Don't Myth the Point

On the eve of Christmas week it is fitting to declare, in the words of Dorothy Sayers, that “the greatest drama that has staggered the imagination of man is the orthodox creed of the Christian Church.”  By that term she meant both the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.  She was describing the Christian narrative that God [the eternal Son] became a human being for the salvation of the world, that he was born, lived, engaged with the world, died on the cross, and was raised from the dead on the third day.  Sayers was certainly correct about her assessment.  And she was also astonishingly clarifying in her setting forth our choices about the matter.  For she concludes, “Now, we may call that doctrine [story] exhilarating, or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation, or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all.” (Dorothy Sayers.  The Whimsical Christian: Eighteen Essays.  (Macmillan, 1969), p.11f.).

 Christianity doesn’t, however, stop at making comparisons as though the point is that the greatest idea wins!  The Christian claim is that this narrative is literally true in terms of normal historical understanding.  It is popularly suggested that the story of Jesus had its roots in the mythologies of the surrounding ancient cultures.  But such attempts at comparison are truly impossible to successfully construct.  Whatever one might think about the foibles of Israel at the time of Christ, these people were rigorously anti-myth (2 Peter 1:16) and anti-polytheistic (Acts 17:16f).  From the very beginning the beliefs of the first Christians (who happened to all be Jewish) were utterly at odds with the prevailing Jewish beliefs at that time concerning the nature and work of the Messiah whom Israel hoped would soon be coming.  That the God of Christianity should be understood in terms of three persons (Matthew 28:19, 20, John 16:12-15), that the Son (“the Word”) should come in the flesh (John 1:1-3, 14), and that God’s Messiah should die for the sake of sinners (Matthew 20:28) --- these three notions alone were so offensive to Jewish belief, they cannot be accounted for in terms of a supposed connection with mythology.  Michael Grant, an atheist who was also a renowned historian of ancient Rome, demolished such mythological reconstructions as are popularly proposed: “Modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory.  It has been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars.” (Michael Grant. Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels. (Scribners, 1977), p.200.

 The foundations of the argument that the New Testament, including the Gospels in particular, are historically sound and reliable do not rest merely on the repudiation of mythological roots.  The historicity of the New Testament also rests on the fruits of archaeological research and insight that I will lay out in up-coming blogs.  In anticipation of what lies ahead I invite you to write for either/or both of my essays.

 1.       “Hoax? Myth? Or Literally True? The Evidence for Jesus’ Bodily Resurrection.”  This paper is not limited to Jesus’ resurrection, but considers the larger matter of His life within history.

2.      “The Prints are Everywhere: The Convergence of Science, History, and Experience with Biblical Revelation.”  This article doesn’t attempt to address its points in depth.  Its purpose rather is to whet your appetite for further study of the broad array of evidence implied by the title.  

Missing the Elephant in the Room

“We cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against God and bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”                   (2 Corinthians 10:5 KJV)

Because world-views lead to their own respective consequences, it is not sufficient for Christians to season our culture by the adding of a bit of Christian flavor.  For the sake of the preservation of our society, we are in dire need of a total overhaul of our vision of what it means to be human.  Every person holds a world-view of sorts, although people don’t often reflect deeply on the particulars.  A world-view is, according to the BING definition, “a view of all life: a comprehensive and usually personal conception or view of humanity, the world, or life.”

O. Hobart Mowrer, one-time president of the American Psychiatric Association, had such an overhaul (an intensely personal one) of his own world-view.  As an adherent of Freud’s (a noted psychiatrist) dismissive views on guilt, Mowrer early on argued that every expression of personal guilt was a harmful pathological sickness which demanded release by means of psychoanalysis.  Yet when he himself was admitted to a mental institution following on his own breakdown, he came to recognize that confession (as opposed to denial) of his own guilt was precisely the path to his own healing.  So after his release he was dismayed to discover that churches were also dismissing the concepts of sin and guilt along the lines of Freud.  However, other leaders from the field of psychology have expressed the same observations as Dr. Mowrer about the necessary connection between confession of guilt (sin) and personal healing, including M. Scott Peck, Karl Menninger, and Paul Pruyser.

At the risk of oversimplification, it seems necessary to state that our culture is experiencing the clash of two major world-views.  The dominant one being promoted in the public arena, the secular view, dismisses such notions as transcendent purpose, values, morality, free-will, and accounttability.  The second, Christian, world-view holds that under God our Maker, there is an over-arching purpose to life, that human beings have innate value (not merely a utilitarian one), that we are not mere machines but have a soul and consequently free-will, that there is a solid foundation for morality, and that we will all be held accountable to God who will judge the entire world according to His righteousness.

Three days of reflection after the tragic cold-blooded murder of 27 innocent people, including 20 defenseless little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut raises a multitude of questions as to how this could have happened.  One leading voice is stating that this senseless violence must stop once and for all.  Certainly we can sympathize with his frustration.  But his statement is an expression arising from his own world-view.  God does have an answer, but His answer is connected to the dealing with human guilt once and for all by the death of His Son on the cross, and the working of the Holy Spirit within the lives of redeemed sinners.  Apart from God’s answer human nature has not a ghost of a chance of changing.

Discussions regarding the shooter’s actual culpability are typically being framed in light of his mental and family history.  Questions are being asked for the purpose of understanding his motives.  But if sin is real, that is the one factor that does defy the rational.  Sin is the moral error of raising one’s sense of self-importance above all others, and most especially above God.  To neglect our misuse of personal freedom and responsibility, to cloud matters of right and wrong, and to brush aside the universal human tendency to act against our own consciences (including the cold-blooded and calculating shooter), by instead proposing a mechanistic answer alone, completely misses a fundamental clue about the evil we all experience in the world.  I am not pleading that we neglect mental illness in favor of spiritual realities.  We ought to give serious attention to both.  Christians fully affirm that there is a material aspect of our being.  But we argue that under God we are so much more than that.

We need religious revival today.  By “religious,” Christians mean regaining the vision that all of life makes sense only when we are in right relationship with the God who made the heavens and the earth at the beginning of time, who sent His Son Jesus Christ for our redemption from sin in the fullness of time, and who invites us to live in union with Him in the present time.  Every aspect of our lives (heart, soul, strength, and mind) is transformed by our connection to God, alone.  To neglect this vision in place of the prevailing, failing mechanistic view of life is tantamount to missing the gigantic elephant in the room.  

Why Not Both/And? Part II

Why Not Both/And?  Part II

On December 7, I was interviewed by Doug Bursch for his radio program, “Live From Seattle,” in anticipation of my up-coming debate with an atheist on the existence of God.  Further details of the relevant circumstances are noted in my recent blog titled, “Why Not Both/And?”  I wish to be clear that I am grateful for the gracious manner he received me and for the very generous amount of time he gave me on air.  Yet I was concerned by some of his closing remarks later at the end of his program where he expressed skepticism about the appropriateness of Christians debating about the existence of God.  I wished he had asked me directly at the time of the interview that I might allay some of his concerns.  So I began to address his concerns in that blog. 

I think it important to now offer two additional reasons why it is important for Christians to lay out the case for the Christian claim by means of a debate format.  First of all, the challenge from the skeptics is in fact already underway.  Controversy is an on-going present reality.  If Christians choose to remain silent, the skeptics will simply continue their attacks on Christianity with increasing confidence and vigor.  From the matter of perception alone the momentum is mounting for their side and needs to be challenged.  Second, it is urgent that the actual contents of the case for Christianity be publically laid out for all to see.  Skeptics needs to “face the heat” from the superior arguments that strongly favor of the existence of the God of the Bible.  Yet Christians too need to become familiar with the powerful case for the God of Holy Scripture.  There can be no more effective means of proving the validity of these arguments than by exposing them to rigorous critique in public debate with a strong dissenter (in this case a representative from the atheist or agnostic camp).

It is vital that Christians who are equipped as apologists express these gifts for the encouragement of others who lack such training.  C.S. Lewis stated the matter so well: “To be ignorant and simple now -- not to be able to meet our enemies on their own ground – would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen.”  (“Learning in Our Time.” The Weight of Glory).   

Using Our Bibles Well (that is, Intelligently)

“…as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we are his offspring.’  Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold or silver, or stone…”  (Acts 17:28,9 -- the Apostle Paul speaking in Athens).

First things first.  I am terribly, terribly sorry for the inconsistent timing of my postings these recent weeks.  I began my blog a few weeks ago with the intention of posting nearly every day.  Yet it has been so very busy these recent days (many additional sermons including a few major funerals just a few days apart, plus preparing for a major event I am about to describe) that I have hardly been able to write at all.  Now, even with Christmas ahead of me I will still have more time to revisit my blog.  My new and more realistic plan is to post on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings.

I have in hand a letter I have been asked to deliver to a third party.  I don’t want to.  Just a few days ago I went head-to-head with an atheist in a public debate at Everett Community College on the question, “Does God Exist?  Where Do The Facts of Science and History, and the Insights of Human Nature Point?”  The letter is from a Christian who attended that debate and who wishes to communicate, by means of his letter, with my atheist counterpart.  There is little in his letter that is factually false.  It is not obnoxious.  Yet at the same time its contents are not appropriate to his particular situation.  It is largely a repetition of Bible verses.  I don’t want to be put into the position of defending the letter.  Neither do I wish to decry it.

Our God is able to use any means He wishes to bring a sinner to faith in Christ.  I myself came back to Christ four decades ago through the preaching of a famous pastor (probably not who you think) I regard to this day as rather obnoxious.  Multitudes of other people may recount similar stories.  I thank God to this day that God used him.  Yet at the same time the Bible does not encourage offensive or over-bearing mannerisms.  To the contrary, the Apostle Peter calls us to speak to others with gentleness and respect.  And the Apostles urge still more.  I have already referenced 1 Peter 3:15 about the importance of “being prepared to give and answer.”  “The Apostle Paul writes similarly, “Conduct yourselves wisely with outsiders, making the most of the time.  Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with popcorn salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one” (Colossians 4:5,6).  Here Paul explicitly encourages what he put into practice in Athens chapter 17.  The Apostle Paul, who repeatedly affirms in practice the drawing on of Holy Scripture, understood the audience to whom he was speaking.  He didn’t clobber them with the Bible.  He firstly understood both who his audience was and why they thought as they did.  Then he began where they actually were by drawing on the array of concrete (well, stone) images erected at mars Hill that surrounded them all.  He also quoted passages from three famous poets out of their own literature.  THEN he drew on the insights of Holy Scripture that we Christians all know to be true.

Notice that to a non-Christian audience the Apostle Paul did not begin with the Bible.  That does not mean he wasn’t pointing toward the message of the Bible.  Indeed he closed with the strongest biblical declaration of all.  This called for study, empathy, and courage.  Goodness knows I myself am convicted by this charge.  But it seems this is the calling of Christians in every time and place.  Of course behind the scenes we are to be animated and directed by the words of the Holy Bible.  But to use the words of Elton Trueblood, as we inwardly reflect from a Biblical foundation, we must “out-think the world.” 

Why Not Both/And?

In a few days I will be publically debating an atheist on the question, “Does God Exist: Where Do the Facts of Science and History and the Insights of Human Experience Point?”  That event will be held at Everett [Washington] Community College on Monday, December 10 at 7:00pm.  In anticipation of the debate, I was interviewed yesterday (December 7) at 5:00 pm, on “Live in Seattle, With Doug Bursch,” on KGNW Radio 820 am.  The experience of conversing (for 20 minutes) with Doug on my convictions about sharing the Gospel was a lot of fun, and I was very grateful to have been given that opportunity.  However, later in his program, at its conclusion, he expressed concerns about the entire matter of debating.  He was concerned, first of all, about the prospect of one person ending up being humiliated because of the superior arguments of the winning opponent.  And he suggested as a preferred approach to addressing unbelief, that Christians instead convey the message that all are “deeply loved” by God.

To his first concern, I don’t think I ever suggested an intention to humiliate my opponent.  I believe that a debate format, when held at high standards (and that is the wish of us both), presents a body of evidence offered up by both sides of a question (in our case, the one stated above) in order that the audience may come to their own conclusions (in our case, about the existence of God).  I fully intend to keep Jim Corbett (my “opponent”) as my friend, even as we both, at the same time, believe it is important to lay out our respective arguments for the audience to consider.  Of course each of us want to, in some sense, “win” the debate.  This seems to me quite natural.  If absolute purity of motive is to be the standard which either allows or excludes Christians from participating in debate (or any discussion or act of witness at all, for that matter), then we are disqualified from being witnesses at the very outset.  But thank God He mercifully and graciously does use sinners…such as me!  At bottom, the goals of debating that I personally strive for include firstly, to inform the audience of a whole array of evidence (that they may never before have heard) in favor of the existence of the God of the Bible, and secondly, to persuade as many as I can, to move in the direction of faith in Him.

What then, about conveying to others the message that they are “deeply loved?”  Of course this is our mission and our obligation, and, in the name of Christ, it is also our highest privilege!  This is the staggering message founded on the truth that our God gave His only Son for our entire world, including the very person we happen to be speaking to at any given moment.  The Apostle Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare His only Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not give us all things in Him?” (Romans 8:31,2).  The radio host had a valid point on this matter that it is urgent for us to emphasize.  Yet we are not forced into an “either/or” proposition.  We are instead driven to see the importance of the “both/and.”  Unless it is actually true that we are deeply loved, then that very assertion that we are “deeply loved” may sadly be nothing more than a figment of our imagination.  This is indeed the assertion of the atheist.  Thank God for us all (on both sides) that the atheist is wrong.  The actual fact of the matter is, the Bible does not leave us clinging to our imaginations, but instead points us to the robust set of facts which undergird the rock solid foundation of the Christian message.  There indeed is an Almighty God who, in fact sent His only Son for us all in love.      

Too Old and Fat? part II

Every creation day in Genesis 1 closes with the refrain, “And it was good.”  The last day heightens this by adding another word, “And it was very good.”  There’s one exception.  No such refrain follows the second day (some have suggested that apparently even God doesn’t like Mondays).  Yet the central point still stands.  God decreed the physics of the universe as we actually have them.  This doesn’t leave us with mere physics.  A better way to put it is, in creation we have “physics plus!”  In previous blogs I already described the high level of precision that was involved in both the total amount of mass and the rate by which it expanded outward from its initial creation out of nothing.  To lay my cards on the table, I am arguing the evidence for God’s providential involvement in creation all along the line.

Now, is our cosmos “Too old and too fat?”  In order for humans like us to live in a cosmos with the physics God has decreed, several things had to happen.  Remember the distinction from my last posting between what God can do (which is anything at all He chooses) and what God has chosen to actually do.  Since we are commanded from the Bible to believe the witness of nature (Romans 1:18-21) then we can conclude that the God-willed initial physical conditions were not compatible for life.  Only hydrogen existed, and then very quickly helium developed.  So far so good, but so far not enough!  This is consistent with Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was without form and void.”  The initial lack was God-willed.

An essential requirement for life to thrive is that we need a home which is safe, comfortable, and equipped with those conditions that allow us to walk, breath, eat, mate, and so forth.  Given the physics nature tells us God has created (Romans 1), things had to transpire before planet Earth would become ready.  Stated very simply, there needed to be hard matter (“heavy” elements) to provide the solid surface on which we Earthlings can walk.  This means a rocky planet like our own, as opposed to a star or even a gas planet like Jupiter.  Jupiter is largely made of Hydrogen (the lightest element on the periodic table) which is hard to stand on (jumping is even more problematic).  In addition, our biological chemistry absolutely requires the existence of another, heavier, element, Carbon.  And our physical bodies also require the array of additional elements (from our periodic table) in order that our bodies might be sustained.  The more scientists study the complex conditions necessary for human life, not to mention life in general, the more it becomes clear that every bit of the natural world participates in some way in its on-going care.

So how does the above discussion support the contention of this posting that our cosmos is NOT too old and fat?  The single answers is, the production of all of the necessary elements required time in order to form, and large amounts of it.  Every bit of matter in the universe is composed of atoms of different numbers of electrons, protons, and neutrons.  The more of each, the heavier the element, from Helium, the lightest, to Ununoctium, the heaviest, as of the writing of the book in front of me by Theodore Gray, titled The Elements. (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2009).  As scientists peer across the entire history of the cosmos they notice that the heavier elements appear much more recently.  But they are produced from their predecessors, (the next lightest element,) in a long chain of events going all the way back to the beginning by the process of nuclear fusion.

Scientists tell us that solid planets such as Earth were not even possible (there were not yet heavy enough materials) until the third generation of stars came into being.  What this means is that the universe had to have been expanding long enough, which means far enough as well, in order to produce the materials we all enjoy on Earth today.  It therefore bears repeating that our cosmos is neither to old nor too fat (large).  It is just right.  Were it not as old and large as it actually is, we would not be here to consider the matter.  But let this truth not be interpreted as a case for evolution.  Not even theistic evolution.  It all bears witness to the God of the Bible who said of His own creation, “It was very good.”  

Too Old and Fat? part I

Our universe breaks the record for the most birthdays:  13.75 billion candles’ worth.  And there’s no cheating on the numbers because scientists have ways of accurately calculating this age.  Since light travels at 186,000 miles per second, then light years (“l.y.”) provide the measurement of both distance and the passage of time.  Distances between stars and galaxies are so vast they must, for practical purposes, be measured by this standard.  And every scientific measurement yields a great age.  Consider that when we look at the light from the nearby star Spika, so close to us that it is visible to the naked eye, we are peering back 270 years into the past because that is how long (at 270 l.y.) it took to reach our eyeballs.  For the same reason our view to the center of our own galaxy amounts to peering 25,000 years back into the past.  Likewise, the “image” which traveled from the surface of neighboring Andromeda Galaxy is 2 ½ million years old (though it isn’t faded!).  By means of the Hubble Satellite, the famous “Deep Field” photograph was taken of an area in the sky about the size of a tennis ball at a football field’s-length, over the span of a million seconds.  That image reveals how its 3,000 galaxies first looked when they formed a little more than 13 billion years ago. 

I think it important to briefly reflect on what is a matter of contention for certain Christians.  Some Christians insist the first chapter of Genesis must be interpreted as teaching that the heavens and the earth are six thousand years old.  I have already challenged that interpretation of the Bible in my blog titled, “My Authority part II.”  I find no such insistence - either from that chapter or the Scriptures as a whole - which would require such an interpretation that cannot be reconciled with the clear measurable calculations of science. 

Other Christians reject the position I espouse, that the universe is “old,” on the grounds that “God can do anything He wants to.”  So they issue the challenge, “Why, Gary, do you choose to limit God?”  My reply to their assertion (but not their challenge) is “Amen!  Of course God can do anything!  Indeed God could have, if He so wished, created everything in a single instant fully-formed.”  But their objection misses the point.  And I am still fully persuaded that Almighty God freely created the universe in a manner consistent with recent discoveries framed by Big Bang cosmology.

What God can do is not the question, but what God in freedom chose to do.  The notion that God should choose to deceive the world, however, through a natural order that doesn’t tell the truth, is not a possibility according to the Bible itself.  Romans 1:18-21 teaches the exact opposite since it commands us to heed the testimony of nature as clear revelation of the power of God.  It also identifies as sin every attempt to suppress that witness.  We Christians have permission from Scripture to scientifically study nature for all it’s worth (in spite of errors by “the Church,” from time to time, to either restrict or criticize such study).  The study of nature certainly doesn’t lay bare the mind of God.  To claim otherwise is silly.  Neither, however, does the Bible itself tell us exactly how God chooses to unfold that cosmos He brought into existence by His Word (Hebrews 11:3).  By every serious reading of the first chapter of Genesis, God appears to use process in order to bring about His final product.  We are free to wonder about these processes.  But we are not free to clobber or “de-Christianize” people whose position on creation lies within the teachings of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.

Therefore, by means of studying nature it is apparent that our super-intelligent God deliberately chose to create the universe by means of “the Big Bang” 13.75 billion years ago.  With that beginning, His creation inherited a set of physical properties that our Maker has deliberately chosen to honor and maintain. 

Now of course I’m sure you have noticed that so far I have offered no reasons for how a very old universe actually points to God’s providence and power.  But it was vital that I first lay some important ground work.  In my next blog I will continue to expand on the case I first began in recent postings, on how the age of our universe is indeed just right.  It is not excessively old!  Given the physics that Almighty God has decreed, its age is exactly required for the making of our wonderful planet, on which our providential God, in love, has chosen to place us.  Stay tuned!