Thinking Christian

Number two on my list of recommended resources for Christian thinking is the Bible. In another time this might not have required much emphasis: of course the Bible is central to Christian thinking! But in age when many consider the Bible to be antithetical to good thinking, and when even many Christians take a thoughtless approach toward Scripture, we need to spend some time on this.

God’s Remarkable Word
The Bible is truly remarkable. It is the most accessible yet inexhaustible of the great texts of history. The youngest and simplest can understand its main message, and Jesus himself taught with stories that anyone with “ears to hear” could catch. But no scholar has ever plumbed its depths. Even the Apostle Paul, who wrote one-third of the New Testament, exclaimed, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33-36).

Attacked from every angle for centuries, the Bible endures. I was reminded just how long it has endured yesterday, when our Sunday School class looked at the life of Moses. His encounter with God at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:16) was the longest recorded dialogue between God and any human. It is also the only time anyone directly asked God for his name (Exodus 3:13-14):

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” [1] And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

This took place around 1450-1500 BC, in a world of thousands of “gods” but with no systematized theology or philosophy. Did the biblical writer (Moses) know the questions that would someday be asked about God’s nature? Did he know that some day scholars would speak of God’s aseity, his attribute of being self-existent, underived? Did he recognize 3500 years ago that God could be identified only in reference to himself? In a world where every other god was an idol, tied to wood or stone, sun or moon, could anything have been so profoundly unexpected as “I AM WHO I AM?” At first glance it seems a non-answer. Only upon much reflection has it become clear it was the only fitting answer.

That’s just one example of myriads, chosen just because it came to my attention so recently. Even where the Bible has been most seriously challenged—the hard questions of history and of doctrine, the difficulties of example and practice—it continues to hold up to the test. Not that everyone would agree with what I have just said (the challenges keep on coming), but where there are questions, there are good answers.

The Reality Anchor
Thinking must be anchored in knowledge, and knowledge must be anchored in what is real. There was a time when I would have said that God’s word was essential to keep thinking on track with what is true. But it’s more basic even than that. The modern world has suffered a long crisis of epistemology (theory and study of knowledge) beginning at least as far back as Descartes and Hume. College sophomores try to impress one another with deep philosophical musings like, “how can you be certain the desk you’re writing on is really there?” That question has a pedigree, and for all its surface sophistry, from human resources alone it has proved devilishly difficult to answer. Modernism failed to make knowledge certain; postmodernism has given up on it altogether. One message of postmodernism is that knowledge is unsure, if it exists at all; and to study postmodernism for any length of time is to begin to wonder what — if anything — is really real.

This deep uneasiness with knowledge is a recent development in history, but its roots were always there. The foolish man was trying to build his house on the sand, and though it took until the 20th century, the rains have come and knocked it down (Matthew 7:24-27).

God’s word, on the other hand, provides grounds for confidence in what we know, in that he has created us in his image as knowing agents. Based on that confidence, we can at least get started in our quest for knowledge. The Bible cautions us at the same time to be careful, for we are flawed: we do not know all that we think we know. Some things are clear, though. The desk is there. God exists, and has made himself manifest in Jesus Christ. And so on. God’s word is the rock of reality, the reference point for truth and solidity in knowledge.

The Guide to Truth
Thus we can reject postmodern skepticism. We can get started on a quest for real truth. In fact, though others often scoff at it this way, we can get started on a quest for capital-T Truth; for we believe Truth exists, and that not all of it is out of our reach. Some of it we gain through observation and experience (science is observation and experience writ very large). Some of it God has given us directly through his word, which is not only the starting point for our thinking journey, it is also our guide along the way.

The Remarkable, True Guide to Reality
It is deep enough to challenge the most serious thinker. It solves for us the question, “can we know anything at all?” And it guides us all along the way as we pursue knowledge and truth (Truth). The Bible is absolutely essential for Christian thinking.

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Dr. Matthew Harmon faces the two hottest questions about the Bible (pdf file):

Assaults on the Bible are nothing new, but there seems to be a new twist over the past decade. Two objections against the Bible have become more prominent. The first charge is that the various books in our Bible were chosen hundreds of years after they were written, and the choice was made by shady church leaders with ulterior motives. The second charge is that we cannot trust our Bibles because what we have is not really what the authors actually wrote.

Hat Tip: Between Two Worlds

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The God of the Bible is often charged with gross immorality, especially for ordering entire nations to be destroyed in the Old Testament. He commanded Israel to cleanse Canaan of its immoral, idol-worshiping nations after the Exodus, and in 1 Samuel 15 he instructed them to destroy Amalek completely, “man and women, child and infant, oxen and sheep, camel and donkey.”

This post is the first of at least two I will write on the genocide question. I will begin by working out a more careful definition of the question. We know what genocide is, of course: it is the attempt (successful or not) to eliminate an entire race, tribe, or nation of people. It is murder writ very large, involving many co-participants in evil and resulting in the deaths of many.

There is no hiding what God told Israel to do. The question is whether God or the Bible are free of the guilt we normally attach to genocide.

I do not propose to answer that question now. I believe there is an answer, but I will save that for the next post (and possibly beyond). The first task is to reflect on what makes genocide the extreme evil that it is, for definition of that sort is essential to the next steps.

For example, one thing that makes genocide so evil is the sheer numbers of deaths that result. In Rwanda, the dead numbered in the hundreds of thousands; in the Holocaust, they totaled many millions. To bring about that many deaths is unspeakably wrong. A believer in the Bible must be prepared to say how God could be free of blame for ordering thousands to die.

Genocide is also wrong in that it:

• Originates from a heart of hate
• Involves a desire to dominate
• Ignores justice and mercy toward the victims
• Targets its victims indiscriminately, without respect to guilt or innocence, age, status in life, sex, or ability to defend themselves or to be aggressors themselves
• Generally entails taking the law into one’s own hands
• Is oriented against the ultimate establishment of justice and mercy in the land
• Provokes severe terror
• Forces huge hardship (massive displacement, refugee situations, economic hardship that may extend as far as nakedness and famine)
• Tears apart families
• Seeks to systematically destroy not only individuals (in large numbers) but also their cultures or ways of living
• Rends the conscience of the perpetrators

What did I miss? It’s easy to overlook things when one tries to systematize in this way. That is essentially the question for today’s post, and you’re welcome to extend my list by adding comments. Even from this, clearly there is something about genocide that is more wrong, and more obviously wrong, than just about. Yet we who believe in God continue to believe that he is holy, good, and just. How can we do this?

I am setting up the question today, not answering it, but I will preview the manner in which I’ll be answering by offering a partial response to the first point raised here: the sheer number of deaths. My approach will be to treat each of the bulleted points separately first, and then later to integrate those treatments into a combined closing response. Therefore, for now, I’m separating out the matter of the number of deaths from the other listed issues. My first look is not at the way they died, or the terror that accompanied it, or any of the other related aspects, but at just the number of those who died. Can God be free of blame in calling for so many deaths?

Let’s be very realistic: on that matter, if God has a problem, it’s far greater than just these genocides. From the very beginning, from the time of the Fall, God has watched over the deaths not of thousands or millions but billions. Some have lived long lives (by human standards), some have been cut off very early, by disease, malnourishment, neglect, injury, or violence. But every victim of genocide was destined to die, even apart from such violence. We have three options in assessing this. Either:

1. God is morally blamable for all the deaths in history, and genocide is just another instance of this (though a special case due to the other factors already named), or
2. God is not blamable for all the deaths in history, but genocide is nevertheless a special case for the reasons listed, so he remains culpable in the case of the OT genocides, or
3. God is not morally blamable for all the deaths in history, and for reasons to be discussed later, he is also not morally blamable for the OT genocides.

The three options are very different, yet they have something very important in common with each other. You can take your pick of any of the three, and no matter which one you choose, inevitably you see that the issue is not the same for God as it is for humans. There is no way it could be the same: we have not looked on the death of every human that has ever lived. God has. If we consider God’s role in these genocides the same way we do humans’, then we are certain to get it wrong, for God’s role and relation to the events is not the same as ours. We need to think through these differences. The reflexive reaction we all have toward mass killings requires more reflection in God’s case.

That last point bears repeating. This whole matter is laden with emotion, and rightly so, based on our experiences over the last century and more. I respect that depth of emotion, and will continue to do so. But I will also lead us to consider whether those feelings tell the whole story with respect to God’s actions in the Old Testament. The question must be asked that way, because we have seen, the issue for God is not the same as it is for humans. We’ve demonstrated that already. The question is not whether it’s different for God, but how it is different for God, and whether that makes a difference.

It also bears repeating that I have not yet begun to answer the questions raised here. I think it may be premature even for commenters to start in with answers, because it’s so crucial to get the question defined clearly first. I would prefer it if we could all focus our comments on defining the question for now. We’ll start working on answers soon enough.

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We are hearing increasing reports of Christians being persecuted in Sudan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Belarus, India, and elsewhere. Even in North America, what seems to be incipient persecution has increased of late, possibly a sign of more to come. In light of that, let us consider the “living hope” of 1 Peter 1:3-7 (ESV).

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

There is a hinge point in this passage: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while … you have been grieved by various trials.” Another translation uses “distressed” as an alternate for “grieved.” The author (Peter, a disciple of Christ when Jesus walked on the earth) wanted his readers to know that no matter how bad it may get, believers in Christ can still rejoice. Jesus himself said (e.g., Matthew 5:10-12) that we can be glad in him even if it is our belief in him that increases our difficulties, that is, even if we are persecuted for following him.

Following Jesus Christ may (for some people) cost a lot, but the cost will always be more than worth it. The living hope that we have in Christ makes it worthwhile.

Hope, in New Testament usage, is rarely (if ever) of the maybe-but-I-don’t know sort, as for example, “I hope Michigan State wins the football game against Penn State next Saturday.” It is rather a confident expectation of a good future. It is the emotional encouragement provided by faith, the inner heart uplift that enables one to keep going.

It has been said that the greatest single predictor of suicide is hopelessness. I went through a rather profound period of depression once, lasting somewhere between six months and a year. There were times I dreaded getting up and facing the day. Yet by the grace of God I knew there was hope, and that it would get better. I cannot imagine the blackness of depression for those who have lost hope as well as joy. For that period I was certainly hindered by the depression, but I was able to keep on going. That’s the emotional power of hope.

Without some sort of solid grounding, the hope of which Peter speaks would be no better than my hope that my college will win the game next week. The resurrection of Jesus Christ provides that assurance. The game has already been played; the fight has already been fought. Life wins, and death is defeated.

This is reality. Resting in that reality is a matter of faith. The reality is not dependent on our faith; but our confidence, our joy, our rejoicing (why is that word so out of place in today’s culture?) are. Peter speaks of faith’s “tested genuineness.” Most of us reading here have faced tests of one kind or another; if not persecution (of which nothing approaching the real thing has yet reached the Western world), then health problems, economic struggles, conflict, crime, separations, war, injustice. To the extent that we continue to have joy in Christ, to that extent our faith has “tested genuineness.”

We can imagine genuine persecution, the sort that really tests us with a choice: follow Christ and face death (or death of a family member, which to me would be far worse); renounce him and “all will be well for you.” Peter is saying that the former is better than the latter. Trials and distress in Christ are better than apparent peace apart from him.

For many in history this has been a real decision to be made. For many today it still is.

Let us focus a moment on that word “real.” People are really choosing pain, separation from family, imprisonment, economic loss, and death, because they believe the living hope of Christ’s resurrection is real. Peter himself, who had first-hand opportunity to know whether that hope was real, made the same choice.

This is not virtual-world stuff, and (a reminder for all of us bloggers!) it’s not just an intellectual game to play. The living hope of Jesus Christ makes all the difference in the real world, in good times and in distress. For followers of Christ, there is “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.” We can count on it; we can live by it; we can stand firm in that good hope.

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