Punctum Saliens

In part two of this series, I talked about Romans 1:18-21 where Paul claims that everyone can know God from nature. But this doesn’t seem to be quite enough because, as I said in part one, you need to get from God to The Jesus of The Bible in order to be saved. And, despite a valient attempt by the Greeks with Dionysus, it seems darn near impossible to do this — at least to the Christian’s satisfaction. And indeed it must be because Paul writes in Romans 10:13-17

… for “whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

So where does that leave the billions of people who, because of where and when they were born, have never heard the name of Jesus? And doesn’t this put the fate of all these souls on the hands of every Christian? Well, yes, but …

Some Christians have no qualms about sending billions of people to Hell. A professor of New Testament, Ethics, and Philosophy at a Baptist Theological Seminary with whom I had a brief email exchange a few years ago told me straight out: “God may do with us just as he pleases.” He was referring to Romans 9 where in verses 20-23 Paul says

On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory

Paul seems to be saying that God created some people knowing full well they’d end up in Hell. But, what the hell, He’s God, right? Of course, this opens up the whole predestination v free-will issue which I am not going to delve into right now. My point is that some Christians are fine with a Hell kind of like Monaco and a Heaven kind of like Greenland. (Hint … Manoco is the most densely populated country and Greenland is the least populated country.) Of course, aside from the guaranteed 50-acre lot in Heaven, the other advantage to this viewpoint is that it’s more or less out of your hands — your evangelical hands, that is. If God created some people knowing they’d end up in Heaven, they’re gonna get there, right? Whether I tell them about Jesus or not, they are gonna get there. And those who were created to be kindling, no matter how much you preach to them they are beyond hope.

Fair enough, but what about the Maya people who lived before even Columbus sailed the ocean blue? Can God, a God of Love, really condemn them all? My seminary pen-pal says yes. God can create entire civilizations knowing that they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in … hell. He is, after all, a God that is 100% just (apparently just trumps love) and those Mayas just didn’t get it right and didn’t say the right prayers and didn’t believe the right thing. They must be punished in accordance with God’s Law. Ignorantia juris non excusat, afterall. Quite a cavalier attitude for someone who had the luck to be born in the right place at the right time!

All this “God is 100% just” talk is just fine except that God, apparently, does have the ability to go against his nature. There is a loophole in the Law. Apparently, God doesn’t send little babies to Hell. Whew! That’s a relief. That would be just downright cruel and unusual. I mean, those cute little babies don’t deserve eternal damnation just because they are unable to hear about Jesus Christ and are unable to make a conscious decision to follow Jesus. Who cares that the Bible says they take part in the “total depravity of man” and are stained by “original sin” and are “conceived in sin”. They don’t deserve Hell!

But, aren’t the Maya of the 9th century, for example, in the same boat? Aren’t they unable to make a conscious decision about … about … what’s his name? Exactly. They never heard!

But don’t give up. There are other Christians who, perhaps like you, don’t sit well with God sending all those wrong-place-wrong-timers to Hell. How do they get around it? Do they let God chill out a bit and offer some free passes? No. They still insist that God be 100% just but they don’t want people condemned who never had the chance to hear. So what do they do? A little presto-chango … a little abracadabro … and a lot of stay tuned …

Maybe it is the influence of my Fundamentalist, “Give me that Old-Time Religion” upbringing but I sometimes think about the role of the Bible in our lives. Should the Bible (in it’s complete entirety) dictate the way we live or should our current society (including attitudes, social norms, etc.) allow us to label parts of the Bible as irrelevant and thus redefine how we interpret the Bible. In other words: Should we change religion or should religion change us?

And I started thinking about this anew after finding this link on Reiter’s Block to a post on Faith and Theology titled Twelve propositions on same-sex relationships and the church. In this post is the following statement on hermeneutics, the science of interpretation:

For here is a fundamental hermeneutical axiom: “If Biblical texts on any social or moral topic are to be understood as God’s word for us today, two conditions at least must be satisfied. There must be a resemblance between the ancient and modern social situation or institution or practice or attitude sufficient for us to be able to say that in some sense the text is talking about the same thing that we recognise today. And we must be able to demonstrate an underlying principle at work in the text which is consonant with biblical faith taken as a whole, and not contradicted by any subsequent experience or understanding” (Walter Houston).

Now, I know nothing about Walter Houston except that it appears he is an Oxford man whose research interests are “the social-scientific interprtation of the Hebrew Bible, with regard to the topics of social class, economics, and culture; its ethics, especially social ethics; and its hermeneutics.” And this is the first thing that really, really bothers me. This guy is doing university-level research on how to interpret the Bible. And he’s bringing into his research more research on ancient social situations, institutions, attitudes, etc. How the heck am I supposed to have devotions now? How am I supposed to apply anything at all to my life until I get a Ph.D. in ancient studies so that I can figure out what I should apply and what I shouldn’t? Are we really at the mercy of the “scholars” to tell us what is relevant for our lives?

And what does this say about the Bible? Is it really any different than Grimms Fairy Tales which get reinvented every few years; updated for today’s youth? I think you’d be suprised to know how some of the original ones ended — not at all the way Walt tells them. There are people who claim that the Bible is absolute truth. Yet absolute truth should be true, absolutely, no? How can absolute truth change from generation to generation? And doesn’t this make the Bible less like God’s Word and more like Dear Abby? A lot of advice that you can pick and choose from and use or not use depending on your mood — I mean your modern social situation?

And what does this say about God? I was taught that the Bible is the plenary, verbally, infallible, inspired, inerrant Word of God. If this is the case, then it seems to me that we ought not be mucking around with it. After all, “God said it, I believe it, and that’s good enough for me” was a whole-heartedly believed motto in my youth. But now, it’s “God said it, but I’ve decided it’s not applicable to my particular situation, and that’s good enough for me.” I wonder why God put all that stuff in the Bible in the first place, knowing that it would be out of date in just a few millenia. I thought he was omniscient — surely he would have had enough foresight to put some everlasting words in there.

Furthermore, doesn’t this really make Society our new God? Since we are reinterpreting the Bible based on our “social situation or institution or practice or attitude,” if society changes then our Bible changes. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. I thought the Bible was to dictate how we live. But it seems that the modern view is that the way we live dictates how we read the Bible. So society is, essentially, issuing a new edition every few years. You know, updated and revised with more graphs and pictures and 17 hours of special features including a 7 hour “The Making of” featurette. If Society is putting out the new editions, doesn’t this make Society God?

And what is the end result of all this reinterpretation? I doubt very much that passages deemed irrelevant will ever come back into “fashion” so we will slowly eliminate verse after verse, passage after passage, until entire books are inapplicable to our modern social situation. What do you think will remain in 25, 50, or 100 years? I think that pretty much the entire Old Testament is null and void even now. After all, the entire thing is about a nomadic, oppressed by everyone and his cousin, desert-wandering society. That pretty much fails the first of Houston’s two tests so chuck it all! And even a lot of the New Testament is out. I mean, women covering their heads while praying, all men with short hair, divorcees banned from church boards, men only as pastors, deploring homosexuality — we have absolutely nothing in common with those people.

I think the death blow is not far away and will be signaled by the removal of Bibles from those little shelves on the back of the pews. Afterall, if the pastor can’t even mention one verse during her sermon, why do we need them? And the pastor can’t mention a single verse because she needs to be hip and relevant and nothing in there is. Of course, we can always ship our unused copies to third world countries. It will take a couple more generations for their social situations to outgrow the Bible.

Josh McDowell’s argument (in Answers to Tough Questions about the Chrisitian Faith) that archaeology proves the Bible reminds me of the Adventurers Club at Walt Disney World’s Pleasure Island. It also reminds me of a Seinfeld episode (but, then again, what doesn’t?). I talked about this McDowell argument in another post but it was lost in a pretty long rant and I think it’s important enough to warrant repetition on its own.

But first, to the Adventureres Club! This club has these barstools that can move up and down. But they move very, very slowly and the bartender has control over them. They move so slowly that you don’t even notice it — even the person sitting on the barstool doesn’t feel it move. Sounds weird but it’s true. So, you’ll be sitting there with a friend talking, watching what’s going on around you, drinking a cocktail and suddenly it will hit you — you are looking your friend square in the nipple ring! His barstool is almost a foot higher and yours a foot lower than normal. And you really didn’t notice anything because it happened so slowly and, I guess, your brain compensated automatically. It is a shocker when it happens.

McDowell’s argument is kinda like that. He starts off stating a simple, fairly well-defined fact. He then continues talking and at the end he has a general, all-encompassing result that “proves” his point. Most people will say, “Oh, cool!” and continue reading not even realizing that the basis of the argument was to “up the ante” with each comment with no justification — subtle escalation, if you will. But once you see it, it’s not so subtle. His basic argument goes like this …

To start off, he says that the Bible mentions some people and places which archaeology has verified did exist. In other words, “many biblical pasages are historically accurate.” His examples:

• The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned in some of the 15,000 tablets uncovered at Tell Mardikh.
• Archaeological proof that a ruler named Belshazzar existed; that the Hittites had a vast empire; that King Sargon ruled; that the “matters that touch upon history in the Book of Acts are demonstrably accurate.”

Fair enough. I’m going to ignore some potential problems such as how the cities were mentioned — the way we would mention New York City or the way we would mention Altantis — and how many, exactly, is “some” tablets. After citing these few examples, McDowell then concludes that “the findings of archaeology have verified, and in no case disputed, historical points of the biblical record.”

Now, this is not quite as strong a point as it may seem. To say that “archaeology [has] verified … historical points of the biblical record” is a pretty solid statement in my book. But to say that archaeology has not disputed any historical points is a totally different matter. ‘Tis far easier to prove than to disprove — just ask Ravi Zacharias and his white rock with black dots. After all, archaeology hasn’t yet disputed my claim that eight-foot Amazon women were the first settlers in the Andes. They just haven’t found them yet! So, we really should forget the second part and leave it at “the findings of archaeology have verified historical points of the biblical record.”

From here, McDowell starts a very short section where he cites new “conclusions” but without offering more evidence to support. Here’s the trail …

1. “the findings of archaeology have verified, and in no case disputed, historical points of the biblical record.”
2. “[archaeology] is very helpful in illustrating that many biblical passages are historically accurate.”
3. “One cannot stress too strongly the importance of the Bible giving an accurate historical picture.”
4. “Putting it another way, if the authors of Scripture are accurate in their accounts of the things that transpired…”
5. “… it then follows that [the authors of Scripture] cannot be ruled out of court because they happen to mention things out of the ordinary.”

Do you see what he’s done from 1 through 3? He’s gone from “historical points” to “historical passages” to “historical picture“. That’s escalation. Starting with “they mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah which, by the way, is a real place” he ends up with “the Bible paints an accurate historical picture” which implies so much more than just mentioning real places.

But he’s not done! From 3 to 4 he claims to simply “rephrase” his last point but what he actually does is escalate again. He claims that an accurate historical picture is the same thing as an accurate historical record. Again, from starting with “they mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah which, by the way, is a real place” he ends up with an accurate account of what happened, who did what to whom, who said what to whom, etc.

But, believe it or not, he’s still not done. From 4 to 5 he makes yet another escalating move. He claims that since the Biblical writers are accurate historians then everything they say must be considered as truth; even when what they say is “out of the ordinary.” This gives the Bible writers carte blanche to say anything and it is to be believed. Pretty convenient when your goal is to be able to use the Bible as the basis for all kinds of “proofs”.

McDowell’s intial claim is that archaeology proves the Bible but he ends up with something that I think is very different. Does the Bible mention some verifiable places and people? Yes, it does. Does that mean anything more than the Bible used real people and places as a backdrop for its stories? According to McDowell, yes. According to me, there’s not enough evidence to say.

And now to Seinfeld. What I am reminded of is Elaine’s escalation in “The Sponge” episode of Seinfeld where she is trying to find a store that still carries her favorite form of birth control after it was taken off the market:

PHARMACIST: Actually, we have a case left.

ELAINE (excited): A case! A case of sponges? I mean, uh…a case. Huh. Uh…how many come in a case?

PHARMACIST: Sixty.

ELAINE: Sixty?! Uh…well, I’ll take three.

PHARMACIST: Three.

ELAINE: Make it ten.

PHARMACIST: Ten?

ELAINE: Twenty sponges should be plenty.

PHARMACIST: Did you say twenty?

ELAINE: Yeah, twenty-five sponges is just fine.

PHARMACIST: Right. So, you’re set with twenty-five.

ELAINE: Yeah. Just give me the whole case and I’ll be on my way.

Not as subtle as the levitating barstools but only slightly less subtle than McDowell’s argument.

Last week, I dusted off my copy of Josh McDowell‘s book, Answers to Tough Questions about the Christian Faith. McDowell is a Christian apologist. Apologetics is the field of study involved with the systematic defense of a position using historical evidence, philosophical arguments, and scientific investigation. So McDowell, in his book, attempts to logically prove all kinds of things about Christianity: Does God exist? Did Jesus exist? Did Jesus really perform miracles?

I totally understand McDowell’s desire to write such a book and defend Christianity. I think he was basically trying to do exactly what I am trying to do with this blog-o-mine: articulate what he believes and why he believes it. And for this I do not fault him in the least. What I do fault is the extent to which he goes. He tries to prove every aspect of Christianity and leave no room for doubt. Or faith!

After all, what is faith? According to wikipedia, “faith is a belief, trust, or confidence, not based on logic, reason, or empirical data.” If I prove to you that the Christian God exists and is the only god out there and that the Bible is the Word of God and that Jesus really existed and was the Son of God and yada yada yada, then where is there any room for faith? If I really, truly prove all this, then there is no way you can doubt and no way you can demonstrate any faith. After all, who needs any faith that electrons exist or that the earth revolves around the sun? It’s been proven.

So, McDowell is doing a grave disservice to the Christian Faith by trying to eliminate the need for faith. But the good news (for the Christian Faith, anyway) is that I think it totally impossible for him to succeed. Impossible for two reasons. First, I don’t think God will let him succeed because he, McDowell, is basically trying to ruin things for Him, God. Second, since faith is not based on logic, it is impossible to logically prove anything in which you have faith; if you could prove it, it wouldn’t be a matter of faith.

But that’s not all. McDowell is doing another, even more grave disservice to the Christian faith; more grave because he is succeeeding. He is succeeding in looking foolish because his “logical” arguments are anything but logical; his reasoning is anything but reasonable. But don’t take my word for it, read his book. But I’ll give a preview anyway …

Let’s examine the tough question: “Are Christians guilty of circular reasoning?” Here is a summary of his argument for proving that the Bible is God’s Word without the use of circular reasoning, i.e. without first assuming that the Bible is God’s Word:

1. Demonstrate that the Scriptures are basically reliable and trustworthy historical documents by applying the ordinary test of historical criticism to the Scriptures.
2. Realize that Jesus Christ claims to be the Son of God based on His forthcoming resurrection from the dead.
3. Examine the evidence for the resurrection contained in the reliable historical document proved in #1, aka the Bible.
4. Realize that since Jesus is God, He speaks with authority on all matters.
5. Show that Jesus claimed the Old Testament to be the Word of God by quoting from the New Testament.
6. Show that Jesus claimed the writers of the New Testament would be guided by the Holy Spirit in their writing the New Testament by quoting from the New Testament.
7. Since both Old and New Testaments are from God, we can insist, with sound and accurate logic, that the Bible is God’s Word.
8. Q.E.D.

Whew! That’s quite the proof. Each step seems to follow logically from the previous ones and he does, indeed, end up with the right answer without assuming the answer to be true. Kudos!

There are several objections I take with this proof one of which is: what does he mean by “basically reliable and trustworthy”? But I’m going to focus on one that is only a little more subtle. And that is: what does he mean by applying the “ordinary test of historical criticism” to the Scriptures? This is rather important as it’s the basis for his entire proof! I did a Google search on this phrase and came up with two hits. One of them was a site that appears to reproduce McDowell’s argument verbatim and the other uses the same line of reasoning to prove that Jesus was the Son of God. Hmmm… not much help there.

McDowell does discuss archaeology and the Bible, so maybe that will help. What he says in the answer to that “tough question” is that the Bible mentions some places and people which archaeology has verified did exist. In other words, “many biblical pasages are historically accurate.” His examples:

• The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned in some of the 15,000 tablets uncovered at Tell Mardikh.
• Archaeological proof that a ruler named Belshazzar existed; that the Hittites had a vast empire; that King Sargon ruled; that the “matters that touch upon history in the Book of Acts are demonstrably accurate.”

Again, we’ll ignore some potential problems such as how were the cities mentioned — the way we would mention New York City or the way we would mention Atlantis — and how many, exactly, is “some” tablets. Instead we’ll continue with his answer and see where it leads.

After citing these few examples, McDowell then concludes that “the findings of archaeology have verified, and in no case disputed, historical points of the biblical record.” From this starting point, McDowell starts a short narrative during which he continuously “ups the ante” and hopes no one notices:

1. “the findings of archaeology have verified, and in no case disputed, historical points of the biblical record.”
2. “[archaeology] is very helpful in illustrating that many biblical passages are historically accurate.”
3. “One cannot stress too strongly the importance of the Bible giving an accurate historical picture.”
4. “Putting it another way, if the authors of Scripture are accurate in their accounts of the things that transpired…”

In one page — five short paragraphs — McDowell starts with “verified historical points” and ends up making comments about “accounts of the things that transpired” with no intervening justification. Just because the Bible gets a few names of people and places right, we are to trust it as a historically accurate document. Does that make sense? But he’s not done. Oh no! There’s another unjustified escalation …

5. “it then follows that [the authors of Scripture] cannot be ruled out of court because they happen to mention things out of the ordinary.”

Wow! That’s quite a leap! Let me see if I got this figured out. Because the Bible mentions Sodom and Gomorrah and a couple rulers by name, it should not be questioned when it talks about people rising from the dead and virgin births and other “things out of the ordinary“?

While I continue scratching my head over that one, where were we and how did we get here? Oh, that’s right. We were looking at McDowell’s first premise in his proof that the Bible is the Word of God. For lack of any other explanation for the “ordinary test of historical criticism,” we shall assume he is talking about the archaeological verification of historical points of biblical record. So, with that assumption, his “proof” that the Bible is the Word of God stems entirely from the fact that the Bible mentions some verifiable people and places. Hmmm … more head scratching on that one. I know a few other books which get some historical “points” correct. Wonder if God wrote them, too?

In any case, McDowell does succeed in presenting a proof which does not employ circular reasoning. His proof, however, is very weak and the starting premise — the very foundation upon which all the other premises rely — is questionable at best. In my opinion, McDowell should stick to faith and forget the logic. Just say, “I believe the Bible is the Word of God” and leave it at that. Put the faith back in the Christian Faith!

But there’s a disadvantage with taking that stance — a loss of power. Once you give up the right to quote the Bible as a historical document that also happens to be God’s Word — which you do when you believe this on faith and don’t try to prove it — you give up the right to use the “Because The Bible Says So” defense. This means conversations with people who don’t share your faith become very difficult. No longer can you stand there and hurl Bible verses at them, parrying all their objections and arguments with Scriptural snippets. You actually have to think and perhaps draw a logical conclusion or two. You may even have to listen to them and try to understand their point of view. Worse yet, you may even be shown to be wrong! God forbid!

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 …

What does it take to get to Heaven? According to many Christians, all you have to do is believe:

1. Jesus was the Son of God
2. Jesus was born of a virgin
3. Jesus was crucified for our sins
4. Jesus rose from the dead
5. Jesus will come to earth a second time

Sounds simple enough. But the entire thing depends on believing certain facts about a certain historical person. You can’t get by on believing in a god — or even in The God — alone. You must believe in Jesus and you must believe the above five things about Him.

May still sound simple to those of you reading this, but project yourself back to the year 1000 in what is now called Florida. Or to anywhere in Australia before the first Europeans arrived in the 1700′s. Or to certain parts of Africa or Asia today that are not “on the beaten path.” How could you possibly come up with all those facts about a person who lived long before you in a place you probably never dreamed existed? But if you didn’t believe, you were doomed to Hell. At least you’d have lots and lots of company — just think about how many billions of people throughout history have lived outside the “circle of influence,” that is, outside the regions where news of Jesus had spread.

But, surely, there’s a way around this, right? Surely, all these people are not damned for all eternity simply because they were born in the wrong place and at the wrong time? Surely it must be possible to intuit Jesus as the Son of God, intuit His virgin birth and death and resurrection, and intuit His second coming, right? No one really needs to hear all this from somebody else, does one?

Well, it just so happens that it is possible to come up with Jesus without hearing about Jesus from someone who heard about Jesus from someone who heard about Jesus … The ancient Greeks did it. They called him Dionysus instead of Jesus but Dionysus was born of a virgin, was the son of a god, was killed, and rose from the dead. Not bad, huh?

But is belief in Dionysus the same as belief in Jesus? Will belief in Dionysus get me into Heaven? My bet is that just about any Christian you talk to will have one of two answers: “Dion who?” or “No!” Let’s even assume, hypothetically if you must, that Dionysus is going to “come again” so that we have all of the fab five. The answer would still be “No!” Why? Because Dionysus was a pagan god. He wasn’t really God’s Son. He wasn’t Jesus.

But what’s in a name? “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” would it not? Don’t Jesus’ origins and actions make him Jesus? Is there really a sixth criterion — “Thou shalt call His name Jesus?” that we forgot to mention?

Aside from the obvious (i.e. “You have to believe in my ‘Jesus’ and not your ‘Jesus’ because if you believe in your ‘Jesus’ I don’t have as much control over what you believe and, therefore, over you”) I think the reason is that the five facts about Jesus are not the whole story. The whole story is the surrounding drama and historical context. Jesus was Jesus for a lot more reasons than the five listed above. He was Jesus because He was born in Bethlehem, was of the house of David, rode on a donkey, was betrayed, was crucified, and so on and so forth. Jesus was Jesus because He was the Jesus that was predicted in the Old Testament. And only the Jesus predicted in the Old Testament could be the True Jesus. In other words, you can’t just believe in Jesus. You’ve got to believe in The Jesus of My Bible and therefore you have to believe in My Bible and all that entails.

So, what does the Christian do with all those poor souls who are ending up in Hell? How does the Christian sleep at night knowing that right now, this very instant, probably thousands of people are dying without even hearing the name “Jesus”?

In other words … If You’re Gonna Send Billions of People to Hell, You Gotta … stayed tuned for more …

The program did what? Oh, that! That’s not a bug. I meant for your hard drive to be erased when you typed the sequence ctl-alt-cmd-tab-G-7. That’s a feature of the program.

For Christmas in 1981, my parents gave me The Ryrie Study Bible (which I still have). There is a Synopsis of Bible Doctrine written by C. C. Ryrie, himself. Under the section titled The Inspiration of the Bible is the following item:

Neither do we deny that there are problems in the text that we presently have. But problems are quite different from errors. Indeed, in the face of the claims that the Bible apparently makes for itself about inspiration and inerrancy, it would seem more reasonable when confronted with problems to place one’s faith in the Scriptures which have been proved to be true again and again than in any fallible human opinion. Man’s knowledge of these problems is limited and has in some instances been proved to be wrong. Time will undoubtedly continue to bring to light facts which will help solve the yet unsolved problems in the Bible. (Emphasis mine.)

So, the claim as follows:

1. This apparent error is not really an error but just a problem we can’t figure out because
2. the Bible doesn’t contain any errors because
3. the Bible is 100% true because
4. the Bible, itself, claims to be 100% true and because
5. the Bible doesn’t contain any errors

Or the condensed version: The Bible doesn’t contain any errors because the Bible doesn’t contain any errors.

Got that?

I have long hair. Even though my father denies that it’s an issue … it is. It’s obvious to me that it is. Even my niece, when she was five or six, told me “my Mom says that it’s a sin for a man to have long hair.” Out of the mouths of babes! So, I looked it up in the Bible.

She was right. Sort of.

I Corinthians 11:14

Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him

So, it’s not an outright sin; it’s just a dishonor. Not sure what “the wages of dishonor” are. Anyone know? But anyway, it’s right there in black and white. Paul wrote it. Men should not have long hair.

But two things bother me. First, what’s this about nature teaching us? I mean, if we look at nature, we see that the male of many species is the more colorful and has the bigger plummage or longer hair. So, how does that teach us about a man having long hair?

Second, let’s look at the context. What else does Paul say? It’s a little hard for me to understand since I think he asks several rhetorical questions but I’m pretty sure he says that if a woman does not have long hair then she should cover her head while praying or prophesying. And this is because the woman is the glory of man and originated from man and was created for the man’s sake. Hey, that’s Paul talking not me.

So, how can my Dad complain about my long hair while my Mom has short hair and does not cover her head when she prays? My sister used to cover her head but I guess it’s not in fashion any more.

Hopefully, while I’m burning in hell for all eternity God will be kind enough to answer these questions for me.