Archive for the 'st. paul' Category

But it says “faith comes from hearing” …

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Ken
on January 29, 2007
in bible, christian fundamentalism, christianity, god, hell, jesus, judging others, religion and st. paul
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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 …

Is the Doctrine of the Trinity just God on purée?

Published
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Ken
on January 20, 2007
in christianity, god, religion and st. paul
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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.

… Rationalize, Perjurize, and Anathemize

Published
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Ken
on January 20, 2007
in bible, christian fundamentalism, christianity, god, hell, jesus, judging others, religion, religious pluralism and st. paul
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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 …

Bertrand Russell: The Fallacy of Only One True Religion

Published
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Ken
on January 6, 2007
in bertrand russell, christian fundamentalism, god, mysticism, religion, religious pluralism, st. paul, truth and why i am not a christian
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I’m starting a series of posts motivated by the book Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell (1957). I’ll tell you up front that I agree with some of what he says and disagree with some of what he says. I think some of his opinions are right on and others are ill-conceived, illogical, and totally ridiculous.

First from the Preface, written by Russell himself:

I think all the great religions of the world — Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism — both untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true.

A classic argument. Interestingly enough, some Christians make the same claim and use it in their “proof” that Christianity is the only true religion. One oft used “proof” is the Blind Men and the Elephant analogy (also here). The claim is that everyone is totally wrong. Everyone, that is, except for the Christian citing the example and those in his camp who have the ability to somehow see the “real” truth. The problem is that he doesn’t place himself anywhere near the blind men or the elephant. He, apparently, has super powers that let him step out of the scenario, shed his blind fold, see the elephant as an elephant, and allow him to condemn all those poor, poor blind souls to hell for all of eternity. Sort of reminds me of Captain Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn when he admits to reprogramming the computers during the simulation test and, thereby, wins the unwinnable scenario. All too convenient, if you ask me.

Let me remind the gentle reader what we are discussing here. We are talking about God, Allah, Brahman, Atman, etc., etc., etc. We are talking about a being that creates entire universes by speaking. We are talking about a being that knows our innermost thoughts and feelings. We are talking about a being that is totally beyond our comprehension, our imagination. And yet one religion gets it right?

Let me use a contrived example to illustrate. You, me, and Bob are sitting around drinking some really, really good bourbon. Bob says, “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and a gazillion. Guess what it is.” You immediately shout out “42.” I immediately start screaming at you “You’re wrong! It’s not 42. How could it be 42? It’s 7427466391!” and begin flicking lit matches into your hair to simulate the eternal torment you will endure in hell because you are wrong.

That pretty much describes the situation. I can no more know what number Bob is really thinking of than can our elephant-seeing Christian really, truly, completely know God. And if he cannot really, truly, completely know God how can he say that someone else’s understanding of God is wrong?

Paul even backs me up in I Corinthians 13

  1. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
  2. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
  3. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
  4. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

This is Paul talking. You know, St. Paul. The guy who spoke to Jesus — and Jesus spoke back! The guy who wrote a fair amount of the New Testament. He, St. Paul, said that “now I know in part.” Even St. Paul didn’t have all the answers; even he didn’t know what number Bob was thinking of. Is Zacharias really claiming that he knows more than St. Paul? If Paul only knew “in part,” then we, not having spoken with Jesus directly, can only know a fraction of an “in part” and that’s probably not a whole hell of a lot.

But what does this have to do with ol’ Bert? Russell seems to undervalue religion when he claims that conflicting religious ideas cannot both be right because he assumes that man can know god (in whatever form you want to picture god) completely enough that he is able to pass judgement on another idea of god. He also seems to overvalue man’s ability to “know”; if I don’t have the full picture and you don’t have the full picture then who’s to say that both our ideas are not two different aspects of the same, full picture?

For example, let’s assume that god is a cylinder and you and I, in our imperfect, limited, all-to-human knowledge can only see projections of god. I look at god and see a rectangle. You look at god from a different angle and see a circle. Are our two viewpoints necessarily mutually exclusive? Well, obviously not because god is neither a rectangle nor a circle — god is something beyond both our ideas.

In fact, the real answer is to combine our apparently-disjoint knowledge which would allow us all to refine our ideas of god. It’s like those SAT questions where you are given three projections of a three-dimensional object and have to pick the right shape. If you only have a single projection, there is no way you can get the right answer because you don’t see all the details of the object’s surface.

It seems to me that what we really need to do is take the most disparate religious ideas and try to fit them together for it is the disparity itself that tells us we are looking at very different parts of God or we are looking at God from very different angles. It also seems to me that the mystic religious traditions do exactly this. Mystic Christianity has a lot more in common with mystic Islam and mystic Judaism than the main-stream religions have in common with each other.

Did you know we weren’t supposed to judge others?

Published
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Ken
on December 27, 2006
in But what about this verse?, god, judging others, religion and st. paul
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Yup, it says so in the Bible. I’m not talking about the well-known “Judge not lest ye be judged”. I’m talking about a direct statement that the Church should only judge the Church and not the World.

I Corinthians 5:12,13

For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.

Hmmm. Very interesting. So, the church really should not be concerning themselves with anyone outside the church. And if anyone is found to be wicked within the church then he/she is to be kicked out (ex-communicated, if you may) and then pretty much ignored.

So, people should not, in the name of God, picket abortion clinics or protest the Gay Pride parade or rail against homosexuals because of Sep 11. No, they shouldn’t. If the people going to or working at the abortion clinic are part of the church and they are wicked (and they must be if the abortion clinic is being picketed in the first place) then those people should be “removed” from the church. If they are not part of the church then they should be ignored because God will judge them.

Some people really seem to think God is crippled or is bed-ridden with a slipped disc or is away on vacation or something and needs help picking up around the house. If God says that “vengeance is Mine” and St. Paul says that God will judge the wicked, why don’t they believe it? Why do they think God needs help judging?

That’s a weak God they are worshipping.

If you’re gonna insist that men can’t have long hair, you gotta insist that women must

Published
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Ken
on December 26, 2006
in bible and st. paul
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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.