Last time I blogged on discipleship of the mind, I raised some serious warnings about relying on the Internet too much. Here we are, though: me writing, and you reading. It’s pretty strong evidence we both think there’s at least something to be gained here. And there is, just as long as we don’t let it be our whole reading diet.
Christian-Oriented Libraries on the Internet Some people in my generation can remember having to drive to the library to find an answer to a question. Sounds almost quaint now, doesn’t it? In this blog post I want to steer you toward some of the better libraries for Christian thinking. This list won’t be complete, you can guarantee that. I’m almost certain I’m having a momentary memory lapse, and I’m not even including all of my own favorites. Please use the comments to add to the list, and accept my advance apologies for missing some of the best.
Thinkers engage contrary views. Here are three of the better places to do that. I endorse the process of studying these views, not the views themselves (or in many cases, the attitudes), mostly because in the end they don’t stand up to good evidence and analysis.
A “Judgmentalism Inspector” just popped up on my computer. It scared me half to death. It may be blank now, but it’s watching. It’s inspecting my judgmentalism. It’s going to judge my judgmentalism.
Okay, you’re probably wondering where it really came from. I’m writing a passage on judgmentalism in my book (which is about two-thirds done now, by the way.) The software, Scrivener, includes an “Inspector” window where I can write summary information on each passage. In full-screen mode it shows up as a floating window, which is what you see in the image here. I don’t use it much—you can see I didn’t enter a synopsis. That’s one reason it surprised me when somehow it showed up there.
This just occurred to me: suppose someone says, “You’re being awfully judgmental!” Is that any different than being a Judgmentalism Inspector?
Don Lemon of CNN Weekend Primetime asked Dr. Sujatha Reddy, OB/GYN
Would you recommend this new emergency contraception to your patients?
She replied,
You know, I would. I think it’s great that women have one more option if there is, you know, an unintended event that occurs, you have have one more option.
The new “emergency contraception,” just approved by the FDA, is EllaOne, a “morning-after” pill that is actually an abortifacient.
Other than cases of rape (including those involving date rape drugs), no woman is pregnant on account of an unintended event. If Reddy were recommending EllaOne just for those instances, I would still have significant problems with it, but I’ll let others write on that. She isn’t just recommending it for those cases, though; and what I want to draw your attention to here is the way she stated it. Reddy was apparently searching for some euphemism for unwanted pregnancy. She came up with a telling one: “unintended events.”
Undeniably the vast majority of pregnancies result from intended events. The man and the woman intend to remove their clothes and they intend to do the sort of thing that can make babies. To call it an unintended event is to dehumanize the participants, to count their actions on the same level as those of irrational beasts. Sure, there are “animal” passions involved—I’m very well aware of that, thank you. But that’s not all there is to it. Rational thinking may be stressed under the pressure of the moment, but it is not erased.
To treat it as unintended is both to brute-alize it and to trivialize it horribly. It could be so much more than that; it was intended to be.
I was in a news stand at the old John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California many years ago. A man dressed in what I call “California Creative” style (think Hollywood director) came up to me and directed my attention to a rack of magazines whose covers were mostly hidden: Playboy, Playmate, etc. He said I really ought to buy one. (Strange, but true.) I told him I wasn’t interested. He said, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
I wish I had answered him better than I did, because I missed a real opportunity. What I said was, “No thanks, I’m happily married.” What I should have said was, “No, you don’t know what you’re missing! You don’t know what it’s like to be with a woman who loves you fully and forever, total commitment, with no regrets from past relationships, no hiding, no pretending. You don’t know what it’s like to give yourself to someone fully that way. You don’t know how empty your idea of sex really is!”
I had a different kind of encounter on this topic about six or seven years ago. I was teaching a group of teenagers in our church about moral purity. A girl about fourteen years old said, “Well, I don’t get what’s the big deal about just a kiss.” I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?!” I shot back. “Not a big deal? I’ve been married sixteen years now, and every kiss I’ve shared with my wife has been a big deal! I like that it’s a big deal! Why on earth would you want it not to be a big deal?”
It’s supposed to be a big deal, not an “unintended event.” Our culture has lost track of that. Intimacy between a man and woman has meaning just in proportion to the meaning invested in it; and there is only one investment with the capacity to carry that full meaning: the lifelong commitment we call marriage. Anything less is, well, less.
But that’s what we’ve come to expect. Since the 1960s sex has been openly exalted, yet its exaltation has become its emptying. What was intended as a glorious expression of deep commitment, joy, life, and oneness, has been reduced to “an unintended event” with “options.”
Those who purvey this drained-out version of sex commit a detestable and horrific crime against humanness, against life, joy, intimacy, and even genuine pleasure—a crime that has victimized an entire generation.
I grieve for those who don’t know what they’re missing.
The book is titled Choosing Your Faith In a World of Spiritual Options. Thankfully Mark Mittelberg, who wrote it, knew where to begin, for the first question that’s bound to come up is, Why choose any faith? It’s a good question, but I won’t take credit for it; I borrowed it straight from the title of his first chapter. Why write about choosing a faith? Is it any more relevant than a book about, say, Choosing Your Sword in a World of Knighthood? Well, yes, of course it is. Mittelberg cites evidence that religion’s influence remains strong in North America (if he had ventured into the rest of the world he could have shown the same, even more so).
Faith is a fact of life apart from religious belief. Mittelberg says of atheist extraordinaire Richard Dawkins (p. 11),
Whether the chances are large or small, the important thought to catch here is that Dawkins doesn’t know there is no God—and he even concedes the possibility that some kind of God might actually exist. Rather, he takes it on faith that there actually is no God….
That’s just the way life is. We all live by some form of faith. Which leads us to the central question: Is ours a well-founded faith? A wise faith? A faith that makes sense and is supported by the facts? One that works in real life and is worth hanging on to?
More personally, is yours a faith you’ve really thought about, carefully evaluated, and intentionally chosen—or did you just slide into it at some point along the way?
That question is directed at all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike. The next six chapters expose common ways people choose their faith: pragmatism and relativism, tradition, authoritarian sources, intuition, the mystical approach, and “logic, evidence, and science,” with an emphasis on “I’ve gotta see it to believe it.” Chances are you’re going to find yourself described in one of those chapters or some mix thereof. Chances are especially good if you’ve never given your faith much thought. Faith, after all, is a synonym for belief; and how many of us really pay attention to why we believe what we believe?
So it behooves each of us to reflect on where we’ve come from in choosing our faith. Mittelberg prefers a version of the logic, evidence and science path, renamed the Evidential path in chapter eight:
It’s the one path that tests—and ultimately supports or undermines—all the others. Its two key elements, logic and sensory experience, are God-given tools we must use to gain the vast majority of our information, to test truth claims, and ultimately to decide what to believe.
The other faith paths do not necessarily lead to the wrong destination, but within them there is little or no means of testing, nothing to correct us if, for example, we rely on tradition for tradition’s sake. (“Your parents could be wrong,” he says. I suppose that even applies to my kids’ parents.) Going on,
The Evidential approach tells us logically and empirically that there is one set of truths—based on actual, what is reality—that we need to discover and let inform our choice of faiths. We can use these tools to test traditional teachings, religious authorities, intuitive instincts and hunches, and mystical encounters, so we can know which ones are worth believing and holding on to.
On another thread I’ve been debating whether it’s conceptually possible for God to reveal himself to us just through direct impressions (the sensus divinitatus) such that we could reliably know that the encounter we’re having is with God. Clearly if there’s a God, it’s unreasonable to assume that he could not do that. I’ve had many experiences I would describe that way. For purposes of that discussion, it’s logically sufficient to establish that if there is a God, then God could do that. But that’s a very limited point, for a very limited purpose. (I wouldn’t have brought it up here except I knew it would be brought up for me if I didn’t.)
The fact is that even though I know God can convince me of his reality any way he wants to, nevertheless when I have an experience that seems like God, I want some way to check whether I’m getting it right or if I’m mistaken. We’re not left only to our impressions, as it turns out, nor are we stuck in a morass of doubt where we have nothing to turn to besides tradition, authority, feelings, or the science of the laboratory. All of these have checks and balances coming from a most useful source: objective reality. Mittelberg explores logical, scientific, and historical criteria for choosing one’s beliefs, along with ways to assess the biblical and historical evidences for Jesus Christ.
Like his friend (and author of the foreword to this book) Lee Strobel, Mittelberg writes on a very accessible level. I recommend this book highly for the seeker in your life (including yourself, if you are that seeker). For church study groups, it could provide good discussion material for assessing various worldviews. (Mary Jo Sharp recently recommended this book for the same purpose.) I especially appreciate that Mittelberg emphasizes how to think about spiritual questions rather than telling us what to think. Of course he lands on his own solid conclusion: that faith in Jesus Christ is an excellent choice, the only one that makes good sense. But he gets there through a thoughtful path that should help readers think thoughtfully about their own paths.
Sixty members of the U.S. Congress joining together for prayer every week before their voting sessions, jointly led by a Republican and a Democrat. Sixty members of Congress taking strong action for religious liberty in the United States. Could such a thing be?
Indeed, it does exist. It is the Congressional Prayer Caucus (CPC). Whether you’re an American or a citizen of another country who cares about America’s role in the world, I think you’ll want to know about it, to be encouraged by it. I see it as one of the bright hopeful lights on our horizon.
It’s not about politics, and it’s not just for politicians. The non-profit, non-partisan Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF) is calling on you and me to be informed and to get involved in multiple ways: in building a prayer wall around our nation and its leaders, getting connected with our state level leaders, and building prayer efforts in our churches. The Foundation’s mission is expressed in its commitment to:
Protecting the public expression of prayer and faith in God
Communicating the constitutional truths that establish America’s freedom
Sustaining and equipping leaders who believe in prayer and uphold Judeo-Christian principles
… and in its dedication to:
Establishing a network of ceaseless prayer, and initiating a Wall of Prayer around America.
Working with legislators to create an architecture within federal and state governments to protect religious and individual freedom for future generations.
Sustaining, supporting, and equipping existing and emerging leaders to live and lead with a Biblical worldview.
Sparking an intellectual awakening regarding prayer and God’s role in America’s foundation and our future.
Lea Carawan, President of the Foundation, says that
CPC and CPCF are mounting a strategy to restore and renew our great nation, and are uniquely position to stand above political parties, religious affiliations, and entrenched agendas; and unite all God-fearing Americans under one banner — In God We Still Trust.
Join in supporting this bright light for our country!
a celebration of womanhood and a toast to our independence…. In our minds, it is essential to find happiness and fulfilment on your own before committing to another.
This absolutely begs for commentary, some of it in the category of easy pickings. The most obvious, which I will not spend much time on, is that it’s another example of the slippery slope from the homosexuals’ drive to re-define marriage. Gill wrote:
We are not opposed to the institution of marriage or trying to make a mockery of it. But let’s face it. Traditions are changing — for the better…. We are fortunate for the opportunity, which many of our mothers never had, to live life to the fullest and not feel compelled to define ourselves by a man. But let’s not get too serious. For the most part, this is also a good excuse to throw a fabulous party.
Note the trivialization of a once-sacred ceremony. But I have a different question to pursue. If one of these women decides later to marry a man, will she have to divorce herself first? In a very practical sense, the answer is yes.
Thankfully this is (for now, at least) not a legal issue. Symbolically, though, this is a powerful solemnization of self-centeredness. This is exactly what marriage was never meant to be.
Marriage is most successful when it is more about the other than about the self. Real marriage is about mutual self-sacrifice, about finding the joy in giving that is far deeper than what comes from seeking one’s own. The Bible tells men to lay down their lives for their wives as Christ did for the church (Ephesians 5:25-28). Elsewhere (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) it says,
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Marriage is an antidote to self. (Raising children is a multiplied dose of the same.) As such it is increasingly counter-cultural, which is one of the reasons it needs defending so vigorously. You can research the tenor of our culture in a moment at a supermarket checkout stand. Scan the magazine covers there and observe how often the word “you” is used. “You can have better sex!” “How you can make more in investments.” “Doctors’ mistakes put you at risk!” This is not a sign of editors’ caring for you. It’s the result of research that shows they sell more magazines by getting us to focus on ourselves.
Nothing could be more foreign to Christ’s call to love one another, to give ourselves up for one another, to find our life by not seeking it. Ms. Gill believes “it is essential to find happiness and fulfillment on your own before committing to another.” Jesus Christ says the one who seeks his own life will lose it.
So it’s unlikely these women could live happily in a real marriage, without divorcing themselves from what they are entering now. And without a change of heart, even on their own, they are not destined to live Happily Ever After.
I appreciate brgulker’s question about Adam Kotsko’s paper, Christians in Academe: A Reply. He said he thought Kotsko made some good points. I see it as a bit of a mixed bag, myself. I’ll respond here to a few excerpts.
I am speaking from long, hard experience, therefore, when I say that there is something toxic about conservative evangelicals’ stance toward academe. This stance is informed by what can only be called a thorough-going persecution complex. In the rhetoric of prominent conservative evangelical leaders, the secular world is not merely a realm that exists alongside Christianity. Instead, it is in active opposition to Christianity, seeking its destruction. The theory of evolution, for example, is not simply a scientific theory that happens to reach conclusions at odds with a literal reading of Genesis — it is a conspiracy aimed at discrediting belief in God.
I’m not in the academy now, but I’ll never forget the way a philosophy prof reamed me out for thinking there was anything in Christian thought or history worth giving two minutes’ attention. The specific issue is not worth rehearsing today, but time has proved he was wrong on it. The main thing I learned at the time was to keep my head down. He was wrong, but he was a full prof and I was a freshman. That was all I needed to know.
More recently I’ve edited two books about secondary school, college, and university instructors/professors being forced out of their positions because of their Christian beliefs. Speech codes mandating Christians shut up about certain beliefs abound. Is Christian belief under pressure in the university? Absolutely yes. Is the theory of evolution a “conspiracy aimed at discrediting belief in God”? That depends on who’s expounding it; there are some in whose hands it has exactly that purpose.
But these things depend partly on local circumstances. Business school students experience very little academic pressure. Biology and humanities majors get a lot more. These are based on national averages in the U.S., so it could be very different from one school to another. When I teach on staying Christian in college, I encourage students to be prepared for both the good and the bad. College was, by the way, the very best thing that could have happened to my spiritual life.
On every front, the conservative evangelical community perceives itself to be under siege, particularly its children, since indoctrinating children in secular ideology is the most effective means of undercutting Christianity.
There’s truth in that. Look, we are in spiritual battle. Isn’t that obvious? The university, along with the media, is the most important battleground in that conflict, and undercutting Christian belief is certainly the opposition’s main mode of attack.
Believing that evangelical students are under continual attack, conservative evangelical leaders encourage them to boldly defend themselves whenever possible. Overall, the attitude their most prominent leaders promote in conservative evangelical students is a combination of extreme paranoia and defiance (conceived as self-defense).
Not being there in the classrooms, I don’t know if Christian students are exhibiting irrational fears. I don’t know if their defense of the faith looks more like “self-defense,” “defiance,” or just being present intellectually and refusing to swallow whole everything that gets spoon-fed to them. I don’t think there’s any call for irrationality or fear. There’s hardly ever anything good to be gained by being disrespectful, so if that’s what he means by “defiant,” I hope it’s not happening; it shouldn’t be.
If Christianity is what we believe it is, then it’s strong enough to stand up to attack. If God is God, and if we’re following him, then we’re in good hands. There’s no need for fear, and no call for rudeness or disrespect. Still, when someone says something untrue or misleading about God, the faith, or morality, then what’s wrong with speaking the truth in love?
Conservative evangelicals as a group, therefore, are not just one among many excluded groups. Rather, they are sui generis insofar as they have constantly been encouraged, from a very young age, to expect and create conflict in the classroom.
It takes two to fight.
Above all, parents and pastors need to stop giving a blank check to anything that professes to be “Christian.” Conservative evangelicals have long been skilled at sniffing out what they consider to be pseudo-Christian liberals — developing some discernment on the other end of the scale would be a welcome shift.
I agree wholeheartedly. There’s some really soft stuff out there, and even some wrong stuff, that claims to be Christian. We need to be far more discerning.
Rejecting the more radical leaders must also mean rejecting their paranoid and frankly made-up ideas. For instance, evangelicals need to reject the fantasy of America as a “Christian nation” and recognize that it is precisely America’s secular state and prohibition of an established church that has allowed American Christianity to be such a dynamic, grassroots-powered religion instead of the empty formality it often is in European countries. Even if conforming to secular culture seems disadvantageous or constraining in the short term, treating it as an enemy is amazingly shortsighted. Evangelicals should be American secularism’s biggest supporters!
There’s a lot of truth in that, and a lot of confusion, all mixed up too thoroughly for me to treat it in the time I have today. In short, if secularism means giving equal opportunity to competing beliefs in the university, letting them all duke it out until the best one wins, that’s great, especially for academic settings. Sometimes, though, secularism means advantaging secular beliefs above Christian beliefs, which creates an unequal playing field. That’s not fantasy, that’s not a “persecution complex,” it’s reality in some settings.
That’s not to say Christian students should walk in to class convinced they’re about to get stoned and thrown out of Lystra. That’s a persecution complex. No, they should enter confidently, secure in who they are and who God is. If something comes up that opposes their beliefs, they should listen, learn, and respond on the basis of well-studied and developed knowledge, including the relevant knowledge from both the Christian side and the opposing view. That’s good, healthy interactive learning.
Similarly with evolution: Christians have always absorbed the best of worldly knowledge and literature. If Christians in the past have found it acceptable to learn about the carousing of pagan gods through studying the classical literature, surely learning about the theory of evolution can’t be a huge problem. Just as previous generations could study classical literature to learn grammar and rhetoric without thereby worshiping pagan gods, so too can contemporary evangelicals benefit from the practical medical knowledge that has resulted from evolutionary theory without denying their belief in God. And in fact I have never met an evangelical who would reject medical treatment from a doctor who believed in evolution — if modern biology, founded as it is on evolutionary theory, can be relied on in a life or death situation, objecting to its use in the low-stakes environment of the classroom seems misguided.
I agree that Christians should learn, study, and thoroughly understand evolutionary theory. I’m all in favor of us knowing what we talk about before we talk about it. But please, let’s not treat “evolution” as if it were univocal. Depending on the context, it means change over time, within-species variations of populations, descent with modification, universal common descent, and/or naturalistic universal common descent. To agree with evolution in the sense of within-species variations, and to accept medical treatment that’s been built upon knowledge of that form of evolution, does not commit one to accept evolution in all senses.
If conservative evangelical parents and pastors focused on encouraging their children to simply get as much as they can out of their education and had the courage to speak up against leaders whose extreme views only bring their community into disrepute, no one would have the occasion to ask if conservative evangelicals are discriminated against and no one would need to develop strategies to cope with the unique pedagogical challenges they represent — instead, they’d be among the most sought-after students. Professors can and should do more to work toward that future, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the conservative evangelical community itself.
Here Kotsko shifts from talking about the nature of the university to the character of Christian students. I’m in agreement with him on this, but not because I endorse his analysis of the situation. I agree because what he’s describing is the way Christian students ought to be regardless of circumstances. I think all of us should focus on getting the most out of our educations (in school or out). I think we should raise our voices in opposition to extreme, false views, both within and without our community. Christian students should be the most studious, the most respectful, the most inquisitive of all. They should also be, in the best sense of the word, the most demanding: they should demand excellence of themselves, and they should expect to be educated with excellence—which includes being taught the truth as well as having freedom to challenge respectfully what is not true.
Oh, for more Christians who will enter the university and stay there, committed to truth, committed to learning, committed to demonstrating excellence and love!
"Thinking Christian is one of the better places I know of on the web to learn and practice solid Biblical thinking, and to understand what it means that Christianity is really true." — Josh McDowell
