Tough Questions

A pastor from the Mars Hill Church in Seattle recently asked his congregants to ask him any question they wanted. The questions, in turn, would be addressed in various sermons over the course of 2008. 893 questions were asked on the church's website and over 343,000 votes were cast to narrow the list down to the top nine questions, listed below. I was surprised about some of the questions, as well as what didn't make the top of the list. All in all, it seems to be a pretty interesting idea.

1. Do you believe that the Scripture not only regulates our theology but also our methodology? In other words, do you believe in the regulative principle? If so, to what degree? If not, why not? (i.e. the regulative principle)
2. What can traditional/established churches learn from 'emerging' churches?
3. How does a Christian date righteously; and what are the physical, emotional, and mentally connecting boundaries a Christian must set while developing an intimate relationship prior to marriage?
4. If salvation is by faith alone (Romans 3:28), then why are there so many verses that say or imply the opposite, namely that salvation is by works (James 2:24, Matthew 6:15 & 7:21, Galatians 5:19-21)
5. How should Christian men and women go about breaking free from the bondage of sexual sin?
6. Of all the things you teach, what parts of Christianity do you still wrestle with? What's hardest for you to believe?
7. Why does an all loving, all knowing, and all sovereign God will into creation people He foreknows will suffer eternal condemnation? Why does Romans 9:20 feel like a cop-out answer?
8. Why do you make jokes about Mormon missionaries, homosexuals, trenchcoats wearers, single men, vegans, emo kids and then expect these groups to come to know God in the same sermon?
9. There's no doubt the Bible says children are a blessing, but the Bible doesn't seem to address the specific topic of birth control. Is this a black and white topic, or does it fall under liberties?

Why he is a Christian

It is the evening of Thanksgiving. I am recovering from a food coma and most of the family is asleep. ASU was losing to USC, so I got a little bored and decided to do a little reading. I came across this article by Stan Guthrie, who wrote a brief editorial for Christianity Today to explain why he is a Christian. Below is a chunk of the editorial. To see the full version, click here. I agree that there is no one thing that is the most overwhelming; it is the weight of all of the concepts that serve to convince me. Just like a court case, you cannot hang your hat on one piece of evidence. As it is said, the sum is worth more than the individual parts.

"...remembering Bertrand Russell's famous essay, "Why I Am Not a Christian," here is a Reader's Digest version of why I am.

Creation: The universe, far from being a howling wasteland indifferent to our existence, appears to be finely tuned through its estimated 13.7 billion years of existence to support life on this planet. Tinker with any one of scores of fundamental physical laws or the initial conditions of the universe—such as gravity or the cosmological constant—and we would not be here.

Beauty: Beethoven's Ninth, a snowflake, the sweet smell of a baby who has been sleeping, and a sunset beyond the dunes of Lake Michigan all point to a magnificent and loving Creator. And isn't it interesting that we have the capacity—unlike mere animals—to gape in awe, to be brought to tears, before them?

New Testament reliability: Compared with the handful of existing copies of seminal ancient works such as Homer's Iliad, the New Testament's provenance is far better attested. There are thousands of NT manuscripts in existence, some made within mere decades of the events they report.

Scripture: Unlike other religious texts, the Bible gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly of its heroes: Abraham, Jacob, David, and Peter among them. Further, Scripture's message rings true. It has been said that human depravity is the only religious doctrine empirically verified on a daily basis. And the Bible's gracious solution to our predicament, Christ's atoning death on the Cross, uniquely emphasizes what God has done, not what we must do, for our rescue.

Jesus: Christ's life and teachings are unparalleled in world history, as any Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim—or atheist—worth his salt will admit.

The trilemma: C.S. Lewis, commenting on Christ's claim to divinity, said: "You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Resurrection: After the crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty. His formerly despondent disciples then turned the Roman world upside down with the message that Christ had conquered death. And they were willing to die for it. The best explanation, according to N. T. Wright and other scholars, is that Christ rose from the dead.

Progress: Despite some horrific incidents perpetrated in the name of Christ, freedom and prosperity generally have followed Christianity. Testimonies: While many Christians have behaved badly, Christ specializes in turning sinners around. What other faith can boast of a Chuck Colson? A John Newton? A William Wilberforce? Then there are the innumerable soup kitchens, universities, hospitals, and orphanages founded to the glory of Christ.

My experience: Finally, as a forgiven sinner, I testify to an imperfect yet growing sense of God's peace, presence, and provision since receiving Christ more than a quarter-century ago. Despite occasional setbacks, my faith has deepened and strengthened, whatever life brings."

On Belief, Part 1: God

“There's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!” -- George Carlin

The idea of God sounds a little crazy, on the same level as a fairy tale (or a horror movie after reading the above quote by the comedian George Carlin). One of the reasons I enjoy apologetics, theology and philosophy is that is requires me to continually immerse myself in my religion beyond the cursory. Faith and belief are not easy at times. As George Hanson once said, “The difficulties of belief are great; the absurdities of unbelief are greater.” In the end, I think belief is the most reasonable position to hold, as opposed to atheism or agnosticism.

After several years of wrestling with the concept, I ultimately came to the conclusion that God was real and that He revealed Himself through Jesus Christ. On one hand, I wish coming to that conclusion were as easy as writing this sentence. On the other hand, nothing in my life that is of value is easy – my marriage, fatherhood, and, yes this includes my belief in God.

I am writing this blog post as a means to explain why I believe in the existence of a god. This is not an exhaustive explanation and will only (briefly) touch on some of concepts that have been influential to me. I will look at the Bible and Christ in a future post.

Good and Evil

Immanuel Kant once said, “Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the starry heavens without and the Moral Law within.” Kant makes a profound point with which I would agree. Where we part ways, however, is when we look at the origins of the awe inspiring (Kant did not believe is a god).

Witnessing an injustice brings about a profound anger inside of me. When someone is hurt, I want to protect the victim and see the perpetrator held to account for his actions. When I witness an act of kindness or bravery, it brings a smile to my face. Why is this so? There are certain actions in life that humans look upon in disgust, while there are other actions that we find admirable. The idea of right and wrong, or good and evil, just and unjust is cross-cultural. In other words, if I spend time with another culture, I would see, to some degree or another, many similar standards or norms in place. This is especially the case with the concept of “fairness.”

Is the human idea of good and evil merely genetic, handed down via the evolutionary process, or is there a different explanation? In my eyes, the evolutionary explanation fails in many areas (I touched on this is a previous post). For one, evolution does not explain why humans commit acts of kindness unknown to anyone. Secondly, why do we risk our safety to help people outside of our group (as did Mother Teresa and Oskar Schindler)? There has to be a better explanation.

Our universe is governed by certain laws or constants, such as gravity. Could it be that the idea of good and evil is a similar law for humanity? Before we say no, read what C.S. Lewis said on the subject, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line cooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe to when I called in unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless, from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because he is not a water animal; a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove God did not exist—in other words, that the whole reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. This atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should have never found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.”

If there is not a god, can there be such a thing as an objective right and wrong? The idea of morality presupposes right and wrong -- but whose definition are we using? If we are using a human definition, then right and wrong is subjective and anything goes, as long as most people feel it is okay. In essence, morality changes with the times. God is not required for a person to make a moral judgment (there are many non-theists whose behavior/actions can be considered moral or good). My argument is that a higher authority is required for an action to be considered inherently moral or evil. A humanistic concept of good/evil is only temporal and thus changes.

It is important to note, that I do not believe in God simply because the alternative would mean the subjectivity of good and evil. Quite the opposite. There are things that are intrinsically wrong (mala in se). If there are acts that are wrong, in and of themselves, how can good and evil be subjective? We can never argue that evil acts by brutal people (such as Hitler or child rapists) are good. As such, evil cannot change with the times, not should it. The fact that humans have what some would call a moral compass, which biology fails miserably to explain, should raise a lot of questions about the origin of such a compass.

The Beauty of Mathematics and the Cosmos

I mentioned earlier the idea of scientific laws or constants, such as gravity. There are many constants in place on our planet and in our universe that are vital to life. Given the preciseness of the constants, some would argue that the existence of life sits on a razor’s edge.

Dr. Francis Collins notes, “Altogether there are fifteen physical constants whose values current theory in unable to predict. They are givens: they simply have the value that they have. This list includes the speed of light, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces, various parameters associated with electromagnetism, and the force of gravity. The chance that all of these constants would take on the values necessary to result in a stable universe capable of sustaining complex life forms is almost infinitesimal…In sum our universe is wildly improbable.”

Astronomer Dr. Martin Rees once said, “The expansion speed, the material content of the universe, and the strengths of basic forces, seem to have been a prerequisite for the emergence of the hospitable cosmic habitat in which we live.” He notes that if there were the slightest tweaking of the numbers, “The universe as we know it would not be here.” Further, the mere placement of our plant within our solar system and within our universe is strikingly fortuitous. Along these lines, atheist author Richard Dawkins once said, "It is such a privilege to be born at all" and that his birth was an "improbable event."

Additionally, the mathematics and formulas behind many of these scientific principles are extraordinary beautiful. Some have even called them, “elegant in their simplicity.” The more we dig into science and mathematics, the more we see beauty at the most infinitesimal levels. Nobel-prize winning physicist and atheist Steven Weinberg once said, “Sometimes nature seems more beautiful that strictly necessary.”

God in the Gaps

The fact that we are here is startling. The fact we have the ability comprehend ourselves and analyze what is going on around is also amazing. The fact that once we dig down into our environment we see a great deal or order and beauty would almost be humorous, if it wasn’t so fascinating.

There appears to something working in our universe beyond random chance. The existence of good and evil, coupled with the staggering improbabilities of life as we know it, lead me to keep my mind open about the existence of a god (there are other concepts that help me, but for relative brevity, I focused on these two).

One may look at what I have written an accuse me of using “God in the gaps” reasoning (if one can’t find a scientific answer, attribute the act to ‘God’). Collins also commented on this subject noting, “Faith that places God in the gaps of current understanding about the natural world may be headed for crisis if advances in science subsequently fill those gaps…There are good reasons to believe in God, including the existence of mathematical principles and order in creation. They are positive reasons, based on knowledge, rather than default assumptions based on (a temporary) lack of knowledge.” In short, I let the evidence lead me to my conclusion, rather than the other way around.

My subsequent post on the Bible and Christ will show how God has revealed Himself to His creation, beyond the general revelation outlined here. These general (natural) and specific (Biblical) revelations, in my opinion, are overwhelming evidence that God is real.

“At this moment, it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers.

The Positive of Persecution

I have not posted much lately, as my family, job and church responsibilities have taken up much of my time -- I enjoy writing, but sleep is nice too. I have a few posts in the pipeline, including: 1) Why I believe in a god; 2) Why I believe in the God of the Bible and Christ specifically; and 3) Do people go to heaven if they haven't heard the message of Christ. Given the complexity of these three issues, it have taken me a while to wade through everything while posting something of reasonable brevity.

In the meantime, I found this interesting article in Christianity Today regarding the positive side of the recent rise of atheist attacks on Christianity. Christianity flourished in spite of the Roman persecution during the first few centuries after the death of Christ. While we want the message of Christ to be spread the world over, there are dangers when our faith becomes mainstream or common, as it has been in western culture since before the founding of America. The danger, obviously, isn't from the message, but the laziness that can rise when there is no external challenge to being a Christian. We often cherish that which is harder to obtain, but possessions gained through relative ease do not hold the same position in our lives (Christ isn't a possession, but hopefully you get the point). Western Christians have not faced many significant persecutions or challenges to our faith, like for example our Chinese brothers and sisters. Yes, prayer has been banned from schools and it can be argued that many universities are not the most Christian-friendly places. But I can still attend my church on Sunday without having to worry about being thrown in jail.

With the recent rise of atheists such as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and others, Christians are facing a full-frontal attack to our belief system -- and it is not on a small scale. Since 2006, the three names I just listed have each published anti-God and anti-Christian books that have sold a combined 1 million copies. The questions they raise are not new, but their message is now becoming more widely spread, via television, the Internet, news papers and other media. Thus, Christians are facing a new wave of challenges and we are being called to defend our beliefs. The positive is that under such challenges, the search for answers will strengthen the faith of many and create opportunities to speak about Christ where such opportunities may not have existed before.

Below is an excerpt from the article.

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You would have to have been hitchhiking across Siberia to have missed a striking new phenomenon: The atheists are back. Not just back, mind you, but globally parading in triumph across tv, bookstores, and the Internet...

Why a surge by atheists right now?...American evangelicals, we must admit, have not been immune to triumphal attitudes, arrogance, foolish public statements, and, sometimes, downright hypocrisy in personal behavior. A backlash against evangelicals has been brewing for years.

The good news? First, a bracing frontal assault on faith is actually good for evangelicalism. It compels us to reexamine what we believe and to behave—well, with greater humility.

Second, this backlash has produced a fascinating response among believers. For example, the most effective public debater with Christopher Hitchens to date has been Brooklyn Baptist and verbal flame-thrower the Rev. Al Sharpton.

In a debate, Hitchens disparaged the God-fearing sensibilities of Martin Luther King Jr., angering Sharpton. "In terms of the civil-rights movement," Sharpton responded, "it was absolutely fueled by a belief in God and a belief in right or wrong. Had not there been this belief that there was a right and a wrong, the civil-rights movement that you alluded to and referred to would not have existed."

Third...theists have drawn into the debate highly articulate scientists of fervent Christian faith. In England, Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology at Oxford, has battled Dawkins brilliantly on his home turf of science. McGrath holds a doctorate in molecular biophysics as well as one in theology.

Two other new books put forward important ideas about God's existence, offering magnificent ripostes to the atheists. In The Language of God, Francis Collins, a former atheist and director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, refuses to choose between science and God. "Science is not threatened by God," he writes. "[I]t is enhanced." Former Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich, in God's Universe, draws a bright line between theists and materialists. He endorses the view that belief in "a final cause, a Creator-God" gives us truthful, coherent understanding about the design of the universe.

Christians have nothing to fear from the new atheist surge. We evangelicals, in our advocacy for the gospel, also have no need for blunt weaponry.

Evil, Plato and God

I attend a study every other Friday at a friend's house where we discuss, among other things, whether there is a rational basis for belief in God and Christ. The chapter in the book we read for this week covered the question of why there is evil in the world. This is a question that theologians have wrestled with for centuries.

The existence of evil is a prominent criticism of Christianity by non-religious persons. In short, the argument goes something like this: If God created all things, and evil exists, then God created evil. Therefore, God is either one of two things - 1) bad for allowing evil, or 2) not all powerful because He doesn't stop bad things from happening. Neither option is a good and some, in turn, find that they cannot bring themselves to believing in such a dichotomy. While the logic of if-then-this may be logical, as any philosophy professor will tell you, just because something appears logical does not mean it is correct.

So then, why evil? I wish I could say I had a simple silver-bullet answer, but I do not (I have discussed the subject here and here). If anyone claims a simple answer, run away fast. Despite the difficulty, there are many crucial observations that can come from asking this question.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust." In essence, when one denies the existence of God based on the existence of evil, it becomes a self-defeating argument. When we call something bad, we refer to a standard that is beyond ourselves. Where does that standard come from? If it is man-made, then it is subjective. Taken to its logical conclusion, crimes such as those committed in Darfur and Nazi Germany could be justified. In fact, the Holocaust was permitted by German law, although no decent person would say that such an atrocity was "good." If there is not a God, what then can we defer to as the arbiter when we say something is evil?

This does beg the question of how God communicates such standards to humans. Some would argue that humans can and do pervert the idea of divine revelation for personal gain -- if God "told" me that murder is evil, then what is to stop me from adding a few of my own pet-peeves to the list simply to control those I don't like? While humans have used the name of a religion for wrong, this is an ancillary criticism and never answers the question of where we draw our concept of right and wrong.

If God does exist, where does He come up with right and wrong? This is an interesting question offered by Plato, called the Euthyphro Dilemma. Simply put, Plato asks if an act is right because God says it's so, or does God say it's so because it's right. Some see Plato's question as a devastating objection to the concept that morality is grounded in God's commands, but it doesn't need to be. I saw one person make the following statement, "What if God had ordained murder and rape as the morally obligatory ways of treating others? If so and rights and values have moral authority merely because God ordains them, then murder and rape would be morally obligatory. You can't protest here and say that since God (who is perfectly morally good) would never ordain anything as immoral as murder and rape, murder and rape couldn't have been morally obligatory. If you say this, you'd be appealing to a moral standard independent of (not ordained by) God. So, either human rights and moral values have an authority independent of God's commands or they derive all of their authority from the fact that God has ordained them and we must accept that human rights and moral values are arbitrary: whatever God says goes - no matter how horrible."

Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas argued that the dilemma is false (thanks Wikipedia for the following condensation of his argument): "Yes, God commands something because it is good, but the reason it is good is that good is an essential part of God's nature. So goodness is grounded in God's character and merely expressed in moral commands. Therefore whatever a good God commands will always be good." Thus, God's commands are not subject to an outside authority, nor are they arbitrary.

It is important to point out that someone does not have to be religious to do "good" things, like feed the poor (although, most outreach centers I can think of that offer such assistance are part of a larger church ministry). But as Norman Geisler says in his book Unshakable Foundations, "In order for moral evil to be present, a moral agent and a moral law must also exist." Who else can that moral agent be but God?

Help My Unbelief

“I do believe; help my unbelief.” -- Statement made by man to Jesus, Mark 9:24

This verse has always intrigued me, in part because I was able to relate to the man. Even with God right in front of me for so many years, I doubted. Two sides struggled: one that wanted to believe and the other that said it wasn't rational. I knew I wasn't the only person to go through this, but I never thought someone of such stature as Mother Teresa would have struggled in such a manner.

The Vatican is looking into whether or not to grant sainthood to Mother Teresa. As one priest was researching this issue, he uncovered a number of letters written by Mother Teresa throughout her life to her confessors and supervisors. She had asked that the letters be destroyed after her death, but the Catholic Church chose not to do so. The letters have been compiled into a book and news reports (see Time article here) have focused on an intriguing theme of many of her writings: Mother Teresa's faith, or apparent lack thereof.

Shortly after she began her ministry in Calcutta, a crisis of faith began. She wrote, "Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. ... If there be God — please forgive me."

Several years later she writes, "Such deep longing for God." "… repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal." She even referred to her smile as a "mask." Another excerpt says, "What do I labor for?" "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

It is not unusual for people of faith to question their beliefs or their God, especially Judeo-Christians. In the Old Testament, Habakkuk wrote, "How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, "Violence!" but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted." Habakkuk later asks, "Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?"

Such questions are not limited to God's followers, but were also asked by Christ himself. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, while hanging on the cross shortly before he died, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Without getting into a theological discussion about the need for Christ to die on the cross for the sin's of humanity (or the doctrine of the trinity), it is important to note that Christ at this moment in His life felt alone.

I have asked similar questions during my life. By my mid-20's, I had buried my biological parents (my father was killed by a drunk driver when I was 8 months old and my mother died of a sudden stomach problem when I was 26 after years of dealing with a painful disease). Watching my mom slowly turn from a strong woman to a sick and fragile shell in a matter of 10 years was painful to witness. The obvious thought popped up in my head, "Why?" There appeared to be many evil people that had lived long lives with lots of money and power. Yet, my loving mother died before she got to see my daughter -- her granddaughter -- be born. She will never see either of my sisters marry or hold their children. It seemed like such an injustice.

During my college years, which was the time that she became progressively worse, I struggled with God over this issue. I never questioned God's existence, but I did question His love and His nature. If He would allow such an injustice, He certainly did not deserve my worship. I did not feel this everyday, but there were low points where this feeling was prevalent.

Years later, my anger went away. It is a long story, but I managed to answer many of the tough questions that plagued me during my high school and college years (Romans 8:20-22 helped, among many other passages, from a theological point of view, as did C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity). When my mom passed away when I was 26, I had a peace that I never expected. The doubts of my adolesence did not surface. Had she died only a few years prior, I would have likely not reacted in such a calm matter (not to say I didn't break down...I cried for several days and still feel a since of loss today). What helped for me to know was that I had been given a Savior who knows exactly what we are going through. Jesus suffered and died on a cross to pay for a crime He didn't commit. He suffered for me. It spite of this, He kept His faith and followed the plan which God the Father had set for Him.

Mother Teresa's writings give us an interesting perspective on a person who dedicated her life to serve Christ. In spite of her doubts and questions, she continued to serve. Against all odds, she pressed forward in the name of Christ. Her letters make me wonder if it is possible to lack large amounts of faith, but still have hope? That is what seemed to occur in her life. She doubted God, but lived like He was there. Maybe she did have a little faith, maybe as small as the mustard seed, and was still able to move the mountain.