Tag Archives: authority

A Word to Live By

More than a few folks bristle at the idea that people of faith get their warp and woof from a book. There are numerous examples of people, past and present, who use(d) their “holy” book to excuse wreaking havoc on the world. Others who believe all people are “basically good” are forced to conclude that these books and their brandishers must necessarily brainwash adherents – those who believe their specific book is given by God – and are therefore dangerous to the continued progress of man.

Religious books aren’t all of the same stripe. The ethereal natures of some Eastern and “New Age” religions don’t require verifiability or historical accuracy of their texts because their “truths” transcend those categories. Others, whose books would seem to be historical (including some Judaism and Christianity), use various four-fold interpretive methods that include the literal meaning of the text, but go to a more allegorical, subjective sense to derive ultimate meaning. Biblical Christians, and I suppose Qur’anic Muslims, and maybe Mormons and other quasi-Christian sects, must needs be “people of the book,” and those books must be in accord with actual natural and supernatural events to be coherent.

For the last 150-200 years, liberal scholars have taken to “demythologizing” the Bible. Enlightenment rationalism has forced many who would “save Christianity” to skew the Bible almost as ethereal, mystical and mythical, so that events like the virgin birth and the resurrection are not taken literally, but super-spiritually – “Jesus has risen in my heart” even if his body still lays dead somewhere. For Paul (and us), Christ’s actual, bodily resurrection is an imperative (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

The Bible depends ultimately on the objective truth of God as he has revealed himself, and what his Word says he has actually said and done in history (revelation). There are copious tests for historicity, continuity, coherency and authority, and biblical Christians welcome honest scrutiny as should any said “people of the book.”

That said, there is indeed a spiritual component to understanding the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 2:14), so if you approach it to disprove it, you might indeed do so to your and others’ satisfaction. Blaise Pascal stated, “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.” (Note: authors Lee Strobel and Josh McDowell are two of many exceptions – scoffers whose investigations led to faith.)

So, I may take a later column to dispel some popular misconceptions (or skeptics’ holstered challenges – locked and loaded for rapid fire avoidance of actually considering answers) about the Bible and how it’s to be read and interpreted as the author(s) intended. For now, let me speak to (myself and) my brothers and sisters.

The reformers stated regarding the sufficiency of Scripture that “the Bible is our only rule for faith and practice.” Given that Christian Scriptures are central to understanding the God who made us – the Christ who saved us (Luke 24:27) – you might agree that knowing it should be somewhat paramount in our practice of the faith. Knowing it…is knowing Him. Reading, learning, memorizing and meditating on “the Word of God” would seem to be essential to leading a life pleasing to the God who made himself known. Yet, Christians are in too large measure illiterate of the book they claim to love. It is meant to be consumed for our guidance and delight (Psalm 119:11; 1:1-2).

A Rose by Any Other Name?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare’s Juliet declares her indifference to the rival family name of her lover, Romeo. Her love for him transcends this label regardless of its social significance. Still, peoples’ names have historically carried associative weight socially, aesthetically and intrinsically.

In many cultures, descendants who carried the bloodline were due some title, honor or notoriety simply for being born into that family – this, long before the attachment of surnames. This is still at least partially true as you consider, say, the British Royal family, or what one might assume meeting a Kennedy from Massachusetts. Whether proved by scrutiny for a famous name or accolades for success from humble beginnings, knowing “whence we come” matters.

We are all born individuals, but we also carry something forward by blood/genetics of our parents and by the sort of nurture and experience with (and of) those who raised us, and those with whom we were raised. Our biological/experiential history affects who we are and our names become the descriptor of that person. “Make a name for yourself” and “identity theft” are contrasting idioms confirming the significance of the name/identity relationship.

If history and heredity matter, then there is one such historical person whose pedigree is unmatched. His name is Jesus. Matthew and Luke trace his genealogy back to Abraham and Adam respectively. This has everything to do with prophecies about Him and the covenants God had made in history with each, directly affecting the meaning of the gospel as a solution to the “problem” caused by Adam and the promises made to Abraham.

Similarly, the biblical Jesus conveyed his eternal relationship with God as a Son to a Father; in the minds of his hearers making him “equal with God” (John 5:18; He was/is subordinate in role only, equal in essence). His supernatural conception (“born of a virgin”) was the first of many miracles that confirmed his heavenly family tree. His own miracles, like those of God in the Old Testament, were “evidence” (John 14:11) and were done “so that you will know” (Exodus 8:22) the authority of the one performing the sign or wonder.

“…At the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” (Philippians 2:10-11) Just as God had gone to great lengths in the Hebrew Scriptures to make clear how his name carried the weight of his character, now this Jesus is exalted by the Father as “the name that is above every name.” (2:9)

Many religionists insist in their “many roads to God” ideology that “we all worship the same God.” All “Christians” don’t even worship the same Jesus! That’s why “Christian” might be a good sociological category, but it’s useless in terms of understanding who is really believing on and trusting in the person and work of the historical, biblical Jesus Christ.

If I told you I knew Oprah Winfrey, you might be impressed until I said, “he’s a skinny white guy.” He may be AN Oprah, but not THE Oprah. Similarly, LDS (Mormon), Jehovah’s Witnesses, many cults, and even many established churches have so dismantled, added to or cherry-picked God’s Word that their “Jesus” bears only slight resemblance to the Christ of the Bible.

By necessity, if the Bible is true, these “based on a true story” doppelgängers are fictional characters unworthy of devotion. What a shame that the moniker Christian is almost meaningless, and when someone says “I believe in Jesus,” you have to ask, “Which one?”

Follow the Leader?

We live in a society of changing “norms” and diminishing distinctions. The New Tolerance has popularized the idea that truth is in the eye of the beholder. Instead of Truth, there is “my truth” and “your truth.” Even in contradiction, each remains equally valid. This sort of relativism sits atop the P.C. throne, and has made inroads into discussions of religion, ethics, politics and even gender. The idea comingles harder (more objective) and softer (more subjective) sciences to muddle “truth” such that personal preferences and mitigating circumstances affect perception. Physics is one of the harder sciences, and I have as yet not seen anyone able to relativize gravity. If you and I step off the 22-story Executive Office Building of the Capitol, our feelings/beliefs about gravity will have little to do with the mess we’ll make on the plaza. My contention here is that religious/spiritual “Truth” is as similarly hard and fixed and as unforgiving as gravity.

Whatever your position is on what happens to our ethereal selves when our bodies die, it’s nonsense to believe we could all be right. The naturalist believes we cease to exist at physical death. We biblical Christians believe heaven or hell await our (temporarily) bodiless souls until Christ’s second coming. We can’t both be right. You can add reincarnation, passing into “oneness,” or the ubiquitous idea that most everyone but despots, serial killers and pedophiles go to some type of heaven. “S/He’s in a better place” may provide opiatic comfort to us as a culture as we watch everyone die, but it begs the question why we try so hard to push death days or weeks as the precipice inevitably approaches. Death is batting around a thousand, and while we could all be wrong about our destination, we can’t all be right.

I might be wrong in my beliefs, but I’m not wrong saying that whatever is, is, and our beliefs and preferences, like in the case of gravity, don’t change the facts. The New Tolerance disagrees, riding in on a white horse named “Fairness,” proclaiming Sincerity as savior. All beliefs are equally (if only subjectively) true and valid and good. Religions, even nominally “Christian” forms, join hands with all who will agree to this wide, inclusive road to a wonderful afterlife and sing. Tra-la…la-la…la?

Here’s the real question: What do YOU believe? Why?

If you’ve thought about the eternal consequences of death for even a moment and settled your position, however tenuously, you’ve trusted someone – your parents or teachers or pastors or scientists or some amalgam of the world’s views. Whether religious/spiritual or areligious/naturalist, you have placed your “faith” in someone or some idea.

Consider this – some thirty years ago, I had a friend who was a fairly new pilot in the F-111. He was flying a night, low level mission with an experienced instructor. This aircraft had terrain-following radar with a type of “auto-pilot” so the plane could fly low and fast with the pilots’ hands off the controls. The system kept forcing the plane to pitch-up and climb (a built-in safety measure) when there was no apparent obstacle, so they assumed the system wasn’t operating properly. They toggled it off. Seconds later they flew into the side of a mountain at over 500 mph. This macabre example is a cautionary tale of death’s insidiousness, ignored warnings and misplaced trust.

So, again, what do you believe and why? By grace, confirmed by study, the biblical Jesus Christ has earned my trust regarding my eternal destination. Has whoever informed your view truly earned your trust? Much is at stake.

[This article originally appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat.]

Understanding the Gospel: What is Good News?

Everyone believes that they are right. Think of the well-worn religious parable of the elephant and blind men. Each has hold of a different portion of the elephant. Asked to describe the elephant, each is confined to his tactile perspective, where a leg “is like a tree trunk,” the tail “is like a rope,” the side “is like a wall,” the trunk “is like a snake,” and the ear “is like a leaf.” “So,” says the teller of the parable, “each has their own perspective, and likewise each religion has some portion of the whole truth.” Sounds compelling until you realize this “inclusive” storyteller is claiming to see the whole elephant! He’s not blind, everyone else is. One path or many? Are our divergent beliefs inconsequential? God only knows for sure.

It comes down to authority. Who or what informs our theological ethic? Unaided conscience? Present social mores? Biblical Christians believe that the Bible is our authority simply because it’s God’s revelation to us (Kevin DeYoung said about the parable that everything changes when the elephant speaks!). I could be wrong, but I have good reasons to believe that the Bible is true – all of it, not just my favorite bits. I know there are tough verses, but I have sufficiently studied the doubters’ accusations and believers’ responses. There remain tensions, nuances and depths of understanding that escape me, but I’m comfortable with the admixture of the rationally grasped, the spiritually understood and the mystery when I find neither. After all, the God of the Bible is a God who can be essentially, not comprehensively, understood (Is. 55:8,9).

While the Bible proclaims clearly that ALL are sinful (Rom. 3:23), or sick, if you will, many people don’t perceive their need for saving or healing. Others would save themselves with perfunctory religiosity – church membership, attendance, rituals – and/or they simply work their “balance sheet” accumulating good deeds and minimizing bad, or hope by comparison with others that they make the grade. “Hey, it’s not like I ever killed anybody.” It’s not a competition. If it was, we’d all lose.

You see, no résumé, no balance sheet, and no comparison of deeds will suffice to cancel the debt each of us owes. If we were true to ourselves, we’d rightly argue with Paul about who, indeed, is the “chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). I pity the person who cannot look inside and see something broken, something sick, something that needs fixing. I hope you can see that. If so, I have GOOD NEWS!

The gospel, or good news, is that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). The God of the Bible is a holy God who hates sin. In his grace, he visited the punishment for sin on his sinless Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. His death and subsequent resurrection “conquered the grave.” If we trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, we will be saved, adopted as sons and daughters. We have no righteousness of our own (Titus 3:5) – instead, we trust in Christ alone. Augustus Toplady wrote in his classic hymn, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”

I understand the exclusive claims of this gospel and the offense it is to some (1 Co. 1:23). Whether biblical Christians are right or wrong, we believe that our ability to truly love the world rests on the proclamation of the gospel. Are we clumsy, forgetting the grace shown us? Too often. Grace should be humbling, for it is not merited, not earned and not deserved.

[This article originally appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat.]