Zack Groff

A Graceful Bow

2010-10-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

This is a transcription of a sermon that I gave on October 3, 2010 at the United Presbyterian Church in Havertown, PA. I was speaking on The Noahic Covenant. The Old Testament Reading was Genesis 8:20-9:17, and the New Testament Reading was Ephesians 1:1-8. This is the transcription from the morning service specifically. The sermon in the evening service was pretty much the same as the one posted here, with some addition of content and slight alteration.

INTRO

Please pray with me. Father in Heaven, You cannot be contained by any earthly vessel, and yet You have chosen to make our hearts Your dwelling place. Lord, we are broken and flawed – and we confess the depravity of our nature to You. But we come together in thanksgiving this morning, praising Your Holy name and yielding glory to You alone. And we ask for the provision of Your Spirit to illuminate Your words for the purposes of understanding and knowing You. In Your promises we place our trust – in Your love we place our hope. In the precious name of our Lord Jesus, Amen.

What a fine morning to praise the Lord! Can I get an amen? Amen! (repeat, if necessary). This is only my second sermon, and I know that at least some of you have yet to hear me preach, and so I would like to preface the message today with a short statement of my understanding of the philosophy of preaching.

Last year, theologian John Calvin turned 500years-old, and there was a great celebration of the Gospel in commemoration of Calvin’s life and the Reformation. At Calvin’s church - St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland - preachers and theologians from all over the (Christian) world gathered together for a week of biblical teaching and, undoubtedly, Christian networking! One of the men who preached that week was Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of the Anglican Church of Uganda. I wish to share this passage from his sermon with you all because I believe that he very effectively illustrates a proper understanding of what effective preaching and teaching looks like. Don’t worry – I will not attempt his accent. And I quote:

“‘Feed my lambs’ is a very powerful command that the church today must follow. Why do I stand here fearing and trembling today? Because the man John Calvin was a teacher of the Word; the man John Calvin fed people the Word of God. And they came. The man John Calvin was used at a time when people had a hunger for the Word of God. And he was a good chef – he cooked very well.

“I would like to say that part of the difficulty today is the lack of appetite for the Word of God. I would also like to say that this is predominantly because of the way that the Word has been preached or even not preached. Part of the difficulty today is that the Word of God is not preached with the faithfulness of John Calvin, the faithfulness of Martin Luther, or the passion that they had, with the desire they had. They believed the Word of God. Today, the church of Christ has not believed with that passion that this is the transforming Word of God. And no wonder people may not come. And if they do come, they may want to stay two minutes, or three minutes, or five minutes, or ten minutes and then go as soon as possible.

“Instead of being fed, they are being poisoned. But when it is preached with power, and preached with such a passion, preached with faith because people believe what they are preaching, it is different” (ed. Hall, Daniel W. 2010. Preaching Like Calvin. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing. p. 44). Wow.

Notice that Calvin was a good chef not only because he believed what he preached, but also because he preached the Word of God. Calvin, Luther, Paul, Peter, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Noah, and Christ Jesus preached the Word of God – God’s revealed Truth – and believed it. One of these fine gentlemen was the absolutely obedient Son of God, so I guess He had to! Well, that’s a question for a different sermon.

Anyway, my point in prefacing my sermon with such a lengthy speech is just to say that I can’t call myself a good chef of anything. But I do believe that the Bible is true, and it is the message of this uniquely inerrant book that I am here to preach from. So, let’s get started.

In the Genesis passage, we see that Noah and his kin exit the ark and the next thing we know, the patriarch is building an altar to God – good man. And I want to come back to what is going on here in chapter eight a little bit later, for God says something very interesting which is crucial for a solid understanding of the Noahic, or Rainbow, Covenant contained in chapter nine.

Man’s Postdiluvian Purpose

In chapter nine, we see that God’s revealed will for mankind in the postdiluvian world is to perpetuate human life. We read the renewal of an old command from Genesis chapter one, verse twenty-eight: procreate and fill the earth. God recommissions Man to procreate, renewing the command from Genesis 1:28. Then we get some new things, such as God setting the fear of Man into the animal kingdom. This fear is specifically upon “every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky,” and not cattle, beasts of burden, or livestock. This is a restatement of the dominion mandate also from Genesis 1:28, but qualified with the work that God has done in the nature of the animals now that Satan has usurped that mandate, as indicated in 1 John 5:19. Again, that’s 1 John 5:19, which describes Satan’s jurisdiction of power – that is, the “whole world.” As a result of Satan’s usurpation of Man’s dominion, and God’s destruction of all life on account of Man’s complicity in that usurpation, God has made Man feared rather than obeyed by animals.

In conjunction with this change comes a dietary change – namely that God allows Man to eat meat. But, God makes clear that we are not to ingest blood. Verse four states, “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” We are not to consume blood because Blood symbolizes life. In fact, let us go so far to say that it is only by our blood that we have life. God made all flesh that way. Blood is Life, and life is to be offered to God, not consumed by men. Blood, which carries the life of animate creatures, is to be offered unto God, not spent away on men. This concept carries over to the next command that God instructs Noah.

God forbids the act of murder. Again, I emphasize that God’s revealed will for mankind in the postdiluvian world is to perpetuate human life. To end human life in murder is not permissible. Murder explicitly does not honor God, and so the shedding of human blood, the taking of human life in murder, cannot be done in service to God. Murder cannot honor God. However, God does not forbid killing per se. In fact, God institutes capital punishment. He institutes capital punishment in retribution for the act of Murder. This is how serious murdering someone is. We can infer that this particular crime was weighing on God’s heart because it was wildly prevalent in the antediluvian world, the world before the Flood. Similarly, there was no institution among men to administer justice, and so God establishes legal authority in order to enforce this mandate that He hands down to Noah.

Verse 5 reads, “Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.” The word “require” is a judicial term. And we see that God requires the life of man from every man’s brother. At this point in human history, there are four men. God is talking to Noah and directly referring to his three sons, who are obviously brothers. If God is saying “from every man’s brother I will require the life of man,” it’s pretty clear to us that He is telling all of the men in the entire world, “you are responsible for making sure this punishment is enforced.” This is pre-Mosaic Law. This command is not unique to the Jews – it is part of a universal command given by God to all of mankind, and it precedes a universal Covenant between God and all of mankind that extends to the present day, and shall continue until the End of Days.

“Whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man. As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.” God finishes this section of commands with a reason. This is a privilege, to be given a reason for a command. God really doesn’t need to give us reasons for what He does – for the secret things belong to God. But it was His purpose to give a reason for why it is so wrong to shed the blood of men even though it’s certainly permissible to kill animals. “For in the image of God He made man.” Unlike animals, we have an eternal soul, not merely a temporary spirit residing in the blood of the flesh. God makes the distinction between men and animals that so many incredibly intelligent fools in schools and universities around the world are trying to undermine all for the sake of progressive evolution. May God have mercy. If the distinction between men and animals is unclear, as it is in evolutionary theory, there really is no reason to view man as specially created in the image of God. There really is no reason to believe that the murder of men is much different than the killing of animals. May God have mercy.

The Noahic Covenant

Let’s move on to the Noahic Covenant. At verse eight, God formally begins the covenant that He makes with ALL flesh – Noah, his sons, his daughters in-law, and every living creature. And I love how God starts up His speech – “Now (that I got the legalities out of the way) behold.” He says behold to this new idea, this new concept, this new promise, this new covenant with your mind. But also – behold this beautiful new phenomenon with your eyes.

God will never again unleash a global flood. He will never again destroy all flesh by water. He will never again destroy the earth by water. And He gives Noah the bow as a Sign of the Covenant. In verse thirteen, He calls the rainbow “my bow,” and it is truly for the covenant the He is making. He seals the covenant with this, His bow. He seals the covenant firmly with a beautiful refraction of white light into all the colors of the light spectrum so that His glory may be seen in its entire splendor.

And this rainbow commemorates the Covenant; it commemorates the covenant. Whenever and wherever there is a rainbow, this covenant is reaffirmed in a sense. Whenever and wherever there is a rainbow, God sees this beautiful postdiluvian phenomenon and remembers His promise to all flesh upon the earth. God remembers. And we should remember as well. There are many things that men have made the rainbow stand for these days. I don’t need to mention them directly, and I don’t really want to either. Whatever a rainbow means to us, we should remember that God has given it to us as a sign of this covenant – and it is meant to glorify Him.

In my last sermon, I suggested that God allowed the Fall of Man because He desires to show Himself as redeemer and savior. It would be logically impossible to redeem or save a perfect, untarnished Creation – so He let the Fall happen. The Fall thus established God’s role as Redeemer, which He had reserved – for His Son – since before time began. Please let me point out that before the Flood, there was no rain, there were no clouds, there was water in the form of some kind of vapor canopy in the firmament above. But now that canopy is gone, and the rain cycle that we know has been set in place, as I will talk about a little bit more in a moment. Only in the postdiluvian world can God display His glorious mercy and grace in this specific way. God redeems the great catastrophe of the Flood with this rainbow and the covenant it stands for. Hallelujah. When I see His bow in the sky above, I am reminded that my redeemer lives!

Heart of the Covenant

Bear with me a little while longer, as I want to go back to chapter 8, verses 20 to 22 in order to really get at the heart of this covenant as I understand it. First of all, this is the first covenant mentioned in the Bible. God did in fact make a promise with the serpent in Genesis 3:15 that the seed of Eve would one day crush his head, but God did not use the word covenant in Genesis 3. Trust me, I would have told you if He did. And so the Noahic Covenant is the first covenant of the Bible.

This covenant is God’s response to Noah’s response to God’s grace, which was extended through Noah’s faith. Again, this covenant is God’s response to Noah’s response to God’s grace, which was extended through Noah’s faith. In short, the Noahic Covenant is God’s response to Noah’s faith. Hebrews chapter 11, verses six and seven make this abundantly clearer than I can. Hebrews 11:6-7 read, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” There it is, folks. I can’t do better than that. That was Hebrews 11:6-7. Write that down next to point 3.A. Hebrews 11:6-7

Grace was extended to Noah. Yet, the faith that made such an extension of grace successful was also a gift from God. Grace and faith are divine gifts. Grace and faith are divine gifts. Again, the Bible can explain this concept with greater clarity and concision than I am able. Ephesians 2:8-9 is a familiar little passage in which Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” What is the gift of God? “It.” What is “it?” The entire preceding clause – “by grace you have been saved through faith.” Both grace and faith are the gift of God. Both are divine gifts, and they go together. They always go together. Again, that was Ephesians 2:8-9. Write that address down next to point 3.B. Ephesians 2:8-9. Thank you.

And God chose Noah and his kin, or else they wouldn’t have had the faith to go onto the ark at all – but why? God chose Noah to be holy and to give praise to God’s glorious grace. This brings us to our New Testament reading for today. Recall Ephesians 1:4-6. “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” And just as He chose Noah to be holy and to give praise to God’s glorious grace, He chose us that we would be holy before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption through Jesus Christ to Himself to the praise of the glory of His grace, according to His will.

It’s very easy to get hung up on passages like this one from Ephesians, for it takes away human agency. It’s not up to me to be saved?!? While I would very emphatically say “Hallelujah,” it is very reasonable to reply with a “Then how do I know if I’m saved? I can never be sure.” In fact, I have grappled with that quandary, and I still do in my lowest spiritual states. First of all, I call those of you who struggle with the doctrine of predestination to not listen to the lies of the Devil. He will distort this Scripture, and all Scripture, to not only immobilize you, but to turn you away from God’s Word, and more than a few people have fled from God because of a mistreating or misunderstanding of predestination. Remember that this is an exhortation to a beleaguered church that needed reassurance of not just God’s sovereignty, but of His fatherhood.

Like Noah, we shall see the floodgates open and fountains burst as things happen in our church, our families, and our individual lives. But, our Father - who art in Heaven - has better things in store for us. He has designs for us as His adopted heirs to be set apart and blameless, and to praise the glory of His grace.

Noah had been through the strangest year. Almost everyone and everything he had ever known or been familiar with had been wiped out. Our neat little bastardizations of the Flood account leave out the mass carnage left in the wake of the Flood just as these little retellings leave out the deaths of Noah’s friends, acquaintances, and extended family. Yup – the Flood killed people. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news to those of you who graduated from Mainline Protestant Sunday School. Yet God carried our ancient ancestor through it all so that the very name of God – Yahweh – would be praised.

The first promise that God made back in Genesis 3:15 spoke of redemption. This first covenant that God establishes with Noah in Genesis 9 demonstrates God’s grace. Chapter 8, verse 21 reads, “The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” God graciously gives us a reason for His decision – this is such a great passage to preach on! He tells us that He will never again curse the ground and kill every living thing because “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Wow – that doesn’t really make any sense. What was God thinking? “So, the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth...what do I do now? I will never again curse the ground or kill every living thing. Sounds good.” This is what God’s grace looks like. We don’t deserve it, yet He chooses to give it, and Noah’s action is an example of what God wants us to do, why He extends that grace.

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” This is a covenant of sustaining grace. God finishes laying down the predictable way in which the world currently works right here in Genesis chapter 8, verse 22. And the pattern of movement and development has not changed since then. And we still have rainbows. This is a covenant of sustaining grace.

What Shall We Do?

So what do we do? I apologize for not giving a clear exhortation in my last sermon, and I desire to give one now, as this is really too important not to do so. First of all, turn over your inserts and prepare to take a couple of short notes on the back. (Are you turning them over? Good.) Remember that we, like Noah, were predestined for holiness and praisegiving, not necessarily happiness and a fun life of ease. In the Odyssey, Achilles tells Odysseus, “It is better to be a slave on earth than to be a king in the underworld.” Similarly, it is better to be a slave in heaven than a king on earth. No matter how good your life is, no matter how comfortable we in America are, no matter how happy and fun our lives may seem most of the time, remember that we are in exile. And until we are in the presence of God the Father giving praise to His glorious grace, we will have that sense of being a wanderer, of not really belonging. If you’re not uncomfortable in this world, and you’re old enough to know better, then be aware that God is even now preparing to shake things up.

I’ve been shaken up a lot – in good and bad ways – these past couple of years, and I will be the first to tell you that this world is not my home, no matter how snazzy it seems. As Eliphaz correctly said to Job in Job 5:7, “For man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward.” As surely as fire rises into the air, man is born for trouble. The Christian life can be fun, but that’s not its purpose. It’s okay to be a happy Christian. I may be Reformed, but I even think that it’s good to smile! My point is that fun and happiness are not the purpose of our salvation. Holiness and God’s glory are the purposes of our salvation.

Next, in Ephesians 2:10 Paul asserts, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which Christ prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” So you’re saved by grace through a faith that was just as much a gift as the grace was – now what? Do something with your life.

Stop engaging in selfish worldly consumption and make a sacrifice of time and energy to God by studying His word and praising His glorious grace on your own, with your families, at home. If you can’t do that much in response to God’s glorious grace – which is a lot easier than building an altar and cooking some animals on it, much less building an ark and caring for animals in it – if you can’t do that much, then please don’t volunteer to serve in this church. I will say that again: if you can’t receive a sense of God’s glorious grace from the salvation that ONLY comes through His son, then you have no place to be performing good works, because they are dead. I don’t care how philanthropic somebody is. If that person isn’t doing it for Jesus – it’s all for naught. I don’t care how pro-life or pro-family someone is. If that person isn’t doing it for Jesus – it’s worthless. Soli Deo Gloria – to God alone be the glory. Your service, my service, our service, this service would be nothing but a sham if we were only concerned with the good works, and not the reception of God’s grace, through faith, which makes them worthwhile in the first place.

Now, the basics: read the Word of God to learn about Him. Come to this church, or go to another bible-believing church, and learn about God. Pray both alone and with others to listen to and bring supplication before God. Listen to God. Listen to God. Rest in Him. Christ said, “Come all you weary and heavy-laden. Lay down your burdens and find rest for your souls.” Allow Him to carry you through the Flood of trouble this world has to offer.

Do as Noah did and rest assured knowing that God knows our sick and evil hearts where we cannot understand them. And He extends grace anyway, because God is Love. Please join with me in singing Hymn #8: To God Be the Glory.

[Sing]

Benediction

I want to close our service today, and send you on your way to coffee and delightful little snacks with this meditation from Spurgeon. I read this on Friday night, so this is as fresh as it gets from the visiting preacher’s desk:

“Grace and glory always go together. God has married them, and none can divorce them. The Lord will never deny a soul glory to whom He has freely given to live upon His grace; indeed, glory is nothing more than grace in its Sabbath dress, grace in full bloom, grace like autumn fruit, mellow and perfected. How soon we may have glory none can tell! It may be before this month of October has run out we shall see the Holy City; but the interval longer or shorter, we shall be glorified ere long. Glory, the glory of heaven, the glory of eternity, the glory of Jesus, the glory of the Father, the Lord will surely give to His chosen. Oh, rare promise of a faithful God! Two golden links of one celestial chain: Who owneth grace shall surely glory gain.” Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone be the Glory. Amen and Amen.

Please join us for refreshments in the Green Room/Fellowship Hall, and stick around for Discipleship Hour. If you have any questions or concerns, I will be around, so please stop me. Thank you.

Impact of the Fall

2010-06-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

This is a transcription of a sermon that I gave on June 27, 2010 at the United Presbyterian Church in Havertown, PA. I was speaking on The Fall of Man. The Old Testament Reading was Genesis 3:1-19, and the New Testament Reading was Romans 8:18-25.

INTRO

Elder Bob Bell read the Genesis passage in the morning service. Mike Scorzetti read it in the evening service. It is transcribed here for easy reference:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

Thanks for reading, Bob/Mike. Good morning/evening, everyone. Please turn in your Bibles to the eighth chapter of Romans, beginning at verse 18, and going through to verse 25.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

May God bless the reading of this His Word. Before we get into the message that I’ve prepared, please join with me in a prayer.

Father in Heaven,

We come before you in the humility of our brokenness, but also with the confidence of our salvation, freely bestowed by grace in the person of Jesus Christ. Father, please open our hearts for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit which was promised by Your Son. Lord God, we ask for the power of the Holy Spirit to infuse this message for the betterment of our small community here at Manoa Presbyterian Church, and the community of saints at-large. Please also allow this time to be a blessing to our visitors, Lord. But most importantly, we ask that this message be true to Your Word, and pleasing to You, oh God our Father. In the name of our Lord Jesus, Your Son, Amen.

I have to say that when Brown invited me to preach, I got really excited. I had a hankering to do so for a time, and the invitation was also a great honor for me. Then he told me what the topic was. The conversation went a bit like this, and this will be my only reenactment – I promise. “Zack, I’d like you to preach.” “Wow, thanks for the invitation! What am I preaching on?” “Genesis 3, and I want you to focus on the Fall and curses.” “Oh...cool...let me pray about it, and I’ll get back to you.”

I admit that the conversation wasn’t quite that up and down, but I have certainly been approaching this passage with fear and trembling. Not only is this one of the most challenging and humbling passages in Scripture, it is also one of the most influential pieces of literature in the Western World. It also hits very close to home to a sinner like me – as it should for all of us. Suffice it to say that I’ve been preparing quite a bit these past couple of weeks by spending time in prayer and reading a lot on how to approach Scripture from the office of preacher.

One of the resources I’ve been going back to over and over again is a book by a Scottish Presbyterian minister named Eric J. Alexander. The book is called What is Biblical Preaching? and it has been helpful as both a launching pad for my preparations and a succinct reference during my composition. At one point, Mr. Alexander describes an encounter he had with another Presbyterian man on a flight to the United States. He writes,

“A few years ago I was traveling on a plane, and my companion in the seat beside me had a fairly thorough glance at the books I was reading. I suppose they immediately identified the work in which I was engaged. He told me that he worshipped in a Presbyterian church every Sunday. It seemed too much of a coincidence not to tell him that I was also a Presbyterian and I was going to a seminary to speak to students for the ministry about preaching. He immediately began to give me some advice: ‘Do you know that I think is wrong with almost every preacher I hear? I think they spend most of their time preaching to one another and trying to impress one another.’”

The first thing I thought was, “well, at least I can really emphasize the fact that I’m not a preacher!” But the man went on to say to Mr. Alexander, “Now my dad used to tell me that if you wanted to hear the pure Christian gospel presented so that you would understand it you should go to a Presbyterian church service because that’s what they did.” After I read this, I thought to myself, “I have a responsibility – and not just to my Presbyterian Church and denomination to uphold our sterling reputation – but to God and His people.” Yet, God is good, and Christ came for the weary, to take up their burdens so that they may find rest for their souls – and I’ve found that coming to church this morning was not difficult or burdensome. I’ve come here with rest in my soul, and by the power of the Holy Spirit within me, I’m ready to preach the gospel.

The passages which are before us are loaded with items for consideration, and there are many approaches to Genesis 3 which we could take. In Genesis 3, we have the first occurrence, and therefore the origin, of sin. By this fact, we could certainly discuss the nature of sin, as certain patterns come out of that first instance. We could explore the full scope of guilt as we experience it in much the same way as Adam and Eve. We could even continue on the theme of the roles God plays in Genesis, and explore his role as disciplinarian and judge of mankind, especially as this is the first time he puts on the gloves, so to speak. While I’m going to touch on a couple of these major themes, we are largely going to open up Genesis 3 as an historical account that specifically defines the nature of conflict in our world.

PRE-EXISTING CONFLICTS

In the Genesis 3 passage, we do not begin with an unblemished Creation. There are already certain conflicts at play before The Fall. We can safely assume that there has already occurred a rebellion in the heavens. Out of that rebellion against God comes an evil character that would try to tempt man into sin. Satan is that evil character. Thus, the first conflict at play in the universe is the “Satan vs. God” conflict. Isaiah 14, 12 to 14 is one place in Scripture that gives a very good look into the nature of Satanic rebellion. Again, that’s Isaiah 14, 12 to 14. You can check that out on your own. Scripture does not give a strict chronology of events prior to The Fall of Man, but I would contend that Lucifer’s rebellion and consequent fall come after God proclaims that all He had made was “very good” at the end of Genesis 1. Whether that rebellion took place in Heaven with a cosmic battle, or in Eve’s ear with a deceitful whisper, I do not know. All we can be sure about is that Lucifer’s pride drove him to rebel against God in an effort to usurp His throne and become king of the universe, and this happened sometime after Creation Week, when God beheld all Creation as “very good.”

Christ gives a very powerful description of Satan in John, chapter 8, verse 44. “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” We can pick up that Satan is a deceiver composed of falsehoods, and devoted to spreading lies. But before Jesus pounds that into the heads of some difficult new followers of His, he says that the devil “was a murderer from the beginning.” This doesn’t mean the very beginning, just generally – the beginning. Remember that Christ was teaching in a different style of communication than Genesis was written in. But by saying that Satan “was a murderer”, Christ implies the second pre-existing conflict which all of Genesis 3 testifies to: Satan vs Man.

Genesis 3 clearly indicates this conflict, which began in earnest with the tempting of Eve and culminated in the eating of the Forbidden Fruit. Satan had a target, and that target was the crown of Creation – mankind. This conflict is principally characterized by what Satan attacks. He did not attack Adam as bachelor, but rather chose to target the family. Satan hates families, and he does all in his power to wreck them. This isn’t to say that he won’t attack single people, but it is pertinent that he withheld his attack until Adam was married. And Satan chose to attack the family through Eve. I want to take this one level deeper. Recall that Eve was taken from Adam’s side. Therefore, Eve is naturally close to Adam’s heart. Our sides, particularly our ribs, serve to protect the vital organs, especially the heart. Is it fair to say that Satan aims his attack against the heart of a man, and does so through the helper who was designed to serve and protect that man’s heart?

Whatever the case may be, we know that the covenant between husband and wife, the marriage bond, is representative of the relationship between God and His chosen people – Israel and the church. Satan seeks to make a mockery of that representation by attacking families, driving couples apart, and destroying hearts. This country has seen plenty of that. This church, being a Christ-loving and Bible-believing communion of saints, is very much focused on the family, and so I really want to open up this picture as we explore the dimensions of Satan’s attack on men.

In his book Reforming Marriage, pastor Douglas Wilson of Moscow, Idaho writes this:

In Ephesians 5, Paul tells us that husbands, in their role as head, provide a picture of Christ and the church. Every marriage, everywhere in the world, is a picture of Christ and the church. Because of sin and rebellion, many of these pictures are slanderous lies concerning Christ. But a husband can never stop talking about Christ and the church. If he is obedient to God, he is preaching the truth; if he does not love his wife, he is speaking apostasy and lies – but he is always talking. If he deserts his wife, he is saying that this is the way Christ deserts His bride – a lie. If he is harsh with his wife and strikes her, he is saying that Christ is harsh with the church – another lie. If he sleeps with another woman, he is an adulterer, and a blasphemer as well. How could Christ love someone other than His own Bride? It is astonishing how, for a few moments of pleasure, faithless men can bring themselves to slander the faithfulness of Christ in such a way.

Just as Christ said that Satan is the father of lies, so we can expect Satan to push husbands to be liars in our marriages. But Satan does not only attack families. The Bible tells us that Satan sidled up to an individual’s ear – not that he addressed Adam and Eve jointly. “And he said to the woman...” I would contend that Satan also attacks individuals in particular. His goal is for domination of the world, and all the souls in it. He also knows that in order to gain control of families, societies, and global orders, he must go through individuals.

Ultimately, we should know that Satan is opposed to God, God wants the best for Man, and so Satan is opposed to Man. Yet we must also understand that God is Sovereign in all of this. As Martin Luther once said, “The devil is God’s devil.” The LORD God is almighty, and is in control of all. We aren’t dealing with a simple picture of Good vs Evil dualism. We are looking at God’s will being worked out in the history of the universe, and Satan playing a part – albeit an evil part – in that story.

AFTER THE FALL

And then we have the Fall of Man. “But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,” God said to Adam in Genesis 2. Genesis 3, verse 6: “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” This is one of the clearest examples of outright disobedience and rebellion in all of literature. A mere 13 verses separate the Lord’s command from Man’s disobedience.

So what are the results? I will begin with the most basic and far-reaching component of the curse. In verses 17 to 19 of Genesis 3 God says to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The Adamic curse clearly indicates the beginning of the Man vs Nature conflict. No longer would Adam be able to harvest his food in a leisurely way. The world is such that the man who works is the man who eats. You cannot be the latter without first being the former. Implicated in this conflict is another, more subtle conflict, however. Not only is Man opposed to Nature, but Nature is opposed to itself. We live in a world cursed by the Nature vs. Nature conflict. The curse God levels at Adam is first leveled at the ground because of him. The curse ends with God pointing out to Adam that he is from dust and will return to it. Man is a part of Nature, and so if Man is in conflict with Nature, the implication is that Nature is in conflict with Nature. From our New Testament reading, we read that “the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.”

The second major conflict coming out of the Fall is that of Man vs Man. This not only includes the big picture of nation against nation, family against family, but also the more intimate conflicts that take place in our homes on the personal level. So we have both intra-family and inter-family conflict. The nature of this conflict can be found in the interaction between Adam and Eve after they had sinned. First they felt shame towards each other in their nakedness. They had been laid bare before each other, their innocence gone, and they felt shameful in that nakedness. Then when God questions Adam about what he had done, the first man does what so many of his descendents do, and that is to blame someone else for his sin. And so this conflict is characterized by shame and blame.

The next conflict is closely related, as it involves a different kind of turmoil among men. This is the conflict of Man vs Self. Paul writes in Romans 7, verses 19 to 20: “For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.” The very nature that we are born with is entrenched in the pain and sin of this world. In Jeremiah, chapter 17, verse 9, the prophet speaks – “the heart is desperately sick,” and this is the truth. And it is not just the kleptomaniac or the compulsive that is enslaved to sin, but all of us without the salvation provided for at the Cross of Calvary. What we have in Genesis 3 is the first example of a Broken Image of God. Paul writes in Romans 16:18 and Philippians 3:18 to 19 of Man’s inborn slavery to the appetite. We must understand that this condition is NOT merely a conflict of appetite and reason, but Man’s slavery to appetite, to the exclusion of righteousness. In the Western traditions of medical practice and education, we have been told that the application of Reason and information can correct bad behavior. This is not true! Righteousness is not contained merely in right reason and conditioning through curricula. Righteousness is contrasted to reason by means of inspiration. Righteousness comes from the Lord, not from the schoolteacher or the doctor’s prescription.

Finally, we turn to the last conflict detailed in Genesis 3 – that of Man vs God. “Where are you?” God says in verse 9. A great gulf has opened up between Man and God as a result of the Fall, and God calls out across the void “where are you?” Man’s reaction indicates the condition of shame and fearfulness that he’s in. “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.” When God asks “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” we know that Adam blames the woman, but he also blames God. “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Eve gets it a little bit more right when she says, “the serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Yet neither of them repent, neither of them say sorry. There is evident sorrow in the loss of innocence and in the separation from that friend who lovingly gave them warning of what was in store. Again, there is NO REPENTANCE. This is what Man vs God looks like. No repentance. No admission of fault or guilt. While there’s a feeling of shame, there is only a compulsion to blame others.

First John chapter 1, verses 8 to 9: “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We can ask, what if the first couple had said to God, “Father forgive us, for we have sinned. We ate of the tree because we wanted that which was forbidden to us, and we didn’t believe You when You said that we would die from it. We disregarded You and did our own thing. Please forgive us.” But this was not in God’s plan. We read from Paul – Romans chapter 8, verse 23: “We ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”

And this is where I wish to uncover the deepest impact of the Fall. The Fall is essentially the enabling of God as Redeemer. From this point in Genesis 3 onward to the final verse of Revelation, we come to know God as our comforter, our healer, the judge of the world, the Savior of the Elect, the transformer of sinful man, and the Redeemer of the world. Remember the words of Romans 8, verses 20 and 21: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” In His reaction to the Fall, God’s full character is revealed to us! We have been studying God as Creator for the past few weeks, and from this Sunday on, we will be exploring how God means history for good. From this moment in history on, God reveals his roles of Redeemer, Comforter, Healer, and Savior.

Please pray with me

Father God,

You are the redeemer of a fallen and broken world. You are the comforter of a distraught and woeful people, suffering under shame and pride. And through Your son, we are made free. May this prayer be ever on our lips, Lord – that Your redemption sweeps over this world and that the few be many Lord. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Please rise for the Benediction.

From Ephesians 3:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

How Can I Love A God Who Allows So Much Evil?

2010-03-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

This is a transcription of a message that I gave at a Wednesday morning Lenten breakfast at the United Presbyterian Church in Havertown, PA on March 10, 2010. I was speaking on a topic based on a reading from a little book by John Piper called For Your Joy.

Good morning everyone! I’m so glad that we are able to start the day off together in fellowship and fine dining. Before I dive into the message, please pray with me:

Father God,

We lift You up this morning. You are faithful and praiseworthy, strong and true. With joy and gladness in my heart, I come before You as Your servant boldly asking for Your wisdom and truth to drive this short message. I thank You for the time that I have had with You over the last several days in preparation for this morning, and I’m excited to share with my brothers and sisters these words that You have blessed me with. Father, please make me into a blessing – use me this morning, and may this devotional time be one in which You are at the center, and You are glorified.

The question that we are asking – and seeking to answer – today is How Can I Love A God Who Allows So Much Evil? Has anyone ever been presented with this issue before? In the academic traditions of the humanities and theology, a form of this question comes up as the Problem of Evil. By raising this problem, philosophers and writers have for centuries challenged the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of God as all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely loving. Essentially, it boils down to “How can God know everything, be capable of anything, and at the same time be the very pinnacle – even essence and being – of love? Look at all the senseless evil and suffering in the world!” Many apologists and authors have tackled this issue head on, but I’m not doing that this morning.

Rather, I’m hoping to answer the question at-hand. How Can I Love A God Who Allows So Much Evil? This question is different, for it is more personal. It’s the kind of question that says, “I’m hurting. I am in pain – my life is overwhelming me. Why, God, why? Are you even there? Is He even listening?” This is a lot more visceral than some philosophical problem or riddle to be solved. Even so, we recognize that the source of evil is shrouded in mystery – be it Free Will, the Sovereignty of God, the bottom line is that we can only dig so deep into the Mystery of Evil. Unlike a problem, it really cannot be solved by reason alone. The great mysteries of God and people are unpacked only after we leave the Academic and enter into the Personal.

In Deuteronomy 29:29, we read that The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law. The Word also has this to say about knowledge and wisdom in Proverbs, chapter 1 verse 7: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction. God makes very clear that He has given us the law explicitly, and also that true knowledge comes with fearing God – trusting Him, spending time with Him, worshipping Him fully submitted to His will. Again, God’s mysteries are for Him to grasp, but we are able to receive His Truth by drawing near to Him in Personal relationship. By fearing Him.

We can only understand the famous verses and passages on God’s purpose in Christ through a personal connection to God. Jesus Christ, who was God, entered into the evil and suffering so present in this world, and suffered under it according to His Father’s design in order to redeem it. Otherwise, the truths ring emptily. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:16-17). To the Christian in fellowship with God on a daily basis, these verses are joyful and beautiful. But to the dead “Christian” or nonbeliever who either can’t seem to fit some time in for God – one on one – every day, these verses are at best quaint, and at worst foolish drivel.

Let us turn now to the end of Genesis. The account of Joseph is historically true, but also serves to foreshadow the Messianic mission of Christ. Among the last recorded words from Joseph, we have these in verses 19-21 of chapter 50 in Genesis: Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones. Similarly, Paul wrote in Romans 8: And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. . . . He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? . . . For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Note that Paul does not deny that those things will not come and stand in our way. They will show up to box us out of that intimacy with God, but God’s love – that is, Christ Jesus – will wipe all of these obstacles out. Ultimately, they cannot stand in our way. For God works all things for good.

I mentioned that Christ came to redeem the evil and suffering by entering into it. He suffered the nine tails, he bled under a crown of thorns, and he was posted onto a cross like so much worthless flesh. But He did not only redeem the evil of Pilate, Herod, and the Sanhedrin. He also redeemed the evil desire of Israel recorded in Samuel. First Samuel 12:19 reads: Then all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, so that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil by asking for ourselves a king.” But God redeemed that evil. He sent His son through a humble virgin who gave to Jesus the blood of King David. Still further, we have records that the earthly guardian father of Christ – Joseph – was also descendant from the line of King David, and so Jesus had legal, as well as Jewish matrilineal blood, claim to the kingship of Israel. By His blood, the misguided and despicable request for a king is redeemed. God worked it for good.

In Christ’s life, we know God’s designs from Isaiah. The tenth verse of chapter 53 reads: But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. And we have in Acts, chapter four: For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur. God was pleased to crush Christ, and he predestined it. For He so loved the world . . .

The most horrible and awesome fact of Christ’s life, and especially His death, is that by slaying Him, his executors perpetrated the greatest sin ever committed. Greater than all the atrocities of genocide, greater than any kind of environmental damage, greater than corporate greed that leaves hundreds of millions starving. For Christ was perfectly blameless. He was spotless. This is a person who, bleeding on a cross, intercedes even then saying, Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.

But He needed to die for us to be able to be with God the Father. God needed to come into the temporal and material existence of humanness to meet with us. He needed to die for our sins to be wiped away in order to bring us to Himself, and He needed to rise again to assure us of life everlasting with Him so that our spirits may thrive in the assurance of His promises. John 20:30-31 reads, Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

But we mustn’t forget that for God to enter into Death – for God to die – He needed to do something more mysterious than any of us can really wrap our minds around. He needed to separate Himself from . . . Himself. We believe in a triune God. He is Jesus Christ the Son, He is the Holy Spirit, and He is God the Father Almighty. I wish to turn to a passage now and read it very carefully, for this is the crucial moment in history when we can read how it is that God felt at the imminence of separation. How our Lord the Son felt at the terrible knowledge that our Lord the Father would despise Him – would turn His gaze from Him and break the indestructible: break the bonds of the Trinity with cold Death.

And He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples also followed Him. When He arrived at the place, He said to them, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." And He withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done." Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, and said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation." (Luke 22:39-46)

Christ not only bares all here. We are not merely seeing a powerful outpouring of God’s emotion. We are given an example of what to do in light of the devastation of evil and suffering. This is the passage that gives that personal answer to the question we are addressing today. What is Christ doing? He first encourages His disciples to pray against the temptation to sin. He then submits to His Father, and prays earnestly. He boldly supplicates. Yet, according to the desire of His own heart, He exalts God’s will above His own request – as righteous and just a request it is. Afterwards, He catches the disciples in slumber – having fallen to the sin – and exhorts them to get up and by any means necessary, to avoid temptation to sin.

God gives us even more than a perfect example. God promises to give us strength, just as He gave His son that angel of strength. Acts 1:8 records the promise of Christ to us, his disciples, when he says You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. But even this strength cannot hold back Christ’s agony. It is actually possible to sweat blood. When in extreme agony and stress, subcutaneous capillaries (blood vessels underneath our skin) may expand and burst, causing blood to commingle with our sweat as both eke out. It is a condition known as hematidrosis. So why was Christ feeling such agony – such torment. I don’t think that it was merely the cross – that was frightening enough, surely.

Christ was facing the effects of sin as He was on the threshold of entering into them, under the full weight of punishment. What is this punishment? The wages of sin is death. Death is Hell. Hell is separation from God. So, God was to be separated from God. In personal terms, a son was looking into the sorry future in which he knew that his dad was to forsake him, despise him, and crush him. But this Jesus is innocent of any and all guilt. He is totally pure! But as a guilt offering, God sentences himself to death so that we may have life.

How Can We Love A God Who Allows So Much Evil? We can recognize that He entered into it Himself so that we may live. It is true that He uses suffering and trials to make us stronger, but at the root of my answer to this question (and Piper’s as well, I believe) is the reality that God did not spare Himself. In fact, He laid the most horrible sin ever committed upon Himself.

I want to close our time together today with a reading from Deuteronomy, chapter 4. I’m starting in the 32^nd verse, and continuing to the 40^th. Remember these words from Moses to the people of Israel as you go through your day today meditating on the weight of Christ’s mission.

"Indeed, ask now concerning the former days which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and inquire from one end of the heavens to the other Has anything been done like this great thing, or has anything been heard like it? Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived? Or has a god tried to go to take for himself a nation from within another nation by trials, by signs and wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great terrors, as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him. Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline you; and on earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire. Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power, driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today. Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. So you shall keep His statutes and His commandments which I am giving you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may live long on the land which the LORD your God is giving you for all time."

Let Justice Roll Down Like Water

2009-12-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

This piece was written in response to the book Justice in a Global Economy, which was edited by Pamela K. Brubaker, Rebecca Todd Peters, and Laura A. Stivers. I wrote it for Religion 2900: Interrogating Globalization at Temple University with Prof. John Raines.

It seems as though we live in a climate of change. While we do not have to look beyond the literature of this course to find evidence for an evolving national consciousness geared towards newfound awe for the majesty of our dynamic world, all arenas of opinion in mainstream society point in the same direction. We have an adventurous president that has won a consensus among Americans by promising to do what is peaceable, the American economy is finally feeling the pain of years of ruthless societal manipulation by corporate dragons, and international tensions over aggressive American policies are slowly fading into history along with the Bush administration. The worlds of academia and news media seem to be in agreement about a promising future, alive with the Earth Charter’s inspirational message that “Humanity is part of a vast evolving universe. Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life.”

However, there is much to be done. As made clear in Justice in a Global Economy, the work of conscientious people to rescue the Earth and her denizens is not over. Our final text clearly points toward the need for a justice that is currently absent in our massive global economy. The common thread through almost all of the essays is the need for a consciousness rooted in the idea that our emerging global system is comprised of interdependent agents.

Each essayist sets a clear example that we can no longer allow an unquestioned, reckless, and ruthless hegemonic corporatism masquerading as American to be the definitive factor in shaping the future of economic globalization. Instead, these writers call for widespread recognition of the interdependence implicit in the Earth community, which includes the animal kingdom, the human race, and Earth itself. As the editors write in the Introduction:

We are called to respond to God’s desire for the well-being of the whole creation by taking responsibility for our lives and the ways in which we help and hurt others – intentionally or unintentionally. We are indeed freed by God’s forgiveness, but we are freed for a new life in Christ that requires us to live differently, a new life that asks us to participate in building God’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth. (Brubaker et al. 3)

Many authors come together in the writing to offer a reprioritization for the driving forces of economic globalization. They nobly seek to articulate “the interests of people and the environment,” as opposed to “the interests of money” (Brubaker et al. 8). One author in particular attacks the ill-conceived methodology of many American corporations by equating their profits with the Hebrew designation of plunder.

Professor Mary Elizabeth Hobgood claims that “wealth creates impoverishment” and correctly states that “many of the teachings of the Torah, the Hebrew prophets, and Jesus recognize an unjust relationship between wealthy people and economically insecure people” (Brubaker et al. 152, 153). Furthermore, she paints a picture of the Christian Right in America as woefully ignorant of the Scripture on this point. She writes, “A version of Christianity, bereft of the centrality of social justice, tells them that God will take care of them in all ways, including economically, if they oppose abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, immigrants, and terrorists” (Brubaker et al. 156). She gives a challenge to the Christian Left (particularly mainline Protestants) to develop a grassroots network as strong and expansive as that of the Right in order to counteract the “social conservative” agenda with so-called “social justice.” However, the Christian Right has something to say of the economic injustices perpetrated on its side of the political spectrum.

In The Long War Against God, Christian Hydrologist Dr. Henry Morris gives a scathing critique of the insidious forces of the Right Wing, and how it has let down the Christian community that has supported it since the rise of Reagan:

It is a mistake to assume, as many do, that political “conservatism” is necessarily compatible with biblical Christianity....many leaders in the present-day Republican Party (e.g., the Rockefellers and other leaders in Wall Street and the interlocking directorates of the giant corporations) are really the spiritual heirs of the nineteenth-century social Darwinists. Most of them are firmly committed to evolutionism and the amassing of great fortunes by whatever methods will succeed in the economic struggle for existence. The recent betrayal of the “religious right” is a painful reminder of this fact to disillusioned Christians. This group joined forces with the ostensibly conservative Republican establishment in order to help restore traditional “Americanism” (family values, prayer and creationism in schools, sexual morality in society, etc.) and to elect Ronal Reagan as president. Its members then saw their own concerns ignored in favor of concentration on economic measures designed to restore a greater degree of Darwinist laissez-faire capitalism. (Morris 59)

Dr. Morris founded the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and is typically lumped into the so-called “Christian Right.” I believe that the mistake that Prof. Hobgood makes with regard to the people of the Christian Right that she forgets to represent what they actually believe. They are just as discontented with their two-faced political leaders as Prof. Hobgood. While the voters of the religious right do care very much for hot topic issues like abortion, euthanasia, and gay marriage, they are not ignorant of the economic injustices perpetrated by the forces of laissez-faire economics. Another mistake that Prof. Hobgood makes is in her reading of Scripture.

In her essay, she writes, “As I have observed, Scripture and tradition are quite clear that economic justice and peacemaking are at the heart of Christian values” (Brubaker et al. 158). I believe that she has obsessively focused on passages stressing economic transgression while forgetting the beautiful words of Amos 5:24, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (NASB).

The book of Amos records the message of a layman (a sheepherder and fig farmer) from Judah who has been called by God to travel northwards to call Israel back to holiness. A good exegesis of Amos, or any passage of Scripture dealing with economic injustice and inequity, cannot leave out the message that such disparity comes as a result of unrighteousness. In actuality, there is no justice without righteousness. In a fallen world – a world groaning under the weight of sin – righteousness cannot come from any action that we take on our own. Rather, the righteousness of Christ inspires holiness among those who truly believe in His work on the cross and afterwards in the Resurrection.

“So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men” (Romans 5:18 NASB). This is the point that Prof. Hobgood and other Process Theologians miss. Process Theology is the system of belief that inspires the editors of this book to write, “[By Christ, we are freed to live] a new life that asks us to participate in building God’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth” (Brubaker et al. 3). I am not putting down the Christian responsibility to act on behalf of Christ by going out into the world to do what is good. Rather, I am rejecting the false claim that we participate with Christ in resuscitating this world out of the death from sin that is strangling it. As a Christian, I believe that Christ took care of that on His own. He was the blameless One that died as a propitiation for the sin of Adam and the sins of Zack. He is the One that has righted the wrongs of this world, and will come again to restore His kingdom on Earth.

What then shall the Christian do? What is the Christian responsibility? After His resurrection, Christ says to His disciples, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned” (Mark 16:15 NASB). I believe that one accompanying Old Testament text to this Great Commission is found in Ezekiel:

Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me....Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus you have spoken, saying, “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?” ’ Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! ...When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, then he shall die in it. But when the wicked turns from his wickedness and practices justice and righteousness, he will live by them. (Ezekiel 33:7, 10-11, 18-19 NASB)

I believe that the authors of the essays in Justice in a Global Economy hit on the key fact that there is evil in the world today, and that people are acting in a way that clearly reveals the depravity inherent in the human condition. They continue in this vein to offer recommendations on personal, community, and national levels for revision of behavior and consciousness. However, I believe that they miss the righteousness. They miss the fact that Jesus Christ died for the sin, and what needs to happen is a commitment to Him as Lord. This commitment to the Christ entails a commitment to all aspects of righteousness, and this includes the concerns of the “religious right,” what Prof. Hobgood calls “a conservative social agenda.”

It’s important to remember that justice and righteousness flow together, and both are rooted in the holiness that is the rock of Jesus Christ. If we build our lives upon this rock, then we need not be fearful of the forces of this world wrecking us, and we can live with Him forever! This is the glorious message of Christianity: Christ died for our sins – let’s go and tell everybody! Part of sharing that reality is to do what Christ says in the fifth chapter of Matthew: “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16 NASB). We are called to first be made right with God through the atonement of Christ, and then to serve others – particularly the poor.

Who Holds It?

2009-11-30T12:03:00.000-08:00

This piece was written in response to James Gustave Speth's book The Bridge At the End of the World. I wrote it for Religion 2900: Interrogating Globalization at Temple University with Prof. John Raines.

In 1997, Disney put out an ill-fated science fiction comedy film called RocketMan. The movie makes a farce out of Man’s (fictional) first mission to Mars, using slapstick comedy, eccentric stock characters, flatulence, and a monkey astronaut to elicit laughter from its intended audience – namely, children. However, as we gazed upon all those images of Earth during class, I could not help but remember a particular scene from this ridiculous kids’ movie. As the crew of astronauts launch into space, they gaze back on the Earth in wonder. In a cheesy twist of Disney magic, the main character – a goofy computer programmer turned astronaut – places his hands against his window and begins singing the old spiritual, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.

The quixotic astronaut continues to sing as the rest of the world joins in, all the while watching him on television. The song was originally a gospel tune, sung by the likes of Laurie London and Mahalia Jackson; to date, it is the only gospel song to reach the top spot on a U.S. pop singles chart. The lyrics of the song are rooted in the biblical concept of sovereignty – God’s place as Creator and Sustainer of the cosmos (including Earth and its inhabitants). “His is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17 NASB).

Through the years, this song has been used by cinematic astronauts, soulful pop singers, and soccer clubs. However, in The Bridge at the Edge of the World by James Gustave Speth, the traditional view of God as sovereign is abandoned in favor of a decidedly humanistic concept of God as hands-off; a God that leaves the condition of the world in the hands of men. Speth’s treatment of God and the spiritual in his book is wholly dependent on a faith in mankind to do what is right, and a belief that men are the primary actors on the world around them. In the Bible, a different account is given.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1 NASB). The Bible describes God as many things, but first and foremost as Creator. In the postmodern age of skepticism and disbelief, this idea of God as sovereign Creator has been pushed aside in favor of the detached artisan. However, if the God of the Bible is the God of the universe, then such a development is not pleasing to Him. To not proclaim God as Creator is to forget who He is principally and to accept a different reality.

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God chastises the nation of Israel for its recalcitrance due to the forgetfulness of its people. In the book of Hosea, the powerful image of the unfaithful wife is used to describe the people of Israel, and Hosea describes the pain and sense of loss felt by the husband figure in such an arrangement. Many times in the book, after describing how his wife refused what he would provide for her, Hosea promises to destroy what she has from him so that it cannot be used in Baal (false god) worship. He also speaks for God in His dealings with Israel when he writes, “I will punish her for the days of the Baals when she used to offer sacrifices to them and adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry, and follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me” (Hosea 2:13 NASB).

But there is a promise deeply rooted in the heritage of the Hebrew peoples when God says, “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness and speak kindly to her” (Hosea 2:14 NASB). He promises to provide in the days of trial that take place in the wilderness. In the life of Jesus, however, the danger of the wilderness is revealed. “Immediately the Spirit impelled [Jesus] to go out into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him” (Mark 1:12-13 NASB). Christ did not abandon His self-proclaimed Father by surrendering to the deceitful temptations of Satan.

If Christ is to be taken at His word and recognized as God in human flesh, so too must His life be recognized as the perfect conduct for all people, but especially the Church. Through history, however, the failings of the Church stand out in stark relief to the call put on it. Especially now, the Church has forgotten God and resembles the adulterous wife of Hosea, and the unfaithful nation of Israel described by the minor prophet. Whereas the Church is meant to be a beacon of hope and messenger of Truth to a tumultuous world, it has often either strayed from the Word or abandoned the consciousness necessary to act in the Spirit.

The Church won’t be around forever, and that’s when God’s method of sharing His Truth will change – according to the Bible. The Book of Revelation describes God’s method of Gospel-telling to a world in tribulation. With the Church out of the picture, God sends three angels to give a tripartite message of Truth, Sorrow, and Redemption. The first angel is to cry out, “Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heavens and the earth and sea and springs of waters” (Revelation 14:7 NASB). The people of the world, suffering under the weight of phenomenal spiritual warfare, are called to remember God as Creator.

Speth has rejected the view that God is Creator and sovereign, and he has opted instead for a man-based view of reality. While he argues that anthropocentrism is an endemic condition of human civilization in the world today, he puts forward a suggestion for action based upon the unique power and responsibility of society in winning back the Earth’s environment. He quotes George Levin’s book Darwin Loves You, in writing “[Darwin] argued that the human sense of value, which he regarded as the world’s highest achievement, grew out of the earth and this genealogy, he believed, did not degrade but ennobled” (Speth 210). This one line speaks of abandonment of God in favor of another source of information, another creative force. Not only does this inflate the position of human beings into the center of the universe (anthropocentrism), but the scientific implications of macroevolution (which is still merely a theory) are found odd upon examination.

In a nutshell, Molecules-to-Man Evolution claims the existence of an impersonal, unintelligent source for the information streaming through our veins and rooted in our bones. Yet this would then force the claim that information can come from nowhere. However, the irreducibility of information precludes the possibility of an evolutionary process that leads up to its appearance. Additionally, human beings have a tendency towards worshipping those things that they believe to have given them life and intelligence. The Bible points toward Father God; Speth points to Mother Earth. In any case, Man must come to the conclusion that, as Oren Lyons says, “we have been given the minds to take care of these things” (Speth 211). To take care of Creation is a form of worship, but the question remains: to whom?

Speth’s commentary on the role of religious movements follows a line of argument that ultimately places God within the box of Earthism. He quotes Mary Evelyn Tucker, who says, “no other group of institutions can wield the particular moral authority of the religions....the environmental crisis calls the religions of the world to respond by finding their voice within the larger Earth community” (Speth 214). It is time, Speth argues, for the spiritual forces of man to be turned away from the Creator to a creation which has become, for mankind, a new creator. The Hebrew word used for Creation (Bara' – forgive the transliteration) in Genesis 1:1 is only ever applied to God’s creative power. The Earth or processes that act upon and within it are not given the creativity that is wielded only by God. Speth’s position is irreconcilably against the position espoused by the Author of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

Furthermore, Speth describes the Earthist ethic as requiring a new kind of politics. He goes beyond demands for transparency and ethical practices into a call for complete overhaul of the system. In quoting William Grieder, he laments the “standard legislative habits of modern government” as an obstruction to the power of “an activist president” (Speth 218). However, the entire reason for a slow-moving legislature is to act as a check against the power of an over-zealous president. The abuses of the power of the executive branch have grown to new heights in the past eight years, and the prospect of further power in that branch, regardless of who is at the helm, is frightening.

But what is the role of mankind in a broken, fallen world? What is the responsibility that men and women have in a world groaning under the weight of ecological and spiritual abuse? King David shows a firm standing in the role that God had assigned him first and foremost as a created man in his writing in the Psalms. In Psalm 34, David praises the Lord even in a time of depression, when the weight of responsibility and trials pushed down on him unbearably. David writes, “I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the LORD; The humble will hear it and rejoice. O magnify the LORD with me, And let us exalt His name together” (Psalm 34: 1-4 NASB).

It is the responsibility of men to hold on to a remembrance of the LORD as Creator with fervor and devotion, blessing His name at all times, and recognizing that true sustainability is found only through the True Sustainer. For we do not have the whole world in our hands; rather, He’s got the whole world in His hands.

Of Men and Systems

2009-10-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

This piece was written in response to Michael D. Yates' book Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. I wrote it for Religion 2900: Interrogating Globalization at Temple University with Prof. John Raines.

I admit that I would not have cracked open Naming the System if it was not required reading. I’m glad that Raines put it on the syllabus, though! Before reading Yates’ words, I knew that there was something wrong with our economic system. After finishing it, I knew that there was something wrong with our economic system. This is not to say that I haven’t learned anything from Yates. I certainly recognize and acknowledge more specific characteristics of capitalism’s contradictions and issues. Ultimately, I believe that while Yates brings out some crucial points that we must consider, he fails to bring up what I consider to be the most important criticism of capitalism: it is run by people. I will argue that the same argument could be applied to socialism, or any other arrangement of the means of production and goods within a society.

First, I wish to explore the text and reiterate some of the key features of bad capitalism that Yates points out. Yates summarily articulates the ills of impersonal consumption when he writes, “This feature of capitalism allows us to consume without thinking, and this is probably one of the reasons why it has been possible for people to associate consumption with well-being” (36). It is amazing how far a little awareness can take us. Allow me to illustrate from my own food-related experience both in this class and outside of it.

My seventh grade math teacher was a strong male role model for me at a time when my parents were first separated and my dad had moved out. Looking back on this time in my life and the relationship between me and Mr. DiBartolomeo, I cannot help but chuckle. One the major points of admiration I had for Mr. D was the fact that he was in great shape – an athletic martial artist and an overall physically-conscious fellow. Such a quality is not all too common in my family, which might suggest why I would find it particularly exemplary. One day in class, Mr. D was talking about something or other, and brought up the fact that he hadn’t eaten any food from McDonald’s in several years. I was stunned. My family ate McDonald’s several times a week, and I cherished my Sunday morning McMuffin with religious devotion. He explained the ill effects fast food had on his body when he would eat it, and how he decided that it was for the best to stop eating such things altogether. Over the course of the next couple of months, I noticed that my body was rejecting McDonald’s food, to put it politely. I then decided that Mr. D was on to something, and began my boycott of McDonald’s. I have not eaten McDonald’s in over six years now (fast approaching seven). Due to a cutting out of McDonald’s, other fast foods, and soda, and the twin processes of puberty and growing muscle, I find myself in much better shape now than I was six years ago.

In the book Stuffed and Starved, which I read in preparation for my group’s project on world hunger, the author – Raj Patel - presents many surprising facts about the agriculture industry and the production of our food supply. I now talk about structural injustices and the inherent madness that dwells in our food system – not to mention the diseases which have sprung up in our livestock as a result. I know that the fruit of my reading Stuffed and Starved is an increased awareness of the issues at hand in corporate agriculture, and some of the things that I should avoid as I shop for my groceries. The point that I’m trying to bring out from the Yates is that because of the readings that I have done for class so far, my awareness is raised, and I’m spreading that awareness to others, as I’m able. The escalation of my own awareness is the necessary cause of a recovery from thoughtless (or uninformed) consumerism. Then, of course, my recovery is the sufficient cause of the spread of this awareness to those within my sphere of social influence.

I appreciate how Yates elaborates on the hegemonic nature of capitalism in these words from the chapter entitled A Radical Economic Perspective:

Neoclassical economics is an important part of the belief system that makes the maintenance of capitalism possible. Capitalism must beat people into submission when necessary, but it is far better to win the hearts and minds of the people who live and work in capitalist societies. If they come to believe that capitalism is the best economic system or at least the only one that can be made to work in the modern world, they will be unlikely to spend time and energy seeking alternatives to it. They will find it in their own best interests to just accept it. Perhaps they will think it necessary to try to correct some of its weaknesses, but these efforts will be seen as working within the system and not against it....Capitalism, by contrast [to feudalism], is most untraditional; the untrammeled pursuit of money, in fact, tends to burst apart all fixed relationships. (161, 164)

While the large part of the passage is obvious to anyone aware of the propagandistic dynamics of our modern culture of consumerism, the last sentence makes a statement a bit more subtle. I have seen the damages done by the “untrammeled pursuit of money” in breaking my mother’s family and turning the disparate parts against each other. This concept is biblical too. For sake of contextualization, I wish to quote the entire passage in which a famous verse resides.

If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (1 Timothy 6:3-10 NASB)

The words of Paul to Timothy resonate with all of us as we bemoan the troubles that have been birthed and increased by the profit motive. Is this is a condemnation of the rich? No! Read on in this very chapter of the Bible, and you’ll see instructions for the rich on how to live as righteous men and women of God with (and in spite of) their riches. Is this a damnation of hard workers? No! But it is a challenge to evaluate one’s motives in the pursuit of money.

Now that I’ve addressed at least two major points from Naming the System that resonate with my beliefs and convictions, I’ll take a more critical stance for the next couple of pages. I take issue with Yates’ explanation for the institution of “deeply anti-social” practices in former Socialist states. The terror inherent in the reigns of Stalin over the USSR and Mao in the PRC is described charitably with the phrase “deeply anti-social.” Yates writes in his final chapter, Fighting for a Better World:

Fourth, the socialist economies’ achievements must be set against dismal failures. As is common in countries surrounded by hostile and aggressive enemies, the least democratic forces rise to the top. The Soviet Union was on a wartime footing for most of its history, and this helped to promote the leadership of the most dictatorial people. Under Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union defeated the Nazis, but it also became an extremely repressive society. (222)

In 1776, our country fought a massive campaign against the world’s major hegemonic mercantilist, capitalist power in order to not fall to the same fate as the colonies in India, Africa, and China. Against all odds, our affectionately-named “ragtime army” won. At the head of the army was a modest man of few words, but much courage and resilience. He was offered a monarchy by his peers and countryman. As leader of the military, he very well could have taken it, with the full support of loyal soldiers, and grateful statesmen. But he didn’t take it. Why not? The Revolutionary War was over, but the threat of the future British invasion was ever on the horizon (fast forward to 1812, and it’s fairly obvious that this was the case), the frontier was riddled with pockets of resistance, and power was scattered among the disparate colonies. It could have been argued that our young nation needed a king to focus our forces against such enemies. Like an Old Testament Judge, however, George Washington refused the kingship, and set a precedent that almost ever president after him followed of remaining in office for a mere eight years. I know that any comparison of the American Revolution with the Russian Bolshevik Revolution must be done with great care, but I believe that the point I bring up is crucial.

While I will agree with Yates that structure is incredibly important in any examination of economic and political ideal, the character of the people involved is so much more important! Ancient Israel had a system of judges similar to our largely decentralized antebellum federalism. Yet, the nation is famous for its kings, both good and horrible, that are the focus of much of the Old Testament – and some of the most colorful characters of human history. I will again transcribe a large passage of Scripture in hopes that the parallels between the politics of Ancient Israel and the politics of modern-day America will become evident.

And it came about when Samuel was old that he appointed his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judging in Beersheba. His sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah; and they said to him, “Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. The LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day – in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods – so they are doing to you also. Now then, listen to their voice; however, you shall solemnly warn them and tell them of the procedure of the king who will reign over them.” So Samuel spoke all the words of the LORD to the people who had asked of him a king. He said, “This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day. Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, “No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” Now after Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the LORD’s hearing. The LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to their voice and appoint them a king.” So Samuel said to the men of Israel, “Go every man to his city.” (1 Samuel 8 NASB)

Greed has infiltrated the government. Bribes are running rampant, and corruption has struck the capital. The people, looking around at other governmental systems, bemoan the loose democratic confederation of their individual tribes, and call on their prophet to anoint for them a king. They desire a strong figure that will “judge us and go out before us and fight our battles” (Samuel 8: 20 NASB). They want a provider for them, more than a mere watchdog, but a government with the power to crush the insidious greed and return prosperity to all peoples.

Israel had lost faith in God. He who had up until then fought their battles, freed them from slavery, and provided manna in the wilderness was either forgotten or thrown away. In America today, our faith in God is dying. In many parts of the country, it is dead already. We have forgotten who our Creator is, and who it was that inspired the birth of the nation. Instead, we have attributed our biological development to impersonal forces, and our national existence to men with a little bit of skill and a lot of luck. As a result, we call for Man to step up to the plate and protect us from the ills of inequality, greed, ecological devastation, and the perversion of justice.

How far away are we from Israel? How similar are the parallels? I lauded Yates for his critique of ignorant consumerism and the profit motive. But his faith in Man to be more just than the market seems just as ideologically suspect as the claims of neoclassical economists. His excuses for Stalin and Mao fail to redeem Socialism just as the neoclassical explication of crises and underemployment fail to save Capitalism. God’s warning to Israel is a call for repentance and revival among the people. But He allows them a king. He can work through a king. He will one day be consummate His Will on Earth in a kingdom. But human kings lack in holiness, as they are distracted by power. A good king can wield that power for good, and share it with his people, but a bad one can horde it for himself, and send his sons through the fire in delight. What’s worse, a bad king can immediately follow a good king and reverse all that was done in righteousness in a matter of months.

Our founding fathers understood the need for checks and balances. Based on their experience with King George, the writings of Baron de Montesquieu, and the Word of God, the drafters of our constitution wanted to structurally crowd out any possibility of a kingdom. But human depravity causes the whole world to groan with the pains of childbirth, and political systems are included in that. America has witnessed a Civil War, imperialist expansion, transnational corporate explosion, globalization, industrial and informational revolutions, and various strains of capitalism and collectivism. Somewhere in the mix, our Joels and Abijahs have succumbed to bribes and the lure of money.

We are a different nation now than we were at our inception, and the people – as shown time and again since World War Two – are calling for a stronger presence in our capital. Entire campaigns have been run on a platform of fighting corruption, fighting lobbyists, fighting corporations, and instituting reform through sweeping change. Our votes are in, and we want a government that will take care of (judge) us, and protect (go out before) us. We are clamoring for a David or Hezekiah, but we must not forget the horrors of Manasseh and Ahaz. Above all, we must not forget our God who saves.

Scripture: A Sublime Resource

2009-10-13T12:17:00.001-07:00

This piece is a reflection paper that I wrote in response to Protestant Theologian Rebecca Todd Peters' book In Search of the Good Life: The Ethics of Globalization.It was written for a course entitled Interrogating Globalization which I am taking at Temple University with Prof. John Raines. Its course number is Religion 2900.

The dialogue that Peters engages in is crucial – this fact is uncontestable. To ignore the soul-crushing inequality, structural violence, and blatant disregard for the Other in the world around us shows not only ignorance, but irresponsibility. If nothing else, our access to information serves as a sufficient reason for our being conscious of the forces inundating our world with suffering and angst. Peters does something unique, however. She enters the global discussion as a Protestant theologian – a non-specialist treading upon ground claimed by generations of technocrats and experts. She primes the pump for our own entry into the fracas of voices and opinions! As our syllabus reads, “This course is for inquisitive non-specialists and is taught by such a one.”

The academic literature on the poor and disparate of our world is all too often dominated by the highly technical jargon of social science. While Peters is guilty of using challenging vocabulary at times – in some sense, it’s unavoidable – she presents us with an accessible work that instigates an incredibly important non-specialist discussion. While I do not accept all of Peters’ arguments, I recognize the importance of her writing. She boldly faces the dialogue with the goals of clarifying the debate, exploring the morality of several major positions on globalization, and “to argue that our moral task is to ensure that globalization proceeds in ways that honor creation and life and that any theory of globalization ought to be grounded in values that prioritize a democratized understanding of power, encourage care for the planet, and enhance the social well-being of people” (Peters 5). I quote the third goal at length because it defines for her what a “materialist-feminist Christian standpoint” uses in a normative analysis of the moral dimensions of competing socio-economic worldviews (Peters 16).

Peters’ goals are noble, and she succeeds in denouncing much of the structural ills that plague the dominant modes of globalization, namely Neoliberalism and Social Equity Liberalism. However, her bias covers up consideration of the very human factor of ‘working the system.’ In an interesting passage on the anthropological underpinnings of American capitalism, Peters references Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, writing
[Protestantism’s] ethical principles mandated that all people approach their life’s work with a sense of duty, responsibility, and blessedness – no matter what the task. This sense of call endowed all forms of work...with a sense of importance and honor....At the same time, there was an ethic of personal moderation and responsibility toward others that changed the way people lived. The Protestant ethic discouraged indulging oneself with gifts and possessions that went beyond meeting one’s basic needs. It also encouraged taking one’s extra wealth and using it to care for the less fortunate in society. (Peters 61)

In the description of Protestant life proffered by Weber, the sense of personal accountability to a mandate from God to care for the needy is central. This core value informed the economic and social activity of our nation’s founding communities. Rather than exploring the deep-seated nature of these values, Peters continues in the next paragraph with “Over the years, however, the moral framework of society has shifted...As belief in stewardship has weakened, individual and communal responsibility to care for others and the ethic of philanthropy also have dwindled” (Peters 61). Why not explore the issue further? What caused this shift? When and why did the shift occur?

Consider this passage on Ancient Israel: “...they sell the righteous for money and the needy for a pair of sandals. These who pant after the very dust of the earth on the head of the helpless also turn aside the way of the humble; and a man and his father resort to the same girl...” (Amos 2:6-7 NASB). From the mid-eighth century B.C., we can see parallels to our own country. A paraphrase of this passage reads more viscerally with regards to modern sentimentalities:
“They buy and sell upstanding people. People for them are only things – ways of making money. They’d sell a poor man for a pair of shoes. They’d sell their own grandmother! They grind the penniless into the dirt, shove the luckless into the ditch. Everyone and his brother sleeps with the ‘sacred prostitute’ – a sacrilege against my Holy Name. Stuff they’ve extorted from the poor is piled up at the shrine of their god, while they sit around drinking wine they’ve conned from their victims” (Amos 2:6-8 The Message).

This seems to me to be a social commentary on the economic and moral conditions of Ancient Israel at the time of Amos, Hosea, Jonah, and Isaiah (all contemporaries). In a similar vein, Peters criticizes the commoditization of human labor, the decadence of the elite, and the subjugation of women. But, Peters never mentions Amos. She does not present us with what we would naturally expect a theologian to drive home her points with: Scripture.

By going to biblical accounts, we can gather the historical and cultural resources necessary to evaluate what pushes a society over the brink into the abyss of decadence and greed. We can find in Scripture the answer to that question I posed earlier: Why would a shift in the moral framework of a once-righteous America occur? Such a question is linked to the reason for Israel’s repeated infidelities as a nation in the relationship with God that is described in the Hebrew Bible.

Peters puts faith in the subaltern accounts of history presented by the likes of Giovanni Arrighi, and so recognizes the nature of recurrent patterns in history (Peters 105-108). Since the publication of Giambattisto Vico’s The New Science, the cyclical ebb and flow of history has been a fascination to Western historians, social scientists, and economists. But why merely look at the Genoese, Dutch, and British for examples of capitalist economic progressions? As a theologian, Peters should also be interested in recurrent patterns of morality’s ebb and flow within a society. From the desert to the diaspora, Hebrew history is marked by cycles of zeal for God’s Word and unfortunate forgetfulness.

Moving on, we can find in Scripture arguments demanding respect for the natural world, dignity for mankind in-general, and the value of the individual as a precious creation. Peters roots her primary concern in the spirit of Scripture when she “[argues] that our moral task is to ensure that globalization proceeds in ways that honor creation and life and that any theory of globalization ought to be grounded in values that prioritize a democratized understanding of power, encourage care for the planet, and enhance the social well-being of people,” but she fails to show where this rooting takes place (Peters 5). By choosing not to go straight to the Word, she misses nuance and subtlety found in the Scriptural passages that are relevant to forming a truly Christian response to a world groaning under the weight of man’s sins of irresponsibility.

The Apostle Paul writes of the danger of skirting around Scripture in this heavy passage:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” (Romans 1:18-23 NASB)

Not only does Peters lose a biblical Christian focus by not going to the Word as the sublime resource that it is, but she begins to flirt with making a god out of the creation, rather than recognizing the creation as an expression of God’s immutable person. A truly Christian view, as seen in the passage above, and in the words “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good,” gives Creation a position as God’s beautiful expression of Himself (Genesis 1:31 NASB). While mankind (as an aggregate involving both genders, not just men) is made in the image of God, His Creation screams “Adonai, Elohim, Yahweh!”

Earth does not have personhood, intention, consciousness, or will. Each of us, however, have these truly remarkable attributes, handed down to us by the only logical source of such marvelous information – a personal, willful, intentional, conscious God. In the Genesis account, God commands an anonymous Adam and Eve (they’re named in Genesis 2 and 3) to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28 NASB). After reading In Search of the Good Life, I suspect that Peters would react negatively to such a verse. God calls mankind as His representative to the rest of Creation, to “subdue” the habitat and “rule over” its denizens. How can we do this with an understanding of Creation’s value? Is it possible to operate in a hierarchical system in such a way that “honors creation and life,” as Peters prioritizes?

If we understand Creation as something of which we are both a part of, and set apart from in the context of the Romans passage above and a certain parable from the teachings of Christ, we can see how the Word makes sense of itself. If Creation is reflective of God’s eternal characteristics and divine nature, as Romans proclaims, then we must protect it – cherish it. The tension between what Creation is and how to approach its proper care is not resolved without an example given from the Word of faithful stewardship.

In the Parable of the Faithful Steward, Christ effectively describes the nature of responsibility:
“And the Lord said, ‘Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that slave says in his heart, ‘My master will be a long time in coming,’ and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk; the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers. And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.” (Luke 12:41-48 NASB)

We have clearly seen how America “has been given much.” We have abundant natural resources, thousands of universities, a stable government with a peaceful transition of power, a capable population of millions of people from the world over. What does this entail? From the Scripture, “much will be required” of us. Peters and I would agree that America is more like the slave or steward that is beating those that he has authority over and wallowing in the decadence of indulgence. But our culture was not always like that. America was once a nation that by-and-large, cherished the Word of God, acknowledged the mandate that was clearly given to it through abundance, and exercised individual responsibility and accountability. Somewhere along the way, the Church in America (and by projection, American culture) lost the sense of humility and obedience required of a steward of God’s gifts.

Like the Israelites, continually tempted to idolatry, we see our world groan underneath the arrogance, greed, and lasciviousness of American culture. We hear our prophets and social commentators calling for a renewal of conscience, a restructuring of society. But which call is more pressing? Which prophetic warning has greater urgency?

I would like to look back at Max Weber’s Protestants as I close. If we agree with Peters that any worldview involving neoclassical economics is fundamentally flawed, then why does she include a short description of where it worked marvelously well? What distinguishes Max Weber’s study from that of Rebecca Todd Peters? The conscience is crucial. A utopian social structure can only go as far as the convictions of its individual members. Ultimately, an operative Christian ethic comes down to that choice each of us has to eat that forbidden fruit or not, to pollute or not, to buy child-produced sneakers or not – to sin or not. In a Christian worldview, God called upon Adam and Eve individually (Genesis 3:9-13). When it comes to realization and change, our sin is my sin and your sin. By missing this distinction between merely our and the more complex mine and your, we run the risk of losing our agency, and thereby, our conscience. But more importantly – for the Christian community, anyway – we run the risk of losing our connection with and to the Word of God.

The Belltower

2008-12-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

Upon down-feathered
wings glistening
with the striking shimmer
of Autumnal dusk

You soar

no fear of Sol’s heat
or Venus’ glow
mild-mannered yet
confident in yourself

Beat the breeze

Winds take you
forward flying
faster without
fear of the

belltower...whoops!

-zg

Obama-McCain Meeting

2008-11-17T20:14:00.001-08:00

Two words: "BOOM BABY!"

-zg

ps. If you're confused, watch that South Park episode...it's hilarious, and not that offensive.

Colin Powell and Maureen Dowd's NY Times Editorial

2008-10-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

I read Maureen Dowd's editorial in the NY Times entitled "Moved By A Crescent." For all of you folks out there that are shocked that I dared to read an editorial from the NY Times, you'll be comforted to know that it was literally read aloud to me by my Sociology professor. However, I think that the piece is important, even if Dowd's stance/bias is very much different than mine.

In any case, Dowd editorializes about Powell's choice to endorse Obama by focusing on something that I did not know about until after the piece was read to me (I actually did read it, as he recommended it to the class online beforehand, but it's pretty humorous that he read it aloud to the class). Evidently, Powell was reading The New Yorker--which is, as we would say in Arabic, makes him a ghariib raj'jul (odd/strange man)--when he came across a pictorial essay that had one picture in particular that caught his eye.

I included the picture in this blog for ease of access. Powell told Dowd that he had stared at the picture for an hour, filled with a kind of patriotic soldier's awe. He then felt convicted to publicly endorse Obama because he felt that doing so would be honoring the young soldier's sacrifice for his country. The editorial is very interesting, and I suggest it to everyone--regardless of political stance.

Powell sites his feeling of sympathy for the Muslim and Arab populations (they are not one and the same, mind you) in America, especially after seeing this powerful picture, as the catalyst that sent him to Meet the Press to come out strong against his Republican compatriot. It is now acknowledged that Powell's endorsement could be the single most devestating move against the McCain/Palin campaign in swaying independent voters.

This is something that I can respect more than the other lame excuses Powell was giving, and by lame I mean typical (i.e. Palin's inexperience, McCain's economic lameness, Obama's electrifying and transformative spirit, McCain's idiotic supporters, the Republican propaganda campaign). I understand and sympathize with the pain that both the Arab and Muslim populations must face as THE marginalized subordinate ethnic subpopulations in America's latest war: The War on Terror.

At the same time, I really wish that Powell had kept the endorsement to himself, and just talked against the marginalization of certain peoples.

Also on a note of interest, Maureen Dowd brings up the fact that the Obama/Biden campaign is not entirely innocent of discriminatory, marginalizing, and degrading practices against Muslims either. She specifically sites the fact that while Obama has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to go to a mosque, and a particular incident when two young women with headscarves were removed from a speech or rally so that they wouldn't be caught on camera supporting Obama (this latter act was perpetrated by campaign aides, not the higher-ups; the campaign officially apologized to the girls).

-zg

Powell's Endorsement and the Principal Faults of Barack Obama

2008-10-19T09:54:00.001-07:00

I'm shocked, and saddened to hear the choice that Colin Powell has made in his endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president of the United States. While I think that his critique of Gov. Palin experience (or lack thereof) is unfounded, and his criticism of Sen. McCain's lack of expertise on economic issues is out of bounds for a general to be commenting on from a place of authority, my greatest angst derives from the praise he showered on Sen. Obama's "electrifying" personality.

Gen. Powell said the following (I grabbed the quote from the BBC): I think he [Barack Obama] would be a transformational president...[an Obama victory would] not just electrify our country, it would electrify the world.

I do not appreciate this reasoning. Woodrow Wilson was a transformational president too, but not for good. LBJ was a transformational president, but not for good. Nixon and Carter were transformational presidents, but not always for good. Clinton was a transformational president, but not always for good. Lastly, Dubya is a president that has done a lot in transforming our nation's governing apparatus, but definitely not for good. There is no reason to believe that the change that Barack Obama promises will be for the good of this nation, and the integrity of the political, governmental, and social systems outlined by our Constitution.

Also, the electrifying aspect of an Obama victory doesn't suggest wholly beneficial social restructuring either. When a man comes into office with the legions of diehard supporters that Obama has, fanaticism and extremism against re tractors typically follows close on the heels of inauguration. It does not take much more than perceived crisis and one charismatic leader to brainwash the masses into relinquishing integral freedoms and liberties for the sake of government sheltering. I look back to Robespierre during the French Revolution, Napoleon a little later, Abe Lincoln during the American Civil War, Wilson during WWI, Lenin in Russia, Stalin a bit later, Hitler in Germany during the economic crisis of the 1930s, FDR in America during the economic crisis of the 1930s, McCarthy and the Red Scare, LBJ and the War on Poverty, and George W. Bush and the War on Terror (Patriot Act). All of these men and the movements that they led victimized generally unsuspecting populations by suspending freedoms of religion, speech, habeas corpus, privacy, and mind.

I cannot trust Barack Obama to do what is right because of two primary concerns:

1) He has no proven respect for the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution in all of it's features. While he'll be the first to lambaste the unconstitutional aspects of the Patriot Act (after me, of course), he has no qualms when it comes to taking control of other aspects of American life, social mobility, freedom of choice in economic concerns, and freedom of religious belief or speech that may seem to him or his colleagues to be hate speech.

2) He is a human being just like the rest of us. Yes, I know, so is John McCain. What I mean by this is that I am fearful that people are losing touch with this reality: that Barack Obama is susceptible to mistakes just like the rest of us. I realize that the recent Al Smith memorial dinner was meant to release some tensions between the two candidates by encouraging jests to be traded and burns to be inflicted in good fun, but there were an awful lot of references to Obama being seen as the Messiah, or in more secular terms, a Superman, sent here to save the planet Earth. I don't mind a Maverick, because there's room for error there. But when a Messiah or Superman is brought into the picture, criticisms are harder to establish as credible. Basically, Obama's exalted celebrity status and popularity is a cause for concern because it ends up overlooking his very human nature, and that includes his propensity for mistakes and the necessity for chastisement.

I do not think that it's cool to vote for or support Barack Obama on the basis of his electrifying personality, his ability to speak well, his prestigious educational background, or his faith in human nature to know how to guide socio-economic structures with anything but an invisible hand. In fact, I do not think that it's cool to Barack the vote at all. And yes, I'm under the age of 50, and I will stand by my position (that last bit is for my older brother).

-zg

Revelation

2008-09-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! One of my goals from the outset of this blog is to write about a whole bunch of things of interest, but also to put up some personal creative works when appropriate. So, here's a little piece of prose that I wrote while looking at a painting of mountains (not the one pictured here, sorry) on the tenth floor of Temple University's Gladfelter Hall. I wrote this for class, so don't think that I did this on my own prerogative.

Revelation

The majestic summits assert themselves over the obstructions—over the clouds, over my exhaustion from the climb, over the gnarled branch I hold on to for support. I park myself on a large rock and wait for the sun to rise over the peaks. The game is what brought me up here.

These mountains—great behemoths!—can dwarf only so much: men, plants, even the sky. But the sun daily conquers them, puts them to shame, and causes their aspirations of glory to crumble. The sun reigns victorious over some mountain somewhere all the time. Be it Everest, Fiji, Olympus, or St. Helen’s, someone is getting shown the truth of the matter.

The sky is lightening now. I pull out a package of jerky and my canteen of water, civilized weapons in my arsenal against Nature. I do this as a way to join the sun in his grand conquest. While he drenches the slopes with light, I quench my thirst and ease the pangs of hunger that the mountains have inflicted on me for stealing their height.

That’s where I’m most fascinated: in joining with the sun to do something that I cannot do on my own. Yet the sun’s choice to reveal the beauty of the mountains confuses me. In the absence of light, these peaks are cold, lonesome, self-absorbed. With the sun’s light, however, the crests come alive and dance, completely engrossed in the star as it is rising to nourish them.

Maybe it’s not the gratification of conquest that brings me up here, but rather the awe of selflessness, wonder at other-centeredness. I want to believe that it wasn’t a carnal, barbaric impulse, but something else entirely that drew me up here and impressed upon me the compassion in such a coupling of that powerful orb and relatively puny stones. After all, if it was merely my own bloodthirsty will for action, I would have missed completely the dance between mountain and sun.

Gov. Sarah Palin

2008-08-29T09:59:00.001-07:00

This posting will be a brief one, in a slight departure from the precedent I've set so far.

I merely wish to express my absolute glee in the choice Sen. McCain has made in Gov. Palin as his running-mate. I find her to be the perfect complement to the aged Big Mac. I appreciate her strict Pro-Life, Gun Rights, Ethics-centered, and family-focused platform, proven by her work in Alaska and the speech that she gave just a few moments ago in Dayton.

Also, as a strong opponent of Sen. Obama, I see the choice of Gov. Palin as the best possible way to slow down--if not halt--Sen. Obama's momentum going into these last 67 days of campaigning. Not only is she a woman (duh), but she is a fresh face, an opponent of special interests (and big oil), charismatic, an outsider to the Washington scene, a "hockey mom," and three years Sen. Obama's junior. As Wolf Blitzer said, and I paraphrase, "Gov. Palin will certainly make the Republican National Convention much more interesting."

Also, because Gov. Palin is a woman, she is reaching out to disaffected female voters (young and old, but especially the latter) that were banking on Sen. Clinton to become the first female president or vice president. The reaching of this goal is plausible considering Gov. Palin's demeanor as a typical good mother. In 1990's political lingo, she would be considered a "soccer mom," she prefers "hockey mom," eh?

Finally, Gov. Palin's strict Pro-Life stance and identification as a devout Christian will strengthen Sen. McCain's campaign among social conservatives and Christian voters. He needs a boost among a voting populace that, up to this point, was turning towards third party candidates (like Chuck Baldwin) or just staying at home.

All in all, I am going to say that at this point it is no longer voting against Sen. Obama for me, but rather voting for Sen. McCain (and by connection, Gov. Palin).

-zg

A couple of links:

PalinforVP.blogspot.com
Offical site for the Alaskan Governor

Critical Rationalism

2008-08-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

Evidently, I am unable to keep up with an every-other-day posting regimen, especially as collegial concerns begin to materialize. Thus, I will aim to produce one or two postings per week. Through the course of looking around for material on Critical Rationalism, I have come across two definitions:

1) The position that religious belief-systems can and must be rationally criticized and evaluated although conclusive proof in such a system is impossible*
2) Karl Popper’s view that progress in our search for knowledge is possible and comes about by taking bold conjectures as hypotheses and subjecting these to severe tests; while a negative test-result may serve as a refutation, a positive test-result cannot serve as a conclusive proof**

These two definitions complement each other; I will attempt to address and make sense of both of them as the first, in my opinion, seems to complete the second. Karl Popper’s view is one that rejects the currents of Positivism (the philosophical position that all knowledge is based on sense-perception) and Classical Empiricism (the view that all knowledge is derived from experience). Popper is most famous, however, for his treatment of the problem of induction.

Popper looks to the practice to science to infer that science does not rest on induction at all. Popper contends that rather than starting with observations and forming appropriate theories, scientists first put forward a theory and then test it with observations to determine its validity. Negative results disprove the scientific conjecture while positive results produce the undefeated conjecture. To Popper, the emphasis is laid on refutations—damning observations—rather than affirming evidence. This mode of thinking leads to Popper’s ‘problem of demarcation,’ the difference between science and other forms of belief. The unique quality of science is that it is at least falsifiable. He uses this argument of falsification in propping up science above both superstitions (like Astrology) and pseudo-sciences such as Marxism and psychoanalysis.

The main concern with Popper’s treatment of induction is that it offers no positive knowledge, but only negative knowledge. We are unable to use Popper’s philosophical approach in constructing medicines or building dams because it cannot predict the future, or in more appropriate terms, trust past results to come about again. Popper defended himself against this attack by stating that he was not concerned with technological application of science, but rather with the pure logic of scientific inquiry. This approach is valuable when considering new hypotheses, but unhelpful in treating established scientific conclusions (such as a heliocentric solar system, and gravitational pull).

Ultimately, Popper suffered from a lack of faith in dealing with the future. Popper chose not to have faith in the repetition of scientific results despite past confirmation. For instance, Popper would not ideologically have faith in the weather forecaster that trusts that red skies in the evening generally precede fine weather. Indeed, Popper would as soon listen to the forecaster that made a random prediction based on what he saw before him.

This is where that first definition of Critical Rationalism steps in. The source in which I found that definition cites Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as proponents of this kind of Critical Rationalism. For my purposes, I will focus on Aquinas and ultimately make the leap to Popper.

Aquinas insisted that there were two different kinds of propositions about God, or the Truth: propositions justified by reason & revelation, and propositions justified by revelation only. As per this view, revelation takes primacy over reason, but the rules of reason can work within the bounds set by revelation. How does this relate to Popper’s views?

The reason which Aquinas wrote of essentially parallels Popper’s observation/refutation. However, Aquinas also has the revelation, or faith, which Popper lacks. It is the element of faith which completes (or perhaps invalidates) Popper’s Critical Rationalism. At the same time, however, Popper brings a crucial piece of thought to the table: criticism.

Popper’s philosophy lends itself to supporting societies that espouse virtues of liberalism, democracy, and freedom of speech because all of these precepts tend to encourage criticism and rejection of falsehoods, ideally. This critical way of thinking is especially helpful in concerns of reason, but should not be neglected in matters of revelation (or faith). People are swayed in their faith to trust falsities, and societies which encourage the expression of concern over Truth in-general, and faith in-particular, help to uncover falsehood for what it truly is.

With regards to our modern American society, Popper would hopefully feel disgust at the broad assumptions of our mass media (ie. education, marketing, reporting, and commentary) and the resulting lack of freedom to confidently express criticism that may, in turn, lead to uncovering falsehood (if not necessarily Truth). I do believe, however, that Popper would love the blogosphere and actively engage in consuming all of its fruits and treasures.

-zg

*Religious faith & reason: Kierkegaard, Clifford, and Aquinas; yes, I realize that this is a student note page, and thus not necessarily authoritative
**Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy
***Additional Source: Philosophy 1: a guide through the subject, ed. A.C. Grayling, Oxford Press

Fideism

2008-08-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

I concluded the last post with a reasonably strong conviction that strong rationalism has an unforgivable fault which causes it to cave in on itself, but also has some bright aspects to it. After reading some of the responses to that post, I may have to look into several heretofore unfamiliar sources to give it another go. However, I do wish to touch on both Fideism and critical rationalism before I go back to strong rationalism. As I said in the last post, I will hopefully craft these next two posts with more original thought as my current reading has not addressed them.

Fideism is the position that religious belief-systems are not subject to rational evaluation, and thus that religious belief is essentially incompatible with reason. A few of the sources I have looked into* on this particular topic have referenced Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1853) Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), and Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) as several major philosophical contributors to, or advocates for Fideism. These men come at Fideism from different perspectives, however. Due to the depth of Fideism and how one may approach it, I will be focusing on one path: that of Blaise Pascal. His is probably the most culturally accessible example of Fideistic thought.

Pascal’s Wager describes a faith that is encouraged by an analysis of the odds after coming to grips with not being able to prove the existence of God (basically, coming to grips with Fideism). The famous passage from his Pensées (Note 233 of Section III: Of the Necessity of the Wager), and I am reading out of the W. F. Trotter translation, basically gives an outline of the nature of the soul and how it’s limitation in the body prevents it from truly grasping (and thus, being able to prove the existence of) God, who—if He exists—Pascal says, “is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us.”

The passage goes on into the setting of Pascal’s Wager: “God is or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.” The stakes are reason and happiness. Reason is essentially incapacitated on this particular decision, because it can support neither, whereas happiness (expressed as eternal life) is completely dependent on this decision. Pascal continues to go on about the necessity to make a wager, that one cannot remain neutral in this game, and so reason cannot be the determiner of the crucial choice.

He determines that if one must make a decision, it is best to decide in favor of God’s existence rather than against. His reasoning is that if God exists, one gains everything from belief (eternal happiness/bliss/life), but loses everything from disbelief (separation from God). If God does not exist, then one loses nothing by believing, but gains an agreeable existence. In either case, one gains something by belief—at least according to Pascal.

He ends the passage by responding to the predicament of knowing all he has said before, but remaining in a state of disbelief by an inability to believe. He advises the person in this situation to become a part of a community of believers, to earnestly try to believe, and see the results of this effort: principally, the acquisition of belief. The last two paragraphs reassert his position that this effort of “lessen[ing] the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks” will result in the acquiring of many desirable characteristics, and thus a rewarding existence in any case, and that the man who has outlined this hypothetical situation is himself a believer who engages in prayer. Pascal’s rendition is, of course, much more eloquent, and less abrasive than my frail explanation.

In Pascal’s Wager, there are several “problems.” A prominent historical criticism of Pascal’s Wager comes from the Enlightenment author Voltaire, who stated that “the interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.” This ‘problem’ is easily avoided by actually understanding what Pascal was trying to make clear in the passage: that the wager is not a rational proof, for reason cannot be trusted.

Another problem is that the wager assumes that the person making this decision is choosing the correct god. There have been many gods that have been worshipped throughout human history. If one were to plug them all into the wager, the odds of making the wrong choice would skyrocket, as the right choice would be one of hundreds (perhaps thousands) rather than merely two. Also, there are cultural variations of Pascal’s wager. Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni (d. 478/1085) of the Islamic kalam tradition authored a similar line of thought in A Guide to the Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief. Of course, Pascal was writing to an agnostic audience (or one or many) within Christendom. Ultimately, he would present this wager to someone (as an act of outreach perhaps) with the intention of them following his suggestion of ‘trying out Christianity.’ From here, Pascal’s friend would discover the Truth, which is, according to Pascal, beyond, but not contradictory to reason, and thus become a believer. I seriously doubt that Pascal would apply this analogy in reaching out to a believer in another faith other than Christianity.

There is also the problem of whether or not the Creator of the Universe would reward someone for following their faith rather than their reason. Richard Dawkins suggests that the wager does not account for the possibility of a god that rewards the coming to purely rational conclusions rather than something that seems like blind faith. In fact, who is to say that this god would not punish someone who rejects the reasoning abilities he has been given? Or, as a variation on a theme, why could there not be a god that accepts both believers and secularists into his presence after death, but rejects those that worshipped another god? When it comes to Decision Theory and Game Theory, I can only go so far before going off on a complete tangent. But, I did stumble across an essay by Professor Jeffrey Jordan of the University of Delaware which fleshes out the examination of Decision Theory in Pascal’s Wager and Pragmatic (William James style) revisions thereof. ** Ultimately, Prof. Jordan comes to the conclusion that it is not only permissible (as there is a Ethics debate on religious belief and faith) to believe in God in lieu of “strong evidence,” but wise to do so (this is also the subject of his book, Pascal’s Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God). In addition to his essay, titled Theistic Belief and Religious Uncertainty, there is a response to it from a man in the same camp as Dawkins, and a rebuttal back from Prof. Jordan.

Finally, there is the “Anti-Pascal Wager,” argued by Richard Dawkins, which states that a life lived based on the rejection of a belief in God is fuller and more enriching than on lived based on an acceptance of God because one would not waste ever-dwindling time on worship, evangelism, or even martyrdom. After reading the passage in Pensées, I think that Pascal does address this by asserting that a life lived for the Christian God, whether He exists or not, is a life well-lived, and is preferable to a life lived based on the destructive passions of men. I believe that Dawkins and Pascal simply disagree on what “the good life” looks like; it is a matter of opinion on what a well-lived life looks like if there is no objective source of Truth, such as God.

For what’s it is worth, I reject Fideism, but not wholesale. While I do not think it wise to ignore the inner workings of the mind (I agree with Galileo when I read his quote, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use”), I believe in putting weight on other parts of the human experience other than reason as well—faith, trust, relationship, and exuberant passion.

I will end this blog not with an allusion to a pending King Crimson concert, but with a quote from Blaise Pascal that will hopefully ease the transition from Fideism to critical rationalism (the topic of my next blog entry, I hope), and also dispel any lingering thoughts that Pascal was a subscriber to pre-Existential irrationalism, as I do not believe he was. "Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them."

-zg

*My sources include Wikipedia pages on Pascal’s Wager (I had to get common objections from somewhere) and Fideism (I had to get those names from somewhere), this page from someone at Crichton University, and this short article from gotquestions.org.

**Theistic Belief and Religious Uncertainty by Prof. Jeffrey Jordan of the University of Delaware

***Also, Pensées Section III: Of the Necessity of the Wager

Strong Rationalism

2008-08-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am hoping that this is not just a well-written and readable entry, but the herald of a wealth of intellectual challenge in the entries to come. Over the past few days, I have been looking through literature dealing with the relationship between faith and reason. One page which popped up on my computer screen laid out three paths to resolving the conflict which comes from the delicate interplay between the two supposedly-opposing forces.

On one end lies strong rationalism (the position that in order for a religious belief-system to be properly and rationally accepted, it must be possible to prove that the belief-system is true); on the opposite side rests fideism (the position that religious belief-systems are not subject to rational evaluation); in the middle stands critical rationalism (the position that religious belief-systems can and must be rationally criticized and evaluated although conclusive proof in such a system is impossible). Each of these viewpoints faces criticism, but offers unique—and valuable—perspectives on epistemology and metaphysics.

Your stereotypical modern thinking person tends to favor most heartily the position of strong rationalism, especially with the advent of secularism and atheism following the Enlightenment. While this particular stance challenges the believer to question himself and investigate the origins and justifications of his faith, it ultimately buckles under its foundational assumption: that our belief-forming faculties fail in one area of thinking.

Strong rationalism ultimately leads to a disbelief in God because it remains impossible for anyone to prove His existence. While there are plenty of clues suggestive of the existence of a Creator behind the universe (ie. the substance of being, the fundamental constants of physics, the regularity of nature, the nature of art and its effect on Man), all of them are rationally avoidable. But if one chooses to evaluate the feasibility of God with such an exacting standard, he runs the risk of falling on his own sword, as it were.

Tim Keller puts it succinctly in The Reason for God when he writes “If we can’t trust our belief-forming faculties in one area, we should not trust them in any area. If there is no God, we should not trust our cognitive faculties at all.” Essentially, if we cannot trust the mechanisms set in our minds to form beliefs, we cannot trust the mechanisms set in our minds to evaluate and test those beliefs. But what of the natural selection that has formed our ‘cognitive faculties?’

Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion that we cannot completely trust our senses to tell us the truth because the evolutionary process is bent on preserving adaptive behavior, which is not necessarily correspondent to the truth. This parallels the evolutionary assumption that false beliefs based on irrational fears and paranoia are more effective, in the long run, at helping an organism survive than beliefs based on the truth, which could lead us to let our guard down long enough to be eradicated by hostile forces.

Keller summarizes this concept with “Evolution can only be trusted to give us cognitive faculties that help us live on, not to provide ones that give us an accurate and true picture of the world around us.” Patricia Churchland puts it elegantly (and Keller quotes her as well), “Truth, whatever that is, takes the hindmost.” But if this is true, and our minds cannot tell us the truth about God, why should we expect our minds to tell us the truth about anything else, including evolutionary biology? It is fallacious to apply one’s skepticism to God without also putting it to evolution.

But, as Keller points out, “If we believe God exists, then our view of the universe gives us a basis for believing that cognitive faculties work, since God could make us able to form true beliefs and knowledge.” In any case, strong rationalism fails to logically jive with itself. Essentially, it disproves itself. Within the strong rationalist’s mode of thinking rests a trust on his ability to come to conclusions about the impossibility of God while dancing around the fact that this also points to the impossibility of verifying the truth of ANYTHING else. Within this paradigm, faith in strong rationalism should be just as impossible to justify as faith in God.

Well, my dad is waiting for me to come out of the house to go to a King Crimson concert up at the Keswick Theater, so I guess Fideism and Critical Rationalism must wait to be put to the test! In any case, my entries on those two stances will be more original, as Tim Keller has not addressed them in my reading.

-zg

Who I Am, What I Have to Say

2008-08-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

For a while, I've been thinking and writing through the course of many streams of consciousness. Finally, the inclination to create a blog has grown strong enough to force my hand in opening up a Blogspot account. Before I get into anything substantial, let me introduce myself.

I was born into a modest middle-income family and raised in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. I just graduated from Haverford High School this last June, and will be attending Temple University Honors come September as an incoming Freshman. My passions include (but are not limited to) music, literature, theology, philosophy, drawing, painting, history, politics, and a teddy bear my Mom-mom gave me way back in 1989 (when I was a wee lil' baby). As of right now I'm single, but kept busy by my electric guitar playing in two bands: Constant Recourse and The Subüru Stallions. That's pretty much all the personal stuff you need to know.

And now, what I'll be writing about:

My purpose in entering the blogosphere is to share my thoughts on politics, society, the arts, music, religion, history, philosophy, literature, relationships, and the challenges the accompany humanness. I'm most interested in the effects of politics on our society/culture, the Truth as expressed by the divine revelation of Christ Jesus, epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical considerations (in that order), and the movement of history leading up to and from the present. Some pretty heady stuff? I hope so. I also hope to break up the gravitas with book reviews and fun, goofy distractions--like The Subüru Stallions.

I'll try to come up with something intelligent tomorrow (or later today, I suppose), maybe on the fallacy of strong rationalism (the position that in order for a religious belief-system to be properly and rationally accepted, it must be possible to prove that the belief-system is true) or at least an argument against it.

-zg