Posts filed under ‘Current Trends’
Christianity in a Culture of Narcissism: From Epicurus to Gilbert
“I know that God wouldn’t want me to be unhappy!” I have heard these words time and time again over the course of my ministry, usually from people who wanted to make decisions that, according to the Bible, were sinful. Yet, these people could not fathom a God who would ever want them to choose a difficult or painful path – a path that would make them unhappy – even if it formed in them obedient righteousness.
The search for human happiness was perhaps most famously forged by the fourth century BC Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicurus asserted that a truly happy life was characterized primarily by two features: a sense of peace and the absence of pain. If a person had these two things, he would be happy. How did Epicurus accomplish such a peace-filled and pain-free life? First, he sought self-sufficiency and second, he lived with a large group of friends. Epicurus, it seems, was the original college student – venturing out from his parents’ place with lots of his buddies by his side. And though Epicurus himself was actually quite restrained in his morality and actions, his philosophy eventually gave rise to hedonism, a way of life which recklessly trades that which is peace-filled and pain-free for parties and pleasure.
For our purposes, it is important to understand how Epicurus related his search for happiness to his faith in God. For the relationship Epicurus establishes between happiness and God serves as an almost precise blueprint for those today who cannot fathom a God whose ultimate goal would be anything other than their personal happiness. Epicurus says of a person’s belief in God:
Attach to your theology nothing which is inconsistent with incorruptibility or with happiness; and think that a deity is invested with everything which is able to preserve this happiness.[1]
For Epicurus, God does not define what it means to be happy. Instead, happiness defines what it means to have God. If you are not happy, then, the problem is not with you, it’s with God! God is merely a means to the end of your personal happiness. He is not your sovereign ruler and creator, but your divine therapist whose fundamental function is to make you feel better. He is a “happy pill” of sorts – a pick-me-up to help you avoid the painful realities of life. Thus, if happiness eludes you, the solution is as simple as shifting your theological sensibilities: “Attach to your theology nothing which is inconsistent with…happiness.”
Epicurus’ philosophy has been replayed over and over again throughout the ages. It has been most recently and famously espoused by Elizabeth Gilbert in her bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia. Gilbert, by her own admission, was a woman who had it all. She was married to a devoted husband and lived in a giant house in the New York suburbs. The plan was, shortly after she turned thirty, the couple would have children – they would start a family. As her story opens, she is thirty-one. But on a cold November night, locked in her bathroom, she discovers what she has always intuitively known: she does not want to have kids. She doesn’t even want to be married. Gilbert explains it like this:
My husband and I – who had been together for eight years, married for six – had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop…But I didn’t – as I was appalled to be finding out – want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant.[2]
So how does Gilbert solve her crisis of marriage and motherhood? Existentially, of course! She divorces her husband and takes off globetrotting – to Italy, India, and Indonesia. And it is during her international adventures that she comes to a conclusion about God that, even though it is altogether unsurprising in its substance, is jarring in its frankness:
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted…You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.[3]
“Attach to your theology nothing which is inconsistent with…happiness.” Gilbert falls lock step into a crassly Epicurean vision of God. She is right at home with a “do-it-yourself” theology. If one version of God doesn’t work for her – if He doesn’t bring her the happiness, joy, peace, and fulfillment she desires as she defines these things – she is perfectly comfortable redefining her theology as much as necessary to suit her longings. God exists solely to make her feel good about herself. God exists to make Elizabeth Gilbert happy.
No matter how attractive Elizabeth Gilbert’s custom made system of doing theology may first appear, it is fundamentally dishonest. It was the atheist stalwart Friedrich Nietzsche who knew that theological cherry picking was a futile and academically vacuous pursuit: “Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea…one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces.”[4] You can take it all or leave it all when it comes to theology, Nietzsche says, but you can’t take only certain parts. Nietzsche left it all. At least he was intellectually – and spiritually, for that matter – consistent.
There is a bitter irony for the person who believes in a therapeutic God who would never want him to be unhappy. In a limited and carefully qualified sense, he’s right! God does not desire the unmitigated misery of His people. Jesus opens His famed Sermon on Mount with a series of blessings, widely known as the Beatitudes. He declares:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted…Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3-4, 10)
The word “blessed” is rendered in many translations as “happy.” Though I prefer the translation “blessed,” “happy” is not altogether inappropriate, as long as the substance of Jesus’ happiness is properly understood. But in order to properly understand Jesus’ happiness, we must first notice the paradoxical nature of Jesus’ statements. Those who are poor in spirit…can be happy! Those who mourn…can be happy! Even those who are persecuted…can be happy! People in seemingly very unhappy situations can nevertheless be happy! But how? True happiness, Jesus teaches, has nothing to do with a person’s external circumstances, or even with his desires, dreams, and feelings, but with his eschatological and eternal hope. Those who brandish about the statement “God wouldn’t want me to be unhappy” as a license to do what they want, regardless of whether or not what they want is sinful, don’t really care about God’s happiness for them because they really don’t care about how God’s happiness comes to them – for sometimes, God’s happiness comes only through personal suffering and prodigious sacrifice.
How are you happy? Are you happy only if you get your own way? Or, are you happy when Christ works His way through you? The first happiness is nothing but narcissism. The second happiness is comfortingly indelible, even in a broken and sinful world that relentlessly seeks to bring us sorrow. This is why I find my happiness – no, my joy – in Christ. As the prophet exhorts, “Find your joy in the LORD” (Isaiah 58:14).
[1] Diogenes Laertius, 10.123
[2] Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia (New York: Viking, 2006), Chapter 2.
[3] Gilbert, Chapter 70.
[4] Friedrich Nietzsche in R.J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 99.
Christianity in a Culture of Narcissism: From Darwin to Dawkins
Growing up, one of my favorite books was P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? If you have kids, or if you grew up with my generation, or even the generation before, you no doubt remember this jewel of a children’s story. It features a baby bird who hatches while his mother is out worm-hunting. When he discovers he is alone in the nest, he ventures out looking for his mother. But he does not know who she is or what she looks like. So he goes to a kitten and asks her if she is his mother. The cat remains silent. So he goes to a hen. No dice. She’s the wrong kind of bird. He journeys on to find a dog. But the dog insists she is not the bird’s mother. Desperate, the little bird presses on to even inanimate objects, asking if they are his mother – a car, a tugboat, a plane, and finally an enormous power shovel. “Are you my mother?” the bird asks the shovel. The shovel, much to the little bird’s fright, snorts smoke out of its exhaust stack and picks up the bird and lifts him high, high into the sky. But then, in a twist of fate, the shovel drops him right back into his nest just in time for his real mother to return. And when the bird sees her, he sings with delight, “I know who you are. You are not a kitten. You are not a hen. You are not a dog. You are not a cow. You are not a boat, or a plane, or a Snort!” – the little bird’s name for the power shovel – “You are a bird, and you are my mother.”[1]
Perhaps the reason this story has resonated with the hearts of so many children for so many years is because it touches on a need all of us have – to belong. The little bird wanted to know to whom he belonged. And so do we. As kids, we want to feel as though we belong to our parents. As we grow, we want to belong to a group of our peers. As we get yet older, we often will give ourselves to one another in marriage and thus belong to a spouse.
This desire to belong is not surprising. After all, the Bible says we are created in “the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) and, as such, are ultimately designed to belong to Him. As the apostle Paul reminds us, “You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NLT). We all want to belong. And, by faith in Christ, we can belong, above everything and everyone else, to God.
Though we all feel a need to belong, a narcissism disguised and gilded in the sterile white lab coats of those who believe that science as a discipline demands a naturalistic worldview in toto is seeking to slowly undermine and supplant this natural desire. This narcissism is promoted by people who, with a paradoxical twist of religious fervency, ground themselves in a system of Darwinian evolution hitched to a strident atheism which espouses not a human desire to belong, but a human fight for survival.
It is well known that the mechanism by which Darwinian evolution works is Natural Selection, or, to use the phrase originally coined by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer, “the survival of the fittest.” Charles Darwin explains the principle:
Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.[2]
Evolution, Darwin claims, lurches forward because those with less desirable traits die off while those with more desirable traits survive, passing on their superior attributes to subsequent generations. These subsequent generations, in turn, grow stronger and more environmentally adept. In short, they “evolve.” Survival, then, becomes a mark of success in a Darwinian system where propagation of oneself is the name of the game. Can there be a goal more blatantly narcissistic than this?
The difficulty with Darwin’s theory, of course, is that, even while it has succeeded at elevating biological narcissism to a cause célèbre, it has nevertheless failed to explain why humans sometimes act so un-narcissistically – even downright charitably! Indeed, Darwin decried this human tendency toward charity and warned of its ill effects:
We civilized men…do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.[3]
“If only,” Darwin opines, “we would not labor so compassionately to ‘check the process of elimination.’ If only we weren’t so charitable to each other!” According to Darwin, a narcissistic fight for one’s own survival and propagation that results in other, less fit creatures dying off and dying out is in line nature’s ultimate goal and good.
But this still does not solve the problem of human charity. If we are indeed the products of an inexorable evolutionary march propelled by Natural Selection, what causes us to trade the narcissism innate to this system for an unnatural, and even counterproductive, altruism?
Committed atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins sought to address this difficulty in his 1976 classic, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins explains that, even when people act in seemingly altruistic ways, their genes are still driving them to act in a manner which ultimately protects their survival and insures their propagation. So if a mother runs into a burning car to save her children, for instance, she is doing so not out of authentic altruism, but so that her genes can live on in her children, even if she dies. Likewise, if someone helps someone else to whom is he not genetically related, Dawkins claims he is doing so out of “reciprocal altruism,”[4] a term Dawkins borrows from the sociobiologist Robert Trivers, which is essentially the genetic equivalent of the old saw, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” In other words, when a person does something “nice” for someone else, that person expects some sort of genomic favor in return. Yet, not all cases of altruism can be accounted for so coldly. For instance, when a fireman risks his own life, storming a burning building to save another, how can one account for this biologically? He is usually not related to the person trapped inside. Thus, he cannot be said to be working out of an evolutionary mandate to propagate his progeny. And his chance of receiving a favor in return, though possible, is certainly not probable enough to drive the risk he takes. Even Dawkins must admit that there is such a thing as “pure, disinterested altruism” that “has no place in nature.” Indeed, it has “never existed before in the whole history of the world.”[5] Evolutionary biology simply cannot account for all the mysteries of human philanthropy.
If nothing else, the evolutionary attack on human charity in favor of a calculated, genomic narcissism shows that, no matter how prevalent narcissism may be in our world, it is not altogether systemic. There are still times and places in which people look outside of themselves. Belonging to each other through love and kindness still count. And lest one cynically protests that belonging is merely an underhanded means to propagation and survival, we must remember that sometimes, belonging means risking one’s livelihood and even life. Belonging to an army means risking one’s existence for the sake of a cause. Belonging to a philanthropic organization means risking one’s health and wellbeing for the sake of fighting the AIDS pandemic in Africa. And belonging to Christ means losing one’s life for the sake of the gospel. That’s not narcissistic. That’s selfless. And that’s still good…no matter what Natural Selection may claim.
[1] P.D. Eastman, Are You My Mother? (Random House Books, 1960), 62.
[2] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1909), 64.
[3] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (forgottenbooks.org, 1874), 116-117.
[4] Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 202.
[5] Dawkins, 201.
Facebook Follies
“Does Facebook Wreck Marriages?” So asked the provocative title of Quentin Fottrell’s blog for the Wall Street Journal.[1] Of course, we know that Facebook in and of itself is not responsible for the breakdown of wedded bliss; rather, it is the way people use Facebook that damages marriages. Still, the statistics cited in Fottrell’s article are staggering:
- More than a third of divorce filings last year contained the word “Facebook.”
- Over 80% of U.S. divorce attorneys say they’ve seen a rise in the number of cases using social networking.
- Of the fifteen cases Gary Traystman, a divorce attorney in New London, Connecticut, handles per year where computer history, texts, and emails are admitted as evidence, 60% involve Facebook exclusively.
Why does Facebook play such a key role in so many connubial collapses? Fottrell brings in an expert for keen insights:
“Affairs happen with a lightning speed on Facebook,” says K. Jason Krafsky, who authored the book Facebook and Your Marriage with his wife Kelli. In the real world, he says, office romances and out-of-town trysts can take months or even years to develop. “On Facebook,” he says, “they happen in just a few clicks.” The social network is different from most social networks or dating sites in that it both re-connects old flames and allows people to “friend” someone they may only met once in passing. “It puts temptation in the path of people who would never in a million years risk having an affair,” he says.
Krafsky’s last line is key: “It puts temptation in the path of people.”
Jesus knew how readily people can fall to temptation when it is placed even peripherally in their path. This is why He warns His disciples, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak” (Mark 14:38). Jesus’ caution against temptation and His diagnosis of the flesh’s relative spiritual strength, or rather, its lack thereof, ought to be taken seriously.
When a marriage is in disarray, Facebook can provide an all too easily accessible foray into the arena of temptation. Its appeal lies at two opposing poles. On the one side, Facebook provides a public forum for a scorned spouse to spout off about how he or she has been wronged and receive eager and many times blind support from friends who are, at best, only partially informed about the situation. On the other side, though Facebook is public, it deceptively feels private. After all, it’s only “friends” who can see what you are posting – that is, until a divorce attorney subpoenas records from your Facebook account and presents them in court as incriminating evidence.
Both the public and private faculties of Facebook make its appeal to those in rocky relationships almost irresistible. But when Facebook is used to arbitrate an unsettled union, it inevitably leads to ruin. For it allows couples to steep themselves in the sometimes rotten advice from friends or the sometimes illicit advances of lovers while avoiding conversation with the person they need to be talking with the most – the other spouse.
So, how can a couple use Facebook to connect with friends – old and new alike – while steering clear of its more seedy enticements? A few practical, common sense safeguards can go a long way to protecting your integrity – and your marriage.
- First, make sure your spouse has access to your Facebook account. There is no reason why your spouse should not know what you’re posting online. If you’re trying to surprise him or her using a little help from your Facebook friends, find another way. Sustained trust trumps an occasional need for the secrecy of a surprise.
- Second, if your marriage is troubled, personal details are not Facebook appropriate. You don’t need uneven advice from partial pals, you need professional guidance from a licensed therapist. Facebook is a great place to post thought-provoking quotes, interesting articles, and even pictures of your Memorial Day backyard barbeque or your newborn bouncing baby boy. It is not an appropriate place, however, to air your, or someone else’s, dirty laundry. Falstaff, though he was a shameful coward in Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth, proved to be wise beyond his actions when he said, “The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav’d my life.”[2] Discretion on Facebook may just save your marriage.
- Third, be discerning. Believe it or not, regardless of a person’s Facebook classification as your “friend,” not everyone you communicate with on social networking sites has your best interest at heart. And not everyone who proffers advice via the internet knows what he or she talking about, or, as the case may be, “posting” about. This means that you should not set yourself up to get bad advice from your Facebook friends by posting sordid details of your life gone awry, nor should you insert yourself via public posts into someone else’s messy Facebook spectacle. If you’re truly concerned about someone, a face-to-face conversation, or, if that is impossible, a private conversation by some other means, works much better than a public posting.
Finally, a sober estimation of your own sinful desires and weaknesses may be the best safeguard against the wily relational entrapments that internet social networking can bring. No matter how strong you may think your marriage is, all it takes is one click or keystroke to lead it down the road to ruin. And so we pray, “Lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:13).
[1] Quentin Fottrell, “Does Facebook Wreck Marriages?” The Wall Street Journal (5.21.12).
[2] William Shakespeare, Henry the Fourth (Part 1, Act 5, Scene 4).
The Problem with Our Politics
“Our politics is broken.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a political pundit utter these words on a cable news show. Usually, when a pundit speaks of broken politics, he or she is referring to the divisive and downright derogatory displays that so regularly parade across our national stage. These pundits long for the days when politicians could reach across the aisle and work with others who held different points of view to get things done and to move our nation into a bold and bright new future. “Why can’t we all just get along?” these pundits wonder.
This dream, of course, is encapsulated in our nation’s de facto, though not official, longtime motto: E pluribus unum. “Out of many, one.” We dream of the day when those in the halls of power – and the population who votes for them – will finally be able act civilly. And yet, as nice of a sentiment as E pluribus unum is, it is neither Scriptural nor realistic. Simple observation verifies this. We may be many in this nation. But we are certainly not one.
This is why the Scriptural vision of unity, rather than being ad hoc and accidental, is grounded in Christ and is intentional. The apostle Paul explains:
There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called – one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
Paul uses the adjective “one” seven times in these verses. And in each instance, the adjective modifies God and His gifts. Thus, true unity can only be founded in the one true, Triune God. Scriptural unity begins with oneness of God and not with the multiplicity of man, as does our folksy national motto.
But our problem goes deeper than a simple lack of political unity. For disunity is merely a symptom of a more systemic and sinister problem. Our deeper problem is that we buy into so many of the impossibly lofty things our politics and politicians promise. We have saddled our politics with the responsibility of:
Fostering unity, creating jobs, saving the environment, caring for the poor, reducing the deficit, cutting spending, supporting unions and workers’ rights, formulating corporately friendly economic policies, reforming entitlements, ensuring the long-term fiscal solvency of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, providing for a world-class education, both deporting illegal immigrants and providing them a path to citizenship, and restoring prosperity.
If we just had all of that, then we would be happy. Hmmm. Is it any wonder we’re disaffected and disillusioned? Does anyone really believe any human institution can deliver on all that?
Last week, I came across a column by New York Times writer Ross Douthat, where he poetically and succinctly summarizes the problem with the demands we make on our politics. Douthat writes:
When strong religious impulses coexist with weak religious institutions, people become more likely to channel religious energy into partisan politics instead, and to freight partisan causes with more metaphysical significance than they can bear. The result, visible both in the “hope and change” fantasies of Obama’s 2008 campaign and the right-wing backlash it summoned up, is a politics that gives free rein to both utopian and apocalyptic delusions, and that encourages polarization without end.[1]
This is precisely right. For all the help politics and politicians might be able to offer, and for all the good they might be able to do (cf. Romans 13:1-5), they are not up to carrying the weight of the metaphysical freight of the divine. The expansive power of God is simply too much for them to bear. Indeed, it is too much for any human to bear. This is why strong religious institutions, as Douthat duly notes, that strongly trust in and teach the providence of God are so important. For they proclaim the message that there is only one Messiah of metaphysical proportions and powers –and His name is Jesus. Anyone else who attempts to do Jesus’ job for Him will fail miserably. It is foolish to place superhuman hopes on simple humans, be they politicians or anyone else.
The upshot of placing superhuman hopes on simple humans can do nothing but result in the disastrous vacillation between “utopian and apocalyptic delusions” to which Douthat refers. When a new politician is elected, we speak of him as if he will be able to usher in an eternal golden age of prosperity and unity. When he unsurprisingly fails, we cry that the sky is falling.
I would submit that the Church stands at a particularly privileged position in our current political environment. For we can serve as advocates for the One who can and does do what politics and politicians can only dream of. We can serve as advocates for the One who not only provides for human beings, but changes human hearts. We can serve as advocates for Jesus. Sadly, many Christians have all too readily and willingly traded an advocacy of Jesus for advocacy of a certain candidate or political position. Not that it is bad in and of itself to thoughtfully support a candidate, but we must remain clear on what our politics and politicians can and cannot do. For our politics and politicians will not last. And they also will not deliver – at least not in the way we might hope. Jesus and His promises, however, will last and they will deliver. In fact, not only will Jesus last and deliver, He will prevail. As the Church, then, our call is to advocate for Him first.
[1] Ross Douthat, “A Nation of Osteens and Obamas,” The Washington Post (5.16.12).
What We Say (And Don’t Say) About Homosexual Practice
When President Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC News on May 9,[1] I knew I would get a lot of questions. And sure enough, I did. This is why the pastors of Concordia have prepared a Christian response to same-sex marriage specifically and homosexual practice generally. You can find the response here. This response will also be published this week in a booklet along with an appendix which will answer some of the questions we have received in response to the document.
I have found this whole brouhaha (to use a technical, theological term) to be fascinating – not so much because of the common, perennial questions I have received concerning same-sex marriage, but because of the way many prominent Christians have responded to this now top-of-mind topic.
It saddens me that when questions are asked, so many Christian people have responded in a breathtakingly nebulous way. Take, for instance, popular Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans. In her blog, “How To Win A Culture War And Lose A Generation,” she decries the way in which the Church has responded to homosexuality:
Every single student I have spoken with believes that the Church has mishandled its response to homosexuality.
Most have close gay and lesbian friends.
Most feel that the Church’s response to homosexuality is partly responsible for high rates of depression and suicide among their gay and lesbian friends, particularly those who are gay and Christian.
Most are highly suspicious of “ex-gay” ministries that encourage men and women with same-sex attractions to marry members of the opposite sex in spite of their feelings.
Most feel that the church is complicit, at least at some level, in anti-gay bullying.[2]
Here, Evans has no problem being sharply specific. Evans places her finger squarely on the pulse of something profoundly tragic: Those who are not Christian feel belittled and berated by the way traditional, orthodox Christians have often responded to homosexuality. They have come across as judgmental, self-righteous, bigoted, and they have even contributed, at least in a complicit way, to the heart-wrenching stories of anti-gay bullying we read in the news. Tragic.
So what is Evans’ way forward? Her last sentence, “Stop waging war and start washing feet,” seems to present itself as her proposed solution, but I am still left puzzled. Though I know there are some bigoted, self-righteous, mean-spirited Christians who delight in waging culture wars, brandishing about the word “sinner” like a weapon of mass destruction while refusing to serve and love according to Jesus’ call and command, I know many other Christians who make it their life’s work to humbly call sinners to repentance while serving them in love. I see the service part of a Christian’s vocation in her statement, “Start washing feet,” but what about the calling to repentance part? Are we not supposed to do both?
Interestingly, Evans wrote a follow-up post where she proposes yet another solution: “We need to listen to one another’s stories.”[3] People’s stories do matter. And listening is terrific, yes. But to what end? Do we have nothing other than our own stories to share? Isn’t the glory of Christianity that it is extra nos, that is, “outside of us” – that we have a righteousness not our own to save us from sin all too tragically our own (cf. Philippians 3:9)? We need to come to grips with the fact that what Jesus says about us is far more important than what we say about ourselves. His story matters more than ours because His story redeems ours.
There’s an old country song by Aaron Tippin where he sings, “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.”[4] I fear that, when it comes to homosexual practice and same-sex marriage, we have abdicated our duty of standing – not charging, not belittling, not berating, not politicking – but just standing – standing in the truth and speaking that truth with grace.
The apostle Paul writes, “Stand firm in the faith” (1 Corinthians 16:13). Notice the definite article in front of the word “faith.” We are to stand firm not just in any faith, but in the faith. This means that we say what the faith says: Homosexual practice is a sin. It is one of a million ways that humans have invented for themselves to break God’s law, just like I invent for myself a million ways to break God’s law too. But God loves sinners. God loves you. That’s why He sent Jesus to die and be raised for you. So repent of your sin and trust in Him. And please allow me to walk with you and love you as do so, or even if you do not.
There. Was that so hard?
[1] “Obama Affirms Support For Same Sex Marriage,” ABC News (5.9.12).
[2] Rachel Held Evans, “How To Win A Culture And Lose A Generation” (5.9.12).
[3] Rachel Held Evans, “From Waging War To Washing Feet: How Do We Move Forward?” (5.11.12).
[4] Aaron Tippin, “You’ve Got To Stand For Something,” RCA Records (1991).
Pastor Zach's Blog 
It’s All Relative
Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little…That’s because most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can cheat a little and still keep that “good person” identity. Most people won’t cheat so much that it makes it harder to feel good about themselves.
The basis for Brooks’ thesis is a new book by Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology at Duke University, titled The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Through a series of surprisingly creative studies, Ariely finds that people are disturbingly comfortable bending moral standards to suit their own purposes…as long as they don’t bend them too much. For instance, for the purposes of his book, Ariely asked a blind and a sighted colleague to take several taxi rides. The drivers happily cheated the sighted client by taking longer routes in order to rack up higher fares. They did not, however, cheat the blind client nearly as often because of the stinging psychological guilt associated with cheating a blind person.
Brooks summarizes Ariely’s findings:
For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer – part of a daily battle against evil.
But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I’m still a good person.
The Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.
Brooks and Ariely assert that when it comes to our modern moral reckonings, most people assume close is good enough. But are Brooks and Ariely right in their analysis?
One of the bad habits I have is reading what commenters post at the bottom of online articles. These comments range from the insightful to the mundane to the paranoid to the bellicose. Nevertheless, the reason I read these commenters – as maddening as they can sometimes be – is because they give me a sense of our society’s zeitgeist. It is with this in mind that I had to chuckle at the top comment, as chosen by The New York Times, on David Brooks’ piece:
Most people in the world today are just trying to survive. A billion people don’t have access to clean water. In America, we see people who destroyed the economy not prosecuted. We see soldiers fight in far off lands, many coming home damaged for life. We see corporations allowed to buy elections. Millions of dollars are thrown away on tawdry campaign commercials that only enrich the coffers of media companies.
There is so much angst in the world today, and Mr. Brooks thinks we should worry about stealing office supplies, or eating an extra cookie.
Thank you for proving Mr. Brooks’ point, kind commenter. Notice how this commenter gauges morality. There are big moral issues – things like dirty drinking water, crimes left unprosecuted, physically and emotionally wounded soldiers, and corporate corruption – and there are small moral issues – things like stealing office supplies or eating an extra cookie. Who has time to sweat the small stuff when there are bigger fish to fry?
But notice the subversive self-aggrandizement that undergirds this commenter’s response. For all of the immoral injustices this commenter identifies are “out there.” Immorality resides in greedy politicians and corrupt corporations, not in people who casually comment on New York Times pieces. This commenter intimates his own morality by decrying others’ immorality. He implies his own relative goodness by opining about the macro-moral problems of our world while jettisoning the micro-moral failings of his life. He seems to believe, to use Brooks’ language, in his own “essential goodness.”
All this is not to say our macro-moral problems are somehow unimportant. They are vitally important. But our micro-moral problems matter too. Why? Because there is no macro-immorality problem in our world that did not begin as a micro-immorality problem in a life. Big injustices begin one person and one decision at a time. Just ask Adam and Eve.
David Brooks concludes his column with a sage warning: “We’re mostly unqualified to judge our own moral performances, so attach yourself to some exterior or social standards.” Brooks is almost right. An exterior standard is indeed necessary to gauge human morality in any sort of meaningful way. But I would argue that this exterior standard should not be a social one. For social standards, though they might be relatively external to us, are not absolutely external to us, because they are based on the collective consensus of human societies – you and me. Thus, even morality guided by social standards ultimately collapses into an internal moral narcissism. Only God is absolutely external. Therefore, in the Christian view, only God can serve as humanity’s enduring moral compass. Only God can judge our moral performances for what they truly are. Is it any wonder the preacher of Hebrews declares of the Lord, “‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge His people’” (Hebrews 10:30)?
Our modern moral mores decry judging other people’s morality. Christianity decries this too (cf. Matthew 7:1-2). But Christianity takes it a step further. For Christianity not only prohibits judging other people’s morality, it also prohibits judging our own morality. Christianity teaches that we are so morally depraved, we can do nothing less than judge ourselves with a foolhardy rose-colored ethical optimism. In other words, we dupe ourselves into believing we are better than we really are. This is why it is God’s job to adjudicate morality – all morality…our morality. And we are called to listen, follow, and believe God’s verdict on morality – all morality…our morality.
[1] David Brooks, “The Moral Diet,” The New York Times (6.7.2012).
June 18, 2012 at 5:15 am Leave a comment