Punctum Saliens

I was feeding our nine month old daughter tonight and started thinking about the milk/meat analogy that Paul uses in I Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 5. Now that we have a baby, this analogy has gone to an entirely new level for me. God, I love a good analogy!

Earlier today, my wife and I were talking about whether or not to start giving our baby some finger food. You know, cereal, soft crackers, and the like. I want to but am scared to death of her choking on a bit of food. We make our own baby food and are no longer puréeing everything but are leaving it a little chunky. Every once in a while, she will try to swallow too fast or something and will start gagging a little. Nothing major and she always manages to get it down but when she does this I feel myself starting to panic.

So I started thinking about the transition from milk to meat, both the physical one with actual food and the metaphorical one with spiritual food. First of all, the transition is a slow one. No baby actually goes from drinking milk one day to eating meat the next. It takes time to work in new foods slowly. You have to be careful to not overstress the baby’s digestive system and you have to avoid creating food allergies from introducing certain things too quickly. The same thing applies with spiritual food. I think there has to be a gradual change in our spiritual diet; we have to work our way slowly from milk to meat. This means that there must be more than two categories of food. There must also be the spiritual equivalent of rice cereal and mashed sweet potatoes. Now, this also means that just because you’re not drinking the milk it does not mean that you’re ordering the holy lamb shank.

Secondly, the transition cannot progress without a little grimacing and gagging. As we introduce new foods into our daughter’s diet, invariably the first few bites give us much laughter as she shudders and shakes and contorts her mouth in reaction to the brand new flavors. But as we eat a little bit to show her how good it is and she gets used to the new tastes, she is soon eating faster than we can fill the spoon. And there will be some gagging as she eats bigger and bigger pieces. It’s just something that I have to accept as she gets used to eating. Again, there is a parallel with spiritual food. Some truths and doctrines may not seem very appetizing at first and others will be difficult to swallow. But we can’t just ignore them and rationalize our way out of taking them in. If we do that, we’ll end up eating diced peas and carrots the rest of our lives.

All this got me thinking about the Christian doctrines we have today. My guess is that anyone you talk to will probably say that these doctrines — the virgin birth, the Trinity, the historical Jesus, etc. — are spiritual “meat.” But I wonder. Just as a baby has no idea about the foods she’s not eating yet, can we really say whether our doctrines are meat or mashed taters? They may seem solid enough to cut with a knife but could they not be mashed up versions of something bigger and better but totally beyond our comprehension right now? Maybe we are still eating puréed notions of God.

According to Addition Does Not a Contradiction Make on ApologeticsPress.org it is perfectly fine for the Bible to tell only part of the truth. It’s ok to leave out a few details here and there. Well, I say, “That’s kooky talk!”

Given the authority that the Christian apologist claims the Bible has (you know, being the The Word of God and all) I think it only reasonable that the Bible be held to the same standards to which we hold witnesses in our courts of law. After all, the Bible is effectively a “witness” for God, right? So, the Bible should tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Let’s look at one of the scenarios in the aforementioned article as it would take place on Perry Mason. I think you’ll agree that John doesn’t come off as a very credible witness.

That other lawyer who always loses: “And as you said in your statement to the police, who was at the tomb that Sunday morning?”

John: “Mary Magdalene.”

That other lawyer who always loses: “No more questions.”

Perry Mason: “Isn’t it true that there was another Mary at the tomb that day?”

John: “Uh, yes.”

Perry Mason: “And this ‘other Mary’, isn’t it true that it was, in fact, Mary the mother of James?”

John: “Yes. Yes it was.”

Perry Mason: “And isn’t it also true that Salome was there, too!”

John: “Well … yes. Yes, she was.”

Perry Mason: “And isn’t it also true that Joanna was there! Isn’t it true that there were at least four women at the tomb that day!”

John: “Well … … yes.”

Perry Mason: “Why did you not tell the police this? What were you hiding? How many women were really there? Five? Ten? A Hundred?”

That other lawyer who always loses: “Objection! Badgering the witness.”

Perry Mason: “Withdrawn.”

This is the second in a series of posts that began here. When we last left our intrepid Christian — defender of the one, true Jesus — she was not sleeping too well because of the constant, nagging fear that she should be doing more to spread the name of Jesus throughout the world. How else would poor, hopeless souls find their way to Heaven and avoid the eternal torment of Hell? And how could her God, a God of love, send so many to Hell just because they were born at the wrong time and in the wrong place? Shouldn’t there be some way for them to change their destiny?

Then she went to church and her faith in her God was restored because of what she heard. For her pastor was preaching from Romans 1:18-21

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.

Whew! Our intrepid Christian sighs a great sigh of relief. All is well with her faith in her all-loving God. For, as her pastor so eloquently relays to her, God has nothing to do with all those souls going to Hell. It seems that they have known about Him the whole time and have made a conscious decision to reject Him. So, of course, they deserve the eternal damnation they are about to receive.

Paul tells us that both God and the Christian are absolved of all responsibility for anyone going to Hell because, from the beginning, God’s “invisible attributes … have been clearly seen.” Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Invisible attributes … clearly seen … how could I have been so blind? Through nature, i.e. “what has been made”, God has made Himself evident to everyone and “they know God” but do “not honor Him as God.” So, everyone — no matter when or where they were born — can know God and know Him as God.

Well, this does seem evident to me. Afterall, how many cultures have gods derived from nature? There are sun gods, moon goddesses, gods of the harvest, gods of war, goddesses of fertility, gods of wine. After all, religion is one of the things that make us humans human, right?

One problem is that, in practice, this really doesn’t work out the way Paul says it can. When was the last time you heard a missionary speak at your church’s annual Missionary Convention (you have one of those, right?) and give the following report:

“We bushwacked through the jungle into the remotest part of the country, to a place where no outsider had ever been, and stumbled upon a small tribe of natives who were holding a baptism service in which they were baptizing ‘in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’. They then recited the Lord’s Prayer, said the Apostle’s Creed, and held an alter call for the neighboring tribes after which the pastor started hut-to-hut visitation to minister to the shut-ins.”

This may sound silly, but think about what it would take for someone you didn’t know anything about to convince you that their religion was the same as your religion. And let’s say that they didn’t go to church or have a copy of The Bible? Without those two things, would it even be remotely possible?

The second problem we saw in the previous post. Just believing in God is apparently not enough. You have to get from God to Jesus. And not just any Jesus but The Jesus of The Bible. This part is not mentioned here by Paul. They could have a virgin-born-son-of-a-god miracle-working tree-crucified rose-from-the-dead god-man and it still wouldn’t be close enough to The Bible’s Jesus to get them into Heaven.

Furthermore, this is being written by a man who spoke directly to Jesus and not from a man who actually found the “right” God from nature. In fact, I know of no one mentioned in the Bible — Old or New Testaments — who found God from nature. Everyone either spoke directly to God/Jesus or heard about God/Jesus from someone else. Please correct me if I’m wrong, here.

So, all this “God is evident from nature” is either a rationalization to make us feel better about God and about ourselves for not “getting out there” more or it is a flat out lie. Either way, it allows us to anathemize the “poor souls” so their ending up in Hell doesn’t seem quite so bad. Plus, we can all sleep better at night, feeling safe and secure in the loving arms of our loving God and knowing that those in Hell have no one to blame but themselves.

But wait … and stay tuned …