Tag: Religion

Angry At A God Who Isn’t There

God - MichelangeloThe other day I heard the story of a distressed parent.  Their son had gone away to college as a Christian and had returned as an atheist.  They wanted to know what they could do to bring their son back into the fold.

Honestly, hearing this boy’s story distressed me.  After all, nothing less than this young man’s very salvation is at stake.  I was tempted to break out into a rant about how far too many colleges and universities deliberately and relentlessly undermine faith while uncritically peddling a deluded vision of a far-flung utopian secular humanistic paradise, but I stopped myself and instead asked a simple question:  “Why?  Why did your son become an atheist?  Was it because of something he heard in some class from a professor, or was it because of something else – something deeper?”

Many atheists like to present themselves as cool and collected, calmly examining empirically verifiable data and coming to the inevitable and emotionally detached conclusion that there is no God.  But the reality of atheism is far less viscerally clean.

A couple of years ago, Joe Carter penned an article for First Things titled, “When Atheists Are Angry At God.”  In it, he notes a strange phenomenon: many people who do not believe in God find themselves angry at God:

I’ve shaken my fist in anger at stalled cars, storm clouds, and incompetent meterologists. I’ve even, on one terrible day that included a dead alternator, a blaring blaring tornado-warning siren, and a horrifically wrong weather forecast, cursed all three at once. I’ve fumed at furniture, cussed at crossing guards, and held a grudge against Gun Barrel City, Texas. I’ve been mad at just about anything you can imagine.

Except unicorns. I’ve never been angry at unicorns.

It’s unlikely you’ve ever been angry at unicorns either. We can become incensed by objects and creatures both animate and inanimate. We can even, in a limited sense, be bothered by the fanciful characters in books and dreams. But creatures like unicorns that don’t exist – that we truly believe not to exist – tend not to raise our ire. We certainly don’t blame the one-horned creatures for our problems.

The one social group that takes exception to this rule is atheists. They claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, tend to be the people most angry at Him.[1]

But why is this?  Why would people who don’t believe in God become angry at God?  Carter goes on to cite Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University:

Studies in traumatic events suggest a possible link between suffering, anger toward God, and doubts about God’s existence. According to Cook and Wimberly (1983), 33% of parents who suffered the death of a child reported doubts about God in the first year of bereavement. In another study, 90% of mothers who had given birth to a profoundly retarded child voiced doubts about the existence of God (Childs, 1985). Our survey research with undergraduates has focused directly on the association between anger at God and self-reported drops in belief (Exline et al., 2004). In the wake of a negative life event, anger toward God predicted decreased belief in God’s existence.

In other words, atheism is not as viscerally clean as many atheists would like to have you believe.  Atheism is not always the product of cool, clean, detached observation of empirically verifiable date.  Instead, atheism is often the product of not disbelief in God, but rebellion against God because a person feels slighted by God in some way.  Atheism, although it may hide between a veneer of intellectualism, is also heavily emotional.  It’s hardly a wonder that the Psalmists says of the atheist:  “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).  Atheism is not just a matter of the head.  It’s also a matter of the heart.

I never quite did get to the root of the atheism of my friend’s son.  But I suspect it was more than just some smooth-talking college professor that led him down the road to unbelief.  That’s why, when sharing my faith, I not only try to speak to a person’s head; I try to minister to his heart.

[1] Joe Carter, “When Atheists Are Angry At God,” First Things (1.12.2011).

It’s Not Tricky … It’s Really Not

Hebrew Text 2It seems like it’s been happening to me a lot lately.

The other day on the radio, I heard a commercial for “The Biblical Money Code,” a program that claims to be able to make millions for the person who follows it:

Imagine if you had a secret code for making money … a code buried deep within biblical text.  A code that certain investment titans have quietly exploited to amass billions.  And what if this code could be used by you, today, to unlock vast amounts of wealth — safely and ethically.[1]

Now, forget the fact that what the Bible has to say about money is about as straightforward and sharp as it can be.  For instance:  “No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24).  Forget the fact that God nowhere promises that you can or will amass billions.  Forget the fact that the Bible doesn’t even find it particularly desirable that a person would amass billions.  All of what’s in this program has to be in the Bible.  You just have to unlock the code.

But that’s not the only biblical “code” I’ve run across recently.

The other day, I received an email from a friend claiming the prophet Muhammad was identified by name in the Old Testament.  Where?  Song of Songs 5:16:  “His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely.  This is my lover, this my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.”  How does this refer to Muhammad?  The Hebrew word for “altogether lovely” is machamadim, which sounds like “Muhammad.”  Now, forget the fact that, in context, this is a statement by a wife about her husband.  Forget the fact that machamadim is a Hebrew word and Muhammad is an Arabic name.  Forget the fact that there is nothing in this verse that would indicate this is a prophetic statement.  These two words sound similar, so they must be related.  You just have to unlock the code.

But that’s not the only biblical “code” I’ve run across recently.

I remember a conversation I had with some Mormon friends about the kingdoms of glory in the afterlife.  “We can enter a telestial, terrestrial, or celestial kingdom,” my friends explained.  From where do they get this?  1 Corinthians 15:40 (KJV):  “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.”  Now, forget the fact that Paul’s point here is not to talk about afterlife destinations, but to speak of the kind of body we will receive at the resurrection of the dead, as he makes abundantly clear at the conclusion of his argument:

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)

Forget the fact that this verse doesn’t even mention telestial bodies.  Forget the fact that no one in the Church interpreted this verse in this way before Joseph Smith.  Paul has to be talking about different afterlife destinations.  You just have to unlock the code.

With so many so-called “religious experts” peddling so many biblical codes, it is worth it to remind ourselves of the principle of perspicuity.  Perspicuity is from a Latin word meaning “clearness.”  And classically, the Church has ascribed this characteristic to Holy Writ.  The Lutheran dogmatician Francis Pieper summarizes biblical perspicuity thusly:  “The perspicuity of Scripture consists in this, that it presents, in language that can be understood by all, whatever men must know to be saved.”[2]  Pieper goes on to note that Scripture testifies to its own perspicuity in places like Psalm 19:7:  “The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.”  One can be simple intellectually and still gain wisdom from Scripture, for Scripture is clear.  Understanding the Good Book does not take a Ph.D. in theology.

Now, this is not to say that every verse of the Bible is equally easy to understand.  No less than the great preacher Chrysostom explains that some parts of the Bible can indeed be difficult to interpret:

Let us suppose … rivers … are not of the same depth.  Some have a shallow bed, others one deep enough to drown one unacquainted with it. In one part there are whirlpools, and not in another … Why then art thou bent on drowning thyself in those depths?[3]

Chrysostom compares different parts of Scripture to different rivers.  Some parts are shallow and easy to navigate.  Other parts are deeper and more difficult to wade through.  But though some parts of Scripture are richly deep, none are nefariously tricky.  In other words, the biblical authors are not trying to hide things from us with a code, but reveal things to us under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.

The long and short of biblical perspicuity, then, is this:  finding codes, mysteries, and secrets that cater to our sinful lusts like greed, play “sound like” games with words across languages, and rip words out of a text and shoehorn them into meaning something which, contextually, they clearly do not and cannot mean are not only not biblical, they’re evil.  God wants us to understand and follow His Word – not be confused by it and misinterpret it.

So the next time you open your Bible, don’t pull out your decoder ring, pull out your reading glasses.  They’ll work much better.  And you’ll be much more edified.

[1] “The Biblical Money Code,” newsmax.com

[2] Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1 (St. Louis:  Concordia Publishing House, 1950), 320.

[3] John Chrysostom, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, series 1, vol. 13, P. Schaff, ed. (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1889), 507.

For Fathers Only

Father and Son“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

These famous words from the apostle Paul are meant to call fathers to Godliness as they raise their children.  Negatively, fathers are not to “exasperate,” or anger, their children needlessly or vindictively.  Positively, they are to “bring them up,” or rear them, in the Lord.  The Greek word for “bring them up” is ektrepho, meaning, “to feed.”  Fathers are to feed their children.  But this means much more than simply “bringing home the bacon,” as it were.  This also means feeding children’s souls with time, affection, discipline, and grace.

Sadly, this call to fatherhood is lost on far too many men in our society.  And the effects are devastating.

Kay Hymowitz, writing for the City Journal, a quarterly affairs journal for Manhattan, recently published an article titled “Boy Trouble”[1] in which she attributes much of the dismal performance in school, in jobs, and in life of a great number of boys to absentee fathers.  In other words, fathers who fail to bring their children up in the training and instruction of the Lord because of their non-presence have a profoundly negative impact on their children.  Hymowitz expounds:

By the 1970s and eighties, family researchers following the children of the divorce revolution noticed that, while both girls and boys showed distress when their parents split up, they had different ways of showing it. Girls tended to “internalize” their unhappiness: they became depressed and anxious, and many cut themselves, or got into drugs or alcohol. Boys, on the other hand, “externalized” or “acted out”: they became more impulsive, aggressive, and “antisocial.” Both reactions were worrisome, but boys’ behavior had the disadvantage of annoying and even frightening classmates, teachers, and neighbors. Boys from broken homes were more likely than their peers to get suspended and arrested. Girls’ unhappiness also seemed to ease within a year or two after their parents’ divorce; boys’ didn’t.

Since then, externalizing by boys has been a persistent finding in the literature about the children of single-parent families. In one well-known longitudinal study of children of teen mothers (almost all of them unmarried), University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank Furstenberg, a dean of family research, found “alarmingly high levels of pathology among the males.” They had more substance abuse, criminal activity, and prison time than the few boys in the study who had grown up in married-couple families.

Hymowitz goes on to consider some of the ways in which societies have sought to compensate for absentee fathers.  Some societies have tried to provide robust social support programs, ensuring single mothers have all the financial resources they need to give their sons opportunities that will serve them well.  But these social support programs have not stemmed the tide of troubled, fatherless boys.  Others have tried to encourage male role modeling in the form of coaches, teachers, and even stepfathers.  But the problem remains.  Indeed, Hymowitz cites one study done on boys who were raised by their stepfathers and notes that these boys were “even more at risk of incarceration than the single-mom cohort.”

Finally, Hymowitz reaches an inevitable, even if unsurprising, conclusion:  “Girls and boys have a better chance at thriving when their own father lives with them and their mother throughout their childhood—and for boys, this is especially the case.”  A household needs a father.

Please understand that I do not mean to belittle or disparage the contributions that mothers – and especially single mothers – make to a household.  Indeed, I know and have known many faithful single mothers who do all they can to raise their children faithfully, compassionately, and evangelically with great success.  To them, I say, “Thank you.”  I am saying to men, however:  You are needed.  The stakes are high.  You cannot afford you to be derelict in your duties toward your families. 

So get with it.  Heed the call of the apostle Paul.  You have more influence than you may ever know.  Which means you have more responsibility than you could ever dream.  Take that responsibility seriously. Little eyes are watching.

[1] Kay Hymowitz, “Boy Trouble,” City Journal 23, no. 4 (Autumn 2013).

Pluralistic Ignorance, a.k.a., “Everybody’s Doing It”

Couple 1“Everybody’s doing it.”  Before this line was used by teenagers in attempts to strong-arm their parents into allowing them to engage in all manner and kind of youthful foolishness, it was the title of a 1938 movie about an alcoholic who creates picture puzzles for a national contest only to get kidnapped before he can deliver the final batch of puzzles.  From the reviews I’ve read, the movie wasn’t very good or very believable.[1]

“Everybody’s doing it.”  Long after the movie, I remember using this line on my parents – with slight modifications, of course.  If I wanted to go to a party, I’d tell my parents, “But everyone will be there!”  Or if I wanted my parents to buy me something, I’d tell them, “But everyone else has one!”

“Everybody’s doing it.”  This is more than just a teenager’s favorite line.  It’s also a dangerous state of mind.

A few years ago, two researchers from Binghamton University in New York, Chris Reiber and Justin Garcia, published a paper titled, “Hooking Up: Gender Differences, Evolution, and Pluralistic Ignorance.”[2]  In this paper, they explored the differences between the real and perceived comfort levels with different types of sexual activity among young adults.  They discovered what psychologists refer to as “pluralistic ignorance.”  They explain:

Pluralistic ignorance (PI) has been demonstrated to play a role in hook-up behavior.  PI is characterized by individuals behaving in accordance with (generally false) beliefs attributed to the group, regardless of their own beliefs … Young adults routinely believe that others are more comfortable with various sexual behaviors than they, themselves, are.  This leads them to behave as if they were more comfortable than they actually are, and engage in behaviors with which they are not actually comfortable.

After a myriad of charts and graphs illustrating this thesis, the researchers conclude, “Individuals of both genders attributed to others of the same gender higher comfort levels [with different kinds of sexual activity] than they themselves had.”  In other words, those surveyed thought that “everyone was doing it,” but, as it turns out, they’re not.  And if you think they are, you’re ignorant about what’s going on in the bedrooms of the plurality of people in our world.

Tragically, this perception of the nature and type of sexual activity among one’s peers often leads to the violation of one’s own ethical sensibilities.  Thus, far too many people wind up breaching moral boundaries for the farcical, mistaken impression that “everyone is doing it.”

In his epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul speaks of how “the requirements of [God’s] law are written on [people’s] hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them” (Romans 2:4).  The apostle here contends that all people, whether or not they are Christian, have a conscience – a foundational moral compass that helps them distinguish right from wrong.  My contention is that we ought to spend more time listening to our consciences and less time worrying and wondering about what “everybody else” is doing.  As the research shows, we don’t really know what everybody else is doing and when we try to guess, we guess wrong.

So, to those who are thinking of breaching an ethical boundary so you can roll with a cultural tide, you need to know:  the cultural tide will only roll you.  Others are not doing what they say they’re doing and you don’t really know what they’re doing anyway.  So listen to your conscience, not to them.  Or, better yet, listen to God’s Word. You’ll wind up much less morally anguished and much more joyfully fulfilled.

[1] “Everybody’s Doing It,” imdb.com

[2] Chris Reiber & Justin R. Garcia “Hooking Up: Gender Differences, Evolution, and Pluralistic Ignorance,” Evolutionary Psychology 8, no. 3 (2010): 390-404.

Truly God, Truly Man

"Adoration of the Children" by Gerard van Honthorst, 1620.
“The Adoration of the Shepherds” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622.

During the Christmas season, it is important to focus not only on the birth of Christ, but on the person of Christ.  That is, it is important for us to remember not only that Jesus was born, but who Jesus was born as.  For it is not the simple fact of Jesus’ birth that gives the Christmas story significance.  After all, people are born all the time.  But Jesus’ identity as it is revealed in the Christmas story makes Jesus’ birth significant even 2,000 years later.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we get a clue concerning Jesus’ identity beginning with Mathew’s opening line:  “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1).  From here, Matthew goes on to give an extensive genealogy of Jesus’ family tree, going all the way back to Abraham.  The genealogy in Luke’s Gospel goes back even farther – all the way to Adam (cf. Luke 3:23-38).  These two genealogies, it should be noted, are quite different from each other, making Jesus’ family tree look quite disparate.  Indeed, over the years, scholars have debated the differences between the Matthew and Luke’s genealogies of Jesus.  Most often, scholars have conjectured that Matthew presents the royal genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, his stepfather, while Luke presents the biological genealogy of Jesus through Mary, His mother.  What is often left out of such discussions and debates, however, is that there is actually a third Christmas genealogy that all too regularly goes unnoticed.

Where is this third genealogy?  Beginning in Matthew 1:18:  “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.”  The Greek word for “birth” is genesis, from which we get our English word “genealogy”  In fact, this is the same word Matthew uses in 1:1 when he introduces his “genealogy [in Greek, genesis] of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.”  Thus, in just one chapter, Matthew presents two genealogies.

So how are to understand these two genealogies?  In Matthew’s first genealogy, we read of Jesus’ human origin.  He is the son of David and the son of Abraham.  In Matthew’s second genealogy, we read about Jesus’ divine origin. He is of the Holy Spirit.  Thus, Jesus is truly man, the son of Abraham and David; but He is also truly God, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.

Ultimately, Jesus’ status as truly man and truly God is what gives the Christmas story its significance.  For as a man, Jesus can identify with us men – our weakness, struggles, and trials.  But as God, Jesus can save us from our sin.

Truly man.  Truly God.  All of this wrapped in a manger.  What an incredible story!  And what a terrific reason to say, “Merry Christmas.”