Posts tagged ‘Christianity’
Cherry Picking Scripture
I had to chuckle as I was watching coverage of the Democratic National Convention last week. I tuned in to see San Antonio’s mayor, Julian Castro, deliver the Convention’s keynote speech, which is quite an honor no matter what your political persuasion. But what made me chuckle were not the speeches at the Convention, but the political pundits pontificating on the state of our nation between speeches. I began watching the coverage that evening by tuning into a liberal-leaning news channel. They asked a question that has become ubiquitous in political circles every time a presidential election rolls around: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” One of their correspondents trotted out a chart that included numbers for jobs created and the state of the Standard & Poor’s index and confidently concluded, “Yes. We are better off than we were four years ago.” I then flipped over to a conservative-leaning news channel. Interestingly, the pundits on this channel were debating this same question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” But my mouth dropped open when they too trotted out a chart with numbers on unemployment and the national debt and confidently concluded, “No. We are not better off than we were four years ago.” Apparently, whether you believe we are better off than we were four years ago depends on which numbers you look at – or which numbers you want to look at.
I am not surprised when politicians and the politically minded cherry pick the facts and figures which bolster their particular partisan position. But it disturbs me when Christians do the same thing – especially with the Word of God.
In Acts 20, Paul is leaving the church in Ephesus which he had planted and subsequently served for three years as its pastor in order to journey to Jerusalem at the Holy Spirit’s behest. One of the things that Paul touts about his ministry to the Ephesians is that he “did not shrink from declaring the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). In other words, when Paul served the Ephesians, he didn’t cherry pick his favorite Bible verses or stories, nor did he selectively or subversively read the Scriptures in an effort to bolster a particular partisan theological platform. Instead, he courageously declared the Word of God – all of the Word of God.
Part of the reason Paul prided himself on proclaiming all of the Word of God has to do with Paul’s belief concerning the nature and character of Scripture. For Paul believed that all of Scripture comes from God and therefore all of Scripture is worthy of our attention, study, and application. As Paul writes to the young pastor Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). All Scripture is useful, Paul declares. There is not a book, a verse, a word, or, to use Jesus’ description, even “a jot or a tittle” (cf. Matthew 5:18, KJV), which is not useful for us to know and take to heart.
The other day, I came across a blog titled, “5 Reasons Why We Should Still Read The Book Of Leviticus Today.”[1] In this post, the author recounts a conversation he had with a PhD scientist who, though he was a Christian, saw no need to for believers to concern themselves with Leviticus, or with any other part of the Pentateuch for that matter. After all, what could modern-day people possibly learn from a book that covers the eating of shellfish, the wearing of polyester, and the donning of tattoos? Not much, in this guy’s mind. But this blogger went on to do a terrific job arguing for the relevance – and, more importantly, for the divine inspiration – of this book. He notes that the credo of Leviticus, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2), is still the preeminent model for Christian sanctification. In our acting, speaking, and thinking, we are to reflect the God in whom we trust. Indeed, Jesus Himself affirms this holiness credo when He declares, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). More vitally, this blogger notes that the sacrificial system of Leviticus is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Without Leviticus, our understanding of Christ’s sacrifice would be significantly diminished, for the whole point of the Old Testament sacrificial system was to lead to and find its telos in Christ’s supreme and final sacrifice (cf. Hebrews 10:1-12). In other words, the whole point of Leviticus, though it was written some 1400 years before Jesus, was to point people to Jesus. And anything that points people to Jesus is something a Christian should want to know about.
Leviticus is just one example of the theological richness that Scripture has to offer – if we will only take the time to look. If you choose cherry pick from Scripture, however, you will miss so much of what Scripture is and what Scripture gives. So devote yourself to Scripture – all Scripture. You never know what you will find, how you will be changed, and how your faith will grow.
[1] Scott Fillmer, “5 Reasons Why We Should Still Read The Book Of Leviticus Today,” scottfillmer.com (8.21.2012).
Decisions, Decisions
It’s almost become a Keystone Cops routine. Every Sunday following worship, my wife Melody and I try to decide where to go out to eat. “Where do you want to go?” I ask my wife affectionately. “I don’t know,” she responds. “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know,” I fire back. “That’s why I was asking you.” After fifteen to minutes of pondering all the different places at which we could eat, we usually decide that neither of us are really in the mood for any of it and so we head home to eat leftovers. When it comes to eating out, we have a hard time making decisions.
Perhaps we’re not alone. Perhaps you have a hard time making decisions too. Maybe it’s when you make it to a restaurant and you have to decide what dish to order off a menu that is twelve pages long. Maybe it’s when you’re out clothes shopping and you have to decide: the blue outfit or the gray one? Maybe it’s when you’re car shopping: the sedan or the SUV? Life’s choices are endless. And even seemingly simple choices can sometimes feel overwhelming.
One of the glories of the gospel is that it relieves us of the responsibility of choosing that which is most important. From the Bible’s beginnings, we read of a God who makes and clear and decisive choices when it matters most so that we don’t have to. Consider the following:
- “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him” (Genesis 20:18-19).
- “You are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession” (Deuteronomy 7:6).
- “Rejoice before the LORD your God at the place He will choose as a dwelling for His Name” (Deuteronomy 16:11).
Time and time again, God chooses. In fact, the gospel assures us that God has chosen us to be saved through faith by His Son. As Jesus Himself says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last” (John 15:16). And as the apostle Paul writes, “For God chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight” (Ephesians 1:4). God chooses us.
Sometimes, people take umbrage with God’s choice of people for salvation. They want to be able to choose God for themselves. They want to be masters of their own eternities. But were our eternities left up to our own choices, we would most certainly make the wrong choices. We read example after example in the Scriptures of people who choose the wrong way of sin rather than the right road of salvation. The ancient Israelites choose apostasy through idolatry. The first century Pharisees choose arrogance through self-righteousness. And we choose our own desires over God’s command. When it comes to choosing God, left to our own devices, we will always and only say, “No.”
Blessedly, God does not allow our choices against Him and for damnation to stand. Instead, He rescues many people from their bad choices through His righteous choice! And if I can’t even decide where to go to lunch, I sure am glad that I don’t have to decide on my salvation. Aren’t you glad too?
Sex That Shouldn’t Sell…But It Does
It may be a cliché, but it is most certainly true: sex sells. Just ask Barnes and Noble. Jeffrey Trachtenberg of The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the quarterly sales of the last remaining brick and mortar chain bookstore giant and noted that the numbers of its retail stores were up – 2% to $1.1 billion. Trachtenberg cites two reasons for this impressive growth. First, Barnes and Noble is reaping the benefits of the recent bankruptcy and closure of Borders. Apparently, many Borders’ customers have found their way to Barnes and Noble. But the second cause has nothing to do with corporate competition. Instead, it has everything to do with sexual infatuation. E.L. James’ bestselling hotly erotic trilogy with its flagship novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, is cited by the company in a public report as “a key revenue driver at its retail stores.”[1] A racy trilogy is singlehandedly driving sales at a major book retailer…way up. And that book retailer explains in an official ccorporate report that a racy trilogy is driving its sales way up…gladly.
This report from Barnes and Noble is sadly indicative of the spirit of our society. It is not just that we are fascinated by sex, it is that we are fascinated by that which has been traditionally sexually forbidden. The racier and the raunchier something is, the more piqued our collective cultural curiosity becomes.
What is especially notable about Fifty Shades is that it is erotica aimed at women. Traditionally, pornography has been marketed to men, with stunningly and sadly successful results. Indeed, pornography addiction has been generally considered to be a male problem rather than a female one. With the Fifty Shades trilogy, however, we learn that women seem to be just as vulnerable to the pornography industry, though instead of featuring lewd pictures, this pornography finds its hook in spicy storylines.
Now more than ever, Christian believers must stand up for a biblical sexual ethic – and not because we can self-righteously claim to be free from sexual sin, for Jesus makes it clear in His Sermon on the Mount that none of us are innocent of sexual immorality (cf. Matthew 5:27-28), but because the Christian sexual ethic tells the truth about human sexuality. Contrary to the vulgar verbal voyeurism encouraged by explicit bestselling novels, sex is more than biological arousal and satisfaction. Instead, it is meant to be an expression of fidelity and unity, blessing husbands and wives with the gift of not only pleasure, but children. Sex is meant to be a valuable gift rather than a cheap thrill. And it is supposed to honor human dignity rather than degrade it (cf. Romans 1:24).
Perhaps the heart and soul of the Bible’s sexual ethic is best summed up in a single verb: “know.” Time and time again, the Bible uses this verb as a euphemistic way to refer to sexual intimacy:
- “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain” (Genesis 4:1).
- “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch” (Genesis 4:17).
- “Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her” (1 Samuel 1:19).
This verb reminds us that sex is meant for husbands and wives to know each other more deeply and connect to each other more intimately. It is not meant for near strangers to grope each other in quest of some cut-rate erotic fantasy. Sex is far more valuable than that. And so are the people who engage in it. Will you stand up for the value of sex and for the dignity of the people whom God has created as sexual beings?
[1] Jeffrey Trachtenberg, “‘Fifty Shades’ of Books” (The Wall Street Journal, 8.21.12).
Is Cremation Okay?
From time to time, I receive questions concerning the practice of cremation. After all, cremation certainly has its benefits: it is less costly than a traditional burial and, if someone desires, he can keep a loved one’s ashes in his home rather than shipping them off to a cemetery. But some people are reticent about the practice though, oddly enough, they often do not know why they have reservations. When asked about cremation, I have heard more than one person say things like, “I heard the church doesn’t like cremation,” or, “Doesn’t the Bible teach against cremation?” The responses to these statements are “no” and “no,” though these responses do come with some qualifications.
Cremation became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century because of a growing fear that one could be accidentally buried alive. Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston University, writes about this phobia:
Newspapers regularly featured stories of individuals, given up for dead, waking up from trances just before being lowered underground. And witnesses to exhumations testified repeatedly about finding corpses that had turned on their sides, gouged out their eyes, and even fractured their bones in what one medical encyclopedia termed “desperate struggle for escape.”[1]
The thinking went that it was better, if one was accidentally pronounced dead, to be quickly burned to death in a crematorium than to be slowly suffocated to death in a coffin. Nevertheless, cremation, though widely touted in the secular society of the nineteenth century, was not universally embraced – especially by those in the church.
The Christian emperor Charlemagne elevated cremation to the level of a capital crime in 789 because it parroted the practices of ancient pagans.[2] The Roman Catholic Church prohibited the practice in the 1917 Code of Canon Law which read, in part, “The bodies of the faithful must be buried, and cremation is reprobated. If anyone has in any manner ordered his body to be cremated, it shall be unlawful to execute his wish.”[3] In 1963, however, Pope Paul VI lifted this ban, noting:
There has been a change for the better in attitudes and in recent years more frequent and clearer situations impeding the practice of burial have developed. Consequently, the Holy See is receiving repeated requests for a relaxation of church disciplines relative to cremation. The procedure is clearly being advocated today, not out of hatred of the Church or Christian customs, but rather for reasons of health, economics, or other reasons involving private or public order.[4]
The prior ban on cremation by the Roman Catholic Church seemed to stem from a rationalistic rejection of the resurrection of the body on the Last Day by some heady antagonists and not from a theological objection to the practice per se. There were some who used cremation as a way to defy Jesus, saying He could not raise a body from death upon His return if that body had been incinerated. This is why even today, The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body.”[5]
Silly protestations against the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day aside, there is no demonstrable theological reason to reject cremation. Scripture never explicitly addresses the practice and, for those who would be foolish enough to believe that Jesus could not raise a body burned to ash, they would do well remember God’s curse on Adam: “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). If God can raise Adam from death on the Last Day long after he has decomposed into dust, God can raise a cremated person from death on the Last Day long after he has been incinerated into dust. And the Christian church has known this – and taught this – from her earliest days. Felix, a Latin apologist from the second century, writes, “Every body, whether it is dried up into dust, or is dissolved into moisture, or is compressed into ashes, or is attenuated into smoke, is withdrawn from us, but it is reserved for God in the custody of the elements.”[6] Even when our bodies return to the elements from which they were formed, Felix says, our God nevertheless retains custody over these elements and will reconstitute these elements into perfected and glorified bodies on the Last Day.
What is the upshot of all of this, then? Each family must make their own decisions as to how to best honor a loved one after his or her passing. Cremation is an option, as is a traditional burial. There is no need to fret over either option theologically, for both are acceptable in God’s sight. What God concerns Himself with is not how a person is buried, but how that person who believes will be ultimately raised to a life of eternal bliss with the Lord and with other believers. And God’s concern should be our hope!
[1] Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 72.
[2] Cf. Lucy Bregman, Religion, Death, and Dying (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010), 13.
[3] 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 1203.
[4] Pope Paul VI, Piam et constantem, 3366.
[5] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2301.
[6] ANF 4:34.
A Theological Look At Suicide
It’s never easy to lose a loved one. Whether it’s an illness when someone is middle aged, a tragedy when someone is young, or even a so-called “natural” passing when someone is old, death brings tears and mourning. People may sometimes quaintly call a funeral a “celebration,” but if it is, what a strange way to celebrate – with lowered heads and furrowed brows and muffled sobs. Truth be told, death is sad. And death is heartbreaking.
Death becomes especially heartbreaking when it is the result of suicide. We will often speak of “preventable deaths” – those that could have been avoided if only he wouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel when he was drunk, or if only she would have gone to the doctor sooner after feeling a lump. But suicide seems to be the ultimate example of a “preventable death.” After all, the person who lost his life is the same person who took his life…voluntarily. He held in his own hands the power to choose life or the power to choose death. And he chose the unthinkable.
When suicide strikes, many questions inevitably arise. People ask everything from, “How could he be so selfish?” to “Is killing oneself the unforgivable sin?” Because of the many questions connected to suicide, I thought it would be worth it to take a look at suicide broadly from a theological perspective and seek to clear up some of the persistent misperceptions that surround this heartbreaking act.
In order to understand the Bible’s estimation suicide, we must begin a fundamental observation: suicide is tragic. Though this may seem self-evident to many, the reason this observation is necessary is because not everyone has believed this, nor does everyone now believe this.
The most famous suicide of the ancient world is that of Socrates. After being convicted of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens by criticizing the city’s democratic government, the town’s officials sentenced Socrates to death by poisonous hemlock. Plato, his close friend and pupil, recounts Socrates drinking the lethal cocktail:
[Socrates] took it, and very gently…without trembling or changing color or expression…Said Socrates, “But I may and must pray to the gods that my departure hence be a fortunate one; so I offer this prayer, and may it be granted.” With these words he raised the cup to his lips and very cheerfully and quietly drained it.[1]
Notice how nobly, stoically, and even, as Plato says, “cheerfully,” Socrates drinks his poison, more in control of his life – and death – than those who handed down his capital sentence. It is this stately picture of Socrates’ suicide that gave rise to the opinion of the ancients that it is perfectly acceptable to take one’s own life. Seneca, a well-known Stoic philosopher, says of suicide, “The best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed to us one entrance in life, but many exits…This is one reason why we cannot complain of life; it keeps no one against his will….Live, if you so desire; if not, you may return to the place from whence you came.”[2] More recently, suicide has made headlines because of those who support “Death with Dignity,” a movement which maintains that doctor assisted suicide, in cases of grave and terminal illness, is justified and, yes, even dignified.[3] For some, suicide is moral and noble. The Bible, however, paints a starkly different picture of suicide. Suicide, according to the Bible, is unambiguously proscribed. Consider the reasons why below.
The Bible prohibits suicide because it results in death. Death is deeply evil. Indeed, the apostle Paul calls death “the last enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:26), ultimately to be defeated at Christ’s Second Coming. Death is so evil because it is utterly incompatible with God’s original creative intent. As we confess in the Nicene Creed, our God is “the Lord and giver of life.” God is in the business of life, not death! However, sin introduced what God never intended. Therefore, we are to hate death rather than embracing it as suicide does.
The Bible prohibits suicide because it results in murder. Most famously, murder is prohibited by the Fifth Commandment: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). But long before Moses delivered the Ten Commandments to Israel, murder was outlawed as a heinous ill. Immediately following the great flood of Noah’s day, God commands, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man” (Genesis 9:6). Notice the general nature of both of these prohibitions. Moses’ prohibition against murder is a blanket one without so much as a direct object to specify who should not be murdered. God’s prohibition to Noah does contain a direct object – “man” – but this direct object is a general one, referring to mankind. The killing of humans by other humans, then, is clearly and consistently forbidden in the Scriptures. Thus, even the killing of oneself breaks the command of God.
The Bible prohibits suicide because it results in abuse. It is difficult to think of a more dire abuse of one’s body than the taking of one’s life. Because God created our bodies, redeems our bodies through His Son Jesus Christ, and will raise our bodies on the Last Day, our bodies – and what we do with them – matter to God! As Paul writes, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Killing one’s body can hardly be considered an honorable way to treat one’s body.
It is important to note that honoring God with one’s body precludes not only suicide, but anything that damages the body. There are many people who refuse to honor God with their bodies in countless ways and for countless reasons. Some do not eat well. Some do not exercise. Some do not visit their physicians. When these people sometimes die prematurely, they do so to everyone’s sorrow, but not necessarily to everyone’s shock. After all, we know that abuse can eventually result in death. So often, we confine our definition of “suicide” to a one-time act that ends in the loss of life. But far too many people are willing to commit what I call “slow-motion suicide” by abusing their bodies over months, years, and decades. This too is prohibited by Paul’s injunction in 1 Corinthians 6.
Though the Bible flatly condemns suicide, even something as seemingly final as the taking of one’s life is not unsalvageable for the Christian. People will sometimes refer to suicide as “the unforgivable sin.” The thinking goes like this: because a person who commits suicide cannot repent of his sin, he cannot be forgiven and will therefore be eternally damned. This thinking, however, is flawed on two counts. First, this thinking does not take into account the extenuating circumstances that often accompany suicide, for a person who takes his own life often does so during a moment of deep despair, depression, or even insanity. This can hardly be considered to be a belligerent and unrepentant sin against God. Rather, the person who takes his life in this kind of an instance may not even understand what he is doing. Second, the thinking that calls suicide “unforgivable” assumes repentance is a cognitive act of sorrow that feels remorse over a specific sin and that this remorse is necessary to offset a sin’s damnable effect. This, however, is not a true picture of biblical repentance. For if a person had to feel cognitive remorse for every sin specifically, none could be saved, for we all commit sins that we either do not remember or do not even notice in the first place. This is why the Psalmist pleads with God, “Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression” (Psalm 19:12-13). Notice that the Psalmist makes a distinction between “hidden faults” and “willful sins.” The “hidden faults” are those sins unknown to the Psalmist whereas the “willful sins” are those sins which the Psalmist has intentionally and knowingly committed. The Psalmist believes that God will forgive both types of sins – both his known and unknown sins.
Martin Luther says of repentance, “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Repent, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”[4] Like the Psalmist, Luther believes that repentance is more than just specific remorse over a specific sin; rather, repentance is part and parcel of the posture of a Christian’s heart, for a repentant Christian continually believes that he is a person who continually sins and is thereby continually in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. Thus, just because a person does not express remorse for committing suicide specifically does not mean that he is not living a life of repentance generally.
Some people may still ask, “But what about Judas? Didn’t Judas commit suicide and didn’t he go to hell?” Though it is true that Scripture implies Judas’ ultimate eternal damnation (cf. Acts 1:25), we must understand that Judas did not go to hell because he committed suicide, but because he refused to trust in Jesus to forgive his sin. Matthew tells us, “When Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse” (Matthew 27:3). The Greek word for “remorse” is metamelomai. Though there is some semantic overlap, this word is nevertheless distinct from the Greek word for “repentance,” which is metanoia. Thus, even though Judas seems to experience some level of remorse over his terrible wickedness, he does not seem to repent of his sin and turn to Christ for forgiveness. Tragically, Judas’ remorse leads only to despair which leads only to his eventual suicide. The stain of human sin cannot be absolved by feeling bad about oneself through remorse. It can only be absolved by turning to Jesus in repentance.
Finally, it is important that we support and encourage those who have lost loved ones to suicide and seek immediate help for those who may be considering suicide. As Christians, we are called to remind everyone that, through faith in Christ, despair and death do not need to have the final say. God’s plan of eternal, joyous life for us can ultimately prevail. As the apostle Paul exclaims:
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)
Despair and death are no match for the victory and life that Jesus brings. Of this we can be sure! And in this we can take comfort.
“For Thine Is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory” – Where Did That Come From?
“Sermon on the Mount” by Carl Heinrich Bloch
This past weekend in worship, we studied the most famous prayer of all time: the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus offers this model prayer as part of His Sermon on the Mount:
This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” (Matthew 6:9-13)
Whenever I teach on the Lord’s Prayer, someone inevitably notices that, in Matthew’s account, the doxology often included in traditional versions of this prayer – “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and glory, forever and ever. Amen” – is missing. Where did it go?
Interestingly, the old King James Version includes the doxology because the Greek manuscripts from which the translators of that day were working incoporated it. As biblical textual criticism has advanced over the past four hundred years, however, we have learned that the doxology is absent from the most ancient and significant manuscripts of the Bible, including Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the fourth century, and is also omitted in early patristic commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer including those of Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian.[1] Thus, these words are not included in more modern translations with the understanding that they were probably not a part of the original biblical text.
It is important to understand that the exclusion of the doxology as part of the biblical text does not mean that it is errant or inappropriate to the prayer. Quite the contrary. It reflects the spirit of 1 Chronicles 29:11: “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is Yours.” Moreover, the doxology has been included as a liturgical strophe from the earliest days of the Christian Church. The Didache, a manual of church practice from the turn of the second century, includes a truncated version of the doxology: “For Yours is the power and the glory for ever.” The Didache goes on to encourage the faithful to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day.[2] Christians, then, were speaking these words from the earliest days of the church…a lot!
More than likely, this doxology began as a response of the people, gathered for worship, to the words of the Lord in this prayer. It is much like, at the end of a Scripture lesson in worship today, the reader will sometimes conclude, “This is the Word of the Lord” and the people will sometimes respond, “Thanks be to God.” The doxology, then, was a way for those assembled to praise God for the prayer His Son had given them. With time, however, the liturgical function of this doxology was forgotten and people began to assume that the words were part of the prayer itself.
We, along with many others, continue to pray these words because, finally, they are a statement of faith in the heavenly Father to whom we are praying. We believe that the reason He can bring His kingdom to pass, give us our daily bread, forgive our trespasses, and deliver us from the evil one is because the Kingdom, power, and glory are at His disposal to do with as He wishes. And His wish, as we delightedly learn from the Lord’s Prayer, is to bless and save us. And so, we continue to praise God with this doxology and pray as Christ has taught us.
Chafed Over Chick-fil-A
The firestorm is burning white hot. And it didn’t take much to spark it either. All it took was a passing statement from Chick-fil-A COO Dan Cathy in an interview with the Baptist Press:
We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.[1]
Cathy’s qualification of “family” as “the biblical definition of the family unit” upset and offended many of those who support same-sex marriage, which, by all traditional Christian accounts, falls outside the pale of “the biblical definition of the family unit.”[2] But Cathy wasn’t backing down. In an appearance on “The Ken Coleman Show,” Cathy solidified his stance:
I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, “We know better than You as to what constitutes a marriage,” and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about.[3]
The reactions to these two statements have predictably ranged from the genuinely offended to the bombastically outrageous. Equality Illinois, an LGBT advocacy group, plans a “kiss-in,” akin to the “sit-ins” of the 1960’s civil rights movement, in front of selected Chick-fil-A’s to protest Cathy’s statements. The group has also launched a “Flick the Hate” campaign, saying, “Rather than spend money at hateful businesses like Chick-fil-A, support businesses that support LGBT rights.”[4] Rosanne Barr tweeted, “Anyone who eats *Expletive* Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ.”[5] She later apologized for her incendiary statement. Then there was Juliet Jeske, a comedian, who posed the perennial hermeneutical quandary: “I don’t quite understand how Christians who cite these six scant verses in the Bible that condemn homosexuality conveniently ignore some of the more extreme laws. How is one verse the ‘WORD OF GOD’ and another discarded as being out-of-date?”[6] She cites a slew of peculiar-sounding passages from Leviticus and opines on why Christians no longer follow the Good Book’s restrictions concerning menstruating women and clothing made of more than one fabric while insisting on following the Bible’s moral verdict on homosexuality. If she is interested in the answer to her conundrum, I would suggest she read Tim Keller’s insightful article, “Making Sense of Scripture’s ‘Inconsistency.’” Considering how many times this question concerning the so-called “inconsistent” application of the Bible has been raised, however, and how many times it has been answered – quite well, I would add – I have begun to wonder if this article, and others like it, is not more of a cheap shot at Christian biblical interpretation rather than a genuine question about Christian biblical interpretation.
What disturbs me most about the Chick-fil-A controversy is not Cathy’s statements, for the immorality of all sex outside the confines of a marriage between one man and one woman is a longstanding Christian tenant. Nor do the objections of many in the LGBT community to Cathy’s statement disturb me, for such objections are to be expected. What disturbs me most about this controversy is the eventual response of Chick-fil-A as a corporation to the stir. The company issued a statement that read in part, “Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.”[7] Though people may debate whether or not it is prudent for COO’s of large corporations to express their theological convictions to news outlets that often make a habit out of subjecting theological convictions to the acerbic accusations of public opinion, I would submit that Chick-fil-A made precisely the wrong move when it so willingly relinquished this debate to the arena of government and politics.
At its heart, the debate over homosexuality and gay marriage is not a political debate, but a moral one. To relegate this debate to the realm of politics and wrangling legislators is to cheapen it and, ultimately, to give it less consideration and credence than it deserves. Moral debate should not be settled by majority vote, but by robust and respectful conversation grounded in something steadier and more transcultural than November’s ballot box – something like Holy Scripture for Christians, or, in broader society, natural, moral law.[8] Morality by democracy can lead only to disaster, for it encourages people to breezily act according to what is right in their own eyes (cf. Judges 17:6).
The mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, had it at least partially right when he said, “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”[9] Though, as a Christian, I heartily disagree with Rahm Emanuel’s values as they pertain to same-sex marriage, on this much we find common ground: this is about values and morals, not politics and opinion polls. Let’s not turn it into anything less.
[1] K. Allan Blume, “‘Guilty as charged,’ Cathy says of Chick-fil-A’s stand on biblical & family values,” Baptist Press (7.16.12).
[2] Read Concordia’s stance on same-sex marriage in “A Pastoral Statement on President Obama’s Endorsement of Same-Sex Marriage.”
[3] As cited in “Dan Cathy, Chick-Fil-A President, On Anti-Gay Stance: ‘Guilty As Charged,’” The Huffington Post (7.17.12).
[5] Cited in Paul Bond, “Roseanne Barr Responds to Critics After Controversial Chick-fil-A Tweet,” The Hollywood Reporter (7.26.12).
[6] Juliet Jeske, “Chick-Fil-A, Do You Really Want to Run Your Company on Biblical Values?” The Huffington Post (7.26.12).
[7] Cited in Shan Li, “Chick-fil-A steps out of public debate on gay marriage,” The Los Angeles Times (7.19.12).
[8] An examination of same-sex marriage in light of natural, moral law can be found in “A Pastoral Statement on President Obama’s Endorsement of Same-Sex Marriage.”
[9] Cited in Bill Barrow, “Chick-fil-A sandwiches become a political symbol,” The Associated Press (7.27.12).
Hope in the Midst of a Colorado Tragedy
The Century 16 Theatre at which James Holmes opened fire during the movie, “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.”
When 24 year-old neuroscience Ph.D. candidate dropout James Holmes burst into an Aurora, Colorado theatre at a midnight premier of “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises” in full tactical gear with a semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol, packing as many as 6,000 rounds, the carnage was nearly instant. Twelve are dead. Over fifty are wounded.
Almost immediately, investigators sprung into action, trying to answer the same question they always try to answer after an act of senseless violence like this: “Why?” So far, Holmes hasn’t left us much to go on.
One of the things that strikes me about this mass shooting is how utterly elusive Holmes’ motive seems to be. He has no Facebook page to scour for clues. He has no Twitter account to review. He didn’t host a blog. He wasn’t connected to anyone on LinkedIn. In an era of ubiquitous social media, investigators have not been able to turn to any of these standard-fare communal clearinghouses for insight into this man’s mind. His police record has left investigators just as mystified. One traffic violation in 2011. That’s it. No arrests. No prior investigations. Nothing that would lead officers to believe this man could or would explode in a rampage of mass murder.
The L.A. Times has been hard at work trying to understand Holmes’ motive, interviewing several people who knew him, albeit not very well. Here is how they describe him:
- “A generally pleasant guy…James was certainly not someone I would have ever imagined shooting somebody.” – James Goodwin, high school classmate
- “He was very quiet…He was a nice guy when you did occasionally talk to him. But he was definitely more introverted.” – Tori Burton, fellow with the National Institutes of Health
- “A super-nice kid…kinda quiet…really smart…He didn’t seem like a troublemaker at all. He just seemed like he wanted to get in and out, and go to college.” – Dan Kim, UC San Diego student[1]
The portrait of Holmes, even if not particularly profound, is incredibly consistent. He was nice. He was smart. He was studious. He was introverted. And he did what? He massacred how many?
Jesus says to the religious leaders of His day, “On the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:28). Jesus knew the goodness a person presents on the outside often conflicts with the darkness he harbors on the inside. And as it was with the religious leaders, so it is with James Holmes. On the outside, Holmes looked like a bright, promising Ph.D. student. But on the inside, as we are now learning, he was full of dark aspiration.
The Bible has a word for this conflict between a person’s externally righteous appearance and his internally depraved heart: hypocrisy. This is why Jesus begins His diatribe against the religious leaders by saying, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites” (Matthew 23:13)! In the ancient world, a “hypocrite” was an actor – someone who put on a mask to perform in a play. Though the actor presented himself as one person on stage, he was, in reality, another person in his day-to-day life.
What is so sad about James Holmes is that, as he burst into that theatre filled with moviegoers, he was not necessarily being hypocritical, at least in a theological sense. Instead, he was – as the doctrine of human depravity makes all too horrifyingly clear – just being himself. He was carrying out in a shower of gunfire the sin that, exacerbated by what seems to be an apparent mental illness, had been smoldering in his heart for a long time. And lest we pontificate on Holmes’ wickedness from a position of self-righteous arrogance, we must remember that the same depraved root of sinfulness that lives in Holmes’ heart lives in every human heart – even in our hearts. As the prophet Jeremiah soberly says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9)?
In a situation as devastating as this one, Christians are in a unique position both to minister to the hurting on the one hand and to speak honestly about the depth of human wickedness on the other. To the hurting – especially to those who have lost loved ones – we can offer a shoulder to cry on and a message of hope: “Christ conquers death!” To those who ask “Why?” we can respond with one, simple word: “sin.” Sin led to this act. Sin leads to all wicked acts. Sin leads to our wicked acts. But, like with death, Christ conquers sin.
As this story continues to unfold, we are sure to learn more about the gunman – his background, his possible motive, and, perhaps, his personal demons. But no matter how much we may learn about his past, we cannot change the past. Loved ones will still be lost. Survivors will still bear physical and emotional scars from that dreadful night. And the hearts of so many will still be broken. The past will stand as it is right now: tragic. Only Christ can take this terrible moment from our past and redeem it in the future – when He calls those who trust in Him to rise from death to eternal life, unscarred and unmarred even by a gunman’s bullets. And so in our distress, we hope and trust in Him. What else can we do?
[1] “Complex portrait emerges of suspected Colorado gunman James Holmes,” Los Angeles Times (7.20.12).
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.
Pastor Zach's Blog 