Tag Archives: Ethics

Commentary

Why Christians should focus on cultural issues as well as evangelism

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Scott Klusendorf linked me this article on Facebook, in which he gives five reasons why Christians should not JUST focus on the gospel, but should instead be good at promoting goodness and opposing evil.

Excerpt:

First, it does not follow that because cultural reformers cannot make a culture blameless before God, we shouldn’t try to make it better for the weak and oppressed. I do not know of a single pro-life leader, for example, who argues that cultural reform can save souls eternally; only the gospel does that. The fact that cultural reform cannot get a man to heaven, however, does not mean that it cannot (in many cases through political means) save him from injustice here on earth. In short, pro-life advocates like me do not work for change in culture to save the world from spiritual death, but to save the most vulnerable members of the human family, the unborn, from physical death.

Second, the goal of cobelligerent cultural reform is not necessarily to change the hearts of individuals (whether saved or lost), but to restrain their evil acts. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it well: “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”3 The purpose of government, according to Scripture, is not to ensure salvation, but to promote justice (Rom. 13:1‑4). The primary purpose of the church, of course, is to preach the gospel of Christ, but if Christians, collectively, do not also challenge government to fulfill its duty to protect the weak and defenseless, who will?

Third, the notion that “there can be no real cultural impact apart from the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ” sounds good, but it is simply incorrect. Consider the moral evil of slavery in America, which did not end because of mass conversions to Christ. It ended when believers and nonbelievers joined forces to stand against it—and paid for it with the lives of 360,000 Union soldiers. Was the abolition of slavery not a “real” cultural improvement? True, it did not make those who participated right with God, but it did take the physical whips off the backs of oppressed people. That is moral and cultural improvement by any reasonable standard.

Fourth, it is not spiritually unacceptable for Christians to mobilize with non-Christians for causes other than preaching the gospel. Prior to the Civil War, Protestant clergy worked with non-Christians and organized the Underground Railroad to free black slaves. Anyone who thinks that God’s people are wasting their time pursuing social justice may want to take a look at how important it is to God: Jeremiah 5:26‑28; 9:24; Isaiah 1:16‑17, 21‑23; 58:6‑7; 61:8; Psalm 94:1‑23; Proverbs 24:1‑12; Matthew 25:41‑46.

Fifth, why should anyone suppose that pro-life advocacy detracts from the discipline responsibilities of the local church as outlined in Matthew 28? Simply put, the answer to a lack of evangelical fervor for the Gospel is not to withdraw our political advocacy for the weak and vulnerable; it’s to encourage Christians to do a better job presenting the gospel. We don’t have to stop rescuing the innocent to do that.

This is why I try to have a balance of apologetics with other issues. And not just social policy, but fiscal policy and foreign policy. We need to have complete, comprehensive, coherent Christian worldviews. One obvious benefit of this is that we can connect Christianity with any topic when we are talking to others in the workplace, or anywhere that normal conversations occur. And if we study everything very well, people will link our intelligence to our faith. They’ll say “if you’ve put this much thought into economics, then you must have a well-thought-out faith, too”. Being well-rounded makes you more convincing, more influential on moral and cultural issues, and more effective at turning conversations to the gospel.

News

New study finds that alcoholism increases marital instability

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Look at this new study from CNN.

Excerpt:

Alcohol dependency not only affects people who drink excessively, but also spouses, friends and family. Now a new study in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research finds that alcoholism has a strong connection to when people get married and whether those marriages are successful.

“For young adults who are drinking, if their drinking continues to levels of problem use, it could impact their likelihood of marriage as well as likelihood of having a really lasting marriage,” said study author Mary Waldron, assistant professor in human development at Indiana University. “What we found is yes, it’s true that alcohol dependence is a strong predictor of separation and we’ve known that for quite a while, it was really the predictor of delayed marriage that was surprising to us.”The study looked at 5,000 Australian twins, ages 28-92, all of whom reported a history of alcohol dependence sometime over their lifetime.

The researchers found the association between alcoholism and getting married for the first time at a 23% lower likelihood for women. For men it was 36% lower only after age 29. For both sexes, the researchers concluded that the chance of separation was twice as likely and earlier. They also found that genetics played a role.

“What we found by using both fraternal and identical twins is that genetic influences appear to contribute to the association … but the processes underlying the genetic effect, we really don’t know yet and that will be a focus of future research,” Waldron said.

The reason I am worried about this is that there seems to be so much drinking that goes on on university campuses. It’s like the young people are really getting addicted to it, and there seems to be a lot of peer pressure on everyone to drink and drink and drink. I think alcohol is very interesting (I was recently visiting friends and got to try whiskey for the first time – it was horrible!) and it makes people feel at ease when you are having a good serious conversation. But I am not so sure about drinking it all the time. It’s expensive, and it alters your moods. How can you be good at making sense when you drink too much? So I think in moderation it’s OK, but not too much.

I think that reading articles like this are important to me. It’s good to know WHY the Bible says things are right and wrong. If being drunk is “wrong” then why is it wrong? Why does God not want us to do this? With a little study and some good research, we can find the answers. And then when we talk to non-Christians about right and wrong, we can explain the reasons for the moral positions we hold using scientific evidence. It’s a lot easier to talk about morality in public when you have solid evidence that doesn’t assume the Bible.

Commentary

Do you ever wish that your co-workers took your faith seriously?

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This is a problem that I used to have in the very beginning of my career, when I was still doing my undergraduate degree and working summer jobs and internships with software development companies. I was just in my early 20s, and was having to deal with being a Christian in the university and in the workplace. It’s very difficult to do it when you are young – everyone thinks that they know more than you do just because they are older – whether they have studied the issues or not. Not only that, but you have deal with the pre-conceptions that people have about Christianity from watching anti-Christian movies and televangelists, etc.

What a mess. So what is the way forward?

The way forward is for you to take Christianity OUT of the realm of private faith, Sunday singing, emotions and feelings, personal testimony, miraculous healings, apparations (if you’re Catholic), end times, Bible prophecies, and other stuff that scares non-Christians. And then you put Christianity INTO the realm of science, history, analytical philosophy, social science, economics, politics, law, and other public, testable, areas of knowledge.

After you’ve studied Chrsitianity and how it relates to public, testable areas of knowledge, it is easy to communicate your knowledge of things like the galactic habitability constraints, amino acid sequence specificity probabilities, minimal facts criteria for the historicity of the empty tomb, the grounding objection to middle knowledge, and the Laffer curve to other people. You are an expert at dumping the burden of proof on your opponent, every attempt by your opponent to make self-refuting statements is met with a whistle blow and a yellow card, and you wield Occam’s Razor like a samurai warrior.

Great! It all works great on people who will give you an hour at lunch to listen to your case. But what about the people who have heard through the grapevine that you are a Christian, identify you with Joel Osteen, and are snickering at you behind your back every time you walk by?

Decorating your cube at work

The solution is to decorate your cube at work.

Here is what you will need:

  1. a peer-reviewed paper on from a scientific journal (like this one, free version here)
  2. a peer-reviewed paper on from a social science journal (like this one)
  3. a news article on some foreign policy issue (like this one)
  4. a publication from a think tank on economic or social policy (like this one)
  5. a textbook on economics (like this one)
  6. a schedule of events from an apologetics event (like this one)
  7. a DVD of a William Lane Craig debate at a big university (like this one)
  8. a debate book from a big academic press (like this one)

Just print these out and read them, and then put them on your desk. That should get you some attention and end the snickering.