author of Judges was that this all transpired because Israel had no king. Could a king, in fact, have really prevented such a sorry state of affairs? Israel would demand a king before God was ready to give them one, but Saul was as much of a free-wheeler regarding God’s Law as was Micah, his mother, his bogus priest, and the murderous Danites.

Clearly, we need to examine the kind of king God desired for His people and, no doubt, the kind of king for whom the author of Judges yearned. The Law of Moses foresaw kings in Israel. Such a king was to be a national Israelite, a man who would not obscenely enrich himself, and a man who would not take many wives. Most importantly, he was to be a man who would govern not according to his own caprice, but according to the Law of God:

¹⁸“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests.¹⁹And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, ²⁰that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left …  – Deuteronomy 17:18-20

The key to a successful monarchy in Israel was not a king per se, but that the king would honor the Law of God in his own life and hold the people accountable for doing the same. Every time we see that lament in the book of Judges about the absence of a king, we can construe it as a lament about the barrenness of lives not governed and guided by the Word of God. “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint …” (Proverbs 29:18).

I would like to say that these odd and ancient tales are hard to apply to our modern setting, but on the contrary, it is disturbingly easy to do so. So much of what presents itself in the name of Christ today is as distant from the truth as were the events in these stories. Superstitious whim and imagination are passed off as the leading of God. Empty promises of prosperity are doled out by grinning clergymen in the name of the Lord. God is worshipped as we imagine Him rather than as He has revealed Himself to be. Sin is redefined according to human motives of sentimentality, distorted love and self-justification.

The disturbing tendencies played out in these odd stories are in no way limited to those who came before us. Too much of what presents itself today as Christian practice is precipitated not by what God has spoken in the past, but by what seems right in the eyes of the adherents of modern Christianity.