The recent bombing attacks in Boston have once again raised the cry across the internet, rehearsing the perceived violence of Islam.  In several recent discussions, Christians have repeated the mantra that the Qur’an is filled with commands to commit violence against non-Muslims.  Islam, they say, is an inherently bloodthirsty faith.  Commonly cited as empirical fact are screeds such as this one:  “The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.”

It is important to note that these statements are made by people and on websites whose express purpose is to “expose” or “correct” the claim that Islam is a peaceful religion.  Frequently, such sites manifest considerable antipathy toward Islam and Muslims … for example the home page banner of the above-linked site describes Islam as “one really messed up religion.”  To put it kindly, the source of this purportedly-objective information is not remotely unbiased.

I propose an experiment for anyone interested:

1. Find an atheist. Not just an unbeliever, but someone who really hates Jesus.
2. Have that person start with the assumption that Christianity is a violent religion.
3. Now have him go through the Bible looking for proof of his preconception about our violence.  Be sure he doesn’t overlook the places where “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13.14) celebrates the orphaning and widowing of his enemies’ families (Psalm 109:8-10). Be sure he lingers over the various causes of stoning people to death, and the genocides of the Pentateuch and Judges.
4. Check how many violent verses, from Genesis (or at least Exodus) to Revelation, your anti-theist finds.  Now convince him you worship a God of love and peace.

I hope you would object “but you have to understand the historical and literary context for those verses … progressive revelation, the nature of God revealed in Jesus Christ, old and new covenants, etc.  No one can fully understand those things who has not studied them in a perspective of submission to the God who inspired them.”  I agree.  This is a perfectly reasonable objection, whether you’re talking about the Bible or the Qur’an.  The fundamental truth is that it takes a person of faith to accurately interpret the texts of that faith.  If I want to know what the Bible means, I’ll ask a Christian, not a Muslim.  If I want to know what the Vedas mean, I’ll ask a Hindu.  If I want to know what the Qur’an means, I’ll ask a Muslim.

Furthermore, sola scriptura biblicist that I am, it is still true that to understand a faith or a “religion” (I really hate that word) requires more than merely dispassionate study of its texts (or even passionate study, for that matter).  Whatever one thinks of the thing called “Christianity,” one cannot really know it without interacting with a Christian–or many different Christians.  The community, the rituals, even some of the language, and yes–the sacred texts–are unintelligible without a knowledgeable insider to function as an interpreter.  If you don’t know any Christians, you don’t know Christianity.  If you don’t know any Muslims, you don’t know Islam (you may not, anyway, but I digress).

I am not suggesting there isn’t a whole lot of horrible violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam.  There is.  One doesn’t have to be a Fox News devotee or a Limbaugh dittohead to see the headlines.  But when other Muslims I know and trust tell me that those violent, radical Muslims are abusing and even violating the Qur’an, I believe them.  Why do I believe them?  Because I have seen plenty of violent, radical Christians abusing and violating my own holy scriptures as a pretext to commit terrible acts … why should I expect it to be any different to other religions?  Satan corrupts everything.

We must oppose the bearing of false witness against our neighbors, and against those we style as our enemies.  But even that isn’t enough.  It grieves me deeply that when arguments such as the “109 violent verses” are used, they are usually in the context of opposing Muslims who are trying to make peace with us, or opposing Christians who are trying to make peace with Muslims.  This is not only tragic, it’s monumentally stupid.  If we have an ounce of self-preservation instinct at all, we should welcome anybody who extends an olive branch to anybody else.  To whatever extent any Muslim is a threat to me, it’s not the one who is preaching peace from the Qur’an who poses that threat.  We would also do well to remember that our Lord said “blessed are the peacemakers.”  He did not qualify that phrase with the adjective “Christian.”  Neither, I believe, should we.

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
    and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
    and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
    their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
    and their words to the end of the world.  (Ps. 19:1-4)

Part of the reason I believe there must be a Creator is because I look around me.  I was raised in the home of an astronomer, so I’ve been enjoying the beauty and grandeur of the cosmos since childhood.  There is a sense that comes in observing in the beauty of the universe, that it got that way because somebody cared to make it that way.  From awe-inspiring views of nebulae and galaxies, the grand solitude of the mountains, the raw power of the ocean, to the incredible intricacies of life small to large, humanity has been inspired for millenia to conclude that all this was made for a reason.

This is not an argument for “Intelligent Design” and the people at “Answers in Genesis,” whose pseudo-science disgusts me to such a degree I refuse to link to it (Google it if you must).  There is, in my view, far too much solid evidence for the age and size of the universe, and for evolutionary processes in the development of life, to go down the various “Creationism” rabbit holes (for those who want to explore a thoughtful Christian approach to evolution, check out Biologos.org).   And since I don’t subscribe to a so-called “literalist” interpretation of the whole Bible, I have no particular reason to fear that science might challenge the basis of my faith.

But neither does my grounding in at least the basics of both cosmic and biological evolution challenge my conviction that there’s some sort of creator behind it all.  I think the so-called “Big Bang” theory does a pretty good job of describing much of what we observe on a cosmic scale–heck, I often joke that part of why guys like me enjoy explosions, fireworks, etc. is because we’re created in the image of a God who started it all off with the ultimate in fireworks.  Frankly, the idea that a singularity would cut loose with the necessary energy and matter to form the entire observable universe, almost demands someone or something to pre-exist that singularity and fire it off … and the notion that it would just appear out of nothing seems to me a much greater stretch than considering a creator.

Similarly with biological evolution.  That organisms change and adapt over time is obvious even on timeframes we can see, and nothing is stronger evidence for this than the frightening rate at which pathogens are developing resistance to most of the antibiotics we use to treat them.  I’ve only read excerpts, but Dr. Francis Collins book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief is a good place to look at how our DNA provides solid evidence for evolution.  Nevertheless, I believe the incremental nature of evolution–minute changes generation by generation, reinforced or eliminated by natural selection–is insufficient to explain at least two major thresholds in the development of life:

The first, of course, is life itself.  We can demonstrate that amino acids in a soup can organize into random patterns that might encode for proteins, but we’ve never observed any such soup make the leap from chemical organization to living organism, let alone living, reproducing organism.  That leap is not evolutionary, it’s revolutionary.  Igniting the fires of life required far more than lucky chance, a lucky mixture, and a lot of time.  I suggest those fires were deliberately set.

Second, assuming single-celled organisms that reproduce, their reproduction is by mitosis, or cell division.  It’s not a stretch to conceive that over time a colony of such reproducing organisms might begin to differentiate such that tissues with distinct functions begin to work together better as a multicellular organism instead of a blob all doing the same thing.  But it’s a leap of epic proportions to have organisms, whether single- or multi-celled, begin the process of sexual reproduction–a process that requires a variety of structures and systems all work together to facilitate the exchange of nuclear material between them, and the incorporation of that material into a third organism not entirely like either of the two parents.  So many systems need to be in place–systems that are completely useless until the reproductive process works as a complete unit–that again the development of this mechanism is revolutionary, not evolutionary.

So I see evolution as an obvious part of how life develops, but I still see a creator as the most probable explanation for the origin of that life, and the impeller of those revolutionary steps that life could not take on its own.  Still further down the developmental path, I rather suspect that sentience, self-awareness, and finally the desire to seek the divine (what C.S. Lewis referred to as “Homo divinus“) are all additional points of revolutionary change.  This perspective even harks back to Genesis (understood in a mythic form), when the writer tells us that God “breathed into [man's] nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Gen. 2:7).  The Septuagint provides an interesting understanding of those words, in that the “breath of life” is πνοὴν ζωῆς (pnoen zoes)–”pnoe” being the word also translated “spirit” (including Holy Spirit) or “wind,” and “zoes” referring to biological life; and then man became a “living soul” (KJV) which in the Septuagint is  ψυχὴν ζῶσαν (psuchen zosan) where the “soul” or “creature” is the word from which we get “psyche” or “psychology.”  In other words, God specifically gave the man life (God’s breath), but also gave him his psyche, which we might understand as cognition and self-awareness.

(It’s unfortunate that certain streams of Christianity have felt it necessary to set up their interpretation of Genesis in contradiction to observed biology, geology, and astronomy.  It was not ever thus, in fact Christian opposition to evolution comes much later than Darwin himself, and in fact one of Darwin’s most ardent contemporary supporters, Asa Gray, was a confessional Christian.)

There is one more point about the universe as we experience it that, to me at least, strongly leans toward the existence of not just a creator, but a benevolent one at that: beauty and our perception of it.  There is much I see around me that is just nonsensically lovely.  Whether it’s the many astronomic objects I’ve seen through my Dad’s telescopes (or the Hubble website, for that matter), the cardinal chowing down on our bird feeder just outside my window, or the gratuitous color display of thousands of sunsets, I find myself often struck by beauty that both in itself, and in my enjoyment of it, is completely unnecessary to our survival, reproduction, or any other evolutionary pressure.  There is evil and ugliness too, and I’ll get to those in a later post.  But they don’t, to me, diminish the reality that we experience beauty that doesn’t have to exist…beauty that is more, I suspect, than the result of happy chance.  I think it’s a gift.

I want to be perfectly clear:  none of what I’ve just described necessitates a Christian worldview.  As I said last month, “The heavens declare the glory of God…” says the Psalmist David (Psalm 19:1), but they don’t actually show us God’s name.  This is one of the points where the Intelligent Design folks get it badly wrong, in that they think once they’ve “proven” creation, their version of fundamentalist Christianity must follow.  In point of fact, people studying the heavens have come up with a pretty diverse set of creation myths and cosmologies down through the ages.  C.S. Lewis (I think…can’t find the quote at the moment) actually suggested that this very fact — that people see the divine in creation — is evidence for the existence of God.  I’m not sure I completely buy his conclusion, but it is nevertheless true that people who have been inspired by creation to envision a creator, have come to starkly different conclusions about that creator’s identity and character.  To find Christ (or not) requires different evidence altogether.  But on the schema of my Belief Matrix, I find the physical world to be strongly suggestive (note I did not say “conclusive”) of a creator, so this evidence, to me, tends heavily toward the Theism side of the curve.

This is a review, but mostly a recommendation, of Carl Medearis’ book Speaking of Jesus – The Art of Not-Evangelism.  I’ll get to the review in a minute, but I’ll start by saying up front:  seriously, this is a book you should buy and read.  If you’re a Christian who’s interested in evangelism, you should read it.  If you’re sick to death of Christians trying to evangelize you, you should read it too.  And if you think there’s something sort of cool about Jesus and can’t figure out why those Christians yammer on about Jesus but seem so not like him, you REALLY should read it!

This book is not new … Carl published it in 2011 and somehow I only learned about it a couple weeks ago.  But I’ve been in dialog with Carl over Facebook for a year or two, mostly around the topic that it’s possible to be unapologetically a fan of Jesus and still have Muslim friends, and even talk with those Muslim friends about Jesus.  He does this through the crazy notion that if you actually love people and treat them as friends instead of, say, part of the “enemy” or the opposing team, they often reciprocate.  He also has this weird idea that if Jesus really is as powerful and important as we say he is, maybe meeting Jesus is more important than thinking the right stuff about Jesus.  So Carl lays out the case for realizing that introducing people to the person, character, and way of Jesus is something entirely different from trying to “win” them to a religion.  As he says in the book:

I don’t want to redefine salvation.  I don’t want to redefine the gospel or even Christianity on the whole.  I suppose I want to undefine them.  I want to strip away the thousands of years of graffiti painted onto the gospel, turning it into a reasonable code of doctrines.  The gospel is not an idea.  It is not a belief.  It is not a favorite verse.  The gospel does not live in your church, it cannot be written down in a simple message, and it is not the sinner’s prayer.  The gospel is not a what.  It is not a how.  The gospel is a Who.  The gospel is literally the good news of Jesus.  Jesus is the gospel.

(emphasis in original)

People who’ve read my blog for any time know that one of my recurring frustrations is when people are driven away from considering the claims of Jesus, not because of who Jesus is, but because of the jerks we Christians can be (see this post if you want a refresher).  Under the guise of the “offense of the gospel,” Christians can be a downright offensive bunch at times.  As Carl put it, “We often blame Jesus when our evangelistic efforts fail … I don’t think it’s Jesus they aren’t liking.  It might be you.”

This book is a great thought-provoker.  One more quote to whet your appetite:

Maybe you’ll read this and think that I’m trying to make salvation easier or make a way for all the gays and liberals and Muslims and Buddhists to get in without going through all the “proper channels.”

Maybe yes and maybe no.  I’m not trying to change what salvation is because salvation is not my responsibility.  God didn’t put Carl Medearis in charge of deciding who stays and who goes.  That’s Jesus’ job, and He can keep it.

My job, no–my joy comes from sharing the good news of Jesus with people.  I point to Him, and He does all the heavy thinking.  I don’t have to convince anybody of anything.

I let Jesus run His kingdom.

Pretty good advice, if you ask me.  Go get this book and read the rest!

When I first heard that Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne were doing a book on Red Letter Christianity, I was pretty excited.  I have a great deal of respect for both men, and while I don’t always agree with either, I think their prophetic voice in the church is beyond any reasonable dispute.  So I actively sought a review copy of the book, and the kind folks at redletterchristians.org obliged. As a consequence, it’s with more than a little regret that I have to tell you that I found Red Letter Revolution a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worth reading the conversation between Shane and Tony, and there are plenty of spots to get the reader thinking. But considering the authors and the title, I frankly expected a lot more. Red Letter Revolution contains far too few of the red letters (that is, the recorded teachings of Jesus in the gospels, often printed in red), and what’s more, it’s not all that revolutionary.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I’ve repeatedly suggested Christian theology spends too much time bringing extrabiblical questions to faith. Much of my objection to the traditional creeds is that they create a priority of emphasis that is discordant with scriptural priorities. Part of my own attraction to so-called “Red Letter Christianity” is that, if we approach the gospel accounts, not only for their raw content, but to see what Jesus did–and just as important, what he did not–emphasize, we find areas of focus that differ radically from those taught in most churches, and studied by most theologians. I had hoped Tony and Shane’s book would illustrate this approach, as I believe much of their teaching and living to date has done.

Herein lies my principal disappointment with “Revolution.” The topics chosen for Shane and Tony’s discussion seem to me to have been pulled largely from the agenda of those some might call “liberal” and others “progressive,” not from the gospels. The first eight chapter headings, under the rubric “Red Letter Theology,” illustrate my point: History, Community, the Church, Liturgy, Saints, Hell, Islam, and Economics. Each of these subjects is treated with an interesting and worthwhile perspective, but it’s often one that only tangentially references Jesus’ words–the red letters–at all. And quite frankly, I’m unconvinced that some of these topics, such as liturgy and the saints (that is, those saints recognized and canonized by an official church) would even figure at all in a gospels-sourced curriculum. Others of the eight are more vital, I think, and we certainly can find among the red letters, guidance for how to approach them. But absent the foundation of Jesus’ actual teaching on his kingdom, even these lose their context and much of their power.

The remaining major sections of the book, “Red Letter Living” and “Red Letter World,” continue the pattern established by the first, selecting topics of great interest to progressives (Christian or not) in a manner that I would have expected from Jim Wallis, but I did not anticipate from Campolo and Claiborne. As before, what the two say about the topics so selected is worth reading. But instead of walking the reader through a fresh exploration of life directed by a focus on Jesus’ priorities, I found a book that lays out a decent left-wing alternative to right-wing Evangelicalism. That’s not a bad thing…In fact it’s quite worth doing. But that is not Red-Letter Christianity…it’s Blue-State Christianity. They’re not synonymous.

So in the final analysis this book, though full of interesting insights from two godly men, fails to deliver what it’s title promises. I sincerely hope that the authors will try again.

Disclosure: I received an advance review copy of the book from the publisher; however the opinion expressed herein is my own and (obviously) not that of the publisher or the book’s authors. No consideration regarding the content of this review was asked or offered.

For years, the abuse of Scriptural passages to justify the aggressive exploits of nations has driven me nuts.  Whether it’s the the account of the conquest of Canaan, used by European colonists to take the New World and exterminate or marginalize its indigenous population, or the same story repeated by the Afrikaaner Dutch in South Africa, it’s always repulsed me.  And when revisionist American Christians use the covenental and missional language of the Bible to justify –even advocate for– the interventionist behavior of the United States, I positively want to scream.  Now Braden P. (Brad) Anderson has published a theological response to this abuse, and it’s an important work.

Chosen Nation is the product of Brad’s doctoral dissertation.  In this book, Brad takes on the topics of nationalism and faith through the discipline of theopolitics…an academic focus that looks at how theology is worked out in political frameworks…and does so with a rigor that few have bothered to master.  In doing so, Anderson makes a compelling case that we need to understand both Biblical claims and nationalist narratives before we all-too-lightly mash the two together.

Drawing on the work of William T. Cavenaugh, among others, Anderson takes a hard look at the American notion of exceptionalism, in which the United States is perceived by many to be chosen and ordained by God to perform a special function in the world, typically one that involves the projection of American power and the replication of American-style ideals and governance through the exercise of that power.  Already in the nineteenth century, but also seized upon by modern theologian Stephen H. Webb, Anderson describes a nation that arrogates to itself the role God intended for the church.  Quoting Cavenaugh, the nation “does not simply seek to follow God’s will, but acts as a kind of substitute God on the stage of history.”  The nation, Anderson says, “worships its freedom to worship, which is inherent to its identity, and thus worships itself.”  The resulting nationalism, he writes in his preface, “…is a challenge that rewrites the Christian salvation narrative, reconstructs Christian politics, and reorients disciples of Christ away from solidarity with each other and with those suffering around them.”

One of Anderson’s most important contributions in “Chosen Nation,” I believe, is his analysis of the meaning of God’s covenant with Israel in the Old Testament.  Beginning with the Puritans coming from England to the New World, right through the nineteenth century and into the nationalism of Evangelical Americans today, there has been a tendency to claim elements of that covenant language, and appropriate them to bless–even to promote–American hegemony.  But as Anderson leads us through the Biblical account, he shows us how God established Israel as a set-apart people with himself as the sovereign.  As the prophet Samuel testified, when the people of Israel chose to emulate the nations around by demanding a king and taking on the role of a nation-state, they willfully abandoned God’s sovereignty and abrogated the terms of God’s covenant with them.  “With the expansion of empire [under King David] and its attendant utilization of foreign alliances, slavery, and a standing army, realpolitik becomes institutionalized in the state, and Israel becomes that from which it had been delivered in the exodus.” (emphasis mine)

Paradoxically, then, as Americans (and others) appropriate to their own nations the covenantal language of the early Old Testament, they fail to recognize that the structures and conduct of the nation state are themselves incompatible with the God-directed people for whom that language was intended.  As Anderson says, “To the degree that Christians residing in various nations seek to (1) identify themselves according to a syncretized theopolitical narrative of identity, and (2) secure that national identity through the political ways of the powers, they participate in a form of Israel’s own error, directly altering their identity in the church of Jesus Christ.”

Later in the book, Anderson looks at the Biblical case for the church of Jesus Christ being the heir to God’s divine covenant with Israel (see 1 Pet. 2:4-10 among other foundational passages).  Since the church, rightly seen, is a transnational entity, it is therefore a fundamental error to apply to any modern nation-state that sense of chosenness that rightly belongs to the church.  The church, Anderson writes, “cannot be supplanted from this role without fundamentally altering the salvation narrative it proclaims.  Insofar as nationalists claim for their nation the mantle of the definitive community witnessing to God’s salvation and prefiguring the kingdom of God on earth, they distort the Christian gospel and make their nation a simulacrum or parody of the church.”  More pointedly, he later states about several Christian Right authors in the US that “…by misappropriating biblical Israel as they do, that is, by making the nation America the extension of Israel as central to God’s plans for global salvation, these authors supplant the church, and by implication, Jesus Christ as Lord.” (emphasis mine)

Anderson’s concluding chapter is not so much a conclusion as a challenge for the church to re-engage with its own identity as God’s chosen people on a transnational level.  As an American, his questions are directed particularly at his own people:  “What does it mean to be American when the very origin of the country is rooted in the act of Christians killing other Christians?  What does it mean to be American when the United States constitutes an earthly empire by most measures of the term, that is, military, economic, ideological?”  And perhaps most challenging of all:  “Can we be American as we live in robust solidarity with non-Americans (or even anti-Americans), especially as Christ has rendered any such divisions or exclusions null and void?”

Difficult questions, indeed, and questions Anderson does not attempt to answer in any great detail.  The challenge is left for the reader to take up.  This book is not a quick read, and if you’re at all like me you’ll need to take your time to properly grapple with Anderson’s analysis and with the various theologians–conservative and progressive–with whom he engages.  It’s an important exercise, and well worth the effort.

Disclosure: This review is done on a copy of the book provided to me by the publisher.

For a while now I’ve been reading (and will soon review) the book Chosen Nation by Braden P. (Brad) Anderson. There are a variety of topics in the book that I’m going to want to engage, but one in particular caught my attention last night. In Chapter 7, Brad discusses the work of two writers, Stephen H. Webb and Richard John Neuhaus, both of whom are proponents of a popular notion in which the United States is somehow under a covenantal blessing from God rather as Israel was in the Old Testament. Consequently both, but particularly Webb, hold that the U.S. has not only the right, but even the duty, to act as sovereign on the world stage–and that the Church is duty-bound to support her.

Webb, as related by Anderson, builds much of his case on the notion of “Providence,” the notion that “God rules the world through the work of nations” (Webb, American Providence, 72, quoted by Anderson, 203).  Essentially, the idea is that the nations do what they do because God has so ordered it in order to accomplish his grand design in history. Webb sees a particularly providential role for America, says Anderson, in that “America has been chosen to fill the role of sovereign in the world today, as evidenced by its hegemony” (p.216). As characterized by Tim Beach-Verhey, “Webb argues that American religious, economic, and political institutions and values are dominating the world, which could not happen apart from God’s will, which means it must be in accord with God’s good and benevolent intentions for the world” (Beach-Verhey, as quoted in Anderson, 207).

Anderson does a good job of showing how the Biblical model of God’s kingdom is wrongly co-opted by Webb and others, but what he does not do is address the underlying philosophical assumption of Webb’s claim, which I suggest is a form (or at least a close cousin) of the “Is/Ought” problem first articulated by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume (here’s a brief summary). Hume’s own statement was this:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation,’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it … [I] am persuaded, that a small attention [to this point] wou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason.”

This statement has been reduced in philosophical usage to the statement “you can’t prove an ought from an is,” and numerous writers then refer to any such conclusion as an “ought-is fallacy” — essentially, the notion that what “ought to be” can never be derived through logic from empirical observations (what “is”) alone, and therefore any argument which does so is fallacious.  Google around a little, and you’ll find that philosophers (or at least those who presume to put philosophy on the web) fall into essentially two (vastly oversimplified) camps.  The first says that ought-is reasoning really is fallacious, and that consequently there is no such thing as morality derived from observation–that in fact, a prescriptive “ought” or “ought not” statement simply doesn’t fit into the categories of “true” and “false”.  These thinkers can come to the conclusion that morality is not, in fact rational at all (though by no means all conclude thus).  Another group disagrees, and says merely that one can’t get to a conclusion of morality (or perhaps any judgment of value) if all one’s premises are merely empirical.  In other words, if one’s inputs (premises) include a moral judgment, then it’s possible to infer further moral judgments from that set of premises (see this article by Dr. Charles Pidgin for an exploration of this).

Now all the discussions on the “Is/Ought problem” that I’ve found seem to circle around the concept of deriving imperatives or norms (what one ought to do) from some set of empirical premises.  What I see in Webb is actually a somewhat different type of inference–not one that (directly) tells us what we ought to do, but rather one which informs the “rightness” of what is.  For want of any source I can find on the subject, I’ll phrase it this way:

Thus it is, therefore it thus should be

which I think sounds cooler in Latin:  Sic est, ergo esse debet

(if anyone wants to correct my Latin I’d welcome it)

This is a far-more-comprehensive idea than simply whether or not one can make a value judgment on a particular action, norm, or command.  Rather than examining the basis for moral judgment, this position seems to be used largely as a foundation to silence dissent, to preclude any prophetic or moral evaluation of our nation’s actions.  If God has willed everything “we” do, then no one can challenge “us” without challenging God.

Now, I’m not entirely sure if the principle that what happens is what ought to happen necessitates any sort of Prime Mover who wills it (a position categorically different from mechanistic determinism), but maybe some of my readers can help me out here.  In any event, it is certainly true that many Christians (and, I rather suspect, theists of other faiths as well) do make this claim all the time.  As I have previously written (see here and here), I believe the assertion that whatever happens is God’s predetermined will is an error founded primarily on a misunderstanding of the meaning of God’s sovereignty, one that conflates sovereignty with absolute control or determinism.  But I don’t have to commit myself either to logic or to faith to call out Webb’s rationale as fallacious.  At the bottom, the claim that everything happens as it is destined or determined to happen does not follow from logic (Greg Boyd makes a nice case on this here); nor does it follow from the Biblical account of God, who for example, genuinely regretted having made Saul king of Israel (see this post on God’s immutability for more).

More importantly from a Biblical standpoint, it is instructive to compare 2 Kings 24, in which a variety of Chaldaeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites all attack Judah (see 2 Kings 24:1-4), and yet these very groups are punished for their actions (see Amos 1 & 2).  If one accepts that the wars of nations are tools in God’s hands, as a literal reading of 2 Kings would suggest, then Amos informs us that being God’s tool may not be such a great thing after all.  If, on the other hand, one holds that God works around and through evil human actions (that is, actions that in themselves run counter to God’s will) for his own good purposes, one cannot then conclude that because God used a situation, he willed it or (more to the point) God’s people ought to support it.  Yet this is precisely what Webb does.  Simply, Webb’s claim that what the United States is doing on the global stage is the right thing (and the church should therefore support it without question) just because whatever the nation does is God’s will, is completely fallacious (and somewhat circular) whether you believe in the God of the Bible or not.  I’m a little surprised Anderson didn’t call him on it.

Disclaimer:  in case any true academic student of philosophy comes across this post, let me say that I do not claim any credential in this regard.  I’m trying to make reasonable inferences from some philosophical literature, but I am a layman and claim nothing else.  If you want to clarify or correct my reasoning, I welcome it, but please understand that I freely admit to being an outsider in the discipline.

Brian McLaren has recently come out with three little fiction e-books:  The Word of the Lord to Evangelicals, The Word of the Lord to Republicans, and The Word of the Lord to Democrats.

I heartily and without reservation recommend The Word of the Lord to Evangelicals to everyone who reads this blog.  It’s a wonderful little parable in which we follow Wheaton College student Wendy Gullivan.  Wendy has a surprise encounter with God in the form of a homeless man while she’s on an “Urban Immersion” ministry weekend with fellow Wheaton students.  God, it seems, is depressed–suicidally depressed–by Evangelicals…”Especially American Evangelicals.  And most especially in groups.  The more, the scarier.”

Over the next four or five years, Wendy and God meet up several more times, and with each encounter, Wendy learns a little more about how to shift her perspective from an obsession with personal salvation and certainty of doctrine, to loving and ministering to those God loves.  Along the way, McLaren is good for several hearty laughs from those of us who recognize ourselves, our friends, or our churches in his characters.  I don’t want to ruin the story by spilling too much…for three bucks you really ought to just read it!  But I will say his alternate rendition of some Scriptures the way Evangelicals teach them is worth the price alone.  Take this example:

For God so loved the church that he gave to himself his only Son, as a penal substitutionary sacrifice, so that those elect few who believe in this atoning doctrine would not suffer eternal, conscious torment in hell as a result of original sin, but would live forever in heaven after death.  For God did not send his Son into the world to save the world, but to condemn it, and save only the church.  (Not John 3:16-17)

The other two books, The Word of the Lord to Democrats and The Word of the Lord to Republicans are both good, but I can’t give them the same unqualified “You Must Read This” endorsement.  Both are actually funnier, in places, than Evangelicals.  But while McLaren’s skewering of Republicans is both witty and pointed (and quite appropriate, I think), in Democrats Brian pulls his punches too much.  I say this as a Democrat–it seemed to me that McLaren’s “Word of the Lord” to the Dems was largely that they are behaving too much like Republicans.  While this is to some extent accurate, it seems to me that if God were to send a message to Democrats it would have a lot more content than just “make up your mind what you’re going to stand for and then take a stand”  (for one thing, I think God’s message to Democrats would also remind them (us) that morality and holiness aren’t antiquated concepts to be left on the scrap heap of history).  So I finished Democrats rather disappointed that he hadn’t slapped them around with the same gusto he did in Republicans.  I will say, however, that his parody of Rush Limbaugh in Democrats is inspired…

All three books are well worth the $2.99 each.  Unfortunately they are only available as e-books…the good news being that this means they’re cheap, but it also means you can only read them on an e-reader or your computer (either Amazon or Barnes & Noble carry them).

The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman earlier this year has brought out the usual political punditry.  Everyone “knows” the “real” reason Martin took a bullet, even though they can’t seem to agree on what that real reason actually was.  As with theology, so with politics: the conclusion to which one comes seems more easily predicted by one’s prior beliefs, than by the facts in the case.  Conventional wisdom says Trayvon was killed because he was a black kid in a hoodie.  There’s probably some truth in that, though I suspect it’s more accurate to say he was confronted because he was a black kid in a hoodie, and his death was the result of an unfortunate escalation of the confrontation.  Bill Cosby and CNN commentators counter that the proliferation of guns and gun rights are also to blame, perhaps more so.  They too have an element of the truth…certainly if George Zimmerman wasn’t packing heat he couldn’t have used it.

But lurking in the background is a deeper question that I don’t hear being discussed, and that is the value of already-born human life.  I say this because, as we all know, the stage upon which the current drama is playing out includes Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.  As represented in the media (and I have heard this characterization on both Fox and NPR), if a person “feels threatened” he or she has the right to use deadly force against a would-be attacker, and has no “duty to retreat.”

Importantly, Florida’s actual Stand Your Ground law is a bit more tightly worded than either conservative or liberal media suggest.  Most of it involves defense of a residence or vehicle, the so-called “Castle Doctrine,” which in essence allows a homeowner to shoot on sight anyone who breaks into his/her home, vehicle, tent, etc.  The part of Florida’s law that might apply to Zimmerman’s defense is XLVI 776.013(3), which reads:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

It is this “no duty to retreat” clause that causes me the greatest concern. The concept of a duty to retreat, historically, has meant that a claim of self-defense to justify homicide would only be sustained if the defendant not only feared for his life, by also had no reasonable means of escape.  In other words, if retreating could have de-escalated the situation without resulting in death or serious injury to either the defendant or a third party, then the defendant had a duty to extract himself from the scene rather than resorting to lethal force.

I’m not going to argue the history of the laws. My question is not a legal one, but rather moral: what is a human life worth? The Florida law explicitly states that anyone who has forcibly entered your home (i.e., broken in) can be presumed to have violent intent…therefore, in essence, the inviolability of your threshold is worth a life. Stand Your Ground says you need not leave the scene if threatened, even if the only wound you might sustain by retreating is to your ego. Bluntly, your pride is worth a life.

This is not unusual in our culture. Listen to conservative American commentary on our wars and foreign policy–heck, listen to our presidents–and it is clear in numerous circumstances that we as a people are perfectly willing to take human lives, at times in great numbers, for no greater cause than our pride in our greatness as a nation.  As goes the people as a whole, so go many as individuals.

Christians disagree about the appropriate boundaries for the legitimate use of deadly force. I myself am not an absolutist in this regard, though my criteria are stricter than most. But I see no rationale whereby the follower of Jesus can justify or defend the doctrine of Stand Your Ground, rooted as it is in the presumption that one man’s ego could ever justify taking another man’s life.

How does this apply to Zimmerman?  Well, he’s likely to be tried either against the state Stand Your Ground law, which even former governor Jeb Bush said is not applicable, or on federal civil rights charges.  Neither is likely to address what I think is the root cause of ego-vs-life, but nor will they address the other relevant question, which is training for those who are armed.  This is the practical side of the Martin/Zimmerman story, and it’s likewise getting no play.  We can argue all day about whether guns, or concealed carry, should be legal in this country.  Bottom line, those arguments will garner lots of donations to the NRA and to gun control groups, but they’ll accomplish little else.

I think we ought to try for a little common ground by requiring that those who have the permission to carry a weapon–particularly a concealed handgun–must undergo regular training.  I don’t mean how to shoot, though they certainly should be proficient with their weapon.  I mean when to shoot.  I rather suspect that in most situations where a weapon is involved, the escalation to the pulling of a trigger happens incredibly quickly.  I know many police departments require their officers to undergo shoot/no shoot simulation training on a regular basis.  So ought civilians.  Evaluating the danger of a confrontation is tricky business, and there are no simple answers.  But those who hold in their hands the power to take life, owe to the rest of us the discipline to have thought, and practiced, and thought some more about just when that power ought to be used.  I’m neither judge nor jury, but I’m guessing that neither George Zimmerman nor the vast majority of his supporters have exercised that discipline.

The geniuses of the legislature in my newly-adopted home state are proving their brilliance once again with regard to the Ten Commandments as a source of American law.  A bill has just passed our Assembly (unanimously, no less) and is now headed for the Senate, to make sure the “Foundations of American Law and Government” display can be posted, not only in judicial buildings and courthouses, but in any public facility in the state.  The “Foundations” display is itself prescribed in Georgia Code 45-13-51, enacted in 2006.  Here’s the description taken from the actual text of the law:

The Foundations of American Law and Government display contains documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government. The display contains (1) the Mayflower Compact; (2) the Ten Commandments; (3) the Declaration of Independence: (4) Magna Carta; (5) “The Star-Spangled Banner”; (6) the national motto of the United States of America; (7) the Preamble to the Georgia Constitution; (8) the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution; and (9) a picture of Lady Justice.

The code has several provisions to make sure that no single one of these nine elements be given prominence over the others.  Though I’m not a lawyer nor a constitutional scholar, I find it interesting that this law appears almost identical to one overturned in the 2005 Supreme Court decision enjoining the display of the Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse.  Though I’m a staunch advocate of the separation of church and state, that is not the issue I intend to address today.  Rather, I’m looking at the ridiculous claim that the Ten Commandments actually serve as a substantial foundation for American law.

Here’s what the Georgia law states in its prescription for the “Foundations” display:

The Ten Commandments have profoundly influenced the formation of Western legal thought and the formation of our country. That influence is clearly seen in the Declaration of Independence, which declared that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Ten Commandments provide the moral background of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of our legal tradition.

The law further elaborates on the Commandments’ influence in its description of the Declaration of Independence:

Perhaps the single most important document in American history, the Declaration of Independence was, as Abraham Lincoln stated, the “frame” into which the Framers placed the Constitution. The Declaration’s fundamental premise is that one’s right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is not a gift of government. Government is not a giver of rights, but a protector of God-given rights. Moreover, government is a creation of “the governed” and derives all its power from the consent of its people. As the Preamble to the United States Constitution states, “We the People” are the government. (emphasis mine)

The Georgia (and previously, Kentucky) authorities claim that they are setting out an educational display to educate the public about the “Foundations of American Law and Government.”  45-13-51(a)(4) of the Code actually states “A basic knowledge of American constitutional history is important to the formation of civic virtue in our society.”  It is rather astonishing, in this context (and the Supreme Court decision referenced above observed the same thing), that a display purporting to teach “a basic knowledge of American constitutional history” does not even include the U.S. Constitution among its documents.  On the other hand, it does include several components that cannot plausibly be said to have any bearing on United States law at all, including most significantly, our National Anthem, the national motto “In God We Trust,” and a picture of Lady Justice.  These things are American cultural traditions, but they are not law.

That aside, the portion I highlighted above makes the true intent of the display pretty clear…among the “Foundations” of American law, in the mind of this bill’s advocates, is the premise that our rights come from God, not from man, or law, or government.  This is a premise worthy of debate on its own merits, but it is not one I intend to engage in this post.  Nevertheless the premise must be acknowledged, because it makes clear that when the legislators claim a secular, educational purpose for laws related to the display of the Ten Commandments, they are in fact being disingenuous.

The claim that the Ten Commandments provide a foundation for American law would be laughable if so many people didn’t take it so seriously. Here’s a link to the full text of the U.S. Constitution.  Go read it.  There is no mention of God or religion in the entire thing.  Nor does the Constitution touch on any topic addressed in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17).  The two documents simply do not overlap at all. Now here’s a link to the first ten amendments to the Constitution, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights, and here are all the remaining amendments to the Constitution.  Go read those.  Note this important point:  The word “God” or any other name for (or reference to) the divine does not occur once in the entire Constitution of the United States nor its amendments.  Nor do the amendments allude to any subject also mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

Finally, let’s look at the Commandments one by one.  I’ve done a visual commentary on the Commandments in America before, but this time, we’re going to look at the actual text (taken from the ESV in this instance):

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

There is nothing in American law that specifies any God in particular, or any hierarchy of gods.  Even the Declaration of Independence only references a “Creator.”  Other than the Creator’s having given to humans the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we are told nothing about that being.  Furthermore, as mentioned before, the Declaration of Independence, while an important historical document, is not actually a law.  Commandment One does not influence any law of the United States.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…

The laws of this nation do not forbid idolatry, and they certainly do not forbid sculpture or photography, both of which create images or likenesses of many things.  For that matter, only very few Christians throughout history have had any objection to the creation of images and likenesses.  We have taken this commandment (correctly, I think) to enjoin idolatry, not art.  But neither is prohibited by American law.

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Whether or not this command contributes to American law depends on what one thinks it means.  Though I’m not aware of any law currently in force, there have certainly been legal prohibitions against public profanity, particularly profanity using God’s name, in various American states in the past.  Clearly any such laws that still exist have lost any force, given the ubiquity of profane speech, music, writing, and general discourse in our country today.

Most credible sources I’ve read suggest this command has more to do with taking an oath in God’s name and then breaking it…and possibly even making an oath with full premeditation that one intends to break it (hence taking God’s name in vain).  We certainly have laws against perjury in this country, though I’d suggest there’s nothing uniquely Judeo-Christian about them.  The material sense of such laws is the dishonesty of the oath, not the violation of God’s name.  To claim we get our laws against perjury from Moses is a stretch at best.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Many places in America used to have Sabbath laws.  We don’t any more.  Very few Americans, Christian or otherwise, come anywhere close to keeping any sort of sabbath law on any day of the week.  American business, pleasure, goodness and sin all proceed apace on a 24-7 schedule.  Nothing to see here…move along now…

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

We could debate exactly what this command means too.  One common interpretation is that we should provide for the care of our elders, which could easily devolve into an argument as to whether each family should care for their own, or whether Social Security and Medicare are our way of keeping the Fifth Commandment.  I’m not taking that bait, at least not today.  But whether it’s the question of long-term care, or the more immediate question of kids obeying their parents, our society has mores and expectations in that regard, but not laws.  A child can disown, disrespect, and even abandon his parents, and as long as he does not physically abuse them (and there are other legal bases against abuse), there are no legal grounds upon which to charge him.

6. You shall not murder.

Yup.  We have laws against that.  So does every society, whatever god it does or does not worship.  Even atheist, Communist societies have laws against murder.  There is a much broader Biblical case, particularly in the New Testament, for a standard on the protection of human life that goes far beyond the prohibition of murder.  The standard of Jesus, which our nation most certainly does not presume to follow, elevates the sanctity of all human life including that of fetuses, enemies, and criminals to a level that those who claim to be “pro life” completely fail to grasp.  Nevertheless, for the point at hand, to suggest that our prohibition against murder descends uniquely from the Sixth Commandment beggars belief.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

Obviously, we have no law against adultery in this country.  In many states, even adultery as grounds for divorce has lost much of its punch.  Whatever public moralizing we may do (say, an adulterous congressman trying to impeach an adulterous president, to pick a random example), nobody goes to jail or pays fines for adultery in the United States.

8. You shall not steal.

We have that one too.  So does everybody else.  Our laws against stealing come from our standards of private property, not from divine fiat.  As I said for murder above, there’s nothing unique about our prohibition of theft that shows any divine sourcing.  Theft did not suddenly become a crime at the revelations from Sinai.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

I already touched on the subject of perjury up in the Third Commandment.  This command is more particularly about false accusation and testimony that wrongly convicts the innocent.  The Code of Hammurabi has several provisions with a great deal more detail than Exodus, regarding the consequences for perjured testimony against another.  Hammurabi predates Moses by anywhere from 300-500 years, depending on what date estimates one accepts.  Moses didn’t inspire this law.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

Of all the Ten Commandments, I find the Tenth to be the most blindingly obvious evidence that American law and Mosaic law are two radically different things.  Without covetousness, the American market economy would not exist.  Advertising as a profession is the deliberate creation of covetous desire in the contented.  Far from reproving covetousness, our society stokes the fire under every human lust and turns it into a market opportunity.

In summary, there is very little material overlap between the Ten Commandments and any laws of the United States.  The most generous reading would see links only in the sixth (murder), eighth (theft) and ninth (perjury/false witness) commandments, none of which contain anything particularly unique, none of which were novel at the time of Moses, and none of which require divine revelation to substantiate them.  To display the Ten Commandments as prescribed in the “Foundations of American Law and Government” regulation is a statement of religious endorsement.  Advocates’ claims  of  secular, historic motivation are at best specious, and at worst  baldfaced lies.

The concept and ideas around heaven is one of things that has been hijacked and subverted from its original understanding. I once heard N.T Wright eloquently say it like this: “heaven is great but its not the end of the world.”

Unfortunately most Christians believe that heaven is simply a destination and that death then heaven is what eternal life means. Of course there is something eternal to this thing we call life but the more profound understanding comes when we realize that an eternal kind of life is meant to be started right now in the here and now while we live on this earth.

When we begin to strive to live today as if all was right in the world as God originally intended, it is as if our veil is lifted and we see this world differently. This theme fits nicely into the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven reality. If only Christians would be taught more often what it looks like to be used a vessel to usher in heaven into the here and now. This I believe will be the challenge to the church over the next decade and longer.

The church has focused so much on the inner transformation that it has forgotten how to pair that vision with the transformation of the world vision as well. For some strange reason God has chosen to use his people to re-build his Kingdom on earth as it is heaven. Jesus was the first fruits of this vision and now it has been extended to his people through the profound presence of God’s Holy Breath (AKA Spirit).

I love how N.T Wright articulates this in that through Jesus God became King. When you pair that profound way at looking at how the heavenly realm and earthly realm are working toward becoming one with the Christus Victor view of the cross, you end up with a Kingdom citizens vision and mission. Loosely, to not just be recipients of new creation but to be agents of it as well. We are of course to shape ourselves into living an eternal kind of life now but we are too also look for places where the powers have strongholds and through prayer, sacrificial love, non-violence, etc tear down those strongholds and re-claim for the Kingdom what the powers have taken on this earth.

Shockingly in all of those battles Jesus has already won. All we have to do is remind the powers that they lost and send them packing. Because we are image bearers it will be our physical work and words / prayers that will accomplish this feat.

I want to end this post with an image and some reflections on it.

I have to say this image makes an interesting point. Of course it is entirely a generalization and deeply flawed, however, if the Church and God’s people were being loyal to their calling as also being agents of new creation, I believe the words describing Christians would be as follows.

Christian:
Takes care of the sick
Cares for widows and orphans
Advocates for the poor and those on the underside of power
Brings food to the hungry
Brings water to the thirsty
Provides shelter for homeless
……

And many more things rooted in sacrificial love. Believe it or not that list above, and more, is actually what I consider “evangelism.”

Grace and Peace.