As I’ve stated before on this blog I have no qualms with those who reject evolution on a scientific basis. I only am interested in defending the view that you can believe in evolution while taking scripture seriously. Interestingly there is a lot of push back against this idea. Much of it is just pure misunderstanding but some of it does seem to present some legitimate questions and problems to the theistic evolutionist stance. I aim to answer some of these objections here.
Objection 1: If theistic evolution is true then why does Genesis portray God as creating everything through separate acts of creation?
My thinking is the Bible is written this way to emphasize that what most cultures considers gods (the earth, moon, sun, stars) were actually created by one God. This is also why, I think, the creation story in Genesis is so lacking in the fantastic imagery we see in other creation accounts. If the author wanted to write the Genesis creation story as a critique and polemic against other creation accounts it would make sense to bluntly state what God has created and what other gods haven’t.
Moreover, how else is the author of the Bible supposed to write that God created the heavens and the earth? And even supposing he did write it with perfect scientific accuracy do you seriously want me to believe than anyone but him would understand it in a culture that had only the most basic technologies? Ancient Near Eastern cultures didn’t see accuracy in the same way we do. Their numerical systems were not mathematic or calculating but symbolic and largely based on cultural nuance and estimations. Time was not seen as something to be measured but rather the passing of one event to another, the duration of which being rather inconsequential. The chronology of events was not as important as their theme.
So I don’t see this objection as holding much weight.
Objection 2: In what sense is man separated from animal on theistic evolution?
If man is not merely a physical being but also has a soul, a non-physical rational mind then how did God put such a soul in man through the process of evolution? If it was an act of special creation then why did God use such a special creation here and not elsewhere in creation? If it wasn’t an act of special creation then the soul developed naturally over time in which case what is the real difference between man and beast?
A few problems with this. Firstly, there are many differing views on what it means to be made in the image of God. My own view is that it is primarily ontological and functional. It is ontological in the sense that we have rational and mental faculties that allow us to think on a level animals cannot. And it is functional in the sense that we have been given a special purpose by God to follow His natural law and be stewards over creation. But to say these two aspects of human nature developed over time in an evolutionary sense doesn’t require us to say that apes are partially made in the image of God and so on. It could be that this sort of spiritual evolution developed in a massive jump after apes, similar to the jump during the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion occurred over a 10 million year period where thousands of new species suddenly evolved. This occurred because basic skeletal structures, spinal columns and nervous systems developed out of more basic forms of life, allowing for a greater diversity of species to form. Similarly, hominids with souls may have only come into existence after brains had become sophisticated enough to express them.
Moreover, supposing God did implant a soul in the first hominid species or perhaps only homo-sapiens in what sense would this make theistic evolution ad-hoc or inconsistent? It seems entirely plausible that God could use special creation to use the brain mankind gained through heaven to place a soul or mind into and that He did this to separate man from the rest of creation as His image bearers.
Objection 3: How does death before the fall fit into Resurrection theology?
One interesting objection to theistic evolution is that because the Resurrection was a conquering of physical death as much as spiritual death, physical death must be seen as a symptom of the fall. Thus physical death could not exist before the fall. My response to this is simple, the problem isn’t physical death in itself but shameful death. Christ’s death on the cross was as much a ritual of humiliation as it was a sacrifice. Crucifixion was a horrendously shameful act that demeaned a person to perhaps the greatest extent possible in society. If physical death as a whole was really the issue, it seems strange that Christ would need to be killed by crucifixion which included so much shame and suffering. Why not just have Christ be beheaded or poisoned? But if we see physical death as perverted by the fall and made shameful to all who experience it and are forced to face God’s wrath afterwards, it makes sense that to conquer death Christ would have to die the most painful and shameful death possible.
This view also makes sense of the punishments God gives to Adam, Eve and the Serpent. All three of these figures are described as being brought below the other; the serpent is brought below Eve, Eve is brought below Adam and Adam is brought below creation. The central issue isn’t that they will die, but die in a fallen state. Given this there seems little issue with supposing that death existed before the fall. We could also further state that death would have led people to a sort of heaven where they awaited resurrection to glory if the fall had never happened. Perhaps such physical death was virtually painless and without shame. Perhaps Christ would have become incarnate anyway to walk with mankind and unite mankind to Himself. The point is death before the fall causes no theological issues or confusions if one actually takes the time to think it through.
Objection 4: Isn’t evolution inherently purposeless and unguided?
Yes and no. Evolution is unguided only in the sense that scientists have no way to accurately predict which adaptations will develop or where they will lead. We can’t predict what species will evolve next. But this doesn’t mean that God couldn’t be working behind the scenes to bring evolutionary processes to His intended ends. We can compare this to a man choosing a random series of numbers and asking another man to try to predict which number will come next. There is no way for the second man to reliably predict what the first man will choose next, but this doesn’t mean there is no one intentionally choosing the sequence of numbers.
Christians who believe that evolution requires this kind of purposelessness have got their ideas of evolution from staunch atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett who have been strongly criticized by both the philosophical and scientific community for making scientifically unjustifiable claims about the nature of evolution and its implications.
You can say that creation is an important Christian doctrine, but it is absurd to say that you cannot take the Bible or theology seriously and believe in an old earth, the Big Bang Theory or even evolution. These issues within the doctrine of creation are not hills to fight and die on. As 1 Corinthians 15 makes clear the center of Christian thought and hope is the Atonement and Resurrection of Christ. This is the point we must defend; the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. Instead Christians insist on centering the debate between skeptics and Christians on evolution and the numerous scientific issues involved therein.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Emotivism and Emotion in the Church Part 2
Ok so now that I’ve outlined what the problems emotionalism causes are I’m going to explain why I think emotionalism itself is a problem scripturally and theologically.
Scriptural arguments for emotionalism;
Yada: knowing God intimately?
Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen,
that you may know [yada] and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me."
Exodus 33:13 “Teach me your ways so that I may know [yada] you and continue in your favor.”
Habakkuk 2:14 "The knowledge [yada] of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas."
The Hebrew root word for “knowing” “understanding” “becoming acquainted with” etc. is Yada. It is claimed over and over again that because of verses where yada is used to imply knowing someone sexually, this must mean that yada is meant everywhere as intimate knowledge of someone. This is simply false, as noted above yada is a root word for knowledge. This means it covers all kinds of knowledge and we have no reason to think that the ancient Hebrews believed all forms of knowledge were “intimate”, at least not in the same sense we use the word today. Even when the word does refer to knowledge of a person, it doesn’t automatically mean sexual relations or the emotional equivalent. Rather it can refer to anything from a casual acquaintance to a close friend or family member. So no, God wanting us to know Him doesn’t mean he wants us to know Him as a wife knows her husband, nor does it mean that He wants some platonic equivalent of emotional intimacy, at least not necessarily.
Examples of bad exegesis of the word “yada”; https://sites.google.com/site/kudeshet/the-hebrew-perspective/developing-intimacy-with-god---yad-yadah-yada-judah, http://www.ibethel.org/articles/2007/09/01/yada-yada-yada
Actual Hebrew Lexicon of the word; http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H3045&t=KJV
Abba: Is God our daddy?
Romans 8:15 “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
Mark 14:36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Galatians 4:6 “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
Many claim that this word “Abba” refers to the way a child endears their father with tenderness and intimacy aka calling him “daddy”. There is actually very little evidence that Abba has this childish connotation. It comes from a New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias who wrote in 1971 that Abba resembled the chatter of a small child and thus it would have been seen as offensive to Jesus’ contemporaries for him to use such a familiar and informal term when speaking of God.
In reality Abba is the only word in aramaic for father, so Jesus didn’t have any other option. While Jeremias was right in that it was not strictly formal or ceremonial, it was as James Barr puts it “a solemn, responsible, adult address to a Father”. Indeed most scholars today recognize Joachim’s thesis as unsupported by the linguistic evidence.
Examples of bad exegesis for the word Abba; http://www.gotquestions.org/Abba-Father.html
Actual Lexicon entry for the word; http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G5&t=KJV
Articles used as sources; http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/factchecker-does-abba-mean-daddy/
Bride of Christ: Are we married to Jesus?
As a dude, I find the idea propagated by many pastors that every individual Christian is somehow married to Christ in an intimate and romantic fashion unsettling. It may be an attractive idea for women, but the implications are that Christ would be polygamous and married to His Fathers children, unless we are the Fathers sons and daughters… in law? What a ridiculous idea! Obviously bridal imagery in scripture is just that, imagery. Its drawing parallels between a husband and Christ in order to give us something to compare it to. But in this light the question still arises; does the Bible employ the analogy of the love between a husband and wife and the individual believer’s love for Christ?
There are 2 passages that seem to most strongly support the affirmative answer to this question:
- Hosea 2:19-20 “And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.”
Despite this being one of the strongest passages in support of the position that the individual is to love Christ with the same level and kind of emotional passion that he loves his spouse, this actually isn’t saying much. Honestly if you read the whole chapter, its fairly clear that the “you” is plural and refers to God’s people as a whole. Moreover, if this was meant to say God has multiple marriage like relationships with all of His followers, why does He state that He shall only have one wife?
- 2 Corinthians 11:2-4 “I am anxious for you with the deep concern of God himself--anxious that your love should be for Christ alone, just as a pure maiden saves her love for one man only, for the one who will be her husband. But I am frightened, fearing that in some way you will be led away from your pure and simple devotion to our Lord, just as Eve was deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden.”
This is probably the best support for the emotionalists position with reference to bridal imagery. Clearly it refers to the individuals love for Christ. However, this passage seems to be speaking in terms of degree, not necessarily of kind. It says stay faithful to Christ in the same way a woman who is engaged stays faithful to her future spouse. In other words; don’t commit idolatry and stay true to your commitments. Unless you say love just is an intimate emotional passion for a person (an assertion which I don’t think can be justified Biblically) I fail to see how this verse really supports the interpretation that I and every other Christian have the deep kind of emotional bond in a modern marriage. But then if you say that, then this passage doesn’t have any more support for emotionalism than any other passage on God’s love.
Sloppy teachings on bridal imagery; http://www.creatingfutures.net/single.html; "Do we live our lives as if we are betrothed to Christ? As singles, do people look at us and see that we are in love. You know what I mean. You have seen people in love. They spend every spare moment with their lover. They will do silly things for and with their lover. They will talk for hours on the phone, even if it is long distance. They make plans for the future. They become inseparable. There is a look in their face.” If this is the way the Christian life is supposed to be lived, you would think Paul, Peter or one of the other New Testament writers would talk about how much they just love talking to Christ and how good He makes them feel. Good luck finding that, most of the time Paul speaks of himself as a bondservant of Christ aka a slave to Christ, not Christ’s girlfriend (Christ is our Lord, not our lover). I will grant however that most articles and sermons written on this issue correctly see Christ’s bride as being the Church collectively as two parties in covenant relationship. Whatever elements of Christ’s affection towards Christians present in bridal imagery passages, if there are any, are secondary to this central message.
Agape: God’s intimate love for us?
Ok so we’ve established that God relating to us as Father not to the Church as a bride entails a deep emotional connection with God. But what about God’s love for us in general? If emotionalism is correct than God’s love for us is centrally His desire to be in relationship with us. This relationship, in turn, entails a deep emotional connection whereby God allows us to feel things we’ve never felt before at certain times (usually in helping others or worshipping God) and bringing us closer to Himself in these emotional experiences.
If I have not made this clear before allow me to make it clear now; I reject the viewpoint described above in its entirety. God’s love as it is expressed in scripture, if anything is a tough love not intended to bring us into an emotionally based relationship with God but obedience to God and unity with God (which doesn’t mean emotional attachment). This is a crucial point of contention for the emotionalist. If they are wrong about what God’s love is, they are wrong in how they frame the purpose of Jesus death and resurrection and they are wrong about the essence of the Christian life. Also a disclaimer to avoid any confusion. The rejection of the above view doesn’t require that we believe God is a cold, distant God not involved in our experiences or lives at all. It just means that emotional and experiential elements to the Christian life are secondary in importance to our ethical and role based duties to God and our neighbor. In other words, you don’t have to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ to be saved (gaaaasssspp).
J.P. Holding and a number of Biblical scholars have realized, however, that both the exegetical and contextual evidence of passages pertaining to God’s love for us do not have the connotations we attach to them. Holding writes; "A key difference in understanding the meaning of agape is to recognize that our culture is centered on the individual, whereas ancient Biblical society (and 70% of societies today) are group-centered. What is good for the group is what is paramount. Hence when the NT speaks of agape it refers to the "value of group attachment and group bonding" [Malina and Neyrey, Portraits of Paul, 196]. Agape is not an exchange on a personal level and "will have little to do with feelings of affection, sentiments of fondness, and warm, glowing affinity." It is a gift that puts the group first.”
Scholars Bruce J. Malina and John Piltch point out that love in the ancient world was not about emotional passion but social attachment and the role you played in another persons life. As such to hate someone is just not to love them and vice versa. This means that both love and hate on the part of God are not descriptions of His emotional attitudes towards us but the role He plays in looking after our best interests.
This makes sense of how Christ could at one moment speak of turning the other cheek and in the next moment call Pharisess hypocrites, white washed tombs and broods of Vipers. In that world, love and hate weren’t personal, no one got offended if you confronted them about their behavior or some such thing. Confrontation was the norm. It also makes sense of passages in the Old Testament such as the story of Jacob and Esau where God states “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.” Also of particular interest in that same story is this passage; “Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” Jacob said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.” This passage makes no sense under a modern understanding of love. We would say that there’s nothing about selling your birth right that indicates you hate it, it only means you don’t care about it. In ancient Mediterranean societies, however, love was seen in terms of attachment; you either are attached to your birth right, or you aren’t, there can be no in between.
So what about specific passages about love? How much sense does this model of love as social attachment make of these passages;
- 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” At first glance, verse 3 seems to refute the idea that the Biblical authors saw love as attachment, not emotional attitudes. After all if you can give all that you have away and die as a martyr but still not have love that seems to indicate love has more to do with your emotional motivations than your attachment to individuals and groups as a duty-bound servant. However, As Malina and Pilch point out, Paul is trying to distinguish charismata (charisma, courage, heroism) from agape (group allegiance, attachment to others). In other words someone might aim to give all they have to the poor and die as a martyr to leave an honorable and heroic legacy and not have any interest towards looking out for others interest. So this passage is saying that we need pure motivations, but its not saying those pure motivations require pure emotional attitudes.
Whether or not you accept what Holding, Malina and Pilch have to say, its clear that the default view of love is not our modern western conceptions. Even if love does have to do with emotional attitudes in the Biblical world, this doesn’t mean that God’s love for us implies an emotionally attached relationship. The Biblical view of love on both models points towards a more wholistic approach where our motives and actions are in harmony towards furthering the will of God and where God’s love towards us entails a looking out for humanities best interests and a will for individuals to grow in righteousness. And nothing about this central truth requires us to have personal relationships with God. That is a view someone can take, but it is dangerous to say that having a relationship with God is what the gospel’s all about.
Sources; http://books.google.com/books?id=cMrQOr9GmhoC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=John+Pilch+on+1+Corinthians+13:3&source=bl&ots=WSNMzdDOEk&sig=oeqkUTDWQaEEVxF5UONuXYBIPDw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zKLIU7-AL9CDogThyIKoAg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=John%20Pilch%20on%201%20Corinthians%2013%3A3&f=false, http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatlove.php
Imago Dei: Relational creatures?
Another claim often made by emotionalists is that we were created in the image of God to be in personal relationships. They cite as evidence the fact that God created Eve so that Adam wouldn’t be alone and that God walked with both Adam and Eve in the Garden. While its undoubtedly true that part of being made in the image of God is our cognitive capacity for communication and personal relationships it seems equally true that the primary aspect of our being made in the image of God is our stewardship over God’s creation as His representatives. Involved in this is our identity as moral creatures who make moral decisions and are meant to live according to God’s purposes.
Again nothing about this requires the emotional relationship that many Christians describe where God. For instance in collectivist societies individuals are not nearly as introspective as we are in the West. So they don’t see interpersonal relationships the same way we see them. For them group identity is more important than individual identity so they don’t think in terms of how they feel about the group but what role they play in the group. So if we define within our view of imago dei a western view of personal relationships where two or more people have this great connection and get along very well in their personalities (a word which didn’t even exist until a little over a century ago) then we could be unintentionally saying all other cultural perspective are lacking the imago dei.
This is partly why I frame the Image of God in terms of stewardship over creation and ethical responsibility as these transcend cultural boundaries and truly get at the heart of who we are as human beings.
Sources; Pilch J. & Malina B. (2009). Handbook of Biblical Social Values. Peabody MA; Hendrickson publishers.
http://anthropology-updates.blogspot.com/2012/05/individualism-collectivism.html
Is eternal life knowing God?
In John chapter 17 Jesus is recorded praying to the Father; “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Well this settles it, eternal life is knowing Christ personally. Not exactly, the trouble is that “knowing” someone has a diverse range of meanings. Does this passage mean that we know God as the triune God who sent Jesus Christ and live according to that knowledge? Does it mean that we actually have conversations with this triune God? Does it mean we know God as we know our father? I think the first option would be the best, simply because it is the most simple. Knowing God is simply recognizing Him as the true God, learning His will and living it out through the power and life of the Holy Spirit. Again nothing about this requires a personal relationship so we have no justification for defining salvation in such terms.
Unity in Christ: becoming intimate with Christ?
John 17 also contains this passage; “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the worldmay believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Aha, being in Christ and Christ being in us, that’s so intimate its almost erotic. This has to prove that salvation, whether individual or group centered involves personal intimacy. Well not really, the language of being in Christ or Christ being in us was employed by Christ in a collectivist society where individual identity was shaped by group identity (you are one with the body of Christ). Its saying we do not form our own identity as Christians, our identity is shaped by Christ such that our goals must be His goals, our desires must be His desires. The way we relate to Christ then is not as two equal persons seeking an mutual emotional connection but truly as a potter forms clay. As such it is not us who lives but Christ in us. This is not a description of a literal person abiding inside of our souls so much as the power of Christ to conform us to Himself. And again nothing about this implies a personal relationship in the sense of two people seeking an emotional connection based on personality.
Sources; http://books.google.com/books?id=zqoJj4WhJXAC&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=Bruce+Malina+on+John+17:3&source=bl&ots=f6PkGfY17b&sig=ag9BbAYge-tw2W72LYOvJub0LHE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3VnJU5ncONK6oQSblILICg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Bruce%20Malina%20on%20John%2017%3A3&f=false, http://www.tektonics.org/qt/selfesteem.php
Worshipping in Spirit means worshipping emotionally?
What is the purpose of worship? If it is truly to give glory to God through hymns and proclamations of thanksgiving and God’s truth and goodness should we not have some passion for God something more than a stoic devotion to Him? Well yes, obviously we are going to have passion. But I think this passion is more like the passion we have for a great leader or someone we are inspired to follow in the sense that you don’t have to know such people personally for them to evoke passionate feelings in you (I don’t think God has a favorite color or a favorite kind of music etc. so its not like we can get to know Him in that respect). As such pastors like John Piper are right to say that we should enjoy God for who He is and we should celebrate what He has done for us in worshipping His character.
I would also deny the idea that worship is where God fills us with a sense of euphoria or even a special sense of peace. Such an experience of God is not intrinsic to worship and so we shouldn’t expect to feel God’s presence every time we engage in worship. In addition to this, more often than not in the Bible God’s presence brought a sense of terror in the hearts of His followers, so I would question why we assume God is going to make us feel comforted by His presence at all times. It seems equally possible that God will convict us in worship about a grave sin we have committed and we should be sensitive to that feeling of guilt as much as we should about comfort and peace.
So I can easily grant the claim that there is an emotional aspect to worship and an emotional aspect to worshipping in Spirit in John 4:24, its just not the level nor the kind of emotion expressed by so many pastors today.
Useful resources on the study of worship; http://books.google.com/books?id=XV3MSDLAt6kC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=richard+rohrbaugh+social+commentary+on+worship&source=bl&ots=-BsOGjabYt&sig=CxmrzKBQtP3FfL6N3PjU1nNs-P4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=auvJU6DDIJbhoATdyoKYDw&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=richard%20rohrbaugh%20social%20commentary%20on%20worship&f=false
The Indwelling Spirit: God inside of us?
What is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is often portrayed as a separate consciousness, communicating with us on a constant basis through our own thoughts, emotions and externally through our own actions and the actions of those around us. This is all done in an effort on the Spirits part to conform our moral and spiritual character and nature to that of Christ’s. Moreover, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is often cited as a testament to our intimacy with God because God is not only with us but in us.
Hank Hanegraff from Christian Research Ministries writes; “...to say that the Holy Spirit is in you is not to point out where the Holy Spirit is physically located, but rather to point out that we have come into a special, intimate, personal relationship with Him through repentance. Similarly, when Jesus says, “the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38), He is not speaking of physical location but intimacy of relationship.” However when it comes to explaining what this intimate personal relationship entails, Hanegraff only comes up with this; "To deny that the Holy Spirit is spatially locatable within us is not to deny that He is activelylocatable within us, working redemptively within the deepest part of our beings to conform us into the image of Christ. Far from detracting from our nearness to the Holy Spirit, the classical Christian view intensifies the intimacy of our special relationship to the Creator as well as the benefits of our redemption.” Ok, but how is this intimate? What about the Spirit’s active part in our lives requires this personal intimacy Hank is describing? If, as described above, being in Christ primarily means our being conformed to the identity of Christ through self-denial and selfless love then The Spirit doesn’t really need to communicate all that much with us to allow us to fulfill our purpose, let alone communicate with us as a unique personality. Such interaction makes no sense if the whole point of our relationship with the Spirit is to be like the Spirit in all His communicable attributes (i.e. righteousness, selflessness, holiness, faithfulness, kindness, gentleness, self-control, peace, patience, love and goodness).
But perhaps Christians leaders and Pastors like Hanegraff are suggesting that the Spirit is affectionate and loving in a nurturing fashion, similar to that between a mother and her child and not so much between two friends or even lovers. Such affection wouldn’t involve communication so much as feelings of comfort in times of distress. But if this characteristic is central to our relationship with the Spirit we hit a scriptural wall when it comes to Acts where the Spirit acts as a supportive role almost solely in the ministry of the Apostles and is never mentioned as supporting them personally. Luke, nor Peter, nor Paul, nor Barnabas ever report feeling comforted by the Spirit in times of distress such as in the numerous times Paul was imprisoned and beaten. The Spirit brings the Apostles visions, provides them with the power to perform miracles and convicts them to evangelize. So again, it seems we must see these intimate nurturing aspects of the Spirit as secondary to His role as a guide to Christ-likeness and Kingdom building.
Aha! But what about verses like John 14:26 where the Holy Spirit is identified as the Comforter? This seems to conclusively demonstrate that the primary identity of the Spirit in us is that of a comforter! Well actually this leads us to the ambiguity of words in Greek when translated to english. The greek word here is paraklētos Which has a fairly broad set of meanings. The basic idea of it, however, seems to be centered on that of a helper or aid. But if this is true than “comforter” properly translated doesn’t have the therapeutic connotations so often attached to that word in modern society. It simply mean the Spirit is there to aid us in the mission God assigned to us. But there still could be a sense in which the Spirit gives us feelings of comfort and peace at times. The point is these must be seen as secondary to His central goal in breathing life into the Church through the ministries of Christians.
But what about external signs that the Spirit is there for us? These are certainly present in scripture, but they are perhaps more rare and less romantic than many would like to imagine. The Holy Spirit is never portrayed as forming a gust of wind around us or floating a flower down before us to let us know we’ll be ok. The signs from the Spirit are usually less cryptic and more direct. For instance, in Acts 16 the Spirit literally just prevents all attempts on the part of Paul to enter into Asia, and instead sends him a vision of a Macedonian calling for help. Not much interpretation is required to understand the Spirits message here. Even more so, events like this only happened every few years or so in the life of the Apostles, the founders of the Church! It seems foolish to suppose they would occur on a regular basis in our lives.
Sources; http://www.tektonics.org/qt/quietthird.php, http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G3875&t=KJV, http://www.equip.org/articles/the-indwelling-of-the-holy-spirit/#christian-books-3
Scriptural conclusion; By my roughly brief analysis of the wide range of passages used to support emotionalism and relationship theology I don’t find the case for seeing salvation in terms of a personal relationship with Christ very compelling. More often than not it seems more assumed that we have a personal relationship with Christ than scripturally established and no one seems to have bothered to build an in depth exegetical case for the idea or even develop what it really means to have a relationship with Christ. It’s always spoken of in very vague terms of “being intimate with Christ” “feeling His love” “having Christ in us” etc. So I suppose that at the very least I encourage Christians to really flesh out what they mean by a personal relationship with Christ because in every sense I could think of it actually meaning something it either seems to be a more confusing way of putting the message of the gospel or a needless (and perhaps even dangerous) addition to it.
Theological Objections to the gospel as a relationship;
On top of these scriptural considerations as well as the sociological problems discussed in part 1 I also have theological qualms with emotionalism. Going back to Part 1 you'll recall I defined emotionalism as; "the view that the Christian life is best understood as an individual transformation through an emotional and intimate relationship with God and that Christ’s atonement and resurrection were meant to establish said intimate relationships."
You'll also recall I tied this definition to various attributes of emotionalism; seeing God as our therapist, lover, friend, and/or daddy, seeing our interactions under these relationship frameworks as being primarily emotional and scriptural (since it would be impossible to hold that we can have verbal communication with God on a regular basis), and seeing our relationship with God as therefore being primarily internal and thereby primarily existing in the individual.
Before I engage in a theological critique of this viewpoint I want to make clear that what I am talking about isn't a doctrine that you either adhere to or not, rather its an emphasis on the way God relates to us. My point is that the personal and emotional aspects in the way we relate to God have been grossly over-exaggerated in the Church. I do not however deny that there is an emotional and personal aspect to salvation (such a view would also lead to troubling implications).
Theology is Pointless;
If we agree with the average evangelical and say that God is literally a person present in our minds then theology seems to be on the chopping block along with scripture. Revelation becomes immediate and ever present. Of course, most churches add that experiencing God means reading scripture and obeying God's word in order to balance the tension between God's immanence in our lives through our intimate relationship with Him and His transcendence above and away from us in His holy and righteous nature. My worry is that merely by saying being in Christ means being in a personal affectionate relationship with Him it is unclear how scripture is really helpful. After all Christ is right there with you at all times on a mental and emotional level, what need do we have for scripture if that is really the case? Moreover, why should we listen to theologians or pastors in theological and ethical instruction if it doesn't match up with our immediate direct connection to Christ?
I don't see how we can emphasize our closeness with Christ to the degree that emotionalism requires without sacrificing the revelation of God through sources outside ourselves. We have to say that Christ is really quite distant from us as individuals but also powerfully impacting our lives as our Lord and God through scripture and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
A Church Club;
A corollary of this would be that under an emotionalist framework the Church itself becomes an optional gathering of individual Christians desiring to share their experience with Christ. If we have this direct connection to Christ where He tells us directly what His will is for our lives its unclear what need is for the Church. Again churches will qualify that the Church has a common relationship with Christ and that Christ uses the Church to exhort individual believers and fill them up spiritually. However, this doesn't seem to be enough to really treat the Church with the amount of importance both Christ and the writers of the NT put on the Church however. I cannot find a reading of Paul or Peter where they do not see the Church as the core of God’s activity on earth. They both go to great lengths to establish communities of Christians devoted to sharing and living the gospel. Paul doesn’t seem to understand any sense of a Christian life outside the Church. Therefore participation in the Church cannot be viewed as merely optional or beneficial for the individual believer, its absolutely essential to the individual believer.
But if this is true it seems equally difficult to imagine that at the same time salvation is primarily an internal affair of emotional and spiritual well-being. Salvation seems simultaneously internal and external; we are changed by our closeness to the Will and identity of God and then are sent out to fulfill His will and calling. This change within us, however, cannot be seen as a single event but as a process. The Church facilitates this process but more importantly we have a role to play in the Church. Paul describes the Church as the body of Christ with many members, each playing an integral role to the function of the whole. Each member is defined by their specific calling or gifting to perform tasks such as evangelism, teaching, shepherding, counseling etc.
Thus salvation is also external in that the plans God has for us have little to do with us relative to the Church and her mission. Emotionalism, by defining closeness with God as a state of deep spiritual connection with God within yourself doesn’t seem to allow for this view of the Church. Emotionalism sees the Church as primarily a service for the individual Christian in nourishing his daily walk with Christ. While a person can be saved and not participate in the Church for a time, I do not think a truly faithful child of God can ignore or neglect the Church indefinitely. Emotionalism, particularly in its stronger forms, states positively that Christians can do this and this emotionalist attitude has captured the hearts and minds of most evangelicals.
Antinomianism;
Emotionalism also has interesting implications for one’s view of the law, grace, faith and works. If Christ really did atone for our sins and conquer death to get closer to us on a personal level and changing us through a personal relationship then any good works we do must be a direct result of this relationship. This is certainly in line with Orthodoxy (good works are a result of God’s grace) but oddly Christians have repeatedly juxtaposed a relationship with Christ and religiousness. A relationship with Christ is described as a vibrant and living faith and religion is seen as empty rule following and obedience. These two seem to be portrayed as so opposed that one cannot have rules or obligations to follow without neglecting Christ and faith in Him. In an article entitled "God Hates Religion” we read:
"But relationship with God cannot be found through religion. In fact, religion is the biggest roadblock to seeking a relationship with God. Religion is simply Man trying to reach out to God by doing something that he thinks will please God. “If I can do enough, say enough, pray enough, give enough, sacrifice enough perhaps God will show me favor”. Every religion is based upon this “works theology”. Neither ceremony, liturgy, creeds, sacraments nor money have ever brought one soul into a reconciled relationship to God. Abstaining from drugs, alcohol, tobacco, illicit sex and the places that provide them is a healthy thing to do but cannot of itself restore a broken relationship with God. Giving up a favorite food or drink, reciting ‘program prayers’ or self mutilation does nothing to convince or satisfy God."
Scriptural arguments for emotionalism;
Yada: knowing God intimately?
Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen,
that you may know [yada] and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me."
Exodus 33:13 “Teach me your ways so that I may know [yada] you and continue in your favor.”
Habakkuk 2:14 "The knowledge [yada] of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas."
The Hebrew root word for “knowing” “understanding” “becoming acquainted with” etc. is Yada. It is claimed over and over again that because of verses where yada is used to imply knowing someone sexually, this must mean that yada is meant everywhere as intimate knowledge of someone. This is simply false, as noted above yada is a root word for knowledge. This means it covers all kinds of knowledge and we have no reason to think that the ancient Hebrews believed all forms of knowledge were “intimate”, at least not in the same sense we use the word today. Even when the word does refer to knowledge of a person, it doesn’t automatically mean sexual relations or the emotional equivalent. Rather it can refer to anything from a casual acquaintance to a close friend or family member. So no, God wanting us to know Him doesn’t mean he wants us to know Him as a wife knows her husband, nor does it mean that He wants some platonic equivalent of emotional intimacy, at least not necessarily.
Examples of bad exegesis of the word “yada”; https://sites.google.com/site/kudeshet/the-hebrew-perspective/developing-intimacy-with-god---yad-yadah-yada-judah, http://www.ibethel.org/articles/2007/09/01/yada-yada-yada
Actual Hebrew Lexicon of the word; http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H3045&t=KJV
Abba: Is God our daddy?
Romans 8:15 “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
Mark 14:36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Galatians 4:6 “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
Many claim that this word “Abba” refers to the way a child endears their father with tenderness and intimacy aka calling him “daddy”. There is actually very little evidence that Abba has this childish connotation. It comes from a New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias who wrote in 1971 that Abba resembled the chatter of a small child and thus it would have been seen as offensive to Jesus’ contemporaries for him to use such a familiar and informal term when speaking of God.
In reality Abba is the only word in aramaic for father, so Jesus didn’t have any other option. While Jeremias was right in that it was not strictly formal or ceremonial, it was as James Barr puts it “a solemn, responsible, adult address to a Father”. Indeed most scholars today recognize Joachim’s thesis as unsupported by the linguistic evidence.
Examples of bad exegesis for the word Abba; http://www.gotquestions.org/Abba-Father.html
Actual Lexicon entry for the word; http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G5&t=KJV
Articles used as sources; http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/factchecker-does-abba-mean-daddy/
Bride of Christ: Are we married to Jesus?
As a dude, I find the idea propagated by many pastors that every individual Christian is somehow married to Christ in an intimate and romantic fashion unsettling. It may be an attractive idea for women, but the implications are that Christ would be polygamous and married to His Fathers children, unless we are the Fathers sons and daughters… in law? What a ridiculous idea! Obviously bridal imagery in scripture is just that, imagery. Its drawing parallels between a husband and Christ in order to give us something to compare it to. But in this light the question still arises; does the Bible employ the analogy of the love between a husband and wife and the individual believer’s love for Christ?
There are 2 passages that seem to most strongly support the affirmative answer to this question:
- Hosea 2:19-20 “And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.”
Despite this being one of the strongest passages in support of the position that the individual is to love Christ with the same level and kind of emotional passion that he loves his spouse, this actually isn’t saying much. Honestly if you read the whole chapter, its fairly clear that the “you” is plural and refers to God’s people as a whole. Moreover, if this was meant to say God has multiple marriage like relationships with all of His followers, why does He state that He shall only have one wife?
- 2 Corinthians 11:2-4 “I am anxious for you with the deep concern of God himself--anxious that your love should be for Christ alone, just as a pure maiden saves her love for one man only, for the one who will be her husband. But I am frightened, fearing that in some way you will be led away from your pure and simple devotion to our Lord, just as Eve was deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden.”
This is probably the best support for the emotionalists position with reference to bridal imagery. Clearly it refers to the individuals love for Christ. However, this passage seems to be speaking in terms of degree, not necessarily of kind. It says stay faithful to Christ in the same way a woman who is engaged stays faithful to her future spouse. In other words; don’t commit idolatry and stay true to your commitments. Unless you say love just is an intimate emotional passion for a person (an assertion which I don’t think can be justified Biblically) I fail to see how this verse really supports the interpretation that I and every other Christian have the deep kind of emotional bond in a modern marriage. But then if you say that, then this passage doesn’t have any more support for emotionalism than any other passage on God’s love.
Sloppy teachings on bridal imagery; http://www.creatingfutures.net/single.html; "Do we live our lives as if we are betrothed to Christ? As singles, do people look at us and see that we are in love. You know what I mean. You have seen people in love. They spend every spare moment with their lover. They will do silly things for and with their lover. They will talk for hours on the phone, even if it is long distance. They make plans for the future. They become inseparable. There is a look in their face.” If this is the way the Christian life is supposed to be lived, you would think Paul, Peter or one of the other New Testament writers would talk about how much they just love talking to Christ and how good He makes them feel. Good luck finding that, most of the time Paul speaks of himself as a bondservant of Christ aka a slave to Christ, not Christ’s girlfriend (Christ is our Lord, not our lover). I will grant however that most articles and sermons written on this issue correctly see Christ’s bride as being the Church collectively as two parties in covenant relationship. Whatever elements of Christ’s affection towards Christians present in bridal imagery passages, if there are any, are secondary to this central message.
Agape: God’s intimate love for us?
Ok so we’ve established that God relating to us as Father not to the Church as a bride entails a deep emotional connection with God. But what about God’s love for us in general? If emotionalism is correct than God’s love for us is centrally His desire to be in relationship with us. This relationship, in turn, entails a deep emotional connection whereby God allows us to feel things we’ve never felt before at certain times (usually in helping others or worshipping God) and bringing us closer to Himself in these emotional experiences.
If I have not made this clear before allow me to make it clear now; I reject the viewpoint described above in its entirety. God’s love as it is expressed in scripture, if anything is a tough love not intended to bring us into an emotionally based relationship with God but obedience to God and unity with God (which doesn’t mean emotional attachment). This is a crucial point of contention for the emotionalist. If they are wrong about what God’s love is, they are wrong in how they frame the purpose of Jesus death and resurrection and they are wrong about the essence of the Christian life. Also a disclaimer to avoid any confusion. The rejection of the above view doesn’t require that we believe God is a cold, distant God not involved in our experiences or lives at all. It just means that emotional and experiential elements to the Christian life are secondary in importance to our ethical and role based duties to God and our neighbor. In other words, you don’t have to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ to be saved (gaaaasssspp).
J.P. Holding and a number of Biblical scholars have realized, however, that both the exegetical and contextual evidence of passages pertaining to God’s love for us do not have the connotations we attach to them. Holding writes; "A key difference in understanding the meaning of agape is to recognize that our culture is centered on the individual, whereas ancient Biblical society (and 70% of societies today) are group-centered. What is good for the group is what is paramount. Hence when the NT speaks of agape it refers to the "value of group attachment and group bonding" [Malina and Neyrey, Portraits of Paul, 196]. Agape is not an exchange on a personal level and "will have little to do with feelings of affection, sentiments of fondness, and warm, glowing affinity." It is a gift that puts the group first.”
Scholars Bruce J. Malina and John Piltch point out that love in the ancient world was not about emotional passion but social attachment and the role you played in another persons life. As such to hate someone is just not to love them and vice versa. This means that both love and hate on the part of God are not descriptions of His emotional attitudes towards us but the role He plays in looking after our best interests.
This makes sense of how Christ could at one moment speak of turning the other cheek and in the next moment call Pharisess hypocrites, white washed tombs and broods of Vipers. In that world, love and hate weren’t personal, no one got offended if you confronted them about their behavior or some such thing. Confrontation was the norm. It also makes sense of passages in the Old Testament such as the story of Jacob and Esau where God states “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.” Also of particular interest in that same story is this passage; “Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” Jacob said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.” This passage makes no sense under a modern understanding of love. We would say that there’s nothing about selling your birth right that indicates you hate it, it only means you don’t care about it. In ancient Mediterranean societies, however, love was seen in terms of attachment; you either are attached to your birth right, or you aren’t, there can be no in between.
So what about specific passages about love? How much sense does this model of love as social attachment make of these passages;
- 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” At first glance, verse 3 seems to refute the idea that the Biblical authors saw love as attachment, not emotional attitudes. After all if you can give all that you have away and die as a martyr but still not have love that seems to indicate love has more to do with your emotional motivations than your attachment to individuals and groups as a duty-bound servant. However, As Malina and Pilch point out, Paul is trying to distinguish charismata (charisma, courage, heroism) from agape (group allegiance, attachment to others). In other words someone might aim to give all they have to the poor and die as a martyr to leave an honorable and heroic legacy and not have any interest towards looking out for others interest. So this passage is saying that we need pure motivations, but its not saying those pure motivations require pure emotional attitudes.
Whether or not you accept what Holding, Malina and Pilch have to say, its clear that the default view of love is not our modern western conceptions. Even if love does have to do with emotional attitudes in the Biblical world, this doesn’t mean that God’s love for us implies an emotionally attached relationship. The Biblical view of love on both models points towards a more wholistic approach where our motives and actions are in harmony towards furthering the will of God and where God’s love towards us entails a looking out for humanities best interests and a will for individuals to grow in righteousness. And nothing about this central truth requires us to have personal relationships with God. That is a view someone can take, but it is dangerous to say that having a relationship with God is what the gospel’s all about.
Sources; http://books.google.com/books?id=cMrQOr9GmhoC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=John+Pilch+on+1+Corinthians+13:3&source=bl&ots=WSNMzdDOEk&sig=oeqkUTDWQaEEVxF5UONuXYBIPDw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zKLIU7-AL9CDogThyIKoAg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=John%20Pilch%20on%201%20Corinthians%2013%3A3&f=false, http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatlove.php
Imago Dei: Relational creatures?
Another claim often made by emotionalists is that we were created in the image of God to be in personal relationships. They cite as evidence the fact that God created Eve so that Adam wouldn’t be alone and that God walked with both Adam and Eve in the Garden. While its undoubtedly true that part of being made in the image of God is our cognitive capacity for communication and personal relationships it seems equally true that the primary aspect of our being made in the image of God is our stewardship over God’s creation as His representatives. Involved in this is our identity as moral creatures who make moral decisions and are meant to live according to God’s purposes.
Again nothing about this requires the emotional relationship that many Christians describe where God. For instance in collectivist societies individuals are not nearly as introspective as we are in the West. So they don’t see interpersonal relationships the same way we see them. For them group identity is more important than individual identity so they don’t think in terms of how they feel about the group but what role they play in the group. So if we define within our view of imago dei a western view of personal relationships where two or more people have this great connection and get along very well in their personalities (a word which didn’t even exist until a little over a century ago) then we could be unintentionally saying all other cultural perspective are lacking the imago dei.
This is partly why I frame the Image of God in terms of stewardship over creation and ethical responsibility as these transcend cultural boundaries and truly get at the heart of who we are as human beings.
Sources; Pilch J. & Malina B. (2009). Handbook of Biblical Social Values. Peabody MA; Hendrickson publishers.
http://anthropology-updates.blogspot.com/2012/05/individualism-collectivism.html
Is eternal life knowing God?
In John chapter 17 Jesus is recorded praying to the Father; “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Well this settles it, eternal life is knowing Christ personally. Not exactly, the trouble is that “knowing” someone has a diverse range of meanings. Does this passage mean that we know God as the triune God who sent Jesus Christ and live according to that knowledge? Does it mean that we actually have conversations with this triune God? Does it mean we know God as we know our father? I think the first option would be the best, simply because it is the most simple. Knowing God is simply recognizing Him as the true God, learning His will and living it out through the power and life of the Holy Spirit. Again nothing about this requires a personal relationship so we have no justification for defining salvation in such terms.
Unity in Christ: becoming intimate with Christ?
John 17 also contains this passage; “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the worldmay believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Aha, being in Christ and Christ being in us, that’s so intimate its almost erotic. This has to prove that salvation, whether individual or group centered involves personal intimacy. Well not really, the language of being in Christ or Christ being in us was employed by Christ in a collectivist society where individual identity was shaped by group identity (you are one with the body of Christ). Its saying we do not form our own identity as Christians, our identity is shaped by Christ such that our goals must be His goals, our desires must be His desires. The way we relate to Christ then is not as two equal persons seeking an mutual emotional connection but truly as a potter forms clay. As such it is not us who lives but Christ in us. This is not a description of a literal person abiding inside of our souls so much as the power of Christ to conform us to Himself. And again nothing about this implies a personal relationship in the sense of two people seeking an emotional connection based on personality.
Sources; http://books.google.com/books?id=zqoJj4WhJXAC&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=Bruce+Malina+on+John+17:3&source=bl&ots=f6PkGfY17b&sig=ag9BbAYge-tw2W72LYOvJub0LHE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3VnJU5ncONK6oQSblILICg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Bruce%20Malina%20on%20John%2017%3A3&f=false, http://www.tektonics.org/qt/selfesteem.php
Worshipping in Spirit means worshipping emotionally?
What is the purpose of worship? If it is truly to give glory to God through hymns and proclamations of thanksgiving and God’s truth and goodness should we not have some passion for God something more than a stoic devotion to Him? Well yes, obviously we are going to have passion. But I think this passion is more like the passion we have for a great leader or someone we are inspired to follow in the sense that you don’t have to know such people personally for them to evoke passionate feelings in you (I don’t think God has a favorite color or a favorite kind of music etc. so its not like we can get to know Him in that respect). As such pastors like John Piper are right to say that we should enjoy God for who He is and we should celebrate what He has done for us in worshipping His character.
I would also deny the idea that worship is where God fills us with a sense of euphoria or even a special sense of peace. Such an experience of God is not intrinsic to worship and so we shouldn’t expect to feel God’s presence every time we engage in worship. In addition to this, more often than not in the Bible God’s presence brought a sense of terror in the hearts of His followers, so I would question why we assume God is going to make us feel comforted by His presence at all times. It seems equally possible that God will convict us in worship about a grave sin we have committed and we should be sensitive to that feeling of guilt as much as we should about comfort and peace.
So I can easily grant the claim that there is an emotional aspect to worship and an emotional aspect to worshipping in Spirit in John 4:24, its just not the level nor the kind of emotion expressed by so many pastors today.
Useful resources on the study of worship; http://books.google.com/books?id=XV3MSDLAt6kC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=richard+rohrbaugh+social+commentary+on+worship&source=bl&ots=-BsOGjabYt&sig=CxmrzKBQtP3FfL6N3PjU1nNs-P4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=auvJU6DDIJbhoATdyoKYDw&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=richard%20rohrbaugh%20social%20commentary%20on%20worship&f=false
The Indwelling Spirit: God inside of us?
What is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is often portrayed as a separate consciousness, communicating with us on a constant basis through our own thoughts, emotions and externally through our own actions and the actions of those around us. This is all done in an effort on the Spirits part to conform our moral and spiritual character and nature to that of Christ’s. Moreover, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is often cited as a testament to our intimacy with God because God is not only with us but in us.
Hank Hanegraff from Christian Research Ministries writes; “...to say that the Holy Spirit is in you is not to point out where the Holy Spirit is physically located, but rather to point out that we have come into a special, intimate, personal relationship with Him through repentance. Similarly, when Jesus says, “the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38), He is not speaking of physical location but intimacy of relationship.” However when it comes to explaining what this intimate personal relationship entails, Hanegraff only comes up with this; "To deny that the Holy Spirit is spatially locatable within us is not to deny that He is activelylocatable within us, working redemptively within the deepest part of our beings to conform us into the image of Christ. Far from detracting from our nearness to the Holy Spirit, the classical Christian view intensifies the intimacy of our special relationship to the Creator as well as the benefits of our redemption.” Ok, but how is this intimate? What about the Spirit’s active part in our lives requires this personal intimacy Hank is describing? If, as described above, being in Christ primarily means our being conformed to the identity of Christ through self-denial and selfless love then The Spirit doesn’t really need to communicate all that much with us to allow us to fulfill our purpose, let alone communicate with us as a unique personality. Such interaction makes no sense if the whole point of our relationship with the Spirit is to be like the Spirit in all His communicable attributes (i.e. righteousness, selflessness, holiness, faithfulness, kindness, gentleness, self-control, peace, patience, love and goodness).
But perhaps Christians leaders and Pastors like Hanegraff are suggesting that the Spirit is affectionate and loving in a nurturing fashion, similar to that between a mother and her child and not so much between two friends or even lovers. Such affection wouldn’t involve communication so much as feelings of comfort in times of distress. But if this characteristic is central to our relationship with the Spirit we hit a scriptural wall when it comes to Acts where the Spirit acts as a supportive role almost solely in the ministry of the Apostles and is never mentioned as supporting them personally. Luke, nor Peter, nor Paul, nor Barnabas ever report feeling comforted by the Spirit in times of distress such as in the numerous times Paul was imprisoned and beaten. The Spirit brings the Apostles visions, provides them with the power to perform miracles and convicts them to evangelize. So again, it seems we must see these intimate nurturing aspects of the Spirit as secondary to His role as a guide to Christ-likeness and Kingdom building.
Aha! But what about verses like John 14:26 where the Holy Spirit is identified as the Comforter? This seems to conclusively demonstrate that the primary identity of the Spirit in us is that of a comforter! Well actually this leads us to the ambiguity of words in Greek when translated to english. The greek word here is paraklētos Which has a fairly broad set of meanings. The basic idea of it, however, seems to be centered on that of a helper or aid. But if this is true than “comforter” properly translated doesn’t have the therapeutic connotations so often attached to that word in modern society. It simply mean the Spirit is there to aid us in the mission God assigned to us. But there still could be a sense in which the Spirit gives us feelings of comfort and peace at times. The point is these must be seen as secondary to His central goal in breathing life into the Church through the ministries of Christians.
But what about external signs that the Spirit is there for us? These are certainly present in scripture, but they are perhaps more rare and less romantic than many would like to imagine. The Holy Spirit is never portrayed as forming a gust of wind around us or floating a flower down before us to let us know we’ll be ok. The signs from the Spirit are usually less cryptic and more direct. For instance, in Acts 16 the Spirit literally just prevents all attempts on the part of Paul to enter into Asia, and instead sends him a vision of a Macedonian calling for help. Not much interpretation is required to understand the Spirits message here. Even more so, events like this only happened every few years or so in the life of the Apostles, the founders of the Church! It seems foolish to suppose they would occur on a regular basis in our lives.
Sources; http://www.tektonics.org/qt/quietthird.php, http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G3875&t=KJV, http://www.equip.org/articles/the-indwelling-of-the-holy-spirit/#christian-books-3
Scriptural conclusion; By my roughly brief analysis of the wide range of passages used to support emotionalism and relationship theology I don’t find the case for seeing salvation in terms of a personal relationship with Christ very compelling. More often than not it seems more assumed that we have a personal relationship with Christ than scripturally established and no one seems to have bothered to build an in depth exegetical case for the idea or even develop what it really means to have a relationship with Christ. It’s always spoken of in very vague terms of “being intimate with Christ” “feeling His love” “having Christ in us” etc. So I suppose that at the very least I encourage Christians to really flesh out what they mean by a personal relationship with Christ because in every sense I could think of it actually meaning something it either seems to be a more confusing way of putting the message of the gospel or a needless (and perhaps even dangerous) addition to it.
Theological Objections to the gospel as a relationship;
On top of these scriptural considerations as well as the sociological problems discussed in part 1 I also have theological qualms with emotionalism. Going back to Part 1 you'll recall I defined emotionalism as; "the view that the Christian life is best understood as an individual transformation through an emotional and intimate relationship with God and that Christ’s atonement and resurrection were meant to establish said intimate relationships."
You'll also recall I tied this definition to various attributes of emotionalism; seeing God as our therapist, lover, friend, and/or daddy, seeing our interactions under these relationship frameworks as being primarily emotional and scriptural (since it would be impossible to hold that we can have verbal communication with God on a regular basis), and seeing our relationship with God as therefore being primarily internal and thereby primarily existing in the individual.
Before I engage in a theological critique of this viewpoint I want to make clear that what I am talking about isn't a doctrine that you either adhere to or not, rather its an emphasis on the way God relates to us. My point is that the personal and emotional aspects in the way we relate to God have been grossly over-exaggerated in the Church. I do not however deny that there is an emotional and personal aspect to salvation (such a view would also lead to troubling implications).
Theology is Pointless;
If we agree with the average evangelical and say that God is literally a person present in our minds then theology seems to be on the chopping block along with scripture. Revelation becomes immediate and ever present. Of course, most churches add that experiencing God means reading scripture and obeying God's word in order to balance the tension between God's immanence in our lives through our intimate relationship with Him and His transcendence above and away from us in His holy and righteous nature. My worry is that merely by saying being in Christ means being in a personal affectionate relationship with Him it is unclear how scripture is really helpful. After all Christ is right there with you at all times on a mental and emotional level, what need do we have for scripture if that is really the case? Moreover, why should we listen to theologians or pastors in theological and ethical instruction if it doesn't match up with our immediate direct connection to Christ?
I don't see how we can emphasize our closeness with Christ to the degree that emotionalism requires without sacrificing the revelation of God through sources outside ourselves. We have to say that Christ is really quite distant from us as individuals but also powerfully impacting our lives as our Lord and God through scripture and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
A Church Club;
A corollary of this would be that under an emotionalist framework the Church itself becomes an optional gathering of individual Christians desiring to share their experience with Christ. If we have this direct connection to Christ where He tells us directly what His will is for our lives its unclear what need is for the Church. Again churches will qualify that the Church has a common relationship with Christ and that Christ uses the Church to exhort individual believers and fill them up spiritually. However, this doesn't seem to be enough to really treat the Church with the amount of importance both Christ and the writers of the NT put on the Church however. I cannot find a reading of Paul or Peter where they do not see the Church as the core of God’s activity on earth. They both go to great lengths to establish communities of Christians devoted to sharing and living the gospel. Paul doesn’t seem to understand any sense of a Christian life outside the Church. Therefore participation in the Church cannot be viewed as merely optional or beneficial for the individual believer, its absolutely essential to the individual believer.
But if this is true it seems equally difficult to imagine that at the same time salvation is primarily an internal affair of emotional and spiritual well-being. Salvation seems simultaneously internal and external; we are changed by our closeness to the Will and identity of God and then are sent out to fulfill His will and calling. This change within us, however, cannot be seen as a single event but as a process. The Church facilitates this process but more importantly we have a role to play in the Church. Paul describes the Church as the body of Christ with many members, each playing an integral role to the function of the whole. Each member is defined by their specific calling or gifting to perform tasks such as evangelism, teaching, shepherding, counseling etc.
Thus salvation is also external in that the plans God has for us have little to do with us relative to the Church and her mission. Emotionalism, by defining closeness with God as a state of deep spiritual connection with God within yourself doesn’t seem to allow for this view of the Church. Emotionalism sees the Church as primarily a service for the individual Christian in nourishing his daily walk with Christ. While a person can be saved and not participate in the Church for a time, I do not think a truly faithful child of God can ignore or neglect the Church indefinitely. Emotionalism, particularly in its stronger forms, states positively that Christians can do this and this emotionalist attitude has captured the hearts and minds of most evangelicals.
Antinomianism;
Emotionalism also has interesting implications for one’s view of the law, grace, faith and works. If Christ really did atone for our sins and conquer death to get closer to us on a personal level and changing us through a personal relationship then any good works we do must be a direct result of this relationship. This is certainly in line with Orthodoxy (good works are a result of God’s grace) but oddly Christians have repeatedly juxtaposed a relationship with Christ and religiousness. A relationship with Christ is described as a vibrant and living faith and religion is seen as empty rule following and obedience. These two seem to be portrayed as so opposed that one cannot have rules or obligations to follow without neglecting Christ and faith in Him. In an article entitled "God Hates Religion” we read:
"But relationship with God cannot be found through religion. In fact, religion is the biggest roadblock to seeking a relationship with God. Religion is simply Man trying to reach out to God by doing something that he thinks will please God. “If I can do enough, say enough, pray enough, give enough, sacrifice enough perhaps God will show me favor”. Every religion is based upon this “works theology”. Neither ceremony, liturgy, creeds, sacraments nor money have ever brought one soul into a reconciled relationship to God. Abstaining from drugs, alcohol, tobacco, illicit sex and the places that provide them is a healthy thing to do but cannot of itself restore a broken relationship with God. Giving up a favorite food or drink, reciting ‘program prayers’ or self mutilation does nothing to convince or satisfy God."
My problem with this attitude is that it rubs very close to antinomian ideals (that sanctification is optional for the Christian). If our relationship to Christ is what saves us, and this relationship doesn’t involve changing us to perform good works, than what on earth is the point of a relationship with Christ? In addition, this attitude seems to go against most Church tradition and scripture on sacramental rituals. Even the most staunch memorialist (we only take communion in remembrance of Christ, it is not a means of grace) would say that both communion and baptism is an important part of the Christian life and most definitely pleases God. As the author of Hebrews states; “It is impossible to please God without faith” but faith is also what motivated the Patriarchs and the Prophets to obedience to God. Rule following, therefore is not the core of the issue, its rule following with the goal of earning our own salvation. Christians can gladly speak of obligations to God and good works as a necessity, just not as a necessity to earn salvation. Rather, obedience to God through good works is the believers participation in the salvation Christ afforded her by living the life of mutual servitude she was created to live. Christians who speak of religion vs relationship may have this in mind when they make statements like the one quoted above, but it sure seems like a confusing way to make a fairly simple point, and all for the sake of cultural relevance.
In addition to this there seems to be a false dichotomy between doing something because we have a duty to do it and doing something because we have a desire to do it. The simple fact of the matter is that it is good to desire to love and serve God as well as our neighbor because it is our duty to do so. Desiring to do our duties and fulfill our obligations is the same as being loving if you really think about it. If you are doing your duties begrudgingly then you really don’t desire to do them but desire an effect or benefit of doing them.
Sources; http://definingthenarrative.com/god-hates-religion/, https://bible.org/seriespage/christian-obligations-romans-13,
A side issue for those interested in Catholic teachings; http://catholicism.org/faith-and-good-works.html
Destroying Christian ethics;
Emotionalism also seems to have a general negative effect on Christian ethics; it discourages the discussion of them. In its stead the Christian life is solely about growing spiritually. If Christianity becomes all about interpersonal (maybe intrapersonal) relationships with God then living as a Christian becomes more about maintaining an emotionally healthy relationship with God then it does about obedience to Him and self-sacrifice to the Church. In other words Christianity becomes therapeutic and psychologized. To see this, one only has to look at the top 100 best selling Christian books on amazon or barnes and noble websites. The majority talk more about self improvement in regards to attitude and inner peace than they do about tangible ethical issues in the Christian life.
In contrast to this the Didache, written around 100 A.D. (just 67 years after the death of Christ), outlines the Christian life in terms of ethical obligations and moral principles;
Chapter 1:
1)There are two ways: one of Life - one of Death, each having great differences between them.
2) The way of life is this:
First, You must love the One who formed you;
Second, you must love your neighbor in the same manner as yourself. Do not do to others, what you yourself would not want done to you.
3) And these are our teachings:
Bless the ones who curse you. Pray for your enemies. Fast for your persecuters. Do you expect a great reward if you only love those who love you? Do the Gentiles not conduct themselves accordingly? But if you practice love to those who hate you, your enemies will vanish.
4) Refrain from the impulses of your selfish nature and the self-serving world. If someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the left to be likewise stiked. This discipline will lead to your perfecting. If someone forces you to go one mile in service, go with him a second. If someone robs you of your robe, freely give him your coat. If someone takes anything from you, don't ask that it be returned, for what good would that do?
5) Give to all who ask, and don't expect return; for your Parent in heaven wills that everyone should be recipients of our free gifts. Great rewards await anyone who gives according to the commandment; for that person is guiltless. A negative return is given to the one who receives but has no need, for he will pay the penalty for why he received for nothing but greed, and under examination will be required to divulge everything concerning his choices, and will not be freed from his obligations until everything owed is paid.
6) On the other hand, the one who is in need and receives is guiltless. Let your gifts rest in in your sweaty hands, until you know to can discern to whom you should give.
Chapter 2:
1) This is the second commandment of the Teaching;
2) You must not murder; nor given to adultery; nor molest children; nor practice immorality; nor theft; nor a practicioner of black magic; nor a practicioner of witchcraft; nor a terminator of unborn children; nor any sort of infanticide; nor one who unlawfully seek to take ownership of your neighbor's possessions,
3) You must not commit perjury nor be given over to false testimony, nor speak evil, nor hold grudges.
4) You must not be deceitful nor fickle; for to be fickeled is a snare of death.
5) Your speech must never be false, nor meaningless, but confirmed by action.
6) You must never be greedy, nor accumulate riches, nor a hypocrite, nor malicious, nor arrogant; nor given over to plot evil against your neighbor.
7) You must not hate anyone; but some you must correct, and pray for others, and some you must love even more than your own life.
Emotionalism also seems to have a general negative effect on Christian ethics; it discourages the discussion of them. In its stead the Christian life is solely about growing spiritually. If Christianity becomes all about interpersonal (maybe intrapersonal) relationships with God then living as a Christian becomes more about maintaining an emotionally healthy relationship with God then it does about obedience to Him and self-sacrifice to the Church. In other words Christianity becomes therapeutic and psychologized. To see this, one only has to look at the top 100 best selling Christian books on amazon or barnes and noble websites. The majority talk more about self improvement in regards to attitude and inner peace than they do about tangible ethical issues in the Christian life.
In contrast to this the Didache, written around 100 A.D. (just 67 years after the death of Christ), outlines the Christian life in terms of ethical obligations and moral principles;
Chapter 1:
1)There are two ways: one of Life - one of Death, each having great differences between them.
2) The way of life is this:
First, You must love the One who formed you;
Second, you must love your neighbor in the same manner as yourself. Do not do to others, what you yourself would not want done to you.
3) And these are our teachings:
Bless the ones who curse you. Pray for your enemies. Fast for your persecuters. Do you expect a great reward if you only love those who love you? Do the Gentiles not conduct themselves accordingly? But if you practice love to those who hate you, your enemies will vanish.
4) Refrain from the impulses of your selfish nature and the self-serving world. If someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the left to be likewise stiked. This discipline will lead to your perfecting. If someone forces you to go one mile in service, go with him a second. If someone robs you of your robe, freely give him your coat. If someone takes anything from you, don't ask that it be returned, for what good would that do?
5) Give to all who ask, and don't expect return; for your Parent in heaven wills that everyone should be recipients of our free gifts. Great rewards await anyone who gives according to the commandment; for that person is guiltless. A negative return is given to the one who receives but has no need, for he will pay the penalty for why he received for nothing but greed, and under examination will be required to divulge everything concerning his choices, and will not be freed from his obligations until everything owed is paid.
6) On the other hand, the one who is in need and receives is guiltless. Let your gifts rest in in your sweaty hands, until you know to can discern to whom you should give.
Chapter 2:
1) This is the second commandment of the Teaching;
2) You must not murder; nor given to adultery; nor molest children; nor practice immorality; nor theft; nor a practicioner of black magic; nor a practicioner of witchcraft; nor a terminator of unborn children; nor any sort of infanticide; nor one who unlawfully seek to take ownership of your neighbor's possessions,
3) You must not commit perjury nor be given over to false testimony, nor speak evil, nor hold grudges.
4) You must not be deceitful nor fickle; for to be fickeled is a snare of death.
5) Your speech must never be false, nor meaningless, but confirmed by action.
6) You must never be greedy, nor accumulate riches, nor a hypocrite, nor malicious, nor arrogant; nor given over to plot evil against your neighbor.
7) You must not hate anyone; but some you must correct, and pray for others, and some you must love even more than your own life.
Speaking about how psychology relates to Christian living is actually quite beneficial, but such discussions have replaced ethical discussion that the early Church clearly seemed committed to teaching in many Christian circles. If the Didache was read aloud in churches today, it would most likely be labeled a document of legalism even though Paul writes much the same way in His epistles to the Romans and Corinthians. In contrast to this, daily devotionals speak more about having a positive attitude and encouragement than they do about serious issues of morality and doctrine. For instance Max Lucado writes in his devotional Grace For the Moment;
“It’s time to let God’s love cover all things in your life, All secrets. all hurts. All hours of evil, minutes of worry… Picture a dup truck full of love. There you are behind it. God lifts the bed until the love starts to slide. slowly at first, then down, down down until you are hidden buried, covered in His love.”
All of Lucado’s writings are like this and all of them are equally centered on making Christians feel better. This is pure therapy and cannot be viewed as the core of Christian living. But I fear it is seen as such by many Christians today.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Emotivism and Emotion in the Church Part 1
I’ve mentioned this phenomenon of emotionalism in the Church before and how I believe it is a huge problem for Evangelicals. I will go further here and argue that it will probably lead to the downfall of Evangelicalism as we know it. Even more so, I wish to further define what I am terming emotionalism and give a comprehensive list of the problems it is either directly or indirectly causing in the Church.
What I am terming emotionalism is really a form of ethical emotivism. This is the view that all ethical statements are really statements of emotional attitude, not universal moral duties. So for instance the claim; “murder is wrong” is really saying “murder brings about bad feelings”. In the Church, emotivism of this sort manifests itself primarily in speaking of how humans relate to God. Specifically, Christian emotivism states that all claims about God’s relationship to man and vice versa are really emotional claims. So saying “God is with me” is equated to saying “I feel God is with me”. Similarly sins are seen as reducible to emotions. Pride, for instance, is equated with feeling you are greater than you are. Effectively emotions are said to be the only, or at least primary way to relate to God or know that He is there.
Implied from this is the idea that the primary way we relate to God is on an individual basis. This is where the idea of Christianity as a relationship with Christ comes in. Before the advent of emotivism in the Church, the primary way to encounter God was at church and within the church community, thus the ornate architecture present in many Orthodox, Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches. This sort of individualism means that the primary aspect of Christianity is the inner transformation of the Christian through spiritual experience and sanctification rather than the more sacramental and communitarian thinking of Mainline Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox denominations.
In addition to this emotionalism as I am defining it is influenced by Romanticism in its affirmation that Romantic or Erotic love is the highest form of love instead of the love between friends as it was before the 19th century. This means that the Bible is interpreted in light of the view that for God to love us, He must desire an intimate relationship with us, similar to that between a husband and wife. In addition to this it is further assumed, as it is in Romanticism, that love is primarily an emotion, or a description of how we feel about someone.
Finally, emotionalism is influenced by psychology in that it assumes God is most concerned with our psychological well-being. Thus positive encouragement and therapeutic spirituality are of primary importance and are the end goal of all endeavors. For example, many pastors claim that following God is meant to bring an immense feeling of inner peace. Moreover, Christianity and religion itself is seen as a means of comfort in a persons life. The justification of Christianity on this view, involves proving it is beneficial and transformative in your life.
A more concise definition of emotionalism therefore would be this: the view that the Christian life is best understood as an individual transformation through an emotional and intimate relationship with God and that Christ’s atonement and resurrection were meant to establish said intimate relationships.
As innocuous as this view might seem I believe it is at the root of most well recognized problems within the Evangelical Church today.
The Feminization of Christianity:
The feminization of Christianity is seen most clearly in the pews. Across the Western world women significantly outnumber men in churches. In American Evangelical churches, 57% are women and in American Mainline Protestant churches 66% are woman. In 1992 43% of men attended church but by 1996 only 28% did Not only are there more women than men in churches but women are also more active in church than men (1). Sociologist George Barna noted that by the mid-1990’s, "women are twice as likely to attend a church service during any given week. Women are also 50 percent more likely than men to say they are ‘religious’ and to state that they are ‘absolutely committed’ to the Christian faith” (2). In my own experience I can attest to this phenomenon as well. Most of the most committed Christians I know are women who are often off on mission trips and/or preparing for them.
What explains this massive disparity between men and women across church denominations? Leon Podle proposes that it is in fact because churches have become too sentimental. The truth of this connection seems apparently demonstrable, perhaps most prominently in ministries such as Joyce Meyer and Joel Olsteen. Its difficult to listen to a sermon today without hearing about how Christ desires a relationship with us and how we should accept Christ into our hearts. Worship songs make Jesus sound like our lover more than our Lord and Bible Studies end up mostly being long belabored discussions about our feelings toward God and our struggles to nurture those feelings.
The only people who get upset with me about my position that Christianity isn’t a relationship with Christ are women. I’ve never once heard a man be passionate about emotionalism, most men I know in the Church just tolerate it. Regardless of whether or not women are naturally more emotional than men, it is certainly true that women are discouraged from intellectual pursuits in American culture. Sociologists have long despaired at the utter absence of women in fields of science (3). Women are encouraged from childhood to be more sensitive and emotional, while men are encouraged to be strong and assertive ().
Anti-intellectualism and the neglect of theology and apologetics:
Closely connected to the Feminization of Christianity is the spread of anti-intellectualism among Christians. Increasingly Christians equate discussions of theology and apologetics with judgmental, heartless fundamentalism. Just for writing this blog post, I would be considered contentious in many Christian circles. There are also Christians who maintain that higher education is harmful to the Christian and for pastors especially. Isn’t scripture meant to be plain to us? After all the Holy Spirit is within us, giving us guidance and teaching us the true meaning of scriptural truth. Myron Horst writes, "If we are to have true revival in the church today the church needs to reject its focus on religious education and credentialing that is patterned after the world’s method of education. Pastor’s need to reject their education and go to God and ask Him to teach them” (5).
And here in lies the rub, emotionalism dually leads to anti-intellectualism by simultaneously teaching that our emotional and spiritual experiences are far more important than our intellectual pursuits and that because we are so deeply connected to God, surely He will not allow us to misunderstand what we believe. Theology either becomes so mysterious no one can understand it because we cannot access it through our emotions or it becomes so apparent that there can be no disagreement since we are so connected with God. Either way theology as a discipline is made utterly redundant or even dangerous because of emotionalism.
The Rise of the New Atheism:
Beginning in the early 2000’s numerous atheist authors began publishing controversial and best-selling books calling for the end of faith and Christianity. They called this movement “The New Atheism”. Today this movement is largely online, but it is very outspoken. It is not difficult to find articles and videos declaring how obviously wrong and stupid Christianity is. These blokes are usually ex-christians themselves and interestingly share the anti-intellectual assumption described above that all scripture should be obvious and easy to understand for anyone reading it. However, unlike Christians they have concluded that if we actually try to take the Bible as plainly and literally as possible, it makes no sense. You can find hundreds of videos describing the stupidity and contradictions in the Bible.
Christians are also criticized by these same atheists for using God as a crutch and having an imaginary friend called Jesus Christ. Consequently, Christianity is seen not only as an aberrant set of beliefs about reality but a delusional experience. And just like the delusions of those with various psychopathic disorders, Christianity compels people to do insane, undignified and crazy things for their fictional genocidal daddy. More than this Christians are mocked for almost everything they believe from many atheists. For instance Peter Boghossian writes;
“The only way to avoid eternal punishment for sins we never committed from this all-loving God is to accept his son—who is actually himself—as our savior. So … God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself. Barking mad!” (6).
Clearly, atheists are not getting answers to there objections that they find compelling. And more often than not, they are very passionate about the stupidity they see in Christianity. In addition, because their criticisms all center around the assumption that Christianity is simple and easy to understand according to its own teachings, its pretty clear they came from churches who taught that the gospel is simple and easy to understand in its entirety. As shown above, emotionalism clearly has something to do with this anti-intellectual attitude. This is because the idea that Christianity is not intellectually based is usually dually paired with the idea that it is experientially, spiritually and emotionally based, specifically in our relationship with Christ. In other words, if Christianity is not intellectually challenging and ideologically transformative, it must be emotionally challenging and experientially transformative. Therefore it is clear that while emotionalism might not have directly caused internet atheism it is certainly nurturing and fostering the movement.
The Juvenilization of Christianity:
Closely related to both the New Atheism and the Feminization of Christianity is the Juvenilization of Christianity, specifically in youth programs. Over the past half century at least there has been an explosion of youth programs across Protestant denominations. This has been matched by the rise of contemporary worship music, church merchandizing and . Church historian Thomas Bergler has written a book on this very issue. He points out, and quite correctly, that church services have become more focused on the entertainment value of sermons and worship than the depth and impact of their spiritual message. The last sermon I went to was about how the gospel relates to the Matrix, no joke. But what exactly is the juvenilization of Christianity? Bergler defines it this way,
“Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages. It begins with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young. But it sometimes ends badly, with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith” (7).
This involves a consumeristic, low responsibility, entertainment based approach to ministry that is extremely prevalent in churches today. Bergler argues this church culture began in the 1930’s where pastors formed youth groups for the first time in an effort to invigorate American youth to social and religious activism. Over time these efforts developed into an approach of competing against “secular” youth culture in an effort to attract more and more youth into the church. However, this has had the unintended result of making churches emulate youth culture, both the good and the bad aspects of it. Most negatively is the immaturity that comes with youth culture (7). Again emotionalism seems to nurture and sustain this immaturity by encouraging us to rely on our emotions and depend on God for emotional stability.
- In my own experience the juvenilization of christianity has been most apparent in youth camps. Throughout high school I attended a youth camp called Zona, based at California Baptist University in Riverside. What I noticed was that almost every year is that while we were there we were encouraged not to discipline ourselves, not to seek strength from God to be responsible but rather to see God as our “daddy” who wishes to guide us through life as an emotional support. We were encouraged to evangelize, but to present the gospel as entering a wonderful relationship with Jesus Christ and definitely not as a set of ethical duties and obligations to God and other people as a result of what God has done for us. As a result we attained an emotional and spiritual high at the camp, but we could never maintain that high for more than a week afterwards. Even worse, even during camp drama and passionate arguments about “whose dating who” or some such nonsense filled the whole group. To suggest that this is the way the Christian life is meant to be lived makes absolutely no sense to me and I am ashamed by it honestly.
The Prosperity Gospel:
Many Christian leaders, especially in reformed circles have lamented the popularity of what has been termed; the prosperity gospel. Perhaps the best resource for dealing with this false gospel is John Piper. In this video Piper defines prosperity preaching as teaching that following God means growing in wealth and health. Piper rightly condemns this gospel as abominable. No reading of Jesus’ ministry, nor early church history in Acts, nor the theology of Paul in the Epistles can lead one to the conclusion that the gospel is meant to bring you wealth and health. Jesus was crucified, Stephen was stoned to death, Paul was stoned multiple times and many of the Apostles and Christian leaders were either beheaded or crucified. And yet this teaching has become quite prevalent in American churches. Numerous popular pastors promote this false theology; Joel Osteen, Bruce Wilkenson, Gordon Lindsay and Oral Roberts to name a few. All of these men have many tens of thousands of followers and numerous best selling books.
So what’s the connection here to emotionalism? If you read the justifications prosperity preachers employ they all have to do with God being with us always, desiring our emotional, physical and financial well-being. The focus, in other words is on you and God, nothing else. But if all that matters is that God loves us and died for us, it makes sense that He would want to give us the whole world! After all were His children right? Because emotionalism place our relationship with Christ as the center of Christianity, then as long as we teach that from the pulpit nothing else matters. Prosperity preaching is allowed to thrive in America because given an emotionalist framework, nothing about it seems obviously wrong. This raises a giant red flag to me, because if your understanding of God doesn’t see anything immediately absurd with the prosperity gospel, but scripture decries it at every turn then you know something is wrong with your understanding of God.
Radical Charismatic Movements:
If you ever get a chance watch the documentary “Jesus Camp”. Its about a fairly unsettling youth camp where charismatic pentacostle children are encouraged to speak in tongues, have intense emotional break downs and learn to fight satanic forces. Pastor John Macarther has argued that the Charismatic movement itself is the greatest source of heresy and false teachers in the Church today. While I don’t entirely agree with his central thesis, he does point out correctly that there are a great deal of radical Charismatic churches around the globe. Macarther argues that the Charismatic movement has been one of replacing thought with emotion and doctrine with experience. Charismatics tend to see passion as being best expressed in hyperactive worship, speaking wildly in tongues and violently combating inner spiritual forces.
One need only search “Benny Hinn” or “Jesus Only Pentecostals” on youtube to see that Macarther’s claims at least have some truth. The level of impulsiveness among many Charismatics is insane. Some Charismatic leaders have even been known to physically abuse members of their congregation for the sake of casting out demons or sinful forces from them. This further supports atheist claims that Christianity is nothing but “barking mad” and ludicrous. And clearly the direct cause of these problems is the belief that our emotions connect us to God and not our thoughts aka emotionalism.
The Decline in Civic Participation by Christians:
Robert Putnam, an eminent sociologist, brilliantly fleshed out the state of civic and communitarian participation in America throughout the 20th century in his book, “Bowling Alone”. In chapter 4, Putnam outlines findings of research on both religious participation and civic participation among the religious. He points out that in the first half of the 20th century religious institutions motivated civic engagement and improvement to an incredibly high degree, from the abolitionist movement to the civil rights movement, churches were the primary forces organizing social movements. As such it is tragic that in the second half of the 20th century civic engagement began to be detached from the Church. With the rise of both fundamentalism and evangelicalism civic engagement among churches began to decline. Why? Sociologists Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney explain it this way,
“Large numbers of young, well-educated, middle class youth… defected from the churches in the late sixties and the seventies… Some joined new religious movements, others sought personal enlightenment through various spiritual therapies and disciplines, but most simply “dropped out” of organized religion altogether… [The consequence was a] tendency toward highly individualized religious psychology without the benefits of strong supportive attachments to believing communities. A major impetus in this direction in the post-1960’s was the thrust toward greater personal fulfillment and quest for the ideal self… In this climate of expressive individualism, religion tends to become “privatized,” or more anchored in the personal realms” (8).
Thus our culture has equated religion with “spiritual therapy” or “the search for personal fulfillment” and the Church has largely bought into this seemingly innocuous delusion. Particularly evangelicals are less likely to engage social movements or volunteer in community organizations (such as food shelters, charities, political campaigns etc.) than mainline Protestants. Putnam writes,
“Most evangelical volunteering however supports the religious life of the congregation itself — teaching Sunday school, singing in the choir, ushering at worship services — but does not tend to extend to the broader community as much as volunteering members of other faiths” (8).
What’s worse is that mainline Protestantism is declining while Evangelical Christianity is increasing. this means that over all, civic participation among Christians is declining with a fair amount of speed. Why evangelical churches? As Robert Wuthnow, one of the worlds leading experts on the sociology of religion puts it, “whereas the mainline churches participated in progressive social betterment programs during the first half of the twentieth century, evangelical churches focused more on individual piety.” The Church is increasingly buying into the cultural delusion that Christianity is about a personal journey and not a convicting and transforming force in society.
The Decline in Church Attendance:
On top of the decline in civic participation among religious Americans there has also been a decline in the number of religiously active members in churches. Americans are still religious, but only privately so. Putnam writes,
“When they were in their twenties (in the 1960s and 1970s), boomers were more disaffected from religious institutions than their predecessors had been in their twenties. As the boomers married, had children and settled down they tended to become more involved with organized religion, just as their parents had, but the boomers began this life cycle move toward the church at a much lower level of religious involvement and have never closed the gap. Even now, in their forties and fifties, thought (as we would expect) more religious than they once were, boomers remain less religiously involved than middle-aged people were a generation ago” (8).
Putnam goes on to argue, and I think rightly, that the reason for this change is a more privatized faith where Christians move from congregation to congregation without much commitment to any single faith community. God knows I’m guilty of this. The consequence is a further retreat of the Church from society (8).
- The irony is that the evangelical church has bought in to the cultural caricature of Christianity so much that many evangelical writers have abandoned calling Christianity a religion altogether! Instead they opt to call Christianity a “relationship”. Unbeknownst to them, however, is that they are only making the problem worse! This has only deepened sentiments that Christianity is useful only for personal betterment and psychological well being. But why should someone be a Christian on this paradigm? After all, if I want to feel better about myself I can just go to a therapist, as many realized in the 60’s and 70’s the Church just isn’t necessary to achieve personal fulfillment regardless of how badly pastors want them to believe it.
There are a few more problems in the Church caused by emotionalism, but these are largely theological objections to the view I have as well as more speculative correlations I’ve drawn between emotionalism and the state of the Western Church today. I’ll be exploring these as well as what I believe to be a better way to approach ministry and simply define Christianity in a way that doesn’t concede the importance and worth of the Christian message to the surrounding culture.
Explicit examples of emotionalism in the Church;
- http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/more-undignified-than-this-joseph-neil-adams-sermon-on-worship-definition-117382.asp?Page=2; Becoming “undignified” through dancing and singing is assumed to parallel David’s dancing before the Lord and is an expression of passionate worship in contrast to dead worship.
- http://christianity.about.com/od/topicaldevotions/a/relationshipwithjesus.htm. Jesus is emotional, and has deep intimate feelings towards us. “The Holy Spirit unfolds scripture so that it becomes a love letter written specifically to you.”
- http://www.joycemeyer.org/articles/ea.aspx?article=a_real_relationship_with_god; "When we have a real relationship with God through Christ, life gets exciting because He stirs up a passion inside us to love people—and we don't have to struggle to do the things He calls us to do. It just happens naturally.”
- http://www.christianpost.com/news/letting-god-into-every-room-of-your-heart-99513/ "We need to do it because we love Him, honor Him and adore Him. Because if He's not comfortable, then we can't be comfortable. Do you ever experience a discomfort in your spirit? If so, ask yourself: Is there something in my life that's making God uncomfortable?”
- http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/i-am-a-friend-of-god-charlie-roberts-sermon-on-friend-of-god-179975.asp?Page=2 "God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, they were able to completely enjoy His divine presence. God’s desire for your life is to have that same kind of relationship with Him, that's why Jesus came to this earth, to provide the reconciliation God wanted to re-establish with His people! Amen? He wants you to not only to be able to walk in His presence, but also to able to experience His power in your life on a continual basis.”
- https://www.christianarmor.net/emotional-wholeness/18-emotional-dependence "If we are not emotionally dependent on Jesus Christ, then darkness can, and will, exploit our thoughts and feelings which will produce in us depression, defensiveness, anxiety, fear, frustration, apathy, insecurities, and many foolish habits."
Sources;
1. http://magazine.biola.edu/article/06-spring/the-feminization-of-the-church/
2. http://www.podles.org/church-impotent.htm
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
4.
5. http://www.biblicalresearchreports.com/seminaryeducation.php
6. Peter Boghossian; https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7096174.Peter_Boghossian. Examples of internet atheism; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO3MmmrUA4o, https://www.youtube.com/user/CultOfDusty, http://www.evilbible.com
7. http://www.wtsbooks.com/common/pdf_links/9780802866844.pdf
8. Putnam R.D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
What I am terming emotionalism is really a form of ethical emotivism. This is the view that all ethical statements are really statements of emotional attitude, not universal moral duties. So for instance the claim; “murder is wrong” is really saying “murder brings about bad feelings”. In the Church, emotivism of this sort manifests itself primarily in speaking of how humans relate to God. Specifically, Christian emotivism states that all claims about God’s relationship to man and vice versa are really emotional claims. So saying “God is with me” is equated to saying “I feel God is with me”. Similarly sins are seen as reducible to emotions. Pride, for instance, is equated with feeling you are greater than you are. Effectively emotions are said to be the only, or at least primary way to relate to God or know that He is there.
Implied from this is the idea that the primary way we relate to God is on an individual basis. This is where the idea of Christianity as a relationship with Christ comes in. Before the advent of emotivism in the Church, the primary way to encounter God was at church and within the church community, thus the ornate architecture present in many Orthodox, Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches. This sort of individualism means that the primary aspect of Christianity is the inner transformation of the Christian through spiritual experience and sanctification rather than the more sacramental and communitarian thinking of Mainline Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox denominations.
In addition to this emotionalism as I am defining it is influenced by Romanticism in its affirmation that Romantic or Erotic love is the highest form of love instead of the love between friends as it was before the 19th century. This means that the Bible is interpreted in light of the view that for God to love us, He must desire an intimate relationship with us, similar to that between a husband and wife. In addition to this it is further assumed, as it is in Romanticism, that love is primarily an emotion, or a description of how we feel about someone.
Finally, emotionalism is influenced by psychology in that it assumes God is most concerned with our psychological well-being. Thus positive encouragement and therapeutic spirituality are of primary importance and are the end goal of all endeavors. For example, many pastors claim that following God is meant to bring an immense feeling of inner peace. Moreover, Christianity and religion itself is seen as a means of comfort in a persons life. The justification of Christianity on this view, involves proving it is beneficial and transformative in your life.
A more concise definition of emotionalism therefore would be this: the view that the Christian life is best understood as an individual transformation through an emotional and intimate relationship with God and that Christ’s atonement and resurrection were meant to establish said intimate relationships.
As innocuous as this view might seem I believe it is at the root of most well recognized problems within the Evangelical Church today.
The Feminization of Christianity:
The feminization of Christianity is seen most clearly in the pews. Across the Western world women significantly outnumber men in churches. In American Evangelical churches, 57% are women and in American Mainline Protestant churches 66% are woman. In 1992 43% of men attended church but by 1996 only 28% did Not only are there more women than men in churches but women are also more active in church than men (1). Sociologist George Barna noted that by the mid-1990’s, "women are twice as likely to attend a church service during any given week. Women are also 50 percent more likely than men to say they are ‘religious’ and to state that they are ‘absolutely committed’ to the Christian faith” (2). In my own experience I can attest to this phenomenon as well. Most of the most committed Christians I know are women who are often off on mission trips and/or preparing for them.
What explains this massive disparity between men and women across church denominations? Leon Podle proposes that it is in fact because churches have become too sentimental. The truth of this connection seems apparently demonstrable, perhaps most prominently in ministries such as Joyce Meyer and Joel Olsteen. Its difficult to listen to a sermon today without hearing about how Christ desires a relationship with us and how we should accept Christ into our hearts. Worship songs make Jesus sound like our lover more than our Lord and Bible Studies end up mostly being long belabored discussions about our feelings toward God and our struggles to nurture those feelings.
The only people who get upset with me about my position that Christianity isn’t a relationship with Christ are women. I’ve never once heard a man be passionate about emotionalism, most men I know in the Church just tolerate it. Regardless of whether or not women are naturally more emotional than men, it is certainly true that women are discouraged from intellectual pursuits in American culture. Sociologists have long despaired at the utter absence of women in fields of science (3). Women are encouraged from childhood to be more sensitive and emotional, while men are encouraged to be strong and assertive ().
Closely connected to the Feminization of Christianity is the spread of anti-intellectualism among Christians. Increasingly Christians equate discussions of theology and apologetics with judgmental, heartless fundamentalism. Just for writing this blog post, I would be considered contentious in many Christian circles. There are also Christians who maintain that higher education is harmful to the Christian and for pastors especially. Isn’t scripture meant to be plain to us? After all the Holy Spirit is within us, giving us guidance and teaching us the true meaning of scriptural truth. Myron Horst writes, "If we are to have true revival in the church today the church needs to reject its focus on religious education and credentialing that is patterned after the world’s method of education. Pastor’s need to reject their education and go to God and ask Him to teach them” (5).
And here in lies the rub, emotionalism dually leads to anti-intellectualism by simultaneously teaching that our emotional and spiritual experiences are far more important than our intellectual pursuits and that because we are so deeply connected to God, surely He will not allow us to misunderstand what we believe. Theology either becomes so mysterious no one can understand it because we cannot access it through our emotions or it becomes so apparent that there can be no disagreement since we are so connected with God. Either way theology as a discipline is made utterly redundant or even dangerous because of emotionalism.
The Rise of the New Atheism:
Beginning in the early 2000’s numerous atheist authors began publishing controversial and best-selling books calling for the end of faith and Christianity. They called this movement “The New Atheism”. Today this movement is largely online, but it is very outspoken. It is not difficult to find articles and videos declaring how obviously wrong and stupid Christianity is. These blokes are usually ex-christians themselves and interestingly share the anti-intellectual assumption described above that all scripture should be obvious and easy to understand for anyone reading it. However, unlike Christians they have concluded that if we actually try to take the Bible as plainly and literally as possible, it makes no sense. You can find hundreds of videos describing the stupidity and contradictions in the Bible.
Christians are also criticized by these same atheists for using God as a crutch and having an imaginary friend called Jesus Christ. Consequently, Christianity is seen not only as an aberrant set of beliefs about reality but a delusional experience. And just like the delusions of those with various psychopathic disorders, Christianity compels people to do insane, undignified and crazy things for their fictional genocidal daddy. More than this Christians are mocked for almost everything they believe from many atheists. For instance Peter Boghossian writes;
“The only way to avoid eternal punishment for sins we never committed from this all-loving God is to accept his son—who is actually himself—as our savior. So … God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself. Barking mad!” (6).
Clearly, atheists are not getting answers to there objections that they find compelling. And more often than not, they are very passionate about the stupidity they see in Christianity. In addition, because their criticisms all center around the assumption that Christianity is simple and easy to understand according to its own teachings, its pretty clear they came from churches who taught that the gospel is simple and easy to understand in its entirety. As shown above, emotionalism clearly has something to do with this anti-intellectual attitude. This is because the idea that Christianity is not intellectually based is usually dually paired with the idea that it is experientially, spiritually and emotionally based, specifically in our relationship with Christ. In other words, if Christianity is not intellectually challenging and ideologically transformative, it must be emotionally challenging and experientially transformative. Therefore it is clear that while emotionalism might not have directly caused internet atheism it is certainly nurturing and fostering the movement.
The Juvenilization of Christianity:
Closely related to both the New Atheism and the Feminization of Christianity is the Juvenilization of Christianity, specifically in youth programs. Over the past half century at least there has been an explosion of youth programs across Protestant denominations. This has been matched by the rise of contemporary worship music, church merchandizing and . Church historian Thomas Bergler has written a book on this very issue. He points out, and quite correctly, that church services have become more focused on the entertainment value of sermons and worship than the depth and impact of their spiritual message. The last sermon I went to was about how the gospel relates to the Matrix, no joke. But what exactly is the juvenilization of Christianity? Bergler defines it this way,
“Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages. It begins with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young. But it sometimes ends badly, with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith” (7).
This involves a consumeristic, low responsibility, entertainment based approach to ministry that is extremely prevalent in churches today. Bergler argues this church culture began in the 1930’s where pastors formed youth groups for the first time in an effort to invigorate American youth to social and religious activism. Over time these efforts developed into an approach of competing against “secular” youth culture in an effort to attract more and more youth into the church. However, this has had the unintended result of making churches emulate youth culture, both the good and the bad aspects of it. Most negatively is the immaturity that comes with youth culture (7). Again emotionalism seems to nurture and sustain this immaturity by encouraging us to rely on our emotions and depend on God for emotional stability.
- In my own experience the juvenilization of christianity has been most apparent in youth camps. Throughout high school I attended a youth camp called Zona, based at California Baptist University in Riverside. What I noticed was that almost every year is that while we were there we were encouraged not to discipline ourselves, not to seek strength from God to be responsible but rather to see God as our “daddy” who wishes to guide us through life as an emotional support. We were encouraged to evangelize, but to present the gospel as entering a wonderful relationship with Jesus Christ and definitely not as a set of ethical duties and obligations to God and other people as a result of what God has done for us. As a result we attained an emotional and spiritual high at the camp, but we could never maintain that high for more than a week afterwards. Even worse, even during camp drama and passionate arguments about “whose dating who” or some such nonsense filled the whole group. To suggest that this is the way the Christian life is meant to be lived makes absolutely no sense to me and I am ashamed by it honestly.
The Prosperity Gospel:
Many Christian leaders, especially in reformed circles have lamented the popularity of what has been termed; the prosperity gospel. Perhaps the best resource for dealing with this false gospel is John Piper. In this video Piper defines prosperity preaching as teaching that following God means growing in wealth and health. Piper rightly condemns this gospel as abominable. No reading of Jesus’ ministry, nor early church history in Acts, nor the theology of Paul in the Epistles can lead one to the conclusion that the gospel is meant to bring you wealth and health. Jesus was crucified, Stephen was stoned to death, Paul was stoned multiple times and many of the Apostles and Christian leaders were either beheaded or crucified. And yet this teaching has become quite prevalent in American churches. Numerous popular pastors promote this false theology; Joel Osteen, Bruce Wilkenson, Gordon Lindsay and Oral Roberts to name a few. All of these men have many tens of thousands of followers and numerous best selling books.
So what’s the connection here to emotionalism? If you read the justifications prosperity preachers employ they all have to do with God being with us always, desiring our emotional, physical and financial well-being. The focus, in other words is on you and God, nothing else. But if all that matters is that God loves us and died for us, it makes sense that He would want to give us the whole world! After all were His children right? Because emotionalism place our relationship with Christ as the center of Christianity, then as long as we teach that from the pulpit nothing else matters. Prosperity preaching is allowed to thrive in America because given an emotionalist framework, nothing about it seems obviously wrong. This raises a giant red flag to me, because if your understanding of God doesn’t see anything immediately absurd with the prosperity gospel, but scripture decries it at every turn then you know something is wrong with your understanding of God.
Radical Charismatic Movements:
If you ever get a chance watch the documentary “Jesus Camp”. Its about a fairly unsettling youth camp where charismatic pentacostle children are encouraged to speak in tongues, have intense emotional break downs and learn to fight satanic forces. Pastor John Macarther has argued that the Charismatic movement itself is the greatest source of heresy and false teachers in the Church today. While I don’t entirely agree with his central thesis, he does point out correctly that there are a great deal of radical Charismatic churches around the globe. Macarther argues that the Charismatic movement has been one of replacing thought with emotion and doctrine with experience. Charismatics tend to see passion as being best expressed in hyperactive worship, speaking wildly in tongues and violently combating inner spiritual forces.
One need only search “Benny Hinn” or “Jesus Only Pentecostals” on youtube to see that Macarther’s claims at least have some truth. The level of impulsiveness among many Charismatics is insane. Some Charismatic leaders have even been known to physically abuse members of their congregation for the sake of casting out demons or sinful forces from them. This further supports atheist claims that Christianity is nothing but “barking mad” and ludicrous. And clearly the direct cause of these problems is the belief that our emotions connect us to God and not our thoughts aka emotionalism.
The Decline in Civic Participation by Christians:
Robert Putnam, an eminent sociologist, brilliantly fleshed out the state of civic and communitarian participation in America throughout the 20th century in his book, “Bowling Alone”. In chapter 4, Putnam outlines findings of research on both religious participation and civic participation among the religious. He points out that in the first half of the 20th century religious institutions motivated civic engagement and improvement to an incredibly high degree, from the abolitionist movement to the civil rights movement, churches were the primary forces organizing social movements. As such it is tragic that in the second half of the 20th century civic engagement began to be detached from the Church. With the rise of both fundamentalism and evangelicalism civic engagement among churches began to decline. Why? Sociologists Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney explain it this way,
“Large numbers of young, well-educated, middle class youth… defected from the churches in the late sixties and the seventies… Some joined new religious movements, others sought personal enlightenment through various spiritual therapies and disciplines, but most simply “dropped out” of organized religion altogether… [The consequence was a] tendency toward highly individualized religious psychology without the benefits of strong supportive attachments to believing communities. A major impetus in this direction in the post-1960’s was the thrust toward greater personal fulfillment and quest for the ideal self… In this climate of expressive individualism, religion tends to become “privatized,” or more anchored in the personal realms” (8).
Thus our culture has equated religion with “spiritual therapy” or “the search for personal fulfillment” and the Church has largely bought into this seemingly innocuous delusion. Particularly evangelicals are less likely to engage social movements or volunteer in community organizations (such as food shelters, charities, political campaigns etc.) than mainline Protestants. Putnam writes,
“Most evangelical volunteering however supports the religious life of the congregation itself — teaching Sunday school, singing in the choir, ushering at worship services — but does not tend to extend to the broader community as much as volunteering members of other faiths” (8).
What’s worse is that mainline Protestantism is declining while Evangelical Christianity is increasing. this means that over all, civic participation among Christians is declining with a fair amount of speed. Why evangelical churches? As Robert Wuthnow, one of the worlds leading experts on the sociology of religion puts it, “whereas the mainline churches participated in progressive social betterment programs during the first half of the twentieth century, evangelical churches focused more on individual piety.” The Church is increasingly buying into the cultural delusion that Christianity is about a personal journey and not a convicting and transforming force in society.
The Decline in Church Attendance:
On top of the decline in civic participation among religious Americans there has also been a decline in the number of religiously active members in churches. Americans are still religious, but only privately so. Putnam writes,
“When they were in their twenties (in the 1960s and 1970s), boomers were more disaffected from religious institutions than their predecessors had been in their twenties. As the boomers married, had children and settled down they tended to become more involved with organized religion, just as their parents had, but the boomers began this life cycle move toward the church at a much lower level of religious involvement and have never closed the gap. Even now, in their forties and fifties, thought (as we would expect) more religious than they once were, boomers remain less religiously involved than middle-aged people were a generation ago” (8).
Putnam goes on to argue, and I think rightly, that the reason for this change is a more privatized faith where Christians move from congregation to congregation without much commitment to any single faith community. God knows I’m guilty of this. The consequence is a further retreat of the Church from society (8).
- The irony is that the evangelical church has bought in to the cultural caricature of Christianity so much that many evangelical writers have abandoned calling Christianity a religion altogether! Instead they opt to call Christianity a “relationship”. Unbeknownst to them, however, is that they are only making the problem worse! This has only deepened sentiments that Christianity is useful only for personal betterment and psychological well being. But why should someone be a Christian on this paradigm? After all, if I want to feel better about myself I can just go to a therapist, as many realized in the 60’s and 70’s the Church just isn’t necessary to achieve personal fulfillment regardless of how badly pastors want them to believe it.
There are a few more problems in the Church caused by emotionalism, but these are largely theological objections to the view I have as well as more speculative correlations I’ve drawn between emotionalism and the state of the Western Church today. I’ll be exploring these as well as what I believe to be a better way to approach ministry and simply define Christianity in a way that doesn’t concede the importance and worth of the Christian message to the surrounding culture.
Explicit examples of emotionalism in the Church;
- http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/more-undignified-than-this-joseph-neil-adams-sermon-on-worship-definition-117382.asp?Page=2; Becoming “undignified” through dancing and singing is assumed to parallel David’s dancing before the Lord and is an expression of passionate worship in contrast to dead worship.
- http://christianity.about.com/od/topicaldevotions/a/relationshipwithjesus.htm. Jesus is emotional, and has deep intimate feelings towards us. “The Holy Spirit unfolds scripture so that it becomes a love letter written specifically to you.”
- http://www.joycemeyer.org/articles/ea.aspx?article=a_real_relationship_with_god; "When we have a real relationship with God through Christ, life gets exciting because He stirs up a passion inside us to love people—and we don't have to struggle to do the things He calls us to do. It just happens naturally.”
- http://www.christianpost.com/news/letting-god-into-every-room-of-your-heart-99513/ "We need to do it because we love Him, honor Him and adore Him. Because if He's not comfortable, then we can't be comfortable. Do you ever experience a discomfort in your spirit? If so, ask yourself: Is there something in my life that's making God uncomfortable?”
- http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/i-am-a-friend-of-god-charlie-roberts-sermon-on-friend-of-god-179975.asp?Page=2 "God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, they were able to completely enjoy His divine presence. God’s desire for your life is to have that same kind of relationship with Him, that's why Jesus came to this earth, to provide the reconciliation God wanted to re-establish with His people! Amen? He wants you to not only to be able to walk in His presence, but also to able to experience His power in your life on a continual basis.”
- https://www.christianarmor.net/emotional-wholeness/18-emotional-dependence "If we are not emotionally dependent on Jesus Christ, then darkness can, and will, exploit our thoughts and feelings which will produce in us depression, defensiveness, anxiety, fear, frustration, apathy, insecurities, and many foolish habits."
Sources;
1. http://magazine.biola.edu/article/06-spring/the-feminization-of-the-church/
2. http://www.podles.org/church-impotent.htm
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
4.
5. http://www.biblicalresearchreports.com/seminaryeducation.php
6. Peter Boghossian; https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7096174.Peter_Boghossian. Examples of internet atheism; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO3MmmrUA4o, https://www.youtube.com/user/CultOfDusty, http://www.evilbible.com
7. http://www.wtsbooks.com/common/pdf_links/9780802866844.pdf
8. Putnam R.D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Purpose in a Vacuum
It makes no difference, on atheism if you live your life like a Mother Teresa or a Charles Manson. We could all kill ourselves right now and nothing would really change. The point is; if we make no difference to reality, we have no role to play nor purpose to fulfill. And if we have no purpose, it seems impossible to see what value we could have. We are star dust, plain and simple. Sure you might say “we create our own meaning and purpose”. But if our purpose is self-created, how can anyone say who’s purpose is better than others? How can we condemn the terrorist for destroying a bus full of women and children? He gave himself that purpose right? Meaning becomes reduced to the realm of opinion and preference. On materialism/naturalism at least their can be no objective purpose or morality for mankind. Our lives are in a state of pure absurdity and nothing, not even world peace or ending world hunger can save us from our own empty existence.
If I am right, then while atheists/naturalists might believe there is purpose for our lives, they are irrational in believing so. An atheist can (and they often do) give to charity, care for the widows and the orphans, but ultimately they are obeying a set of rules Unless they adopt some view of reality beyond the natural realm of observable phenomena, particles, space and time, I see no way to say that there is something inherently valuable about a person. If naturalism is true, its really uncertain why it is such a bad thing to be irrational in the first place.
Be a Platonist, a Deist, a Pantheist, or a Polytheist, anything is better in terms of value and purpose than naturalism.
If I am right, then while atheists/naturalists might believe there is purpose for our lives, they are irrational in believing so. An atheist can (and they often do) give to charity, care for the widows and the orphans, but ultimately they are obeying a set of rules Unless they adopt some view of reality beyond the natural realm of observable phenomena, particles, space and time, I see no way to say that there is something inherently valuable about a person. If naturalism is true, its really uncertain why it is such a bad thing to be irrational in the first place.
Be a Platonist, a Deist, a Pantheist, or a Polytheist, anything is better in terms of value and purpose than naturalism.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Jesus>Religion: Misunderstanding What the Church is Misunderstanding
Unlike Steve McVey, Jefferson Bethke seems to have a fairly Biblical idea of the gospel. In his book, however, Jesus>Religion: Why He is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More and Being Good Enough he seems to repeatedly claim both that Christ demands all of us and that He demands nothing from us. All of this done in the name of stubbornly condemning religion and legalistic thinking. When we take away the proposed demon (religion) in Bethke’s framework the picture makes more sense. The problem isn’t religiosity or desiring to do good per say, but a perversion of those things where we are religious and “selfless” for our own selfish gain. The center of this issue is the tension between empty actions and empty motivations or beliefs. We can do good things with poor motivations (which Bethke labels religion) but we can also do wrong things with good motivations. It is the latter that Bethke neglects in his analysis.
Chapter 1: Jesus isn’t safe
Bethke rightly points out in this chapter that American Christianity has made Jesus a vending machine of comfort where we put in x amount of effort and get out y amount of joy (which really means pleasure to most Americans). What’s more, the American Jesus is always there to comfort you in times of pain. In Contrast the Jesus of the gospels is incredibly intense and convicting demanding absolute obedience to God and condemning the Pharisees for not giving all of themselves to God and instead merely doing things to enlarge their own egos and status in society. So far so good, I agree with Bethke on this point.
Chapter 2: Religion verses Relationship?
In the authors experience it seems, Christians focused all their efforts on not cussing, not looking at porn, not drinking and not having sex before marriage. He rightly condemns this form of Christianity as a farce, it is a false religion and represents the attitude of the Pharisees. He gives many stories of people he knew in college who had these ideas about Christianity. They thought the center of Christianity was promoting wholesome family values and voting Republican. Indeed there is research to back up these suspicions. The Barna Research Group has conducted a fascinating study on the attitudes of Christians in America and their findings are unsettling to say the least. They found that at least 51% of Christians have more self-righteous attitudes and behaviors than truly selfless attitudes and behaviors. Granted, I would contest some of the fine print of how the study was conducted (I disagree with what they consider self-righteous in some instances), however, their conclusion does make sense of Bethke’s experience and it also makes sense of why so many Christians and non-Christians have desired to pit Jesus against religion. I however do not think this is a particularly helpful dichotomy.
In contrast to Jefferson, my experience was with Christians (including myself) who believed that the point of Christianity was to have an out of this world experience with God that was so transformative, so emotionally moving that we couldn’t help but obey God radically afterwards. It is this Christianity that I also affirm is a farce. I spent so much time recommitting my life to Christ, going to youth camps and mission trips all seeking after this experience. But it never happened, no matter how emotional it seemed, no matter how inspired or convicted I was, my emotions dulled and I went back to my sinful lifestyle. This appeared to be the same for the vast majority of my friends in high school. By college most of the kids I helped disciple in our church youth group had virtually forgotten about Christianity. Consequently, I cannot rationally believe Jefferson when he states;
Religion says do, Jesus says done.
Religion is man searching for God. Jesus is God searching for man.
Religion is pursuing God by our moral efforts. Jesus is God pursuing us despite our moral efforts.
Religious people kill for what they believe. Jesus followers die for what they believe.
Bethke here has fallen into the same trap as McVey and neglected the already but not yet tension in scripture regarding our salvation. Our past sins are forgiven at the point of conversion, we are baptized into the Church and community of the Holy Spirit. But we also have to continue the cycle of grace, we have to be on alert praying for one another and constantly seeking to grow in righteousness. Peter writes;
“Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in you ignorance; but as He who called you is holy you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “be holy, for I am holy”.
The model of so many evangelicals is to view rest in Christ as ceasing to put effort into, to relax and be at ease. But Peter and Paul describe it as disciplining your self and finishing the race, to continue the good work that has begun within you. Thus resting in Christ cannot simply mean being at ease that we DON'T have to work to become more righteous, rather it is resting in the hope that we CAN become more righteous because of what Christ has done for us. Given this, distinguishing between religion and Jesus seems to accurately represent Jesus transcendence over and above religion, but it doesn’t grasp the heart of the tension between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day. The tension was not us trying to seek after God but us seeking after a false God, a God we can control and who caters to our desires and needs, or worse just not caring about God and living as though he didn’t exist but in all of this claiming to be a true worshipper of God for selfish gain.
“Relationship” oddness yet again;
Oh and of course Bethke, like every single other popular Evangelical writer today talks about how Christianity is about "your personal relationship with Jesus”. I swear I’ve heard that phrase so much it makes me sick. This isn’t idea that’s contrary to scripture (and 2000 years of Church history for that matter) but one that is completely alien to it. When the New Testament speaks of “knowing God” it means understanding who God is and what He wants for our lives (understanding God’s nature and will) not only on an intellectual level but experiencing it by living it out and seeing God work through you. But this is a far cry from modern sentiments of getting to know someone. It has nothing to do with chilling out or hanging with Jesus. It doesn’t mean getting emotional messages from God or personal messages from scripture as though the Bible is Jesus’ email. Being close to God does not mean having intense feelings for God but having strong commitments to follow Him and serve Him in all that He asks of us. This can’t be done without the all sufficient grace of Christ and the infilling hope of the Holy Spirit.
The conceptual difference between these to frameworks may seem subtle but their implications are very different. The former implies that getting closer to God means having a more intense experience in worship, Bible Study etc whereas the latter means being willing to do things that could get you killed regardless of how you feel. And this is exactly what we see in the Church, Christians either seeking to obey rules without commitment or seeking emotional support without commitment. In both cases the focus is on putting in effort for personal benefit, Bethke is merely trading one form of legalism for another. When the importance of Christianity is based upon our emotional state, it makes sense that Christians would turn to private devotions, contemporary worship and inspirational speeches as the center of the Christian life. All these activities are purposed towards producing and manufacturing encounters with God through our emotions.
Notice also that the focus in the modern conception of a personal relationship with Christ is communication, and communication for its own sake. “We just need to spend time with Jesus” Christians say. The problem is that neither God the Father in the Old Testament, Jesus in the gospels nor the Holy Spirit in Acts ever just stops to have a chat with people. There is always a lesson being taught, a mission being given, a problem pointed out and/or a punishment administered. Thus communication with God is not the end all be all of the gospel, that would be what God has done for us and how He commands us to respond. Yet again, to make speaking with God the center of the gospel we turn the mission of the Church into a therapeutic system of prayer, devotion and worship to God with some volunteering mixed in. This is the essence of legalism by Bethke’s definition; you put in x amount of effort and get y amount of satisfaction.
In conclusion then, framing Christianity as a relationship with Christ is at best redundant and at worst invites heresy. If it is only meant to say that we need to communicate with God to learn what His will for our lives is and the hope that we have in Him, then it seems kind of benign but pointless. If it is rather trying to say that Christianity is all about having deep intimate and emotional experiences with God then it seems to either swerve to legalism (you need to do this this and this if you want to reach an emotional high with God) or antinomianism (salvation doesn’t require you to change anything about yourself, just talk to Jesus and He’ll make you feel better).
Chapter 3: Fundies and fakes
Bethke doesn’t really add much here. But he does talk about Christians who reduce Christianity to spirituality with the goal of avoiding accountability. He gives the example of a college friend he had on the baseball team who always wore a cross, had Christian themed tattoos all over his body and regularly participated in the Church but also drank heavily, had regular casual sex and partied in excess. His excuse was that he had put his faith in Christ as a child and gone to church his whole life so he should be able to live how he wants. So it seems that Bethke is trying to make the point that we do have actual obligations to God and things we have to do, he just seems too engulfed in the popular caricature of legalism (its either you have to or you get to) to realize this.
Chapter 4: Jesus making friends?
In this chapter I was expecting more emotionalism, but here Jefferson surprised me. He actually made some good points and kept to a Biblical framework for understanding salvation. And I’m glad he’s kept his rhetoric against religion in balance. He doesn’t argue that we need to stop judging people and just make friends with people. At least not quite, rather he questions our obsession with certain sins at the expense of others. For instance, while Christians often picket gay pride events and will not hesitate to get rid of a pastor who has had an affair we hardly ever condemn anyone for gluttony or greed. But the New Testament spends way more time on these sins than homosexuality (which isn’t to say that the gay lifestyle isn’t sinful). And yet we have no context for even understanding the sin of gluttony in our cultural context! No one seems to be talking about it, its like the massive elephant in the room nobody seems to know is there!
I’ll also give Jefferson props for saying this;
“But let’s also realize that we do have hope and victory and are called to take sin very seriously, doing anything and everything to run from it and to Jesus. The writer of Hebrews makes it clear by saying we should “also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and… run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and protector of our faith.”
His point about Jesus making friends is about Jesus only classifying people into 2 groups; the repentant and the unrepentant. If you had sinned horribly but desired to turn away from your sin regardless of the cost no matter who you were Jesus was on your side. But if you were a stuck up rich dude who thought he was better than everyone else, Jesus wanted nothing to do with you. By contrast, churches today seem to aim their guns at everything non-Christian aka “secular” when these same churches have struggled with the same problems that they are condemning in the so called secular world! I agree with Bethke, whatever negative connotations have been heaped on the Church in the West is largely the doing of the Church.
I could go on but having read the rest of the book, Bethke pretty much continues on solid points while making some mistakes that I’ve already pointed to above. However I did want to discuss more about the issue of what I call emotionalism in the Church.
The implications for worship;
One thing that sickens me deeply is when Christians say you have to raise your hands during worship and sing loudly and be crazy and undignified for Jesus! They think that churches which don’t do this are dead churches. This is just absurd, for 2000 years the Church was very sober in worship, the point has always been seen as a sobering encounter with God where we meditate on His holiness in comparison to our sinfulness and to be grateful for His grace. Worship isn’t a time to party its a time for reflection on the glory of God and meant to be an act of unity in the Church. To claim that churches who don’t worship with excitement just points again to how deeply emotionalism is rooted in evangelical culture. The underlying current of thought seems to be “without getting that emotional high how are you supposed to evangelize or make disciples?” Well Paul certainly seemed to do it just fine and so did the rest of the Apostles.
I also don’t particularly like the idea that we should all worship the way we feel called to. This again privatizes worship, as though its all about you and God alone. If that’s the case then what is the point of worshipping in a church? Why not just have everyone go home and worship by listening to music on their i-pods? On this view worship becomes divorced from the Church. The Biblical view seems to be that we should sing together as one, and seek to be of one mind and purpose in the Spirit through worship.
Implications for Theology;
If Christianity is all about encountering God in the here and now then it seems that what God is really like and what He has really done in the past is of no consequence. Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolph Bultmann both took the view that the only matter of any importance in Christianity is your present encounter with God through worship, sermons, prayer and Bible study. In fact, many have argued that evangelicals individualistic and pietistic attitudes sprung from the work of these men. The problem is that they both rejected the vast majority of Christian doctrines from the divinity of Christ to the inspiration of scripture. Even worse they both taught that it doesn’t really make any difference whether or not these teachings are true as long as the people who believed they were true had a life changing experience.
While I by no means think that the evangelical church has adopted this way of thinking, it does seem to be headed in that direction. For the evangelical the only purpose of theology is to help us in our daily walk with Christ. Theology is only as important as it is practical, this is heard every sunday by every pastor who bothers to preach theology; it has to be practical. Devotionals and Bible commentaries go through innumerable pains and spill gallons of ink trying to point out how doctrines like the Trinity or the incarnation are “practical”. But when I read any part of the Bible, theology is inextricably linked with ethics. One of my favorite examples of this is in Colossians 1:15-23
“15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”
Note how Paul speaks here; what matters is the big picture, he seldom speaks about the individuals experience or talking about what it feels like to be enfilled with the Holy Spirit. Theology just is how he speaks about God and how he understands the Church! Theology isn’t just practical, its what makes Christianity matter in the first place. Notice also that Paul doesn’t fit his Christology into his personal life, but fits his life into the bigger picture. I don’t think Paul would see much use for the personal devotions and popular Christian self-help books we grovel over today. Paul’s approach is that the truths we affirm about God are all consuming realities! Indeed what we affirm to be true about the world as Christians is our reality and we understand everything through it. So I am truly shocked at how willingly Christians just give up studying doctrine and theology and just claim its all a mystery, all they need is Jesus.
Chapter 1: Jesus isn’t safe
Bethke rightly points out in this chapter that American Christianity has made Jesus a vending machine of comfort where we put in x amount of effort and get out y amount of joy (which really means pleasure to most Americans). What’s more, the American Jesus is always there to comfort you in times of pain. In Contrast the Jesus of the gospels is incredibly intense and convicting demanding absolute obedience to God and condemning the Pharisees for not giving all of themselves to God and instead merely doing things to enlarge their own egos and status in society. So far so good, I agree with Bethke on this point.
Chapter 2: Religion verses Relationship?
In the authors experience it seems, Christians focused all their efforts on not cussing, not looking at porn, not drinking and not having sex before marriage. He rightly condemns this form of Christianity as a farce, it is a false religion and represents the attitude of the Pharisees. He gives many stories of people he knew in college who had these ideas about Christianity. They thought the center of Christianity was promoting wholesome family values and voting Republican. Indeed there is research to back up these suspicions. The Barna Research Group has conducted a fascinating study on the attitudes of Christians in America and their findings are unsettling to say the least. They found that at least 51% of Christians have more self-righteous attitudes and behaviors than truly selfless attitudes and behaviors. Granted, I would contest some of the fine print of how the study was conducted (I disagree with what they consider self-righteous in some instances), however, their conclusion does make sense of Bethke’s experience and it also makes sense of why so many Christians and non-Christians have desired to pit Jesus against religion. I however do not think this is a particularly helpful dichotomy.
In contrast to Jefferson, my experience was with Christians (including myself) who believed that the point of Christianity was to have an out of this world experience with God that was so transformative, so emotionally moving that we couldn’t help but obey God radically afterwards. It is this Christianity that I also affirm is a farce. I spent so much time recommitting my life to Christ, going to youth camps and mission trips all seeking after this experience. But it never happened, no matter how emotional it seemed, no matter how inspired or convicted I was, my emotions dulled and I went back to my sinful lifestyle. This appeared to be the same for the vast majority of my friends in high school. By college most of the kids I helped disciple in our church youth group had virtually forgotten about Christianity. Consequently, I cannot rationally believe Jefferson when he states;
Religion says do, Jesus says done.
Religion is man searching for God. Jesus is God searching for man.
Religion is pursuing God by our moral efforts. Jesus is God pursuing us despite our moral efforts.
Religious people kill for what they believe. Jesus followers die for what they believe.
Bethke here has fallen into the same trap as McVey and neglected the already but not yet tension in scripture regarding our salvation. Our past sins are forgiven at the point of conversion, we are baptized into the Church and community of the Holy Spirit. But we also have to continue the cycle of grace, we have to be on alert praying for one another and constantly seeking to grow in righteousness. Peter writes;
“Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in you ignorance; but as He who called you is holy you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “be holy, for I am holy”.
The model of so many evangelicals is to view rest in Christ as ceasing to put effort into, to relax and be at ease. But Peter and Paul describe it as disciplining your self and finishing the race, to continue the good work that has begun within you. Thus resting in Christ cannot simply mean being at ease that we DON'T have to work to become more righteous, rather it is resting in the hope that we CAN become more righteous because of what Christ has done for us. Given this, distinguishing between religion and Jesus seems to accurately represent Jesus transcendence over and above religion, but it doesn’t grasp the heart of the tension between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day. The tension was not us trying to seek after God but us seeking after a false God, a God we can control and who caters to our desires and needs, or worse just not caring about God and living as though he didn’t exist but in all of this claiming to be a true worshipper of God for selfish gain.
“Relationship” oddness yet again;
Oh and of course Bethke, like every single other popular Evangelical writer today talks about how Christianity is about "your personal relationship with Jesus”. I swear I’ve heard that phrase so much it makes me sick. This isn’t idea that’s contrary to scripture (and 2000 years of Church history for that matter) but one that is completely alien to it. When the New Testament speaks of “knowing God” it means understanding who God is and what He wants for our lives (understanding God’s nature and will) not only on an intellectual level but experiencing it by living it out and seeing God work through you. But this is a far cry from modern sentiments of getting to know someone. It has nothing to do with chilling out or hanging with Jesus. It doesn’t mean getting emotional messages from God or personal messages from scripture as though the Bible is Jesus’ email. Being close to God does not mean having intense feelings for God but having strong commitments to follow Him and serve Him in all that He asks of us. This can’t be done without the all sufficient grace of Christ and the infilling hope of the Holy Spirit.
The conceptual difference between these to frameworks may seem subtle but their implications are very different. The former implies that getting closer to God means having a more intense experience in worship, Bible Study etc whereas the latter means being willing to do things that could get you killed regardless of how you feel. And this is exactly what we see in the Church, Christians either seeking to obey rules without commitment or seeking emotional support without commitment. In both cases the focus is on putting in effort for personal benefit, Bethke is merely trading one form of legalism for another. When the importance of Christianity is based upon our emotional state, it makes sense that Christians would turn to private devotions, contemporary worship and inspirational speeches as the center of the Christian life. All these activities are purposed towards producing and manufacturing encounters with God through our emotions.
Notice also that the focus in the modern conception of a personal relationship with Christ is communication, and communication for its own sake. “We just need to spend time with Jesus” Christians say. The problem is that neither God the Father in the Old Testament, Jesus in the gospels nor the Holy Spirit in Acts ever just stops to have a chat with people. There is always a lesson being taught, a mission being given, a problem pointed out and/or a punishment administered. Thus communication with God is not the end all be all of the gospel, that would be what God has done for us and how He commands us to respond. Yet again, to make speaking with God the center of the gospel we turn the mission of the Church into a therapeutic system of prayer, devotion and worship to God with some volunteering mixed in. This is the essence of legalism by Bethke’s definition; you put in x amount of effort and get y amount of satisfaction.
In conclusion then, framing Christianity as a relationship with Christ is at best redundant and at worst invites heresy. If it is only meant to say that we need to communicate with God to learn what His will for our lives is and the hope that we have in Him, then it seems kind of benign but pointless. If it is rather trying to say that Christianity is all about having deep intimate and emotional experiences with God then it seems to either swerve to legalism (you need to do this this and this if you want to reach an emotional high with God) or antinomianism (salvation doesn’t require you to change anything about yourself, just talk to Jesus and He’ll make you feel better).
Chapter 3: Fundies and fakes
Bethke doesn’t really add much here. But he does talk about Christians who reduce Christianity to spirituality with the goal of avoiding accountability. He gives the example of a college friend he had on the baseball team who always wore a cross, had Christian themed tattoos all over his body and regularly participated in the Church but also drank heavily, had regular casual sex and partied in excess. His excuse was that he had put his faith in Christ as a child and gone to church his whole life so he should be able to live how he wants. So it seems that Bethke is trying to make the point that we do have actual obligations to God and things we have to do, he just seems too engulfed in the popular caricature of legalism (its either you have to or you get to) to realize this.
Chapter 4: Jesus making friends?
In this chapter I was expecting more emotionalism, but here Jefferson surprised me. He actually made some good points and kept to a Biblical framework for understanding salvation. And I’m glad he’s kept his rhetoric against religion in balance. He doesn’t argue that we need to stop judging people and just make friends with people. At least not quite, rather he questions our obsession with certain sins at the expense of others. For instance, while Christians often picket gay pride events and will not hesitate to get rid of a pastor who has had an affair we hardly ever condemn anyone for gluttony or greed. But the New Testament spends way more time on these sins than homosexuality (which isn’t to say that the gay lifestyle isn’t sinful). And yet we have no context for even understanding the sin of gluttony in our cultural context! No one seems to be talking about it, its like the massive elephant in the room nobody seems to know is there!
I’ll also give Jefferson props for saying this;
“But let’s also realize that we do have hope and victory and are called to take sin very seriously, doing anything and everything to run from it and to Jesus. The writer of Hebrews makes it clear by saying we should “also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and… run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and protector of our faith.”
His point about Jesus making friends is about Jesus only classifying people into 2 groups; the repentant and the unrepentant. If you had sinned horribly but desired to turn away from your sin regardless of the cost no matter who you were Jesus was on your side. But if you were a stuck up rich dude who thought he was better than everyone else, Jesus wanted nothing to do with you. By contrast, churches today seem to aim their guns at everything non-Christian aka “secular” when these same churches have struggled with the same problems that they are condemning in the so called secular world! I agree with Bethke, whatever negative connotations have been heaped on the Church in the West is largely the doing of the Church.
I could go on but having read the rest of the book, Bethke pretty much continues on solid points while making some mistakes that I’ve already pointed to above. However I did want to discuss more about the issue of what I call emotionalism in the Church.
The implications for worship;
One thing that sickens me deeply is when Christians say you have to raise your hands during worship and sing loudly and be crazy and undignified for Jesus! They think that churches which don’t do this are dead churches. This is just absurd, for 2000 years the Church was very sober in worship, the point has always been seen as a sobering encounter with God where we meditate on His holiness in comparison to our sinfulness and to be grateful for His grace. Worship isn’t a time to party its a time for reflection on the glory of God and meant to be an act of unity in the Church. To claim that churches who don’t worship with excitement just points again to how deeply emotionalism is rooted in evangelical culture. The underlying current of thought seems to be “without getting that emotional high how are you supposed to evangelize or make disciples?” Well Paul certainly seemed to do it just fine and so did the rest of the Apostles.
I also don’t particularly like the idea that we should all worship the way we feel called to. This again privatizes worship, as though its all about you and God alone. If that’s the case then what is the point of worshipping in a church? Why not just have everyone go home and worship by listening to music on their i-pods? On this view worship becomes divorced from the Church. The Biblical view seems to be that we should sing together as one, and seek to be of one mind and purpose in the Spirit through worship.
Implications for Theology;
If Christianity is all about encountering God in the here and now then it seems that what God is really like and what He has really done in the past is of no consequence. Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolph Bultmann both took the view that the only matter of any importance in Christianity is your present encounter with God through worship, sermons, prayer and Bible study. In fact, many have argued that evangelicals individualistic and pietistic attitudes sprung from the work of these men. The problem is that they both rejected the vast majority of Christian doctrines from the divinity of Christ to the inspiration of scripture. Even worse they both taught that it doesn’t really make any difference whether or not these teachings are true as long as the people who believed they were true had a life changing experience.
While I by no means think that the evangelical church has adopted this way of thinking, it does seem to be headed in that direction. For the evangelical the only purpose of theology is to help us in our daily walk with Christ. Theology is only as important as it is practical, this is heard every sunday by every pastor who bothers to preach theology; it has to be practical. Devotionals and Bible commentaries go through innumerable pains and spill gallons of ink trying to point out how doctrines like the Trinity or the incarnation are “practical”. But when I read any part of the Bible, theology is inextricably linked with ethics. One of my favorite examples of this is in Colossians 1:15-23
“15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”
Note how Paul speaks here; what matters is the big picture, he seldom speaks about the individuals experience or talking about what it feels like to be enfilled with the Holy Spirit. Theology just is how he speaks about God and how he understands the Church! Theology isn’t just practical, its what makes Christianity matter in the first place. Notice also that Paul doesn’t fit his Christology into his personal life, but fits his life into the bigger picture. I don’t think Paul would see much use for the personal devotions and popular Christian self-help books we grovel over today. Paul’s approach is that the truths we affirm about God are all consuming realities! Indeed what we affirm to be true about the world as Christians is our reality and we understand everything through it. So I am truly shocked at how willingly Christians just give up studying doctrine and theology and just claim its all a mystery, all they need is Jesus.
I still could say more, but hopefully this gives you an idea for how dangerous overemphasizing our emotional and personal connection to God can be. I sincerely believe it is the single greatest challenge to the Church today.
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