Secularism and the Myth of Neutrality: There is No Such Thing as an Unbeliever

Secularism and the Myth of Neutrality: There is No Such Thing as an Unbeliever

Dec 5, 2022 | Philosophy

I’m currently working on my upcoming new international best-selling book, and the chapter I’m currently obsessing over is on secularism. In my research and study, the title of an article caught my attention: “Is That All There Is? Secularism and its discontents.” Published in the print edition of The New Yorker Magazine in 2011, it wasn’t quite what I expected because it’s written by a committed secularist admitting secularism has its challenges, but by golly, he ain’t giving up secularism! The reason I’m addressing secularism in the book is because it’s a lie, and the most pernicious enemy of Christianity and liberty in our time. There are numerous reasons for this on a societal and personal level, but I will only briefly address the personal level here.

The secular believe they are not “religious” therefore neutral regarding ultimate issues, and because they are not “religious” think they don’t need faith. Their definition of faith, however, is fallacious and biased, something along the lines of what Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, declared, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Faith is basically wishful thinking, and not “scientific,” as if science can answer questions of meaning. That would be known as a category error; science and philosophy do two different things. The bias is specifically anti-supernatural because secularists are naturalists or materialists, i.e., the material is all there is. Even if they are not philosophically materialists, they are practical atheists. Believing they’re “scientific,” we religious appear to believe in myths and fairy tales. They are every bit as “religious” as the religious.

The fact is, there is no such thing as an un-believer. One of my pet peeves is referring to certain people as believers and others as unbelievers; even Christians do this, all the time. The word believer is biblical, but it’s a word we need to retire in our secular age. Using it allows the “unbeliever,” the secularist, to live in the illusion they don’t require faith just like every “believer.” All human beings by the nature of their finite created existence are believers and live by faith; the issue is what or who they believe in. In other words, they are just as religious as any Christian, and require faith like any Christian. Therefore, I encourage all Christians to refer to people either as Christians or non-Christians, not believers and unbelievers. I know getting people to do this is a Sisyphean task, but alas, rolling boulders fruitlessly up hills is something I can’t help but doing.

James Wood, the author of the piece, most definitely a non-Christian, gives us a good example how a secular person does this. He refers to “Both atheists and believers . . .” Ergo, atheists don’t have to believe anything. It’s almost comical how ridiculous the contrast is. Atheists believe without the slightest evidence all material reality basically created itself, something came from nothing. Talk about a leap of faith! This is why it’s so important in our secular age to stop using believer and unbeliever, not only because it’s a distortion and inaccurate, but because it allows atheists like Wood, and his readers, to think they are somehow beyond any need for faith. It’s why so many atheists (and there are not many) can be so arrogant toward the weak who they see needing the crutch of faith.

You’ll see throughout the piece something secularists are especially good at, begging the question. Most people use this phrase today to mean raise the question, but it is a logical fallacy meaning to assume the premise as the conclusion, a form of circular reasoning. A great example of this is early in the piece when he lays his cards on the table claiming, “God is dead, and cannot be reimposed on existence.” The bald assertion is never defended, just asserted as if it didn’t need to be defended. That is an article of faith. He obviously doesn’t understand his fundamental faith commitments, or that they are faith commitments. After all, he’s an un-believer. We should not let him think that.

He does more question begging later in the piece. Speaking of tormented metaphysical questions that remain, he asserts they “cannot be answered by secularism any more effectively than by religion.” Really? The stunning ignorance of such an assertion is breathtaking and utterly predictable, just assumed to be true. The secularists who read The New Yorker wouldn’t even blink at it because they’ve likely never met someone whose life has been utterly transformed by their relationship with the risen Lord Jesus, like, for example, Claire Dooley. I listened to an interview of this young women this week telling her story of being rescued from atheism on the Side B Stories podcast.

Remember stories like this are happening all over the world in every nation every day as Jesus builds his church, and the reason is because Christianity is true. It isn’t true because it works, it works because it’s true. Lies and wishful thinking don’t transform lives or civilizations, truth does, and the one who declared, he is “the way and the truth and the life.”

Book Review: Solas Centre for Public Christianity Uninvented Book Review by Peter S. Williams

Book Review: Solas Centre for Public Christianity Uninvented Book Review by Peter S. Williams

Dec 1, 2022 | Uninvented

I was recently on the Solas Centre’ podcast with Andy Bannister (which should air after the first of the year), and they were also kind enough to get scholar Peter S. Williams to do a book review. I figured I had a good chance of getting a positive review given he was willing to endorse the book, but still, one never knows. The most gratifying thing he says is that the book is both “highly readable” and “very readable,” which is something I always strive for, better accomplished at some times than others. Since my first book I’ve learned a very lot about writing and trust I’m a bit better for all the practice.

Uninvented: Job and the Nature of God

Uninvented: Job and the Nature of God

Dec 1, 2022 | Theology

Reading through the book of Job, I’ve been trying to think through it from an uninvented perspective. I’ve realized it would be difficult to see it as merely a figment of human imagination, as if some ancient screenwriter was preparing a script on suffering for a Netflix TV series. Who knows how it actually played out, but the realness lies in the antagonists thinking they get God and why he does what he does; we know, the ending doesn’t let them do that.

Sinful human beings have a nasty habit of thinking they can comprehend God, who by definition is incomprehensible. However, since we are made in God’s image and made to know him, we can have some, although not exhaustive, knowledge of God. We don’t have exhaustive knowledge of anything, even ourselves! If we’re honest, we’re willing to admit we’re often a mystery to ourselves. It’s interesting, then, when reading Job to see how each of the characters seems unwilling to admit there is any mystery in what is happening to Job. Although to Job his suffering is a mystery because he “was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.”

Theology isn’t an option in the Christian life, but I wasn’t even introduced to the concept until I’d been a Christian for over six years. Until then, I was under the impression it was just me, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t deny the Holy Spirit is intimately involved with helping us understand Scripture, only we’re never called to bypass our brain. I seemed to think there was a wire in my brain going up to heaven, and when God wanted me to understand something, zap! That’s not the best hermeneutical principle.

Why is theology important? It is the study (ology) of God (theos in Greek), so yeah, it’s important. And Paul in Ephesians 1 prays

17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

The two requirements for us to grow in our knowledge of God is work and effort, and God revealing truth about himself to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it’s more than just reading the Bible; it’s studying the Bible, studying God in the revelation of himself to us in his word. Paul is telling us without the Christian concept of revelation, we would be as benighted as Job and his friends, his “miserable comforters.”

This includes having some idea of the principles of biblical hermeneutics, of how texts ought to be interpreted. I hadn’t even heard that word, let alone knew what it meant, until I had been Christian for more than six years. I learned the text of the Bible wasn’t magic, but it had a specific meaning the author intended when he wrote it. That’s called, not surprisingly, authorial intent. We must ask what the author intended his audience to understand when he wrote. Which further means the context is critical to understanding the text. Which even further means the Bible wasn’t written to me! It was written for me, but not to me, big difference.

All of this requires study outside the Bible itself. We’ll get a lot of this every Sunday in church if the pastor is doing his job, and in my 44 years as a Christian I’ve found that always to be the case. It’s why they go to seminary. But that doesn’t let us off the hook. We must read more than the Bible. A study Bible is helpful, as are the innumerable commentaries and books on the Bible, as well as the inexhaustible sources on the Internet. It’s amazing how alive the text and the stories in Scripture become when we know more about the author and the historical context. Most amazing of all is the ultimate biblical hermeneutical principle that Jesus gave us: the entire Bible is about him!

When I was introduced to theology at 24, I began with reading the Systematic Theology of Charles Hodge, the great 19th century Princeton Theologian. It blew my mind. In a chapter on the knowledge of God Hodge writes that God is inconceivable, incomprehensible, and that our knowledge of him can only be partial, but he argues it is real knowledge. The problem is when we think our knowledge of God means we can understand him, why and how he does what he does. The reason Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done . . .” is because we don’t, and we can’t! The book of Job makes that very clear. This problem of thinking we can figure out God’s thoughts and motives is endemic to the human condition, and both Christians and non-Christians are afflicted by it.

If we give it a moment’s thought, we’ll realize our pretension of thinking we can probe the depths of God’s being and mind is ridiculous. It’s stunning if we really ruminate upon it, how totally and completely inconceivable and incomprehensible God is. For example, he created everything out of nothing by the power of his word, “and God said, ‘Let there be . . . .’” Try to wrap your mind around that. God is also omnipresent, everywhere at once. He is also omniscient, meaning he knows all things. And omnipotent, meaning he possesses all power. Think of the devastating power of splitting the atom, and he made every single one! He is also aware and intimately involved in the lives of every single human being on earth, at the same moment.

I could go on, but you get the point. All we can do is fall down in praise and adoration of a being so great, and proclaim in doxology with King David,

Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.

Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.

Nehemiah’s Hopeful Frustration and the Gospel

Nehemiah’s Hopeful Frustration and the Gospel

Nov 27, 2022 | The Gospel

The book of Nehemiah takes us to the end of Old Testament history in the early 5th century BC. The last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, lived during that time and spoke a message of hope and judgment, and he points to the hope in Nehemiah’s frustration. The Lord declares through this messenger (what his name means) another one to come (3:1):

“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.

The final verse says it will be the prophet Elijah whom he will send “before that great and dreadful day of the Lord.” It ends with the promise of something God will do, or else he “will come and strike the land with a curse.”  When I finished reading Nehemiah, I realized the answer to Nehemiah’s frustration lay in the promise of God through Malachi.

First, a brief historical background. Jerusalem had been destroyed by the great empire of Babylon in the late 500s, and most of the people of Judah, the southern kingdom, were taken to Babylon (modern day Iraq). Because they were from Judah they were first called Jews in Babylon. The northern kingdom, called Israel, had been destroyed in 722 BC by the Assyrians, and the 10 tribes who lived there were scattered throughout the Middle East never to be identified again by their tribal association, thus called the lost tribes of Israel. By contrast Judah, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, was also conquered and exiled, but because the Messiah was to come through Judah, God brought them back to Israel.

After the Persians conquered the Babylonian empire, King Cyrus who ruled from 539-530 let the remnant of Jews go back to Israel and rebuild the temple. This is recounted in the book of Ezra. When we get to Nehemiah, we’re in the mid-400s, and learn Nehemiah is a personal cupbearer to King Artaxerxes (ruled 465-425). When he learns the remnant in Jerusalem that survived the exile is suffering because the walls of the city had been broken down and its gates burned with fire, he asked the king if he could go and help his people, promising to return to his job when he did. When he arrives and inspects the damage, he tells the leaders his idea to rebuild the wall, and they get about doing it.

There is predictable opposition that comes along with anything the people of God do in a fallen world, but they eventually accomplish the task. Ezra the scribe was told to get the Book of the Law of Moses and read it to the people, and they weep and repent, and are told to then celebrate before they confess their sins. In 9:38 we read of the peoples’ agreement:

“In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.”

So far so good. Nehemiah has to head back to Babylon to keep his word to the king, and sometime later he asked to visit Jerusalem again. You can read what the people did, and Nehemiah’s final reforms in chapter 13, but what struck me was the hopeful frustration of Nehemiah. Using the phrase, “O my God,” he asks four times for God to remember, three for himself, and one for those who “defiled the priestly office and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.” It seems Nehemiah is aware of the futility of his own actions, and that God alone is the answer to sin. This is why reading Malachi helps us to understand the redemptive historical context of the end of Old Testament history that points directly to the New. The final words, after which the prophets went silent, tell us what to expect:

5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

These verses and 3:1 point directly to the coming of Jesus and the gospel, the answer to Nehemiah’s frustration. He doesn’t want to be forgotten by God for what had “so faithfully done for the house of” his “God and its services,” but the Old Testament ends in apparent futility. Nehemiah’s hope, however, is in the right place, not in his own efforts, but the God who can make his efforts ultimately fruitful.

As 3:1 and here both say, it is the Lord himself who is coming, and who came in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And we notice it is the coming Lord who turns hearts, in the image of Ezekiel, from stone to flesh. And the hearts being turned are the heart of the family, the very foundation of civilization. When peace, and righteousness, and wisdom in Christ reign there, society will be blessed.

As I say, ad nauseum, it all comes down to trust, but what exactly is trust. One definition: assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. In all we do, fruitful or not at the moment, we pray and trust in the God whose kingdom is even now coming. He promises to keep us in perfect peace who trust in him.

 

 

This Thanksgiving Make Thanksgiving a Habit, For the Rest of Your Life

This Thanksgiving Make Thanksgiving a Habit, For the Rest of Your Life

Nov 24, 2022 | Gratitude, Uncategorized

Thanksgiving is a good reminder we ought to give thanks, and ought to do it 365 days a year, literally. As I grow older, the more I realize how central thanksgiving is to the vibrant Christian life, and how naturally we are given to un-thankfulness. Complaining is so much easier because naturally (i.e., sinfully), we live by site and not by faith (i.e., trust in God). We look to circumstances as sovereign, not the Sovereign God who is in control of all things. We look to them for succor and comfort, not God. It’s a fool’s errand because our circumstances will never be enough to give us what we think we are looking for. The irony is we have no idea what that is! Augustine tells us that would be God:

You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.

Then we do something even more ridiculous, we look to other people for fulfillment. If you want a recipe for disappointment, look to other human beings to fulfill you. Whether it’s other people or circumstances, we will be disappointed. That’s life in a fallen world among fallen people in a fallen body. Something I’ve emphasized to my kids as they were growing up is a slightly different version of a quote I got from The Princess Bride, one of our family’s favorite movies: Life is disappointment, highness. Wesley says pain, but it’s all the same (the short version or the longer version). Life will never live up to our expectations. That is when it’s most important to give thanks.

Normally, when I’m lecturing others, or myself, about the necessity to give thanks, I quote the Apostle Paul in I Thessalonians 5:18. In a direct command he tells us to “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” This doesn’t leave much room for ingratitude, or its corollary, complaining, or whining, or moaning, or grumbling. It tells us the key to a thankful heart is found “in Christ Jesus.” To be truly grateful, and give thanks because we are in fact thankful, we must understand the gospel.

In Ephesians 5, Paul confirms in an even more far-reaching way that our gratitude, our ability to give thanks, needs to be rooted in Christ and the gospel. The context is living “as imitators of God,” which means we walk, or live, in love. No problem, right? Piece of cake. Unfortunately, this goes against every natural sinful inclination we have, so it’s anything but easy. However, God in Christ, in the gospel, makes it possible. Paul explains the gratitude mentality we ought to have and how it becomes doable,

giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Adding “always and for everything” to “all circumstances” doesn’t leave much wiggle room. Paul’s use of “the name” points to the significance of the meaning of Jesus being our Lord and Messiah, our Savior and king. And he is not just our personal Savior and Lord. We too easily tend to individualize what he accomplished, as if it were mainly about us. It is, of course, but he is also the Savior of the world, and as Paul says in Ephesians 1, raised from the dead and seated at God’s right hand “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named.” All this for us! His church. That is the name in which we can and ought to give thanks.

The gospel is deeply personal, and cosmic, which is why we no longer have to look to our circumstances as the key to our fulfillment or happiness. Saved from God’s wrath because of our sin, we are now reconciled to him, and can love him by loving others. The more profound this saving is to us, meaning the more we know how rotten we are, the easier it is to love others. We have no choice; we love because he first loved us. Then knowing that Jesus has all authority and power in the universe over all things, means we can trust that God works all things “for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” There’s all again. I think we’re getting the picture.

All applies to the cosmic piece as well. Prior to his ascension to the right hand of the Father, Jesus said all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, therefore go. Paul promises us that “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” As we begin to understand the entire picture of the gospel in all it’s personal and cosmic ramifications, developing the daily, even minute by minute, habit of giving thanks, is really not hard at all.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever!