Tag Archives: Christian

Commentary

Is there a Tea Party faction within the Christian Church? Who is it?

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Did someone say "Tea Party?"
Did someone say "Tea Party?"

Consider this report by a non-Christian who attended the recent “On Guard” conference in Dallas, Texas. (H/T Melissa of Hard-Core Christianity)

Excerpt:

Over the weekend, I attended the On Guard Conference 2010, a Christian apologetics conference. Before you read any further I must quickly explain my history with Christianity.

Back in high school, I was holy rollin’ like a 80-year-old on a Rascal. I  knew for sure I was going into the ministry and was entirely prepared to spend the rest of my life in the service of God. Several things happened about which I would write a book (and might one day). The short version is, my church was populated with small-minded, bigots. The church split twice and once because of a situation I was involved in. A poor black woman living out of an old rusted mustang barely survived two lots down while the church sent money to missionaries in Honduras. By the time the church had sucked my soul from me and spit me out, I turned my back on it all.

Fast forward to now. I have two children and I live in Texas. They will be exposed to Christianity in some form. We visited many churches (and synagogues since they are technically Jewish) and nothing appealed to me. The primary problem I have is that traditional worship is a broken record, especially when handled by Southern Baptists. There is only so much of the same catch-phrases, slogans, and cliches I can take before I hit toxic cynicism. The other problem I have is with modern worship. There is only so much canned slides, unfamiliar songs, and slick (but only re-purposed traditional) sermons I stomach. Where others claim tradition, I claim “rut”. I was on the other side long enough to see all of these things as meaningless.

I kept myself at such a distance from religion for so long, that aplogetics is entirely new to me. Christian apologetics is a discipline (and I would argue a culture as well) within Christianity where Christians defend their faith through logic, reason, and even science. Yeah, I know, sounds crazy. But here’s the kicker:

In my entire life, not once have I ever seen or heard a Christian say these words: “I’m not afraid for anyone to question me about my faith. I have nothing to hide [intellectually].”

Keep in mind, growing up Southern Baptists means growing up knowing very little about your own faith and spending time around other people who are openly hostile to those who don’t believe the same way.

For me, I don’t know what I believe anymore. I feel burned by a long history of disappointments by my own faith. In a nutshell, God to me is very similar to my own father. He came around, did his business and is long gone. I don’t and probably will never believe God is much more than a designer who set up some sophisticated systems that still work today but has moved on to other interests. I frankly think it’s absurd to believe God takes the time to help somebody have the strength to make it through a job interview while somewhere else around the world a child is sold into a life of sex slavery. But I digress.

So my attendance at the conference is me intrigued by the kind of intellectual topics presented because that’s not the Christianity I know or see on TV.

He summarizes the conference and then ends with this:

So the conference was great. So great in fact it occurred to me if actual mainstream Christianity was like that instead of the feelings-based judgment frontal assault I grew up with, I might have never left the church. However, the conference seemed to be geared toward two types: believers (meaning Christians who want to defend their faith) and atheists, who comprise the main apologetics boogie man. “Atheist” was used constantly to refer to the kind of people they needed to stay prepared for.

As a guy who lost his faith long ago, I never doubted God’s existence.  However, since I think he is a deadbeat dad, I have many questions and am looking for meaning without being convinced God is real. My struggle with faith has lasted me about 25 years. I would like to have seen a session on reconciling the Bible as a whole. For instance if Intelligent Design is really using science as I heard, how do they address the Adam and Eve question? I also would like someone like Dr. Moreland to discuss why he gets three angels and conversations with God directly when clearly God never bothered with me to begin with.

The premise on which they build many of their arguments is their belief. I don’t have that. So while I enjoyed the conference overall, I walked out of there with more questions. But isn’t that kind of the point? For the first time in over two decades, I felt mentally stimulated by a religious event. In that, I’m intrigued.

And what do we learn from this?

Well, I will try to be civil, but what I really want to do is rant against the postmodernism, irrationality, mysticism, pietism, relativism, inclusivism, universalism, hedonism, etc. that has got us to a point where something like 70% of young Christians who grow up in the church abandon it as soon as they go off to college. The church is a club that is run by people who want nothing to do with the honest questions of people who are less interested in feelings, intuitions, amusement and community and more interested in truth. And we are failing these honest questioners, because we are too busy having fun and feeling happy.

I have a very good idea of why the church is losing all of it’s young people. And we need a tea party revolution in the church to get people to come back.

So here’s my stand:

  • The church believes that belief in God’s existence is divorced from logic and evidence, but I believe that God’s existence is knowable, rational and supported by publicly-accessible evidence
  • The church thinks that people become Christians because they like Christianity, but I believe that people become Christians when they think Christianity is true
  • The church believes you can seek happiness without caring about the moral law, and their job is to make you feel accepted no matter what you do, but I believe that we need to set out clear moral boundaries and explain to people using non-Biblical evidence what damage is caused if those boundaries are broken
  • The church believes that reading the Bible and attending church as therapeutic, but I think that the Bible and church are for clarifying my obligations in my relationship with God and for setting out the broad goals that I will use when I develop my life plan to meet those goals by solving problems using my talents in the way that *I* think is most effective – and my plan doesn’t involve making you feel happy, by the way
  • The church thinks that the Christian life consists of singing, praying and not disagreeing with anyone or thinking that we are right about anything, but I think we should get off our duffs and start studying to think about how our Christian convictions apply to the world around us in every area of life, from politics to economics to foreign policy to marriage and parenting and beyond
  • The church believes that Christianity is true for them while other religions work for other people, but I believe that religions are assessed by whether they are true or not – and that other religions can be mistaken where they make false claims
  • The church believes that evangelism is done without using apologetics or focusing on truth, but I think we should all be prepared by watching debates, holding open forums, hosting speakers and conferences, and generally training ourselves to engage with the outside world in the realm of ideas
  • The church thinks Christianity is a faith tradition, but I think Christianity is a knowledge tradition

Anyway, check out these other posts for more snarky defiance.

Mentoring

Apologetics advocacy

News

Christian couple barred from having foster children

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The UK Daily Mail reports on a Christian couple that has been banned from having foster children as a result of anti-Christian policies passed by the secular-left UK Labour Party. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The couple in the High Court test case, Eunice and Owen Johns, said Derby City Council’s fostering panel rejected them as carers because they would never tell children a homosexual lifestyle was acceptable.

Mrs Johns said: ‘The council said: “Do you know, you would have to tell them that it’s OK to be homosexual?”

‘But I said I couldn’t do that because my Christian beliefs won’t let me. Morally, I couldn’t do that. Spiritually I couldn’t do that.’

The Pentecostal Christian couple from Derby, who have fostered almost 20 children, are not homophobic, according to the Christian Legal Centre, which has taken up their case.

But they are against sex before marriage and do not recognise as marriage civil partnerships between gay couples.

Their beliefs are at odds with Derby City Council’s equality policy, which was drawn up under the terms of the Sexual Orientation Act brought in by Labour.

The Christian Legal Centre, which campaigns for religious freedoms, said in a statement: ‘The case will decide whether the Johns will be able to foster without compromising their beliefs.

‘The implications are huge. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of Christian foster carers and adoptive parents hangs in the balance.

‘It may not be long before local authorities decide that Christians cannot look after some of the most vulnerable children in our society, simply because they disapprove of homosexuality.’

This reminds me of how gay activist groups banned Catholic adoption agencies for insisting that children be placed with a mother and a father. Clergy may face prosecution for refusing to perform same-sex marriages. Similarly, leftists insist that doctors and nurses be forced to perform abortions against their consciences. And of course, the left regularly tries to silence Christians from talking about their faith in public, because talk of “morals” and “truth” offends leftists – it makes them feel bad, and that means everyone has to shut up and pretend to be atheists like them. Where can you see thorough, consistent atheism on display? Well, North Korea and Zimbabwe, of course.

Here’s another story I found at the Blog Prof. Michigan teacher bullies students into accepting gay agenda on “anti-bullying” day.

Excerpt:

Unionized teacher hacks sure have a funny way of educating their captive audience on national ” Anti-Bullying Day.” One teacher – Jay McDowell of Howell Schools who is also the local teachers union head – took it upon himself to make sure each and every one of his students endorsed homosexuality. When two students did not, he unilaterally suspended them from his class.

YOUR public schools in action. You pay for them. See, only certain students deserve bullying protection – certainly not the Christian students.

Where will this end? Well, I would expect that private schools and homeschooling will be be abolished and if any child expresses any preference for traditional marriage or protection for unborn children, then that child will be seized by the state and placed in a boarding school, or perhaps a more liberal household.

Commentary

Can a person be a Christian and yet still do bad things?

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I sometimes write posts about atheists and say that they will have difficulty grounding the minimal requirements of morality if the universe is an accident and they are just lumps of matter. To show how this works out, I like to cite famous atheists who also managed to get political power, and then point out how they treated other people. I then say that doing bad things is not really wrong on atheism, since morality is really based on doing whatever you feel like that makes you feel good and that your peers will approve of. And if you want to do something they won’t approve of, you can still do it, as long as no one ever finds out.

Atheist readers sometimes object that Christians can behave just as badly as atheists.

But consider this post from Retha’s English-language blog. (She’s from South Africa)

Excerpt:

However you choose to define Christian, the definition most certainly is not “anyone who calls himself a Christian, is a Christian.” We don’t use that definition for anything else. We don’t believe that everyone who calls themselves “honest” are. We don’t believe that everyone who calls themselves “not overweight” are not. You cannot be a king, or a genius, or a dog, or a tall person, by calling yourself that. (If it worked that way, it would have been a very strong temptation to call myself drop-dead gorgeous.)

Simple word etymology is more useful: Christian has the root word Christ and the suffix –ian. A Christian is a Christ-following/ Christ-imitating person. Who is meant when we speak of Christ? He is the Jesus described in the New Testament, as described there.To be a Christ-ian, you need to follow/ imitate Jesus as he is painted in the Bible. That is where He is painted as the Christ.

There’s a lot of wisdom in those two paragraphs.

I think it’s possible for someone to call himself a Christian and yet to do bad things. Christians aren’t perfect. Even when they know what they ought to do, they struggle to do it. The dividing line here is that a real Christian is never going to call sin anything other than sin. They aren’t going to try to defend it. (Although I always try to explain what leads me to sin if anyone asks – which is not the same as rationalizing, it’s just explaining). Someone who claims to be a Christian and yet does things that Bible forbids without any shame or regret is not a Christian. If that person responds to being judged by denying that what they are doing is wrong, or by attacking the Bible’s authority on moral issues, then that person is not a Christian.

If the person is saying “don’t judge me”, or “the Bible doesn’t say that”, or “the Bible was written by men“, or “the Bible was written a long time ago”, or “I believe in a God of love”, or “you’re intolerant”, or “I was born as a pickpocket”, or “I have the bank-robbing gene”, or “that’s your truth”, or “that’s just your interpretation”, or “if God loved me, he would give me a Mercedez Benz”, then you are probably not dealing with a Christian, whatever they claim to be. Lots of people claim to be Christians but don’t follow Christ. An we shouldn’t believe that someone who tries to argue that abortion is consistent with the Bible is an authentic Christian, for example. The Bible forbids pre-marital sex and murder.

I sometimes struggle with going to church, because I can’t stand being around happy, singing people (unless they know apologetics, in which case I can). But you would never hear me say that going to church was wrong, or that I was morally justified in avoiding church. Instead, I would say I was wrong not to go to church regularly, but that I hadn’t found a church that made me feel comfortable yet.