Tag Archives: Humility

Commentary

Does the Christian life require unpopularity and self-sacrifice?

4 Comments

This post on Eric Chabot’s Think Apologetics blog made me think of someone I’ve been talking to about her life plan. He lists out the components of the gospel in long-form, then asks whether millenials are hearing that in church.

Excerpt:

What Gospel are millennials hearing? The “Jesus will meet all my needs” Gospel?

To summarize  “The Kerygma” of the early Christian community:

1. The promises by God made in the Hebrew Bible/The Old Testament have now been revealed with the coming of Jesus the Messiah (Acts 2:30;3;19;24,10:43; 26:6-7;22).

2. Jesus was anointed by God at his baptism (Acts 10:38).

3. Jesus began his ministry at Galilee after his baptism (Acts 10:37).

4. Jesus conducted a beneficent ministry, doing good and performing mighty works by the power of God ( Acts 2:22; 10:38).

5. The Messiah was crucified according to the plan of God (Acts 2:23).

6. He was raised from the dead and appeared to his disciples (Acts 2:24; 31-32; 3:15-26;10:40-41;17:31;26:23).

7. Jesus was exalted and given the name “Lord” (Acts 2:25-29;33-36;3:13;10:36).

8. He gave the Holy Spirit to form the new community of God (Acts 1:8;2;14-18;33,38-39;10:44-47).

9. He will come again for judgment and the restoration of all things (Acts 3:20-21;10:42; 17:31).

10. All who hear the message should repent and be baptized because of the finished work of Jesus (Acts 2:21;38;3:19;10:43, 17-48; 17:30, 26:20).

Conclusion: If millennials are hearing a Gospel that doesn’t mention any of these points, they aren’t hearing the Gospel at all!

[…]Churches need to emphasize that we are called to be servants. Hence, we are looking for Servants! And this means there will be self denial. And he (Jesus) said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.– Luke 9:23.

Do you know what this mean to its original hearers? The cross may be viewed as a symbol of love. But when we look at the first century context, to a Jewish person the cross was not a badge of honor but instead a sign of rejection and embarrassment. In other words, the cross meant misunderstanding, rejection by others, ridicule, etc. In other words, to take up our cross is death to our own reputations, our honor and how we are perceived by others.

In a world that wants instant results, self- sacrifice is tough sell. Part of the problem is that churches preach a Gospel that promises that Jesus will fix all our problems. And when things get tough, many people bail out. A long-term commitment to our Lord which involves self denial (Luke 9:23) is hard to swallow for millennials who have been told The American Dream is the way of happiness. 

I think we need to warn young people that just being willing to serve God does not reward bad planning. I know people in full-time ministry now who are facing a very challenging environment with fewer and fewer donations. It’s important not to bite off more than you can chew, and then blame God for not following through.

I think in my own life, I’ve probably been too defensive, but I still think I’ve been able to score points while on defense. I never believed that I could make risky decisions and then have God automatically bail me out. I just tried to serve the best I could, within the bounds of prudence and frugality. I guess I am trying to say that I can easily see how being overly ambitious could end badly, and I would hate to see someone bail out on God because they incorrectly thought that he would reward sincere desires with happiness. In the real world, what produces results is good planning and accurate budgets. Count the cost.

Mentoring

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less

9 Comments
Buddy breathing
Buddy breathing

I have been getting into disagreements with the woman I am mentoring in apologetics, where she has been telling me that accurate assessments of my strengths are “proud” and that I need to be more humble. So I thought I would explain what I take humility to mean.

Here’s something from J. I. Packer:

“Being humble is not a matter of pretending to be worthless, but is a form of realism, not only regarding the real badness of one’s sins and stupidities and the real depth of one’s dependence on God’s grace, but also regarding the real range of one’s abilities. Humble believers know what they can and cannot do. They note both their gifts and their limitations, and so are able to avoid both the unfaithfulness of letting their God-given powers lie fallow and the foolhardiness of biting off more than they can chew.”

— J.I. Packer, “A Passion for Faithfulness: Wisdom From the Book of Nehemiah”

I think I can give an example here. Ever since I was young, I have wanted to do the PhD in computer science and become a Christian professor. I already have the BS and MS and I have been working in industry full-time for over 10 years. The money is there to do the PhD in computer science five times over, but I have not done it because I am not sure that I have what it takes to be a researcher. Sometimes people ask me what I studied and what I do for a living. I am accurate about my degrees, my resume and my savings, and what I am doing and can do with my resources. But I am also accurate in saying that doing a PhD takes a whole different level of commitment and sacrifice. And I am humble enough to know that it is beyond me, at least at this time. I lack the support to do it. God hasn’t given me a mentor or a wife. So I am humble about not “biting off more than I can chew”. That is real humility. But trying to pretend I don’t have any skills, haven’t made any good decisions, or that I am lousy with money is not humility.

Here’s her most favorite theologian, A. W. Tozer:

“The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and as helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring.”

— A. W. Tozer, “The Pursuit of God”

So let’s talk about some cases where I feel I am humble, but my apologetics mentoree doesn’t see it.

I know that there were things that I wanted, and things that I wanted to do in this life. Getting married early was one of them, and keeping chaste as my 20s passed by has been hard. I really wanted to be married by now and to have children and a home. If you are looking for some sort of evidence of humility in a person, that is a good place to look: how far has this person been willing to go along with God’s purposes and rules, even when it meant not fulfilling their own needs and goals? Humility means not thinking of your own goals and needs. It means following the rules even when you know you aren’t being fulfilled. Although I have the resources to just grab for happiness, I won’t break God’s rules to do it.

Let’s get specific with that. There are lots of things that I would like to do for fun that cost money – like learning how to fly a plane, or buying an even faster car than I have now, or taking scuba diving lessons. For some people, it might be surfing, hang-gliding or skydiving. These entertainments cost money, but that money could just as easily be donated to a Ratio Christi event or a Faith Beyond Belief event. That’s humility – putting God’s needs above your own needs in stewardship of resources. Even though you have a right to be happy with what you earn, you can humble yourself and share and go without thrills and entertainment. I almost never spend money on entertainments. The argument “but you only live once, you have to experience this now” means nothing to me. I like to stay home.

Humility also comes into play when deciding what I should do with my life. I think all of us would like to be William Lane Craig or Stephen C. Meyer or Jay Richards or Michael Licona. Standing up on stage, smashing atheism into the floor with both hands. I would love to be that. To do that, though, I would have to go back to school and spend tens of thousands of dollars on PhDs, and then write books and papers. That would eat up the savings that I need for a family. Then I could be famous and awesome, like my heroes. But I choose not to sacrifice tens of thousands of dollars on my dream, when my money and the money of other Christians who might support me could be better used for God’s Kingdom by the more skilled scholars who already exist. Maybe there is someone getting a PhD in Biochemistry who I could help out instead, just by keeping my job and doing with a little less entertainment. Humility means being content with your part in the Kingdom, and not trying to be something you’re not. Letting other people have the spotlight, while you just quietly help them from the shadows. It takes real faith in God to be that humble… to work in secret, and to depend entirely on Him for your accolades.

So how to be more humble? One good way is to sit down with someone you trust and confess things that you have done wrong, or things that you failed at. That’s what I do with her, and it helps to remind me of my limitations. I try to confess my failures in achieving the things that I wanted to achieve all the time. I recommend that to everyone. It’s not hard for me, I think a lot about my failures. The missed opportunities, the things I never got to do. Sometimes, you can have the best of intentions, and things just don’t work out. It’s good to confide in someone else when that happens. So if there is someone who you would like to be more humble, maybe the best thing to do is to ask them about their mistakes and regrets, and then just listen to them. That will work.

Commentary

Why is it rational to act in a self-sacrificial way on Christian theism?

26 Comments

I guess everybody who reads the blog is familiar with my view that self-sacrificial moral behavior is not rationally grounded on atheism. Well, I got a great (snarky) question from a commenter (Gregory Lewis) who wanted me to explain WHY self-sacrifical morality is rational if Christian theism is true. So I wrote the stuff below to try to answer it. I’m not completely happy with it, but I tried.

Note, this is not exactly theologically correct. I do understand that salvation is by grace, and that doing good deeds is part of sanctification, not justificiation. I.e. – the good deeds do not save you, but they do affect your relationship with God, and everyone else, in the after-life.

My response

The question to be answered is why should a person act in a self-sacrificial way when it does not give them pleasure and may even result in punishment. On atheism, self-sacrifice is irrational because morality is illusory, we have no free will, and life is temporary. Your life purpose on atheism is to be as happy as possible before you die, and there is no room for self-sacrificial love just to be good. So it is not rational to sacrifice yourself for the “moral law”. There is no moral law, on atheism. That’s what I mean when I say that morality is not rational on atheism. I mean self-sacrificial morality is not rational, and it seems to me that this morality is the only kind that counts.

But here’s what is true on Christian theism:

1) the moral law is real (objective) not subjective and not arbitrary
2) humans have free will – we are not biologically determined
3) there is a real Creator/Designer who says we ought to obey the moral law
4) there is a final judgment where our free choices to obey or not are measured
5) obedience to the moral law affects the quality (not duration) of that eternal life
6) the author of the moral law loves us self-sacrificially

And what does all of this mean, on Christian Theism:

There is an objective moral standard that specifies what we (morally) ought to do on Christian theism, like self-sacrificial love. Our capacity to make a choice to accomodate that moral obligation is real, because we have consciousness and free will on Christian theism. There is a real way we ought to be, and a real capacity to choose to be that way. But sometimes being good that way sets us back, personally. Is self-sacrificial love rational when it reduces our pleasure in this life? What happens when doing the right thing results in LESS happiness in this life and maybe even LESS time to live in this life? Is self-sacrifice rational on Christianity?

Well, there are two things better than a finite amount of happiness in this life and a finite duration of this life. And that’s an infinite amount of happiness and an infinite duration of life. If we could get that by taking a little short-term pain here and now, then it would make sense for us to suffer now and get something better later, if the world really were designed that way as a matter of fact. And that’s what Christian theists believe is the case.

So, on Christian theism, self-sacrificial love is rational because it is in our own best interest to do so AND because it’s what we were designed to do. It’s the way the world is that makes it rational, and that objective reality can be investigated and sustained in a debate using the standard arguments. Self-sacrifice is rational on Christian theism because there is a state of affairs that makes it rational.

But there is more to it than just self-interest. You have to remember that Jesus’ self-sacrificial death on our behalf is a kind of call to action as well. It may be that many or even most Christians never think about rational self-interest. They think of relationships. They look around at the world and they are willing to take on the obligations of the moral law in the context of having a relationship with God. They don’t think of obeying the moral law as a way to get eternal happiness and eternal life, but as the only possible rational response to another person who sacrifices themselves to love them. It’s not just that we want eternal life, or eternal happiness. We want a relationship with that person who loves us. We have a desire to be loved in a non-temporary way. We want to know that other person as he really is. I would not call that desire self-interest.

I’m thinking of what I feel like when I ask a woman to spend time talking to me over a meal that I will pay for, and she says yes. She probably isn’t thinking that she is doing this in order to be made 100% happy with no demands on her own behavior. There is something more going on there than self-interest – she wants to have a relationship, and she is willing to make adjustments to have that relationship. Most Christians aren’t thinking that they are going to get eternal life or eternal happiness. They want to know who this God person is and they are not concerned about the fact that this person wants them to act a certain way as part of that relationship. We want the relationship. It’s rational for us to act in a way that keeps the relationship going.

Normally, to get a relationship started, I give a woman a book to read or a DVD to watch. That’s not fun for her. But it is a gift. Either she is going to want to know this person who chose her or she isn’t. Maybe she thinks I will make her happy, but that’s not why she takes that first step to follow me. She wants the relationship.

Related posts