Tag Archives: Fundamentalism

News

Younger evangelicals put happiness and popularity over morality

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Here’s an interesting post by Mark Tooley in the American Spectator. (H/T Jay Richards)

Excerpt:

A new generation of evangelical elites is imploring evangelicals to step back from the culture wars. Mostly they want to escape polarizing strong stances on same-sex marriage and abortion, and perhaps also contentious church-state issues, like the Obamacare contraceptive mandate.

Purportedly the evangelical church is failing to reach young, upwardly mobile professionals because evangelicals, who now broadly comprise perhaps one third of all Americans, are seen as reactionary and hateful. On their college campuses, at their coffee shops, and in their yoga classes, among other venues, some outspoken hip young evangelicals want a new public image for their faith.

[…]A popular young evangelical blogger echoing Merritt’s theme is Rachel Evans, who conveniently grew up in the Tennessee small town famous for the Scopes Monkey Trial. Her 2010 book was Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions. “We are tired of the culture wars,” she explained in a recent interview. “We are tired of politics.” Lamenting the church’s preoccupation with “shame and guilt,” she urged evangelicals to reconsider their opposition to same-sex unions.

The post has a nice history of how evangelicals have always been involved in moral and political issues, and it’s worth reading. But I want to make a different point below.

What’s at the root of this movement to back away from moral issues? Here’s what I think is the problem. When you advocate for moral causes like protecting the unborn, or school choice, or freeing the slaves, a bunch of people are not going to like you. Christians in the time of Jesus knew that being bold about their Christian convictions would make a lot of people think bad things about them – they expected it. But young evangelicals have gotten the idea that being a Christian should not involve any sort of unhappiness and unpopularity. They wouldn’t have learned this from the Bible, because the Bible emphasizes suffering and unpopularity as part of the normal Christian life. It is their experience of church (and the hedonistic culture around them) that is likely to reinforce that view.

What young evangelicals learn in many churches is that religion is something that is centered on the Bible and the church building – it is not something that flows into real life. They learn that you can’t find out anything about God from the Big Bang, the DNA, the fossil record, or even from the peer-reviewed research on abortion, divorce, or gay marriage. They learn from the Bible that helping the poor is good, but then they never pick up an economic textbook to see which economic system really helps the poor. What you learn about in church is that religion is private and has no connection to reality whatsoever. This fits in with their view that Christianity should make them happy, because they’ve learned that it doesn’t involve any studying to connect the Bible to the real world.

What follows from having a view that Christianity only lives in the Bible and church, and not out there in the real world of telescopes and microscopes? Well, most young evangelicals interpret what their pastor is telling them as “our flavor of ice cream” or “our cultural preference”. They don’t link Christianity to the real world, they don’t think that it’s true for everyone. They think that you just accept what the Bible says on faith, and that’s all. No reasons can be given to non-Christians outside of just asking them to accept the Bible. Younger evangelicals believe that there are no facts that confirm or disprove Christianity – it’s just a blind belief. Young evangelicals think that their faith doesn’t have to be complemented with careful study of how things work in the real world.

What is the result of this anti-intellectual compartmentalization of faith? The result is that young evangelicals will balk at the idea of telling someone that they are going to Hell if they don’t believe in Jesus. They will balk at the idea that feminism is to blame for the destruction of the family. They will balk at the idea that the best way to help the poor is to push for free market capitalism. They will balk at the idea that it is wrong to kill unborn children. They will balk at the idea that disarmament and pacifism embolden terrorists and tyrants to attack peace-loving people. They will balk at the idea that traditional marriage is better for society and children. They will balk at the idea that man-made catastrophic global warming is not supported by science. They lack courage because they first lack knowledge. They don’t know how to make the case using hard evidence. They don’t learn that hard evidence is important in church.

If the purpose of religion is to have happy feelings and be liked, then studying the real world to find out whether the Bible is true is bad religion. If religion is divorced from reality, then it’s just a personal preference influenced by how a person was raised. No young evangelical is going to lift a finger to take bold moral stands if they think their worldview is just one option among many – like the flavors of ice cream in the frozen section of the grocery store. They have to know that what they are saying is true – then they will be bold. An example: there was a time when people believed that God did not create the first living cell, because it was just a simple lump of protoplasm that could easily come about by accident. Now we know better, and we can boldly make the case for intelligent design based on hard evidence – if we put in the time to study the evidence. And it is the same for everything – from theological claims, to moral claims, to social claims, to economic claims, to foreign policy claims. It doesn’t matter if people call you names when you have the facts to support unpopular claims, and that’s why public, authentic Christianity is built on facts. Non-Christians being offended by your claims doesn’t change the way the world is.

We have to turn away from our own ignorance, laziness and cowardice if we hope to have the ability to stand up for our beliefs in public. Christianity is not about being happy and feeling good and being liked by others. In a society that is increasingly secular and relativistic, studying outside the Bible necessarily precedes an authentic Christian life. There is no shortcut. We might have been able to get away with fideism 50 years ago, but not anymore. Not now.

News

Review of the SMU debate on textual reliability with Wallace and Ehrman

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From Kacie at “The Well-Thought-Out Life” blog.

Here are the speakers:

Bart Ehrman is a professor and scholar in the field of textual criticism. He literally wrote the book of textual criticism with his own professor, Metzger. Isaac has had his books as textbooks in his graduate studies on textual criticism. He’s also become known on the popular level, though, because he came out of fundamentalism to evangelicalism to liberalism to agnosticism (he’s a Moody and Wheaton grad). At the moment I’d call him an agnostic evangelist, and that’s why he intentionally is willing to do debates like this in the Bible Belt. He wants to engage conservative Christians and directly challenge their beliefs. He’s written books like Jesus, Interrupted, Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, and Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. His work is quite personal to me not only because of his attendance at Moody, but because his writings have drawn my friends away from Christianity.

On the opposite side you have Daniel Wallace. Wallace is also a textual critic, and on the scholarly level has written the textbook on Greek grammar that everyone uses, Harvard, Princeton, etc. He’s started the Center for Biblical Manuscripts, which is going around the world doing high quality photography of all of the ancient biblical manuscripts so that they are recorded for history. He’s a professor at Isaac’s school and has directly engaged the ideas of Ehrman in an essay, “The Gospel According to Bart: A Review Article of Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman.” He is an evangelical Christian and one of my husband’s professors.

Excerpt:

Isaac and I went to a debate on Saturday night between Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace over the topic of “Can we trust the text of the New Testament.”

[…]In any case, this debate had a lot of buzz surrounding it and we bought tickets immediately. The first 500 went fast so they moved the debate to the larger auditorium on the campus of SMU. 1,500 people sold out the place. Why? Because of the speakers. Experts in the field of text criticism with opposite conclusions. I put both of their bios on the bottom of the post. In the crowd I saw DTS students, people with “atheist” on their t-shirts, Isaac’s professors, church staff, and a couple I know where she is a Christian and he’s an atheist.

It was fascinating. Both men were lucid and funny, but it ended up not being a debate so much about the evidence for the New Testament text as it was about presuppositions. I expected Ehrman to attack the text itself, since he is a textual critic and that’s what the title of his books hint at. Instead he sort of argued from our points of ignorance – the first 150 years after the texts were originally written before our early fragments and manuscripts. Ehrman granted so many of Wallace’s points – that the New Testament has a vast amount more evidence supporting it than any other ancient document. That while there are lots of little variants in the text, the vast majority of them make no difference in the actual meaning, and few if any make any difference to Christian theology. That even without the early documentary evidence that we have, the early church fathers quote the scripture so much that you can almost recreate the entire NT from their quotes alone.

What was his point? The statement he made again and again was that while the evidence for the text was good and actually unparalleled, we don’t know for sure. Can we be certain? Is it proven? Wallace kept coming back and pointing out that he wasn’t saying that we could absolutely know for sure or that we couldn’t know for sure – he was just examining the evidence and saying that based on the mountains of evidence it looks as though we probably have a trustworthy text today.

It was fascinating. Wallace sounded like the scientist, since he was the one following where the evidence led him. Wallace gave loads of evidence, often from Ehrman himself, for the unmatched reliability of the NT text, and for the field of text criticism to help solve the places where there are variants – to get back to the “original” text. Most of it Ehrman didn’t disagree with. Ehrman just kept saying that before the earliest fragments begin there’s a gap and so we can’t know for sure that the text is trustworthy.

[…]In the Q & A later someone asked Ehrman what sort of manuscript evidence he would need in front of him to convince him of the reliability of the text. He said that he’d want a copy made within the first week of writing and with .01% variance. Really? So essentially he says it’s not trustworthy unless it’s one step away from the original. Wallace’s first and perhaps most necessary point was that there are three paths to take, and Ehrman walks the far left – radical skepticism. Wallace is a moderate. He may be a theological conservative, but his approach to the text is moderate.

If you want to see a nice debate feature Ehrman on textual reliability, you can listen to the Ehrman-Williams debate. I recommend a lot of debates, but this one is one of the best I have heard on this topic. At least read my snarky summary, it’s one of my favorite snarky summaries.

Polemics

Why do some Christians think that government should provide free meals to children?

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First, read this story from the Korea Herald.

Excerpt:

After months of political dispute, Seoul citizens will decide on free school meals in a vote on Wednesday. The referendum will ask voters to choose between providing free meals to all school students regardless of income straight away, as favored by Seoul City Council, or gradually covering students from the poorest 50 percent of households, as backed by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. At least one third of the electorate must vote for the result to be valid.

The road to this point has been fraught with controversy and division. In protest of Seoul City Council’s decision to implement a universal meals program, Oh earlier this year boycotted council meetings for six months, prompting the council to accuse Oh of a “dereliction of duty.” On Tuesday, Oh put his political career on the line, promising to step down as mayor should his proposal fail. For Oh and many conservatives, the vote is a last bid to safeguard the city’s finances from welfare populism. To many liberals, the referendum demonstrates more about Oh’s political ambitions than his principles. Where their conservative peers see waste in a universal program, they see inclusiveness that avoids stigmatizing poorer children. But in the end, the voters’ voice will be the one that matters.

The article features two opinions, pro and con.

Here is the pro excerpt:

We cannot stand by and watch classmates be divided between the well-off and the less well-off, nor can we stand idly by as some children feel ever more left out, branded “poor” by their own peers, and all because of school meals. The constitution of Korea is very clear in its declaration that compulsory education ought to be free as well.

And here is the con excerpt:

Kwak begins: “If we harbor the idea of universal welfare …”

This justifies suspicions that the goal is to establish a universal welfare program, not just to help poor kids. “Welfare populism” has defined the current election cycle, with Korean politicians pushing and shoving each other out of the way to announce the latest “free” or “half-free” proposal: “Free” school lunches, “free” medical services, “half-tuition,” “free” childcare.

I obviously agree with the second opinion. These hard-cases are regularly used as a way to push through full-blown socialism. Even many Christians fall for this, and have been tricked into voting for left-wing activists who went on to enact many objectionable things like taxpayer-funded abortion, taxpayer-funded sex changes, taxpayer-funded day care, taxpayer-funded IVF, etc.

Why would Christians support government-provided meals?

Recently I was listening to an interview with an apostate on the Unbelievable radio show. She is a pastor’s kid, listened to Christian music, went on short-term mission trips to Haiti to help the poor, (but no apologetics conferences – eww, yucky!), and did all kinds of Christian activities that would not help her to pass my screening questions at all . I don’t think she was ever a Christian, because I don’t think this happy-clappy pastor’s-kid sing-in-church stuff is any indication of having a Christian worldview.

Anyway, her stated reasons for her apostasy were as follows:

  • I don’t like that people aren’t equal financially (she said she annoyed her father by wearing a pin that said “Jesus was a socialist”, which, of course, he isn’t – unless you decide these questions based on feelings not facts)
  • I don’t like that people are not happy (she talked about the problem of suffering, and was annoyed that God was failing to give people happiness, which she assumed was his job because of her impressions of God from her happy-clappy worship music view of Christianity)
  • I don’t like the idea of a God who could punish people in Hell for disrespecting his existence and character (because knowing God as a real person and caring about his character when you make decisions is such a drag on her autonomy and her need for peer approval)
  • I don’t like some things that Jesus says that are mean (her examples were all misinterpretations of the text that a preschooler could solve)
  • I don’t like where the Bible says that men and women have different roles (she claimed to be a feminist in the interview, which provides a clue about what really happened)

This reminds me of when Lewis Wolpert said in his debate with William Lane Craig that God didn’t help him find his cricket bat so he became an atheist. What sort of investigation of the truth of Christian theism is possible for people who became atheists in their teens? None. They do it because they don’t like rules, and don’t like how the real world doesn’t fit with their emotions and intuitions about what God should be like. They don’t want answers, they want emotions and intuitions.

Often, when people say “God doesn’t prevent suffering”, what they really mean is that God didn’t meet their personal expectations for making them happy. And when they say , “God doesn’t prevent poverty”, what they really mean is that God didn’t give me lots of money for acting irresponsibly. They believed that they could act recklessly and that God would make their  emotional flights of fancy work out somehow. Just read my post on Dan Barker: this is not at all out of the ordinary.The air of intellectualism and critical thinking that atheists put on come much later after the wounded narcissism.

Atheism starts with wanting to be popular or a missing cricket bat. Dan Barker sang songs for most of his life – he was an uneducated man. He was in no position to become an atheist for intellectual reasons. As a young man, he invented a God in keeping with his fundamentalist praise and worship songs, and then he expected his golem-God to make him happy – which it didn’t. He rejected his caricature of God because it didn’t produce the expected benefits. If God can’t be what they want – happiness provider, money provider – then they quit. They are not in it to serve – but to be served.

I see this a lot where people choose to have romantic relationships with non-Christians, and it doesn’t work out. Instead of taking responsibility for breaking the rules while trying to get happiness, and realizing that Christianity isn’t there to make them happy, they blame their Santa Claus caricature of God for not giving them what they want.

And that’s why Christians support government-funded meals. They have this idea that God ought to be in the business of providing for our needs. Many of them fall away from the faith and become socialists when those expectations about God fail to prove out. So they look to government to change the world into something it isn’t. They have an intuition that the world should conform to their happy expectations. When God fails to deliver, they become atheists and turn to government as the solution to their problem. But is happiness really the goal of life?

Do Christian socialists really understand what Christianity is about?

But back to the government-provided school meals. Undoubtedly, this apostate socialist feminist from the radio show would favor the government taking over the duties of parents to feed their children.

But she isn’t alone. I would think that many Christian women also express delight at the idea of the government using family money to “help the poor”. I’ve heard opinions like this from a number of Christian women. They just think that Christianity is consistent with a secular government confiscating wealth and redistributing for secular purposes. Because Christianity isn’t about things like evangelism and private charity – it’s about people of all religions feeling good regardless of what they think about God. It’s also about people who make reckless and/or immoral decisions getting money from the government to make the consequences go away.

Christian socialists think that it’s better for a Christian family to give up their money and lose their ability to share the gospel as they meet the needs of others. Let government do it instead, and let government get the credit for helping the poor. The main point of Christianity, they think, is making people feel good regardless of what they believe and how they act – by means of wealth redistribution by a secular state.

Christianity is not about the equalization of wealth by government, or the elimination of suffering, or allowing people to be reckless and immoral and then feeling happy about what they’ve done. Christianity finds meaning in suffering – look at the example of Jesus – and Christianity is concerned with knowing God and making him known to others, and respected by others. Many Christians reject the real goals of Christianity and substitute alternative goals – and that’s why they are so open to socialism.

Christianity is about loving God and loving your neighbor. To love God you have to know him, integrate his values with your decision making and priorities. Loving your neighbor doesn’t mean shoveling money at them regardless of what they know about God or how bad their decisions are. Giving to your neighbor in the Bible is a private matter – not a government-run redistribution operation. You give SO THAT the recipient gets the better of your input and judgment.

The government in Canada hands out drug needles, and pays for abortions. Is that what Christianity is about? If it isn’t, then stop being suckered by extreme case sob stories and voting to hand more and more money to the government. They will never spend it as well as you will – so long as you think that how you spend money is ALSO under the authority of God. Many Christians don’t.

Are Christian socialist women ready for marriage and family?

To me, I take socialist convictions as if the woman is saying that she doesn’t want her husband to be the leader in the home, she wants to diminish his purchasing power, increase the uncertainty of his job, add to the national debt her children will pay, and to empower the government to get into the business of making more and more citizens dependent on the government instead of being dependent on parents or independent as adults. Many of these women also favor welfare for single mothers, and a whole host of other social programs.

Money that husbands earn is family money, not government money

One of my friends on Facebook who is a pro-life capitalist feminist (not a Christian) wrote this to me as a summary of how to understand what a woman means when she expresses support for government to provide meals to children so that they will be equal:

How about, “I want my husband to give his money to women who didn’t marry the fathers of their babies, rather than keeping it in our family.”

I, for one, am tired of children being used as bludgeons and shields by the Left to argue against any actual repercussions for their actions. While I don’t think that children should go hungry, and I can’t work up much anger at a state-funded (not federal-funded) school lunch for poor kids, but… reality is that parents work their butts off to give their kids advantages. My father didn’t work 80 hour weeks for someone else’s kid (well, he gives away a lot of time and money, but that’s his choice); he did it so that his four kids could have a stable life, food on the table, and college educations. Not so that some other brat he’s never met could have all of that.

Isn’t it amazing that non-Christian women actually acknowledge the importance of the male roles of father and husband more than the many Christian women? I find that amazing. Women who oppose socialism think that the results of my hard work are not better spent by Harriet Harman than by families. If families want to help the poor and to give God honor by being known to be Christians by those they help, good. If families want to share the gospel and answer questions with those they help, good. If families want to choose who to help based on their Christian worldview, good. But government does none of that, so they should not get family money.

And this is why I warn you Christian young men. Money is the fuel that you use to run your lives. It is the flour that you use to bake the bread that you will offer to God as a gift. A woman who thinks that the Christian life is about giving money to a secular government is not ready to marry. A Christian family can always spend their money better for Christ than a secular government.

Men: Do not assume that just because a woman likes baby pictures and weddings that she is qualified for marriage. Marriage is a very particular thing. Wanting it is not the same as being ready for it. Men are not sperm-donors, and they are not bank accounts. They do not exist to cater to the whims of women who want to feel good about themselves and the world. Men are there to execute their own plans to serve God, with help from women. My role is not to make a woman feel better by creating utopia here and now. I am a Christian man. I have Christian goals. Giving money that I earned to a secular government does not help me to achieve those goals. And a woman who thinks that the secular government should spend my money does not help me to achieve those goals.

Christian women especially ought to know this, but many don’t. They have completely given up on the Christian message of sin and forgiveness and reduced it to 1) being liked, 2) feeling good. Abandoning Christian particularism makes them feel liked by people in other religions, and redistributing the money of hard workers, including their own husbands, makes them feel good because government is helping the poor… to a taxpayer-funded abortion at Planned Parenthood. But that’s not Christianity.

Many, many women want this feeling of putting the world right. And since they don’t read about things like education vouchers and consumer-driven health care, they settle on the obvious, but incorrect, solution – reduce “inequality” by redistributing wealth through a secular government. They know nothing at all about the free market, and less still about how the free market works to solve social problems. They don’t read – they just feel. And then they are shocked when a bloated government starts to encroach on religious liberty, right to life, homeschooling, etc.

Christian men, listen. Just because a woman can sing hymns, prayer, dance, read the Bible, and attend church, it doesn’t mean that she has a Christian worldview. She can just be like that apostate on the Unbelievable show, having the form of Christianity, but without any real faith in God or knowledge of his character. She may not support God’s purposes of being known by all and honored by all. She may not support private charity instead of public social programs.