Real Clear Theology Why should we be in the dark about God and our relationship to him, when it is so plainly laid out for us in the writings of those whom Jesus instructed? Followers of the Way of Jesus should grasp this with clarity. Yet it seems that every generation—perhaps every person—needs to see the light afresh. The key question is this: how can we get in a right position with God? I’ll not go into this question as it relates to eastern religions here, but leave that for another day, since it requires explaining an entire worldview that is based on a fundamentally different way of thinking about the world and our place in it. What I have to say is for those of us who live within the western worldview that stems from Judeo-Christian assumptions and the scientific enterprise that flows from that worldview. Jesus revealed God to us. Christians say Jesus was God—and that he came in human form to rescue us. Do we need to be rescued? Do we want to be rescued? Obviously we need to be rescued. The human race is in a mess—always has been throughout our long history. More pointedly, I as an individual need to be rescued. While I may look good compared to some others, before the all-penetrating eyes of God I am not holy, not righteous, and hence not fit to be in fellowship with God. To use Jesus’ term—I am lost. Lost in my sins. Lost in my delusion that I can make myself acceptable to God by trying harder or being sincere. Sweeping away these fatal misconceptions is the first order of business. As with illness, the diagnosis must be accurate. My diagnosis is this. I have some more or less minor problems that I can fix by proper effort. I will admit I have sinned against God. I will say I am sorry to God. I will do better in the future. I will go to church and learn how I can improve my performance. I will take the sacraments. Why not? I’ll be baptized. I’ll pray. I’ll admit my sins and take Holy Communion. I’ll donate some money to the church and to the poor and be all set. All this will prove that I have done what is required. When my time comes I will present my ticket at the Gate of Heaven, show all the stamps and punched holes of my good deeds, and they will have to let me in. What is the true assessment of the preceding? I am delusional—to think that God will accept that. It’s like training for the Navy Seals thinking your sincere hopes and best efforts will work when you cannot meet the actual requirements. The true diagnosis is much, much worse. I am dead. I am dead in my sins. Some regimen of therapy is out of the question. One does not massage a corpse. Nor inject medicine. It takes a miracle of God to bring the dead to life. The Raising of the Dead—hope for the hopeless. The followers of Jesus insisted that the only way a sinner can be accepted by God is through grace, mercy and faith with no addition of the dead sinner’s religious efforts. God has not asked us to do anything prior to throwing ourselves on the mercy of God. We plead only the merits of Christ and none of our own. None of my own. I come empty-handed. I can present nothing to God to influence him to accept me. Everything I am and have is of no value in the matter of inducing God to accept me. As God looks upon me I must realize that God has every right to reject me. That is what I deserve. In fact, I have condemned myself already. A moment’s reflection is all I need. I have condemned myself already. I have no right to be treated differently than my treatment of others. And just how have I treated others? I have been nasty to others in many subtle ways. Sometimes not so subtle. In short, I have sinned against others. And I have sinned against God. In fact I stand in a posture of rebellion against God. I have not loved the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my strength. I have put myself at the center of my affections for my whole life. It has always been about me. Even my pathetic efforts toward God and for others have been to please myself and make myself feel good. And the truth is, God knows this full well. So what does God require of me before I come to Him? Nothing. As the poet put it, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the Cross I cling.” I come empty of anything that could put a claim on God. I am naked except for the rags I have stitched together to cover my spiritual disgrace. This is what those who knew Jesus insisted on. We are spiritually penniless. Nor is there any basis for me to make a claim that God must help me. God owes me nothing. I know that God has made promises to help the helpless. But can I insist he favor me? No. No more than I can go to a generous friend known for kindness and insist on my request for help being accepted. It is up to the donor alone. I know this by my own attitude when I pass by a row of panhandlers and beggars. No one of them can justly say that because I helped someone else I am obligated to give to him also. God knows this. God has taken it into account. God does not have to accept me. It is up to him only. And God has found a way. Why? Why does God bother with us? Simply because he loves us. It is all due to the kind of person God is. He has no obligation to save us. He does not have to answer our prayers. He is sovereign. He is at liberty, constrained by nothing outside of himself. Whatever he does is fair. We are the ones who are unfair. Want to point fingers? Point at the mirror. Think about it. We have rebelled against God. We have all lived life “doing it my way.” If we get what we deserve, it will be instant damnation—exclusion from the presence of God. That means exclusion from light, love, and joy. For God is light. God is love. In his presence is joy forevermore. That God has not yet sealed our self-imposed fate is due only to his mercy. It is thus foolish for me make an appeal to the justice of God. Justice is exactly what I do not want. I do not want God to administer his justice fairly, for I know that would be my doom. There is but one ray of hope for me. I have been told that God is so merciful that he himself came in the person of his Son to take upon himself my sentence of death. Knowing I deserve to be rejected, knowing my plea has no basis to persuade, I throw myself on the mercy of this God who loves me and who proved it by coming to rescue sinners such as myself. “Encouraged by the goodness of God as shown in the death of his Son, to hope for acceptance and salvation.” This is faith. It is a true faith that transforms one’s whole character by the power of love. I now live for God—not just in religious settings—but 24/7. God is my whole life, not just a portion exercised when I do my religious obligations. Would you love God even if God did nothing for you? Do you love God for who he is—or just for what he does for you? If your whole world fell apart, would you still love and worship him? If God took away your money, your friends, your health—even your life, would you still love him? You and I have taken God’s stuff— resources of nature, money, the gift of life and health. When he came to earth for us we even took his life. But the light of his love for us never flickered. That’s what he is looking for in you and me—our love—a love that turns over everything to him. Nothing less. That’s the deal. Are we there yet? Do we want to be rescued?

The Shelf Life of Civilizations

The way I look at it, everything has a shelf life. I am aware, for example, that there is an expiration date in my personal DNA—I just haven’t found it—and I am not looking for it, either. But, as the old guys used to say, sooner or later I will “go the way of all flesh.” Philosophers have said this about civilizations, too. Civilizations are born, often through great labor pains; they grow, mature, go senile, and then are buried in the dustbin of history. Forgotten except for people who write doctoral dissertations. Plato, Karl Marx, Oswald Spengler and many others have tried to discern the lifespan of cultures and nations, following Plato’s analogy that the State is the Soul Writ Large—in capital letters, so to speak. As Malcolm Muggeridge colorfully put it a few decades ago, every new social movement ends up like an old brontosaurus that one-day keels over and dies. “The End.” Think of all the once flourishing cultures that are no more, yet intrigue us as we uncover their remains. Incas and Aztecs, Egyptians and Sumerians, Aryans and Easter Islanders. The Mustang Kingdom of Nepal and the Clovis civilization of North America. Some seemed destined for immortality, such as the Roman Empire that persisted for a thousand years. The same for dynasties in China, India, and Egypt. Yet they all collapsed in the end. For me, the dynamics here are a mere matter of input and output. And the pattern is like the progress of a rolling hoop launched with a vigorous spin onto the landscape of history. Think of it this way. A group of people spins their hoop with great energy across the topography of time. Each revolution is a generation that comes and goes but perpetuates the momentum of its civilization. There are ups and downs along its path. There are obstacles that it bumps over or wobbles around—natural disasters, plagues, internal revolts or external wars. But the hoop rolls on—for a time. All the while the system is ageing—to switch to a biology metaphor. Flushed with success in its early years, it begins to soften as it enjoys the fruits of its youthful energy. It begins to get flabby—more appetite than muscle. Outsiders are soon hired to do the hard work. Once gritty fingernails are now polished. Calluses are replaced by a soft elegance on hands at the ends of arms with no biceps. Many are able to outsource military duties and escape a sacrifice that might cost them their life. In the last days money begins to run low, enemies grow bolder. Now in its dotage, the energy ebbs, inviting either an inner decay that proves fatal or a coup de grace by external opportunists eager to bury the remains and start a new civilzation. So the corpse goes back to the dust; the hoop founders and falls to the ground, never to roll again. In philosophic terms, the values that created the society tend over time to be forsaken. Out-take overcomes input. Social discipline weakens. Traditional values no longer drive most people. Social energy flags. The law of social entropy sets in. Marx thought that the hoop of history could roll forever upward and reach the plateau called Utopia where political change with its messy conflicts breeding crime and war would cease and humans would roll their hoops for cultural advances only. (This is a form of utopianism that so far has failed everywhere it has been attempted.) Others thought that the hoops would always roll upward to greater evolutionary heights as humans evolved to nearly divine proportions. “Every day in every way we are getting better and better.” (This theory is labeled meliorism, of which progressivism is a contemporary example.) Still others say that the hoop rolls only downhill, with occasional brief uplifts. (The technical name for this is primitivism: the "good old days" theory.) I go for a combo theory: things get better technologically, medically, and the like, but slowly go downhill morally and spiritually, all the while cycling through the chaos of the ins and outs, the ups and downs of cultural change. Another law of human nature that is constant is that of unforeseen consequences. Sometimes good surprisingly comes from destructive sequences. Sometimes evil arises from seemingly benevolent or at least harmless actions. I say unforeseen. I do not say unforeseeable. Many of the trendy changes we now see in social norms and structures are spinning the hoop downhill not uphill. If we would we could discern this. But we tend to ignore things that we wish were not there—like the people I know that would not go for a medical test that was recommended. Several of them are now dead, I am sad to say. To get to the present state of the world, it seems to me that we are sliding down a slope to a very real precipice that could (not must) bring us to a cataclysmic social event from which humans might never recover. Let me explain. 1. We have seen ever greater catastrophes as the technical power in our hands increases. Example: the next world war would likely make all other wars seem benign by contrast. We are now on the edge of a possible doomsday scenario, when nuclear conflict could, as some put it, bomb us all back into the Stone Age. 2. We are now one global community such that a pandemic that eludes our clever attempts to keep the bacteria and viruses at bay will collapse and decimate the global population in unimaginable ways. Who knows what percent of the world population might succumb? 3. Or there could be a financial crisis in the global network that would collapse the fragile economies of the world like a house of cards. 4. Or, God forbid, it could be a combination of these apocalyptic woes. For me, I expect a combination Tsunami of Troubles. When economies dissolve and disease thereby runs rampant, violence is inevitable. Given the track record of human nature, when push comes to shove, this seems unavoidable. At that point, the horrors hinted at in the Bible's Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) come true as things unravel in, pardon the term, biblical proportions. Our hoop is already lurching down slope with a steep descent ahead. Bill Cosby put it this way in 2011. After summing up his frustration with people who excuse wrong behavior, blame others, and want more from the government, he admits he’s old and he’s tired, and he won’t be around too much longer. “But mostly, I’m not going to have to see the world these people are making. I’m just sorry for my granddaughter and her children. Thank God I’m on the way out and not on the way in.” Is this a great comedian going sour due to age and bitterness? Or is this a man who sees what’s just around the corner? While I am not an end-time guru—I personally hope that normal history goes on a long time so more people have a chance to repent—there are uncanny signs of the fulfillment of biblical prophecies about the end of history as we have known it. Just the sequence predicted there is stunning—from good to bad to worse. First comes a powerful message of peace symbolized by a rider on a white horse—the token of righteousness and justice. Next comes a red horse with war and slaughter in his train. Third is a black horse whose rider symbolizes economic ruin. The last horse is grey in whose track is disease and death. Decent people who have been killed by ruthless criminals in the chaos are crying out for justice. Along with these woes come natural disasters that terrify even the mightiest of the world’s powerful people. Meanwhile, God is protecting those who trust in him even though they suffer horribly for his kingdom’s sake. Next come a series of natural disasters that I associate with a cosmic catastrophe that could possibly come from a magnetic pulse from the sun. Wildfires on land and chaos on the oceans, followed by what could be a meteor that contaminates water supplies. Clouds from volcanoes darken the skies as things turn for the worse. All hell breaks loose. Insects explode bringing disease and pain in their train. Armies go forth to wreak havoc with what might be chemical and biological weapons. Finally God steps in just as all is about to be lost. The cosmic battle of God and good versus Satan and evil comes to a head. People are forced to turn against God or be wiped out. But in the end God’s enemies are brought down once and for all. History as we know it comes to an end and the kingdom of God breaks in and comes to fruition. The Son of God presides over the last judgment. Implacable opponents of God and goodness are forever separated from those who love God and have persevered through all the turmoil and persecution. The conflict is over for good. The great dance of joy, love and peace begins—life forevermore. Civilizations may have a shelf life. God’s kingdom is forever.

Worldview Lite: Making Robust Thinking Thinner

In our time people seem to prefer philosophy lite. Rather than think systematically, ranging over the landscape of ideas to be sure everything relevant is accounted for in a worldview, we often tend to take a few thoughts that we think are enough to dismiss alternative worldviews—just enough to think we have proved our point. Religion lite is what it comes down to for most people. Lets take a look at four influential worldviews—Christianity lite, Hinduism lite, Islam lite and secularism lite. In Christianity lite people pick a few ideas in the Christian worldview that they like and stop there—sort of like a buffet line. Such people often have no idea what a full-orbed Christian worldview looks like. Their view pretty much comes down to this. “Be good and go to church. Give some money and say prayers when you need something.” They have no clue that Jesus Christ speaks harshly against this attitude. He says that no one can follow him unless they radically deny themselves, make God their top priority, confess sin constantly, and sacrifice everything to God 24/7—yes, everything. Hinduism does much the same. The demonic horrors of the caste system that glosses over crimes and abuses now brutalizing millions of people are dismissed as aspects of a salvation credo that explains this away. There are exceptions. Many Hindus would not commit such injustices. They hold to Hinduism lite. But the caste system demands inequality—a level of inequality that results in the oppression of millions of low caste people who supposedly deserve their lot as the result of karma. They made their bed, now they must lie in it. Islam lite glosses over the dark side of the faith Muhammad brought to the world. Think of the crass cruelty of Allah against those who deserve hell, where flames burn off one’s skin only to have it grow back to be burned away again and again forever. Or ponder the injustice of Islamic theocracy that necessitates peace by force, not persuasion. Muslims have full rights—Christians and other unbelievers do not. Many Muslims gloss over such things in Islam because Islam does not encourage the faithful to be critical of the Qur’an and Hadith. “Believe, obey, and fight” seems to be a motto that puts Muslim basics into a slogan. For this reason Islam could not long sustain its golden age of philosophy that peaked nearly a thousand years ago. Islam as an intellectual force has been in decline ever since. Secularism lite is also prevalent in our time. “Take the best of non-religious thought and compare it to the worst of religion—this seems to be the modus operandi. Dismiss powerful arguments for creation with a wave of the hand, so to speak, rather than grappling with the weaknesses of humanism and the strengths of Christian philosophy. Marxism lite is a version of secularism that similarly rails against the shortcomings of capitalism and bad religion while blind to the assumptions of its own worldview and to the death and destruction coming from its own dark side. Integrity demands that we take an open-minded look at the strengths and weaknesses of every worldview, including our own. Anything less would be logic lite that cuts corners to achieve a comforting closure. The light of knowledge will never come through lite thinking. We must do an analysis of all worldviews that honestly appraises the strengths and the weaknesses of all belief systems, including our own.

Why Christianity Bugs People

Why Christianity Bugs People—Especially Christians. As a professor of World Religions I field many discussion posts about religion. I know that fewer and fewer people in our society understand the basics of the Christian religion. That doesn’t bother me. It is my job to help them gain understanding through the textbook (Huston Smith’s classic: The World’s Religions) and my lectures. What tempts me to withdraw from society and become a desert monk is this: most who claim to be Christians do not know their own faith, the faith that Jesus and the apostles promoted at the cost of their lives. In my courses I try to distinguish between Christianity as a popular religion and the Good News as Jesus presented it. I refer to this original Christianity as the Way of Jesus just to make my point. Christianity is what Jesus said and what those who knew him heard from his own lips. Over the centuries his ideas have been “improved upon” by well-meaning followers so that one now needs to peel back layers of interpretation designed to deepen our understanding. That is a legitimate enterprise. But in my view the average person in our culture, even among church attenders, has a distorted view of what Jesus actually taught. What follows may be simplified but it is not simplistic. I want to get to the heart of the matter. In one sentence I assert this: Christianity has become a religion rather than a unique way of life. It may well be the most misunderstood movement on earth. Christianity the religion is fairly easy to live with. The Way of Jesus is not. It upsets every life it touches. As a popular religion Christianity is just another path to God. You believe in God as creator. You try to live by his instructions—mainly the Ten Commandments. If you are nice and polite God will answer your prayers and then you will have a nice life. No need to go overboard here. Nothing embarrassing. Or threatening to your plan for your life. You want God on your side. Maybe you read the Bible, maybe not much. Maybe you go to worship with others (church), maybe not or not much. As long as you are a mostly decent person and agree that God exists and that Jesus taught the truth and made a way to heaven, you are good-to-go. Not so fast. This is more like Islam than Christianity. But it is what most people, Christians and non-Christians, believe. Contrast this with what the message of the Way of Jesus truly is. 1. You are not good in God’s holy eyes and you have no chance of making it to heaven by being a good person. None. All people keep on sinning in the sense of falling short of God’s standards. That shows we are sinful to the core, not just weak people who commit a sin here and there now and again. 2. There is no way you can balance the scales and thus make the grade. The standard is sinless perfection, not trying your best. Illustration: some rock climbers climb cliffs (like Half Dome in Yosemite National Park) without ropes. Such freestyle climbing requires zero mistakes. You cannot do it if you are missing an arm or leg. Humans climbing the cliff to heaven can never reach that destination on their own because we start off as cripples to begin with. 3. The whole Gospel message tells of how God reaches down to save us from inevitable destruction. We must trust him and him alone to carry us. We are as helpless as a paraplegic is in a Triathlon. Some severely handicapped people have completed a triathlon. But someone else did all the work for them. That’s what Jesus, the Son of God, does for anyone who will yield to him. Check out Dick and Rick Hoyt (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH943Az_lPQ) for an example that illustrates what I am saying. 4. When you embrace this it is like being born all over again into a new life. God gives himself completely to you—every breath you take, every neuron that fires in your brain is a gift God gives you just because he cares. On this basis God requires that you live for him every moment of every day 100%. You cannot wait to find out everything God wants you to become and everything God wants you to do. You are united with him. God’s goals are your goals. God’s desires are your desires. God’s plans are your plans. It is to be 100% God and zero percent anything else. You are going to stumble on this track; you are going to want to quit. You are going to suffer hardship just like a marathon runner does, but you are not going to give up or take an easier route. You may even get killed, just like a solider serving his country. But that does not matter. God promises he will get you to the goal no matter what—and the finish line, the goalpost, is in heaven. 5. To stay fit and on course you are going to think of Jesus every day. You are going to love reading his words and those of his first followers of the Way in the book called the New Testament. You are going to find yourself thinking of him many, many times each day and you are going to listen to him and speak to him in prayer—in fact your attitude will be like that of mother with a newborn—you will always be alert for his voice. You will fail in this process many times, but God is for you. 6. You are going to carry out his mission. He will use you, usually in partnership with others who are sold out to him. You will agree that all your time is his, that all your energy is his, that all your money is his. So you are going to give 10% of your money at the start and a lot more as you advance, as a general rule. You are going to join with others to pray, to grow in understanding, and to serve on the Lord’s Day and at many other times. You are always on duty—just as you would be if you were a parent or a spouse. You are in battle 24/7 while you live on earth. Jesus will give you time to rest and be refreshed. But your life, your time, your treasure are all provided by him and for his cause.It takes time to grow to this level. But that is your goal. 7. This life will produce a sense of joy you won’t believe. You will know this is what you were created for. To love, to serve, to enjoy God’s presence is your highest fulfillment. God created you for this. You will know that your reason for existence is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. And you will gladly pour out your life into other people. Of course people who have not been transformed by this grace and power of God will not understand. To them you are now a fanatic. They think you are now too religious, when in truth you are not religious at all. It is not about religion. It is not about trying to do enough or be good enough to get goodies from God, the Great Vending Machine in the Sky. If you follow the Way of Jesus this world is no longer your home. You are not there yet. But God is transforming you little by little. You enjoy what God gives you and you struggle with the mess and heartaches. You enter the sufferings of Jesus. But you are looking for a kingdom whose builder and maker is God—a home eternal in the heavens. He’s leaving the light on for you. That is enough.