Forging Truth

A colleague of mine recently wrote the following:

To me, liberty is not simply a political philosophy. It is my earnest attempt to bring people out of darkness, intellectually and spiritually. My advocacy of liberty is a call to the masses to reject all tyranny over the minds of men. This philosophy transcends questions of the scope of government. It is a cultural revolution, a rejection of ill-conceived prejudices and worn-out, anachronistic traditions that encourage ignorant conventions. This is a vision of a society far different from the one in which we share in today: one that operates on the premises of cooperation, tolerance, and rationality.

This surmises most of what makes me queasy with a portion of the libertarian movement. While we both reach the same conclusion, we do so through different means. Instead of being a question of efficient or even contented living, individual freedom becomes a means to “bring yourself out of the darkness, intellectually and spiritually”.

My biggest reason to opposing centralized force and control is because I don’t trust people. We all have darkness inside, a result from our fallen natures. The more power a given individual has over others, the more likely that they’ll do evil things to others. To borrow from C. S. Lewis, people who get into power tend to act like school-yard bullies. Even if they have the best intentions, they’re likely to a lot of harm before they’re done.

 Instead, others support economic and political freedom because it places the individual at the center of the epistemological universe. Man becomes an end to himself, and he’s set out to search for what those ends are. Subjectivity and post-modern “tolerance” reign.

The worshipers of the self would instantly object to me referring to a fallen nature. A priestess of this alter, Ayn Rand, took especial offence at the concept of original sin, calling it an affront to justice, and a removal of the will. She cannot stand the idea that evil might be in our natures and against our ability to change. This reveals a fundamental difference between Objectivism (and related philosophies) and Christianity.

The “spirituality” of individual freedom is a far cry from true spiritual freedom. To liberate oneself from reality is no liberation, but enslavement.  Spiritual freedom is not to create a god that best suits you, but to realize who God really is. Yet, this is not something we can do ourselves. There’s very little we can learn of God simply by watching sunsets. Instead, He must reveal himself to us. We’ll never hear His quiet, undemanding voice as long as we continue to place ourselves, our voices, first. A self-driven spirituality will ignore God as He is, and instead craft a false imagining serving us.  

Glenn Beck's Rally and the Emptiness of Moralist Religion

The polarizing Glenn Beck recently hosted his Restoring Honor rally on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. Predictably, this has stirred the voices (but not THOSE voices, thankfully). It’s the range of the voices, not their roaring volume, which fascinates.

The Washington Post wrote a great summery of the event. While in many ways it seems to represent the republican/tea-party ideals, it wasn’t a political rally, at least not a normal one. In short, the call was for the nation as a whole to bring more religion in the "public square" and to reclaim it’s previous greatness. Reason Magazine has a great view from the perspective of those in the crowd.

First on the scene, we have the ever-virulent Christopher Hitchens, who decried the entire event as a white-man’s pity party. Hitchens saw the Restoring Honor rally as the majority class throwing a temper tantrum because they’re not enough of a majority. This class struggle, he says, is also at the heart of the mosque ordeal, the 14^th amendment, and most of Arizona.

Where he actually becomes interesting is when he calls Christianity anything but an endangered religion (you can almost hear the sign of resignation). There’s a yes-and-no answer about this. What was once termed “the culture wars” has become nothing but lot of angry people hoisting state-enforced moralism. Any semblance of a war vanished when everyone else got bored and walked away. Most of the momentum in Christianity was towards this battle, and when the fight collapsed, the movement slammed against the ground and left everyone dazed and confused about what to do. I think they still are.

Rob Harrison’s commentary sees through the fog of class and cultural warfare. He claims that Beck’s call for a religious nation is actually a call for more empty moralism. Those crying to Restore Honor would be perfectly happy if people behaved well, followed the rules, and never breathed a word of Christ. Harrison quotes Michel Horton:

Over a half-century ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church, gave his CBS radio audience a different picture of what it would look like if Satan took control of a town in America. He said that all of the bars and pool halls would be closed, pornography banished, pristine streets and sidewalks would be occupied by tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The kids would answer “Yes, sir,” “No, ma’am,” and the churches would be full on Sunday . . . where Christ is not preached.

This is what the larger institutions of Christianity are turning into. They have cut a powerful Being into a small, weak god who so desperately needs their help to fix all the problems of the world. Somehow, the Holy Spirit simply has no power unless they, along with the republican party, change peoples minds.

This absolutely not what the nation needs. Harrison states my thoughts exactly:

The only kind of revival I want to see is one that can only be created by the Holy Spirit, who lives and breathes to talk about Jesus and the Father: the revival of the injudicious and incendiary proclamation of the radical gospel of grace, of the infinite love and unfathomable grace of God in Jesus Christ, capturing the hearts and minds of the people of God. That kind of revival—yes!—will have profound political and social consequences, should it come; but it will never be about those consequences, never be for those consequences. It won’t be about America, about restoring our honor or rebuilding our character. It will only ever be about and for glorifying and praising and giving thanks to God the Father for his Son Jesus Christ, who is ours by the work of his Holy Spirit. It will be for God and God alone.

Missing the Stars for their Light

To preface, I’m stepping out into dangerous territory. The debate often misframed as “evolution vs creationism” is almost as intense as the protestant and catholic conflict in Ireland. It’s almost required to take a strong stand on the issue to be a Christian nowadays. After years of hostile conflict, everyone has strong opinions on the matter. I don't intend to step on toes and take sides, but to offer criticism on the conflict as a whole.

The debate around young-earth creationism and “pretty much everything else” is not whether science “proves the bible”, but about how to read the first chapter of genesis. This “exegesis” involves the context, audience, history, and author to determine the meaning of the text. Good exegesis asks how it fits into the theological narrative; bad exegesis removes it from its context.

A literal interpretation is one way to read Genesis 1, but it certainly isn’t the only one. Latching onto a single interpretation at the expense of the rest of Christ is counterproductive (to say the least). This was what drove the persecution of Galileo. The church thought that the readings in Psalms 96, Psalms 93, 1 Chronicles and more proved that the “firmament” was fixed. However, the orbiting spheres of Galileo contradicted this, leading them abandon the loving nature of God and attack a man over something as theologically irrelevant as the movement of celestial bodies. To them, to question the nature of the firmament was to contradict the authority of scripture, and their stubbornness still haunts them today.

 

Augustine was very careful to use the literary context of a scripture piece to determine its meaning; books of history and instruction ought to be read literally, while poetry and songs ought not. Thus when Psalms 104:5 says “"the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved”, the writer is writing in metaphor, not literally. To read it as poetry still supports the character and power of God, so an alternate exegesis does no harm. But holding onto it at all costs destroys the entire meaning of scripture.

A symbolic reading of Genesis 1 uses this context.  The poetic nature of the writing lends itself to a more lyrical reading, not a literal one. Also, the nature of the audience, a tribe of pre-scientific people, simply would not understand any modern scientific language. Because God is a relational being, he speaks to us where we are, and if that happens to be sheppards in the desert, He’ll speak accordingly.

Moses wrote genesis to show his people how foundational God was in everything, not write a textbook that wouldn’t be understood for two millennial. To reduce this deep theology solely down to a literal scientist reading dodges the actual meaning of Gods character.

I’m not an expert on exegesis; I’m just an ex-soldier in the culture wars who questioned his marching orders. I’ve heard enough of the bickering to have formed ideas of my own. For some great analysis of creationist exegesis please read this criticism. I don’t dare take his arguments as my own, but I will admit it inspired my rant today. Jepson’s point in the above link is not that young-earth creationism is wrong, but that Ken Ham’s exegesis is just outright bad. It’s well worth a read

When you get down to origins, it’s tricky. Even if the universe is just a few thousand years old, it certainly doesn’t LOOK like it; we wouldn’t see hardly a single star in the sky, as the light from the wouldn’t have reached us yet! We could make the silly argument that God created the world with the appearance of age, but that raises the greater question of why the deception in the first place? Yet, a theistic evolution would present a world with death before sin, which creates issues.

We should be humble enough to admit that we don’t know how the world began, and smart enough to trust that God’s bigger then our limited knowledge. Never should we cut down an infinite God down to only what we can comprehend.

A constant reminder that the love of God is completely unconditional needs to be at the center of this debate, above all else. Christ did not come to us to “make sure we know when the universe was created”, but to “seek and save the lost”. THIS is what matters. A Christian can hold any of a number of views about the origin of the universe, as long as he knows and loves the personhood of God. It’s to debate the how of creation and ignore the why. 

Once we get the respectful and loving part down, THEN we can talk about our exegesis.