2 What Does it Mean to be a Christian?
What Does it Mean to be a Christian?
Now that we have laid the foundation for a discussion on whether or how Christianity has failed us by first recognizing who Jesus is and why he came, let us go on to answer the question of what it means to be a Christian—a person who believes what Christianity teaches. If we do not know the answer to this question, again we cannot answer whether or not Christianity has failed us. So, what does it mean to be a Christian? What are the logical implications for our lives that follow from what Jesus taught by his example and his teachings?
I want to explore the hidden realities of the story that follows and use it to illustrate and point out how the Christian life works and why it works the way it does. In this pluralistic society and new age of science, it is even more important to know what it means to be a Christian. We often hear the statement that all religions are fundamentally the same and superficially different. But this is not true. All religions are fundamentally different and only superficially the same at best.
Neither are the sciences fundamentally the same and only superficially different, for we talk of exact sciences, behavioral sciences, phenomenology, ontology, analytic statements, and synthetic statements. Indeed, there is a legitimate range within which truth can be pursued and within which the verification processes of truth claims can be justified. To reduce all religions to the superficial similarities among them and make those similarities definitive of the religions themselves does injustice to both the belief systems and the believers who
subscribe to them and puts at risk nothing less than individual identity—and spiritual life or death.
It has been said that the language of lust and the language of love are much the same. Both say "I love you," but one says it for a night and the other for life.
Words and emotions repeatedly fall victim to the moment and must be tested. Listening carefully and understanding what someone says they believe requires the ultimate test, not just of knowledge, but of wisdom as well. Knowledge and wisdom are two different things, and we must come to understand the difference between believing something and knowing why it is believed.
Many will remember the tragedy that took place among the college community of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana on April 26, 2006. Returning to the campus late at night, several students and staff in a school van were crushed by a truck whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. Four students and one staff member were killed. In the ensuing confusion of pulling the bodies out of the twisted metal and identifying them, a most unexpected twist unfolded.
For five weeks after the accident the Van Ryn family sat at the bedside of the broken body of their daughter Laura, the lone student survivor. But as the days went by, they experienced a growing and troubling consternation. Laura was not answering their questions or relating to them in a manner that was consistent with who she was. Attributing it to the trauma and head injuries she had experienced, they kept hoping that her mind would clear and that their daughter as they knew her would return to them. But with each passing day, their uneasiness increased, until they finally realized that this girl they had nursed was not Laura; she was actually
Whitney Cerak, one of the other students in the van. Laura Van Ryn had not survived the accident and was in fact buried under a marker that read "Whitney Cerak."
This incredible case of mistaken identity had happened because of the extreme disfigurement caused by the accident and by the fact that the girls actually resembled each other.
The trauma for the two families is unfathomable. We have all heard of newborn babies who have been switched at birth, but who can calculate the psychological ramifications of the honest mistaken identity in a multiple tragedy such as this one? Whatever judgment may be made on how such a mix-up could have occurred, no one denies that it was an honest, unintentional mistake, made in the chaos and confusion of devastating emotional trauma.
The decisions we make during the throes of wrenching emotion sometimes have great ramifications. Thus, skeptics often cavalierly charge that those who believe in God only do so out of psychological need or emotional fear. How easy it is for them to choose to ignore the fact that many skeptics are skeptical about God for the equally distorting psychological reasons of hurt, pride, or just plain self-aggrandizement.
Truth, however, is no respecter of mistaken judgments.
That is the strange symmetry, the painful and redeeming reality of the nature of truth. How often has each of us made a false decision or judgment based largely on emotion and realized too late what has happened? People have been incarcerated for a good part of their lives because of wrong judgments. Similarly, one's whole view of life can develop from erroneous thinking, sometimes resulting from great trauma. Thus, many have turned their backs on God because of a traumatic experience that may have colored their thinking or their ability to reason
logically.
In Isaiah 1:18 the Bible records God's words: "Come now, let us reason together." So let us begin to reason together about what Christianity teaches about life and the world we live in with our minds and hearts open to the truths that will be discussed so that we can honestly answer whether Christianity has failed us.
THE CONFLICT OF THE MORAL AND THE SPIRITUAL
When philosophers present arguments for God's existence, they resort to the laws of logic and the rational inferences one may draw from them. Over the centuries, the most existentially powerful argument that continues to haunt the discussion on God's existence is the moral argument, which goes something like this:
Objective moral values exist only if God exists.
Objective moral values do exist.
Therefore God exists.
This simple syllogism is then broken down, and each statement is examined against reality and against its relationship to the two other statements in the syllogism. The argument stands or falls based on how it holds up against reality. Some who challenge God's existence will often assert that even if this argument does sustain the existence of some transcending power, it still doesn't tell us who this God is or, more particularly, why this God is the God of the JudeoChristian faith and not any other god. In effect, they are arguing, "Yes, I will accept the fact that objective truth exists.
But why should it be the truth as you see it rather than as I see it? Why can't I reject your version of truth and replace it with my version of truth?"
If there is no reality against which to measure truth, these people are correct. But I would ask them: Is it legitimate for me to argue that whether the theory of gravity articulated by Newton applies to a person depends entirely on how that person has been raised to think? Why must I accept the theory of gravity that Newton stated and that science has accepted?
Why can't I come up with my own theory of gravity? The answer, the scientist would say, is that Newton's theory best reflects reality. And I would say that the existence of God best reflects the reality of the world we see and live in.
Now if we grant that objective moral values do exist, why does that necessarily point to a personal God as Jesus taught?
Consider the following: Every time a question with moral implications is raised, it is raised by a person or about a person, or both. Animals and plants do not raise questions about morality. This must at least mean that personhood is indispensable to moral reasoning. But if the notion itself of personhood is essentially worthless—which is the position to which naturalism is ultimately and undeniably driven—is there really any point in any discussion about morality? Such a discussion just for the sake of discussion is circular at best, and no conclusion can be sustained apart from an acknowledgment of an ultimate spiritual reality.
Skeptics who mock anyone who questions the validity of certain scientific laws also mock anyone who believes in spiritual laws; they do so because they believe there is no empirical value in the spiritual; that is, they cannot test or evaluate spiritual truth using a scientific method. If physics is
the only reliable means of knowing anything with certainty, what does that say of the laws of logic, which are not properly in the category of science? They have declared metaphysics unreliable and yet they have borrowed logic and reason from the world of metaphysics in order to prove their purely scientific explanation for the physical world! Induction and deduction are not only scientific tools; they are also used to determine the truth of ideas. Setting apart science as the only certain discipline is itself not a scientifically verifiable fact.
Moral categories must exist with certainty; otherwise the very critique of God as being "immoral" is a self-defeating argument because if there is no morality, God cannot be immoral—no matter what he does. What is more, having decided that there is no value in the spiritual anyway, they cleverly lump all religious truth claims indiscriminately into one bundle, which is then subjected to their empirically exact sciences. Failing the test, they are all tossed out of the arena of fact.
Certainly they must know that not everyone who believes in God subscribes to the same belief system. If all who believed in God believed in the same God, the term would need no explanation and multiple religious worldviews would not have developed. All belief in God is not the same, which is why we run into the clutter and complexity of competing worldviews, each arguing its own merit. If the problem of evil is the single greatest challenge in the debate around God's existence, the problem of which God to believe in is a close second.
There are many ways one can respond to this question, and I have done so in my writings elsewhere. Here I want to simply present what the Christian faith affirms that makes it unique and true with regard to the basic issues of human
identity and human worth. I will try to avoid using theological terms, since they are often unfamiliar and can result in confusion and resistance. I will simply go to the big ideas that shape the worldview of the Christian.
THE "CAUSE" OF THE FIRST CAUSE
I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus is who he says he is, and I have accepted his sacrifice as payment for my sin.
Beyond that, the first and foremost assertion of Christianity is implied by the question, What is man? The answer the psalmist gives to his own question demonstrates a starting point for Christianity that is different from any other belief system, secular or religious, except for Judaism:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
PSALM 8:3 – 5
These magnificent words were penned nearly three thousand years ago by a man marveling at the beauty and diversity of what he saw around him in nature—and yet recognizing the distinctiveness of a human being in contrast to nature.
A story circulated some years ago about Sherlock Holmes
and his loyal friend and student Watson, who were together on a camping trip. After a good meal, they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend awake.
"Watson," he said, "look up at the sky and tell me what you see."
"I see millions and millions of stars," Watson replied.
"What does that tell you?" Holmes questioned.
Watson pondered the question and then said, "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all-powerful and that we are small and insignificant.
Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?"
Holmes was silent for a minute before speaking. "Watson, you idiot!" he said with a measure of restraint. "Someone has stolen our tent!"
As funny as this story is, if we apply it to our present discussion, we see that an enormous robbery has taken place in which someone has stolen from you that which provides shelter or the covering for your life. It is not accidental that those who stick to a scientific single vision of ultimate reality start by denying a Creator, and from there, all of the disciplines are herded together to create a mentality that asserts that any worldview seeking a transcendent explanation for our universe is unwelcome in intelligent discussion. When science categorically and unconditionally insists to all who hunger for religious truth that there is no such thing, it has ceased to be science and is only revealing its hostility.
This, I'm afraid, is what is revealed by the stridency and belligerence of the "new atheists." They are not open or willing to go where the evidence leads, unless that evidence sustains their own naturalistic assumptions. They have covertly reduced all philosophical thought and deduction to—ironically
—faith. Perhaps inadvertently, in denying a Creator they also deny the essential worth of creation and of the act of creating, which means, then, that all great art, music, architecture, and writing must be consigned to the ash heap, because the inspiration behind these great expressions and reflections of the transcendent is denied as non-real or faith (it cannot be scientifically or empirically studied or observed). The same must apply to all the great themes of love, beauty, truth, morality, justice, and the like, as they too cannot be empirically or scientifically studied and observed.
The starting points, then, of Christianity and naturalistic science diverge, and unfortunately the resulting conflict often brings more heat than light. For when the starting point of one belief system is an intelligent mind with a purpose and that of the opposing belief system is matter and randomness, the ending points are determined right from the beginning.
On a side note, I would like to say that certain people who held these beliefs of naturalism could have saved me a lot of reading. In my days of graduate studies the noted philosopher
Antony Flew was the atheist with whom we had to contend. I spent hours coming to terms with Flew's arguments and all that he demanded of theism in terms of logic and proof. Because he was the most noted atheist of that time, it was imperative that we understood and were able to respond to his challenges.
Now times have changed, and Antony Flew finds himself in the position of writing against the vociferous atheists of our
day because he contends that atheism is no longer a logically tenable position for him. He is willing, he says, to go where the evidence leads. In his book There Is a God, Flew reflects on an argument regarding the probability of human origin that he had to deal with in his younger days. The argument runs like this:
How long would it take for an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters to compose a sonnet by Shakespeare? (Believe it or not, this argument was based on an experiment conducted by the British National
Council of the Arts.) A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys, and after one month of hammering away at the keys and using the computer as a bathroom, the monkeys produced fifty typed pages—but not one single word. This is amazing, considering that the shortest word in English could be a oneletter word such as the letter a or I. But a one-letter word is only a word if there is space on either side of it. Flew points out that if one considers that there are thirty keys on a keyboard, the possibility of getting a one-letter word is one in 30 x 30 x 30, which is one in 27,000. If these attempts could not even result in one one-letter word, what is the possibility of getting just the first line of one of Shakespeare's sonnets, let alone a whole sonnet? Flew quotes scientist and author Gerry Schroeder on the sheer improbability of the random existence of the universe:
If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips—forget the monkeys—each one weighing a millionth of a gram, and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second
[producing] random letters, the number of trials you would
get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials. It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th.
You will never get a sonnet by chance—let alone the complete works of Shakespeare. The Universe would have to be 10 to the 600th times larger. Yet the world just thinks the monkeys can do it every time.1
For Flew, the sheer improbability that such an intricate design as we have in this universe is the product of mindless evolution is insurmountable; the universe must have purpose and design behind it.
As powerful an argument as statistical improbability is, a simple point I want to make here is that although the specifics may be different, this is not a new argument for the improbability of chance. Antony Flew knows this to be so. But I must add that no dyed-in-the-wool naturalist is likely to suggest that our universe could not have beaten such odds.
They will say that just because it is improbable, it doesn't mean that the universe didn't happen this way—a view that vehemently resists both human limitation and the humility required to follow reason where it leads. Instead, they will wax eloquent, like Watson, on endless categories of convoluted descriptions of what "might" or "could" have happened, all the while ignoring the most obvious deduction or conclusion before them as to the origin of the universe—that it was a deliberate act of creation by an intelligent being. Stubbornly and deliberately ignoring that "the tent has disappeared," there is no way for naturalists to account for human relational hungers, so they refuse to recognize that these hungers are validated by the real fact that people relate to other people through a relationship.
To even think we could get a Shakespearean sonnet by accident assumes, first, that we have other sonnets to which we can compare the "accidental" one in order to know that it is indeed a Shakespearean sonnet and, second, that whenever we see intelligibility we assume intelligence. Even if the monkeys could have produced a sonnet by accident, we would still wonder at the intelligence behind the technology of the keys and the development of the alphabet, the aesthetics of this sonnet in comparison with other sonnets, and, to boot, whether the monkeys knew what they were doing.
The numerical impossibility actually defies even the "chance" analogy. And in the origin of the universe, as naturalism tells the story, there are no monkeys to begin with.
The monkeys evolved from chemistry and energy after the universe already existed. There are no alphabets to be explained. There is no idea of a sonnet except as nonexistent monkeys pounding on nonexistent keys. All these assumptions are circular.
Let me illustrate this point a little differently through the fascinating story of George Frideric Handel's composition of Messiah. His career as a composer was on the verge of collapse, and he was naturally discouraged, feeling that he was a failure. The words for Messiah were given to him as a possible oratorio, and he decided to try one last time to compose a great piece of music. When he reached the text for the "Hallelujah Chorus" and began to reflect on the words, he said later that he saw the heavens opened and the great God himself. And as the great chorus reached its climax at the first public presentation of Messiah before the king of England, the king rose to his feet in recognition of the awesome power of the words and music combining to give honor to the One to
whom honor is due. The convergence of intelligence, aesthetics, and the inspirational power of a transcending reality in the person of God has the power to bring even kings either to their feet or to their knees.
All of this is dismissed as mere nonsense by the skeptic.
Not only does he take that which appears statistically impossible and try to make it actual; he takes the emotion and spiritual expression that is common to the human experience, and is therefore actual, and tries to make it farcical. Is it really possible to deny such a reality as that described by Handel's experience in writing the music for Messiah without even a twinge of doubt that perhaps there is more to life than science alone?
Is that not what happened to the Van Ryn and Cerak families? It was not just DNA that told them they had the wrong daughter. There was something else—something beyond science and matter. It was the intuitive certainty that comes from the collection of data—memory, affections, attachments, and numerous other contingencies that produce the distinctiveness of what we call "personhood." What if the Van Ryns had insisted that this was their daughter, even as the Ceraks denied it, steadfastly believing it—even though the girl herself claimed she was not their daughter and all the DNA evidence pointed to her being someone else? What if they had stubbornly refused to accept the truth just because they had been told by the coroner that their daughter had survived the wreck?
In this same way, the naturalist is simply compelled to deny the evidence before him that each human life is of worth apart from anyone else, with unique needs and a unique capacity to relate to others. In fact, within the setting of this
tragic event for the Van Ryns, the Ceraks and the Taylor community, science and the sacred were forced to converge.
The DNA testing only confirmed that the person before them was who she was claiming to be and not who she was believed to be by the Van Ryns. This intertwining of the disciplines with relationship that is both "intrapersonal" and "interpersonal," within and without, reveals a distinctiveness that we must recognize as sacred and inviolable. But this is denied repeatedly in naturalism, which insists that we just happen to be here, that we're all just "dancing to our DNA," as Richard
Dawkins puts it. For the Christian, the awesome nature of the world we are part of does not point to brute science in isolation but to the Creator, a personal God who can and does relate to human beings.
NOT ALL PURPOSES WITHSTAND SCRUTINY
The other day I passed a clever billboard while driving to the airport—it was an advertisement for Chic-fil-A in which one cow was standing on the back of another in order to reach a blackboard on which it wrote, "E=MC2= Eat More Chicken." To be sure, Einstein had anything but eating more chicken in mind when he came up with that formula. But from the breadth and depth of a scientific understanding of energy to the respite of clever humor, human beings are each distinct in intellect and mind.
Now as we think about created entities created by a personal Creator, the whole realm of purpose is brought into focus. Many facets of what it means to be a person are shared among us, but each person is still unique. All of humanity shares some core characteristics; for example, we know that
none of us have caused our own existence and that from conception to death we cannot survive independently of each other. Our lives are interdependent, even as we build our individual values, hopes, and dreams. Every pursuit we follow is either conditioned or driven by personal choice to express that individuality.
Here we are brought up short in the search for our own distinctive identity and destiny. Are we content to just be here, putting in time, or are we going to pursue the significance we intuitively sense we have? Our laughter, our tears, our sense of humor, our fears all point to an innate ability to think as an individual in abstract, caricatured, and concrete terms.
Let me shift our focus from the intellect to the mind. Pastor and speaker Reid S. Monaghan, summarizing the argument of Kevin Favero (an electrical engineer by training), provides a syllogism that gives a remarkable clue to the difference between how the mind works and how mere intellect works:
If matter/energy is all there is, then there is no free will.
There is free will.
Therefore matter/energy is not all there is.2
Monaghan is pointing to that which is definitive of all that is basic about moral reasoning. We know that as human beings, we have the capacity to feel with moral implications and to think in paradigms. We make judgments all the time according to the way each of us views or interprets the world around us. Even if we do not agree with each other on what ought to be, we recognize that there must be an "ought," such as, "We all ought to behave in certain ways or else we cannot get along," which is why we have laws. In short, we ascribe to
ourselves freedom with boundaries and assume that truth is a valid goal. As a rule, we implicitly grant that two mutually exclusive statements cannot both be true without some qualification. Our shared humanity in the context of our distinctiveness and of our ability to reason in moral terms is precisely what the Bible asserts in God's infinite capacity to create individuals with a hunger for community and a hunger for truth—indeed, a hunger for individual acceptance.
These contrarieties of individuality and community become part of our search for meaning and for meaningfulness.
In other words, I am not absolutely free to pursue individual meaning at the cost of denying someone else the same prerogative. Life comes as a package deal, and there is mutual responsibility if we are to keep from destroying each other.
More to the point, we reap within ourselves the consequences of our choices because of the laws we must live by. If we don't, there is a law of diminishing returns when we pursue pleasure for pleasure's sake. Both pleasure and pain have therapeutic and debilitating sides to them, for, as C. S. Lewis wrote, "God whispers to us in our pleasures,…but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."3 This is vitally important to remember. Christianity gives an explanation for these realities of life on this earth; naturalism does not.
To illustrate, a prominent public figure recently contacted me by phone. Both of us were overseas when he called me.
Perhaps being miles from home provided him some sense of protection and enabled him to say what he wanted to say. As I listened to him speak, nothing he told me was any different from what I have heard thousands of times before. Perhaps the specifics were different, but the story was the same. He had climbed the pinnacle of success. He had experienced human
emotions of the deepest kind. Yet he was like a ship on the high seas without chart, compass, or destination. The essence of what he said was that he was lost. His impressive credentials and his level of despair were totally incongruent. He was living as an icon of success in a make-believe public persona.
Privately, both he and his world were falling apart.
But he is no different from any of us, if we will but admit it, for we are all totally lost in spite of our accomplishments, both as individuals and as a community. Why do we see this so often and yet continue to deny its implications? It seems we have to learn the same lessons over and over. But there can be no reproach to pain unless we assume human dignity; there is no reason for restraints on pleasure unless we assume human worth; there is legitimacy to monotony unless we assume a greater purpose to life; there is no purpose to life unless we assume design; death has no significance unless we seek what is everlasting. This is true across the board in human experience—across cultures, languages, and backgrounds.
This is what Christianity teaches.
This man had told our common friend, "Please pray for my children. I am not sure what will become of them." As I heard him speak of his situation and his fears, I couldn't but help think of the Broadway play Phantom of the Opera. The words of the song "Music of the Night" speak volumes of how the darkness of night intensifies temptation. Under the cover of darkness not only are nefarious schemes hatched and implemented, but strange justifications are invented. In the darkness, the song says, it is easy to pretend that the truth is what we think it ought to be.
When everything is done only for the sake of appearances, the human mind becomes a factory of
manipulated reasons to justify the horrendous. We make our own truths in the dark, and when daylight comes, we wonder what possessed us to do what we did and to think what we thought. Half a century ago, Aldous Huxley said that he wanted the world not to have meaning because if there were no meaning to life he was freed to his own choices for sex and politics. Is it for the same reason today that we wish to deny the Creator any room in the public place?
False religions have at least one redeeming aspect—those who follow them do so because they understand they have not found the answer within themselves. They acknowledge that as humans we are quite limited and cannot make it on our own.
Even when we exalt ourselves, it is because we need to justify our existence. Sheer naturalism lives the ultimate lie of giving itself value by self-reference, insisting that it needs no one and no thing in order to justify itself or its existence.
The Bible says we distort truth to suit ourselves.
Christianity makes it clear that we are created to conform to the image of God's Son, Jesus (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
He is the blueprint for life. Each of us must either recognize that we are who God says we are or deny him, leaving ourselves with no point of reference or value, except as our individual cultures assign to us.
NOT ALL FAITHS ARE CREATED EQUAL
Christianity is unique in another way. Not only are we redeemed and given individual value by God and a place in community; we are shown the only reasonable vantage point from which to know these truths. Let me explain.
How do we know what we know? How do we know that
what we know is true? Let's look at this set of statements Reid Monaghan put up on his website:
A plurality of persons and ideas is good.
A plurality of religions is a brute fact.
A plurality of gods is an idolatrous fiction.
A plurality of contradictory "truths" is an impossibility.4
A plurality of contradictory "truths" is an impossibility.
This statement is the bottom line. Contrast everything you have just read that Christianity teaches about origin and purpose with the worldview of every other religion or belief, and you will see there is a difference between Christianity and other religious thought. In the pantheistic scheme, every birth is a rebirth; life moves in a cycle. Fatalism is the inevitable result of such a view: what has been, will be, and what will be, will return. Why worry about the children? They may not have been yours last time around and will not be yours next time around. Just fulfill your karmic debt so that you have a smaller debt to pay when you start over the next time. And perchance if you return with a greater debt, no one, as far as you know, will be able to identify the reason for it. This is the ultimate game of "Who's on First?"—never being able to pin down where anyone stands or who we truly are.
Instinctively we know that names and individuality mean something. Pantheism takes away individual essence and offers in return existence without reference. It is the coroner burying a body without ever knowing its true identity. As one former Hindu said to me, "If every birth is a payment for the previous birth, and I have had only a finite number of births, what was I paying for in my first birth? Even the bank tells me
how much I owe them. My karma tells me nothing." Karma is a cruel, silent creditor. It leaves you hanging on a thread, filled with a fearsome uncertainty about whether it will support you or break you.
Islam does give primary place to the Creator. But from there, everything spirals down until you are reduced to the existence of an automaton. Everything is Insha'Allah—the will of God. Man is only a pawn in the hands of a God with whom no relationship is possible. From an Islamic perspective, Kevin
Favero's syllogism (see above) would read:
God is absolutely sovereign.
There is no free will.
Therefore man is absolutely determined.
Thus, the poetic cynicism of Omar Khayyam in his Rubaiyat:
'Tis all a chequer-board of nights and days Where destiny with men for pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the closet lays.
Islamic apologists, trying to convince themselves of some freedom in their belief while also retaining their belief in the absolute sovereignty under which they live, would write a syllogism as follows:
God is all sovereign.
Just submit to Allah.
You will be weighed in the balances.
You will be held accountable
as if you are sovereign over yourself.
A sovereign God will judge you.
Christianity is definitively and drastically different from all other religions. God is sovereign, to be sure. But Christianity teaches that in his sovereignty God has given humanity freedoms within built-in boundaries that bring fulfillment. No amount of goodness can justify us before a sovereign God, but his grace makes up for what our wills cannot accomplish.
THREE POSTURES
Here I am going to significantly diverge into an aspect of the Christian faith that is utterly unique. I use the term on purpose as it defines both Christian and faith.
It stands to reason that there are three postures from which we can make judgments about our own human nature and the nature of ultimate reality.
Sheer Determinism The first is sheer determinism, which means we have no choice in how we think or believe since it has all been determined for us, either genetically or through environment, and we are locked into the very data over which we stand as judge, creating a stranglehold within the naturalistic framework.
Naturalists use this same determinism that they believe has sovereignty over them to throw mud at belief in God by attributing belief to genetic makeup or by declaring, as American molecular geneticist Dean Hamer does, that "a
person's capacity to believe in God is linked to his brain chemicals." Interestingly, the same claim is made about homosexuality. In other words, everything is related to molecular genetics. In response to this conclusion, philosopher and writer David Berlinski states, "If he [Hamer] has refrained from arguing that a person's capacity to believe in molecular genetics is linked to a brain chemical, it is, no doubt, owing to a prudent sense that once that door is open, God knows how and when anyone will slam it shut again."5
Hamer is voicing the default position of bioethical evolution—molecular genetics. He has no other option but to take that view. But in a scathing look at evolutionary determinism Berlinski, a secular writer, declares the following:
A successful evolutionary theory of the human mind would, after all, annihilate any claim we might make on behalf of human freedom. The physical sciences do not trifle with determinism: It is the heart and soul of their method… When [experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist] Steven Pinker writes that "nature does not dictate what we should accept or how we should live our lives," he is expressing a belief—one obviously true— entirely at odds with his professional commitments.
If ordinary men and women are, like Pinker himself, perfectly free to tell their genes to "go jump in the lake," why pay the slightest attention to evolutionary psychology?
Why pay the slightest attention to Pinker?
Either the theory in which he has placed his confidence is wrong, or we are not free to tell our genes to
do much of anything.
If the theory is wrong, which theory is right?
If no theory is right, how can "the idea that human minds are the product of evolution" be "unassailable fact"?
If this idea is not unassailable fact, why must we put aside "the idea that man was created in the image of God"?
These hypotheticals must now be allowed to discharge themselves in a number of categorical statements:
There is no reason to pay attention to Steven Pinker.
We do not have a serious scientific theory explaining the powers and the properties of the human mind.
The claim that the human mind is the product of evolution is not an unassailable fact. It is barely coherent.6
This scintillating response by Berlinski to the yes/no dance that science engages in with determinism reveals precisely why science ends up being executed by its own artillery when the discussion turns to freedom of any kind.
In short, a belief in determinism becomes self-defeating in the face of any departure from the status quo, whether it is an issue of morality or of invention.
Total Transcendence The second position from which we can make judgments about our own nature and the nature of ultimate reality is to claim total transcendence. We are so able to jump out of the
box that the box itself is defined by our absolute objectivity.
But seriously, aside from being arrogant, is it really possible to rise above reality so as to view it with pure objectivity? Is such self-transcendence really possible? If in the particular judgments we make within our lives we fall so abysmally short, how can we make such sweeping judgments on life itself? Is this not the conundrum the philosopher Peter Kreeft had in mind when he wrote, "Falling in love is a mystery. Getting to Mars is a problem."7 According to the philosopher Gabriel
Marcel, a mystery is "a problem which encroaches upon its own data."8 In other words, we borrow capital from a debt we owe.
If determinism hangs itself by its own rope because it doesn't have the freedom to choose its destiny, selftranscendence jumps into the abyss of a free fall with nowhere to land. There is no solid ground for takeoff or landing. In short, in both determinism and self-transcendence, there is no certain position from which to view the landscape.
Semitranscendence The only option left from which to make judgments about our own nature and the nature of ultimate reality is that of semitranscendence. From this vantage point we are able to view and make judgments in the proper interplay between faith and reason. We can trust our findings with certainty, but we are not so "outside the box" that the box is nothing more than an object of study.
Let me illustrate. Some years ago, I had the privilege of speaking at a colloquium hosted by a fine group of faculty
members at Johns Hopkins University. The theme of the conference was "What Does It Mean to Be Human?" There were representatives from a diversity of perspectives delivering papers. Mine was to be presented from the perspective of Christianity. I would cover four basic ideas:
1. Creation. Christianity teaches us that each one of us has been created by God for a specific purpose.
2. Incarnation. The incarnation of Jesus is the essential splendor to which we are to be conformed.
3. Transformation. Because of my propensity to distort and refashion my destiny, I, a human being, am in need of God's grace and the strength to change my propensities.
4. Consummation. The consummation of the Christian life is in the communion that one enjoys with God and the final purpose beyond the grave.
From this paradigm for life I argued that both the glory of humanity and its shame made sense.
One can imagine the distress of some listeners and the acerbic questions to which I was subjected when the opportunity was given. What is ironic is that in all of the questions, whether they challenged or supported what I had said, my points were in one way or the other sustained. One of the most antagonistic questioners vehemently objected to my assertion that at heart we as human beings were basically selfdriven—hence our bent to evil. The louder she argued, the more she proved my point. I recall that Malcolm Muggeridge once said that human depravity is at once the most empirically
verifiable fact yet most staunchly resisted datum by our intellectuals. Reinhold Niebuhr declared, "No cumulation of contradictory evidence seems to disturb modern man's good opinion of himself."9
Now here is the point. Minutes before I presented my talk, Francis Collins, the codirector of the Human Genome Project, made his presentation. In closing, he prepared to show us two pictures on the screen. As he uncovered the first one, he told us it was the rose window from York Minster Cathedral in York,
England. The beautiful design in magnificent colors was like a great jigsaw puzzle, each piece perfectly in place. One could only imagine the skill of the craftsman or craftsmen who spent so many hours fashioning all the tiny pieces of glass and fitting them together.
Then Dr. Collins uncovered the second picture. There were the two pictures, side by side, the second design even more complex and beautiful than the first. As we awaited his explanation, there was pin-drop silence. After a moment, Dr.
Collins explained that we were looking at a cross section of human DNA. There was an audible, awestruck response as the audience drew in their breath and gazed in wonder at the pattern made by the more than three billion bits of information in that one strand of DNA. Dr. Collins responded by saying that he knew of no other way to end his presentation than to sing a hymn. And with that he picked up his guitar and sang.
As I sat entranced by what I was seeing, the thought came to my mind that it was because of the DNA strand I was seeing that I could see what I was seeing. That which held me in awe was the reason for which I could be awestruck. In other words, mine was a meaningful response in recognition of meaning, enabled by that which made my meaning meaningful.
Only a semitranscendent point of reference makes that possible. This is the bequest of my Christian faith because in Christianity the God who created us in his image and assigns value to each one of us is a transcendent, intelligent Being.
That is why the candor of David Berlinski is commendable, as he does not claim to be speaking from a Christian perspective. After his one-line zingers questioning the rationality of Steven Pinker's academic sleight of hand, he ended the section by saying, "The idea that man was created in the image of God remains what it has always been: And that is the instinctive default position of the human race."10
So the psalmist asks the question in Psalm 8:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him…?
He then answers himself:
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet… O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
The glory of what it means to be human is that we can celebrate the glory of the universe in its immensity and intelligibility. The universe cannot return that compliment.
When the starting point is matter, the mind can be nothing more than matter. The psalmist's question, "What is man that you are mindful of him?" remains a haunting problem for humanism where humanity is but a byproduct of the universe.
And why would anyone care about the byproduct when you still have the original? In naturalistic humanism, the universe is supreme, not humanity.
Readers of the Bible will remember the story of the group of religious leaders who came to Jesus and asked him if it was all right to pay taxes to Caesar (Luke 22:21 – 25). Jesus responded to them with a question of his own. He asked them for a coin, held it up, and asked, "Whose portrait and inscription are on it?"
"Caesar's," came the response.
"Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's," Jesus said.
The interesting thing is that the questioners did not come back with a follow-up question. They should have asked Jesus,
"And what belongs to God?"
Undoubtedly Jesus would have answered with another question: "Whose image is on you?"
Let me take this a step further. The other motive behind this question was to pit Jesus against Caesar. The truth is that they didn't want to pay the taxes to Caesar, and they were hoping that Jesus would either anger the people or Caesar by whichever way he answered the question. But Jesus' answers always went to the root of the question and not the cultural trappings of the question.
This is also essential to understanding the uniqueness of Christianity. We are confronted every day with a host of problems. As we face a range of issues, we struggle to grind
out solutions. Jesus faced the same issues in the questions that were put to him, and again and again his answers went to the root of people's questions. Again and again they tried to trip him up. When they could not trip him by pitting him against Caesar, they pitted him against the religious leaders, asking, "Which is the greatest commandment?" (Matthew
22:25 – 40). Moses had given over six hundred laws. Tradition added an unmanageable burden by multiplying the caveats and contingencies to those six hundred laws until they needed experts to decide what a particular law actually meant. So when
Jesus was confronted with the question, one might have expected he would either dodge the question or pick out one law that could be the anchor of all the other laws.
His answer was profound. He did not give them one law; he gave them two: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it:
'Love your neighbor as yourself,'" he said. Then he added a footnote. "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
The first law—to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind—makes the second—to love your neighbor as yourself—a necessary sequel, and the second is only possible because of the first. Any other rationality for loving your neighbor would die the death of a thousand qualifications in the cultural wars that we fight all the time.
David Berlinski is right when he says that the idea that man was created in the image of God is the instinctive default position of the human race. We are not the byproduct of an impersonal universe. God has poured into our hearts a hunger for him and the ability to reason to remind us that if we don't
follow this imperative, we end up demeaning ourselves.
From the Christian perspective, the only roadblock to this celebration of God and to life as he has made it to be lived is that because we have turned our backs on God, we are spiritually bankrupt. The way back to God and to life is not by a set of laws or a set of strictures. The way back to God and to the life he desires for us is to humble ourselves before him and recognize that in giving his Son, God has provided redemption for each individual soul. And with that redemption comes a new life of serving God and our fellow human beings. God has presented us with not just an idea but with connected truths that give us a broader context by which we are able to interpret our particular experiences.
We are made by a personal God.
We are fashioned individually but with a hunger for community.
We are unable in our own strength to attain what it takes to live peaceably with God and our fellow human beings.
We have a blueprint in the person of Jesus that points us to our ultimate destiny.
We are able to know the blessing of awe and humility, both of which are prerequisites for human dignity and for recognizing our limitations.
We are made to live by reason and faith that are so intertwined that they are the only reasonable way we can transcend ourselves.
To say "I am disappointed in Christianity" is more than
merely to say, "This isn't what I thought it was going to be."
Much more than that is implied and is at stake if one is truly disappointed in Christianity. To be disappointed in Christianity, one really has to say, "I am totally transcendent over reality and cannot see any ultimate purpose whatsoever."
The judgments that are then made in accordance with such an assumption can no longer be made in the context of a Christian way of viewing things—the Christian worldview. Doesn't it make more sense to say, "I am assuming some things about life and about myself that I dare not assume if there is an ultimate purpose and cause for my life—and what's more, there are some things I cannot fully understand"? The shift from seeking
God's ultimate plan to pursuing my own immediate desire is a shift of text from a context that is indispensable.
To dismiss all of life as ultimately random is to also dismiss the mind with which I make such judgments. The only position from which I can make valid judgments is from a semitranscendent vantage point. But this vantage point is only given to me by a moral, personal First Cause—God. Our names, our identities, our relationships, our destinies all hinge on this starting point. This is Christianity. It values the individual as having transcendent worth, giving the individual a glimpse of that transcendence without changing the distinctiveness of a God/individual relationship. Isn't that the way we even relate as children to an earthly parent? How much more so in a relationship with God.