The Honesty - Dualism Connection Part I

When I started this Blog, it was titled something about being brutally honest in an Evangelical world. My attempts were to peel back layer after layer of honesty within the Evangelical context. I had to then write anonymously because the things I was writing would have hurt a lot of people (see my posting about being "too honest”). But, like I said before, I decided to "come out of the closet" and disclose my identity and refocus on the basic problem . . . which I believe is the Gnostic Dualistic influence on the Church over the ages . . . especially modern Evangelicalism.

So, in this posting, I want to try and make the connection between the barriers of honesty within the church and their Dualistic way of thinking.

First, I want to define the kind of honestly issue that I'm tallking about. I will have to use personal, true examples to make my point.

About ten years ago, my wife and I went through a very serious conflict within our marriage. It was a complicated situation that would take pages to try and explain. This was after fifteen years of marital bliss. It wasn't like we didn't want help. We were desperate for help, real help. But, we had been seen as spiritual leaders. After all, we had been missionaries, elders, and generally leaders in the church.

But trying to approach people within the church was very difficult. It wasn't just my pride (this was before I had become as honest as I know believe that I should be). Just to attempt to talk to people seemed to be met with horror and I wasn't even mentioning the really bad parts.

I did have an old Navigator friend who lived in another state (and not of the old, legalistic Navigator school). We had many long and fairly candid conversations. I also met with the pastor. He was well known as a "godly" man. However, he too could not venture within the deepest parts of what we were dealing with. He used a counseling method that was taken from some super-duper mega church. It was four meetings with four precise (mechanical) steps. 1) Identify the problem, 2) give a plan to fix the problem, 3) check up on the Plan, 4) create the long range plan.

This was a formula that might work in business, but what I (we) needed was someone (sort of like my long-distance Navigator friend) to grab us and cry with us. Then to give us the love that made us feel safe enough to pour out all the dirt knowing that we would not end the relationship with that friend. I did not feel that with the pastor. Well before I could get to the really nitty-gritty of the problem, I was feeling condemned (or at least he was being disappointed even at the minor things). So I certainly couldn’t share my heart.

This reminded me years before, when I just returned from the mission field and was doubting God’s existence. I worked with a true-blue evangelical who was deeply offended if I tried to share with him what was going on in my heart. He would quote a verse or give me a cliché (like from a popular Christian song) . . . often along the lines, “Who are you to doubt God . . . He never doubts you!” So, of course I couldn’t talk to him about what was going on in my private places of my heart. Oddly, this same man abruptly left his wife and seven children a few months later to run off with a young women . . . whom he was having sex with at the very time he was condemning me.

So, in my pursuit of honesty, I know even within our most “godly” evangelical circles there’s some real, (deeply hidden) sorrows.

When I come back, I want to show why Gnostic Dualism is so compatible, and actually sets up, us to live in Evangelical dishonestly (what young people call the Evangelical farce).

Dick Keyes Lecture

Dick Keyes

About four weeks ago I attended the LAbri conference in Rochester, MN. The theme this year was "God's Common Grace." What they meant by this was how God's Grace is common not only to the Church but to all of humanity, and to all of the cosmos. This of course is not meaning a universal salvation ( Jesus came to save all men, whether they believe or not). But more simply, how God's grace and creative design is still present in even the non-Christian writer, artist, thinker etc. and how that Grace can be appreciated by the Christian.

The Evangelical's Dualistic approach is to see the world as camps. The believer camp vs the non-believer camp. It even finally reaches the level of Red States vs Blue States. Then us vs them. I could go own and own.

I really think the root to this kind of thinking is tied to that never ending human desire to be significant. To look down our noses at the homosexual, Muslim, Goth or Punk . . . is to use them for leverage to push ourselves up. Hey, we have the truth and they don't. We may say that we are saved by grace, yet in the most private parts of our hearts we believe we are were we are because we have earned it. But if you really understood God's grace, then the divisions would vanish or at least loose their power to make us feel signficant. In Christ, we are signficant and there is nothing we can be to add to that.

Dick Keyes' lecture at the LAbri conference (The Breath of God's Lordship linked above with the title of this posting) was a good summary of this Dualistic thinking that seems to haunt Evangelicalism, tainting our perception of what is spiritual and what is "worldly." It is only $5 for the MP3-down-loadable version from Sound Word.

I hope to do some more postings soon. I've been on the road and just got home. I never have time to post when I'm travelling. I did get home in time tonight to make it to my daughter's play, Urinetown. They did a fantastic job. Mike

Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins

NPR's Fresh Air featured Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins on their Friday evening (3/7/08) in a very interesting interview. Dr. Dawkins' interview made up about 45 minutes and Dr. Collings was about 15 minutes.

Dr. Dawkins is a evolutionary biologist and an outspoken atheist. Indeed if you look at his website you would get the feeling that he is the rock-star of atheism, Dr. Dawkins is the author of the book The God Delusin . Actually I am sure (having published a book or two myself and knowing how these things work) that the reason that Dr. Dawkins was featured on NPR last night was because his publisher arranged it since his book came out in paper back yesterday.

Presently I believe that Dr. Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,Oxford University.

Dr. Francis Collins is a geneticist and is best known for his discoveries of genetic disease and leading the Human Genome Project. He is also an outspoken Evangelical Christian. However, he differs from the mainstream Evangelical apologist in the fact that he not only believes in an old earth (4.5 billion years old) but also believes in evolution and that all species had a common biological ancestor. This is very different from the Evangelical anti-evolution poster child Richard Ham. Mr. Ham not only believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old but suggest that anyone who does not believe that is at least in sin if not a believer.

I would like to share my impressions of the Fresh Air episode.

Although I had heard of Richard Dawkins I knew very little about him. The only time I had seen him was a brief video that Richard Ham used of him, taken out of context btw, which was in a series that I saw at our church. Richard Ham's point in airing this excerpt was to make fun of Dr. Dawkins and score a few points with his live audience. But that's another story.

First of all, I was very pleased to hear that Dr. Dawkins and I have a fundamental point of agreement and it is regarding classical logic. He says, which I agree with fully, that Science and Religion are asking some of the same questions but are coming up with some very different answers. Now the amazing point, was that he said that only one of two opposing answers can be right. For example, if the Bible clearly states that the earth is only 6,000 years old (which it does not) and science says it is 4.5 billion years old, then only one could be right. In the classic sense of logic, this makes sense.

However, in the Post-Modern age (and post rational) there is the popular concept of synthesis, which states that non A and A can both be true. Dawkins admitted that many scientist practice tis synthesis, saying that during the day when they are in the lab they can believe one thing, but in their religious life they can believe the opposite and the two are compatible.

So I am glad that Dr. Dawkins at least admits in the classical logic. It is so much easier to have a conversation with someone who speaks logically than some Post Modernist who do not. Now, I am not sure why Dawkins thinks logically. I mean, either he is an old hold out from the logical-positivist or he may be representing a new, actually very old, way of thinking . . . which is a positive step.

The other thing, and the host Terri Gross must have done her homework, is that some very important questions were asked of him (questions which most atheist fail to address) and this where he gets his basis of hope. His answer though was evasive. He says that the universe does not owe us any reason for hope . . . an Terri let him get away with that.

The problem with atheism is that a true atheist can not live consistently with their beliefs . . . life is meaningless, art is meaningless, hope is meaningless, ethics are meaningless etc.

There is much more I wish I could say but this is getting long.

Briefly, regarding Dr. Collins, it was a little interesting and refreshing to see that a true believer can have intelligent views apart from Ken Ham's and still consider themselves a Christian.

I may add more later, but I have three teenagers wanting to watch a movie. I would like to put these thoughts in the context of Evangelical Dualistic thinking and how we can improve the discussion by seeing the Universe as God intended.

The Blog Takes a New Direction

This blog, previously known as Brutally Honest Christian in the Evangelical Wilderness, is taking a new direction. The point is, rather than ranting and raving about particular issues, I would rather related them to what I think is the crux of the matter . . . the negative influence of Gnostic (or Platonic) Dualism on the Church and how we can look at the world more Biblically.

Besides a new name and a new look, the other major is that the author and Blog jockey will come out of the closet. I've gone back and delete the honest (but possible offensive) post that I did while anonymous. I have several reasons for this. The most important one is that I feel that a Blog with a real person (rather than a synonym) is more organic and real (although much more dangerous for me).

Stay tuned for what's to come!

I'm Back!

I've been out of town for a week . . . then returned to an incredible schedule. I hope to do some meaningful postings soon.

Part of my trip was to attend the Midwest LAbri conference in Rochester, Mn. It is always such a breath of fresh air. An interesting lecture by Dick Keyes . . . which was exactly along the lines of my own personal observations. It has to do with what I consider as the number one challenge facing the Church in America . . . the influence of Platonic Dualism.

More later.
Pilgrim

The Theology of Twisters--The Lunacy of God

The news in the last couple of days has been about a deadly tornado that hit parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky. This story was very poignant as I am from Tennessee. I don’t have the latest death count, but it is at least fifty plus hundreds injured, some of them seriously.

The thing that caught my eye this morning, was listening to the Today Show as they interviewed survivors of the tornado on the campus of Union University, a Southern Baptist school

As I was trying to shave and dress while listening, I could not catch the faces of the students, but I could hear their words. They each talked about the “miracle” of their survival. One described how “God had wrapped her in a cocoon of protection.” Another guy was laughing how God had forced him down (with the walls pushing down on him) into a kneeling position and the message to him was that God wanted him to pray. Each of the students were praising God for protecting them and he was protecting them because they had prayed.

At this moment, allow your mind to wander to the hundreds of people, sitting in funeral homes, hospitals, in broken down houses or in the safe haven or shelters . . . each of who has lost, through a terrible death, a loved one in this storm. Others have suffered intense pain and dismemberment from the storms effects. How does this fit with the Union University interviews? I mean, does it make sense that all these people, who perished, were either not praying right, pissing God off for some reason? I bet many of those, God-fearing, Tennesseans (there in the Bible belt) were praying their hearts out . . . just before the tornado ripped them to pieces, killing them. We . . . I guess I must say “those” evangelicals, such as the UU students, often paint themselves into a theological corner with these types of statements.

One of the worst examples of this was when I was living in northern Michigan. I happened to be working in the Emergency Room during those days. I was not on duty when the dreadful event occurred, but came in right afterwards and heard about it from my colleagues.

A couple in our church had two young boys. I think the youngest was 4, and we will call him Bobby. His parents were going through some marital issues at the time, and had even been separated.

One day Bobby’s dad was in the back yard mowing the yard on his rider. Bobby pushed on the screen door, wanting to go and be with his dad. He pushed until the door came unlatched. Then Bobby ran across the yard. His dad threw the riding mower into reverse and backed over Bobby, slicing his little precious head up into about four pieces.

In the midst of his horror, his dad grabbed up the bloody little body and ran to our ER where he was pronounced dead.

The next Sunday, or church was in grief and horror over the loss of such an innocent life. One of our fellow elders, Robert, went before the church (as he usually did to share prayer requests). As he started to talk about Bobby and his family he paused. He looked out over the crowd of 500 and said loudly, “I don’t care what any one says . . . my God doesn’t make mistakes. He took Bobby home for a purpose and I’m sure it was to teach his parents to depend on Him.” Immediately there were amens and praises being shouted out in the Church.

So God sliced a four-year-old boy’s head up into pieces in order to “teach his parents to depend on Him?” Well, it didn’t work. His parents eventually divorced and left the church in the subsequent year. So if God knows the future, and He knew that they would eventually leave the Church and their marriage, yet God sliced up the little boy’s head anyway . . . then God is a lunatic!

Of course He isn’t, but that’s the crazy box that we put God in. So a plane crashes and 30 people die and two survive. The family of the two says it is because they prayed right???? Hey, something is messed up here.

There is much more I want to say here to solve this riddle. The riddle is that God is 1) sovereign, 2) loving yet . . . there is a place for cause and effect in this wonderful . . . but dangerous world in which He has created.

THE SUPERSTITIOUS CHRISTIAN

Ihave no theological agenda with this blog . . . not really. If there is a unifying theme, or purpose, and that is the attempt to venture deeper and deeper into an authentic (and certainly honest) understanding of Christianity.

I was thinking yesterday about how superstitious Evangelical Christianity tends to be. I think what prompted it was catching some type of pre-Super Bowl Christian program on TV. I was actually looking for the PBS channel and specifically NOVA. I happen to catch a glimpse of three hefty men (with virtually no necks) sitting around a coffee table. The coffee table was draped in football jerseys. I paused the remote and listened as one of the manly-men seemed to be crying.

In summary, this man was giving a testimony about how he got involved in full-time ministry. He had gone out to his “prayer shed” and was praying something along the line of “God do you want me to play football?” Then he added, in a very high-pitched, emotionally endowed voice, “Then it was a miracle . . . like a movie being played in the inside of the shed . . . it was a movie of my life and God showing me that he wanted me to go into full time youth ministry!” The two other football types were saying “Praise God!” or something like that.

As I watched this I thought that there is a 99.99999% chance that this man is seriously embellishing the story . . . if not out-right lying. How do I know? I’ve sat in on countless meetings like this over the past 35 years. I’ve told hundreds of stories of how God had done miracles, super-natural miracles in my life. But looking back, and even at the time, I knew it wasn’t true. Deep, deep in the inner-most parts of my heart, when I spoke of driving on no gas, or praying for a sign and then something amazing happening, that it really didn’t happen that way.

But why did I do it? I think I want to make that topic, something along the line of the psychology of lying for Jesus. But this posting is about Christian superstition.

First I must define what I mean by superstition. In my use here, it is simply the notion that events are controlled by unseen and supernatural means. When I state it that way, you may think, “okay, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that the Biblical ideal?”
To put flesh on this discussion, I’ll mention some real conversations that I’ve had with other Christians, or at least their statements.

“I was praying that I would see Eric’s mother. I went up to her house and she wasn’t there. They told me she was in town (a town of 500 people). I drove back down Main Street . . . and there was her car at the IGA. It was obviously a God thing. I went up and down each aisle over an over until I caught a glimpse of her going out the door. It was a miracle!”

“We were at the youth rally in the huge football stadium. We stood up to put our hands into the air and to sing praise songs with Casting Crowns at the microphone. With forty thousand people singing at once, it was surreal. But then I looked down and there was gum on my shoes. Obviously Satan had put it there to ruin everything. Those were my brand new Nikes. But I prayed, God help me. I felt my anger calming down and then started singing praises again. It was a miracle!”

“We were praying that God would bring Dan home safely the night he was killed in the car wreck. But a peace came over me when God opened my eyes. He had done exactly what I was asking, He answered my prayer perfectly and supernaturally because I didn’t realize, with my carnal eyes, that when I was asking God to bring Dan home safely . . . to God the word home is Heaven!”

I could go on and on with familiar conversations, the type that we hear every Sunday at church or anytime that we run into Evangelicals. But the issue that I want to raise again is honesty. Running into someone that we are looking for, in a small town . . . is that really outside the laws of probability? Is it really supernatural? If you get gum on your shoe is it really the direct work of Satan? I’m speaking supernatural work here . . . where the gum wasn’t there a second before you put your foot down, and Satan magically created it out of nothing . . . just to irritate you?

This is a game that we use to play all the time when I was deeply enthralled within Evangelicalism. Every event, good or bad, was tied with invisible puppeteer strings, to the hands of God or, in some cases, Satan.

There is tremendous social (peer) pressure for Christians, especially those Christians who want to appear spiritual, to speak in these terms . . . but why?

I really think that the root cause of this mis-perspective of reality, has to do with the influence of Gnostic Dualism within Christendom. I will mention this historical fact over and over in my posts because I think it is key in the things that ail our wonderful faith. This influence is not controversial because every historian, be they Christian or secular is very familiar with this influence. All of the Church’s early creeds were written to combat this cancer growing within the church . . . but in my opinion it was never eradicated.

Speaking more specifically and practically, Gnostic Dualism pollutes the way in which we look at the world . . . meta-physically. The Gnostic-Dualistic concept believes that the physical, including the body, the earth, science, laws of physics and chemistry, the brain etc. are all inferior to the “spiritual.” They define “spiritual” along the lines that Plato did (and Zoroaster). It is not a Biblical division, but one based on altitude . . . things up (in unseen Heaven) are good and things low (this world) are inferior . . . or perhaps evil. Therefore, you (the Evangelical Christian) can not define events, any event, by the laws of physics or probability (looking for someone in a small town and finding them) because that perspective is inferior or unspiritual when compared to the God the puppeteer perspective.

The Biblical view is that the dividing line rests at the point of something passing out of nothing. In other words, the inferior natural world . . . is really nothingness. It was the second before all that is was. Everything, this side of creation IS A MIRACLE and directly from the hand of God. Of course I’m not saying, like the pantheist, that both good and evil are from the hands of God. That’s a different discussion . . . the state of real evil in the world.

So when a big part of our Christian culture states that cause and effect, laws of physics etc. are "worldly" and the direct hand of God is spiritual. It is like we think that God is a stranger (or alienated) from the natural laws rather than the creator of them.

As I've said, the really root to all of our behavior is the drive for self-significance, that with in our Christians circles we also want significance. We want to be looked up on as good Christians, or being "spiritual." This is the great pressure to embellish stories, to make them look like "super-natural" events.

I have a neighbor who is really looked up to as a spiritual person. He speaks in these supernatural terms all he time. To the common Christian, he does look like a hero. I think he is a decent man, as decent as any of us are in this fallen flesh. But when I talk to him, I start feeling very tempted to embellish as well.

But the odd thing is, we Christians say that we believe in truth and honesty, yet we are some of the most, emotionally at least, dishonest people in our society.

So where does this leave the sovereignty of God? Of course I believe in God’s sovereignty . . . there is no place in the universe that is hidden from his power and knowledge. But does this leave only Christian fatalism? I mean, does God choose to control every event, even where each leaf lands when it falls from a tree? We Christians believe that it is disrespectful to say that an event happened because of cause and effect (following the laws of physics). But where in scripture does it say that God has direct control of every event?

Yes the hairs on our head are numbered. Yes, a sparrow does not fall without God knowing about it. Yes the heart of the king is in God’s hand and he can direct it like a river.

But God also created the laws of cause and effect. If I climb the mountain in front of my house and then jump off . . . I will die and I don’t think that God “planned and directed” the whole event. We Christians must have the theological position that gives us the freedom to be honest about the world in which we live.

Do miracles (outside the laws of physics) happen? Certainly scripture attest to them. I’ve heard of thousands of miracles . . . none of which could be proven not to be bogus. Yes, I do think miracles can happen, but if they are happening today, they must be rare.

I’ve heard of thousands of people babbling in tongues (including myself a long time ago), but I’ve never, ever seen someone spontaneously start speaking another, unlearned language. I’ve heard of many, many supernatural healings . . . but I really can’t say (as a medical professional) that anyone of those were outside the laws of human physiology.

Doesn’t this make me look very unspiritual? But, if we want to be people of the truth, we must embrace the truth for what it is.

There are several dangers when we look at the world through the Gnostic-Dualistic glasses. For one, we don’t achieve the potential that I think that God wants for a society. When we are superstitious Christians, we are always looking for a sign. When things (naturally . . . following the laws of physics and probability) go wrong we give up, thinking that road-block was the hand of God.

How many good Christian people have been thwarted from doing great things because they didn’t “have peace” about it? They assume that it is a “God things” speaking outside the role of human emotions. But another perspective is that God created us with a wonderful set of emotions . . . one of those being anxiety. Often anxiety is a healthy thing. Like this morning, a good taste of anxiety made me slow down on an icy road crossing a mountain pass. But, because we are fallen and not perfect, our anxiety can be irresponsible. It can show up when there is not a good reason. But the superstitious Christian assumes that it is the Holy Spirit, and backs down.

I had a dear Navigator Christian friend call off a marriage, because as the day got closer, he felt more anxiety. He loved the gal and she did him. But he interrupted the anxiety as a warning from the Holy Spirit.

I’ve seen it work the other way. I knew a group of Christian guys, who seeing a gorgeous gal enter the ministry . . . and feeling horney for her (it couldn’t have been love or any other attraction because these guys had only seen their bodies). But instead of realizing that it was normal warm-blooded male attractiveness (according to the way that God made our brains . . . and our goads) they spiritualized it. These guys told the girls that “God had spoken to them” and told them to marry them.

But, as Christians, we must dare to be honest. This does not disrespect God (making Him less powerful) but respects Him more, because it mean that we desire truth over deceit.