The Ethical Maze and the Post Evangelical

The thing I enjoyed the most about being a hard-core Evangelical was that life was simple—pure black or white. Ethical problems were all textbook—or maybe I should say cookbook—and we were all on the same page. But now, in the way I view the world, life can be a bit sloppy at times. So, I will propose a current ethical situation and see what others think. My mind has mulled over this for the past few days.

I alluded to a high school play a few posts ago. I went just to support the kids as none of my own children were in it. Our high school kids preformed brilliantly. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by many of the adult themes of the play (The Wedding Singer) especially one dance number that was very provocative (a girl on a bed wearing very little, some kind of short nighty that looked like panties). The other things that some Christian would find offensive was God's name used in vain a couple of times, a very brief dance scene where several heterosexual couples in a restaurant took turns dropping onto one knee and proposing to one another . . . then two men (waiters) do the same (it was mostly for a humor effect). Lastly, one of the main male characters, who was quite effeminate, in the end confessed to liking boys.

I also mentioned in the previous post that some friends from our church got up and marched out after that early scene where one male waiter proposes to another. Honesty, I wasn’t surprised or offended by that scene in the slightest. The provocative dance scene came at the very end. I was a little perplexed by it and was surprised that the school would include that scene. They did have a sign at the door warning that the play was “R rated.” But at the same time I wasn’t offended nor ever considered walking out. However, if it had been my daughter doing that dance I would have been traumatized. But the lasting memory in my mind from the play was how talented the kids were. They had to memorize a huge amount of dialog, songs and dance numbers. I clapped at the end with great sincerity and enthusiasm.

So here is the issue. A pastor friend was one of the ones that walked out after that brief gay-proposal scene. He is now very upset at the school. He as met with all parties involved including the principal, music director (who is a member of a different evangelical church) and the director (mom volunteer). He went to the play only because his daughter was in the orchestra pit. His daughter is caught in the middle a bit.

His view is that we as Christians should oppose immortality in our society at every chance. I think he may have been in a march against same-sex marriage laws and pro-life marches.

He is also disappointed that no one is standing with him. The other evangelical pastors in town did not go to the play so they don’t feel that they are in the position to say anything. My wife and I are one of the few people who went, except for the pastor’s wife who when three time.

A long time ago, at the height of my evangelicalism and when I was in a Navigator training center, we did not go to movies unless they were G rated. Our leader thought that was tolerable, however, he didn’t believe that we should go to any movie. Even if we went to a Disney flick, then we would be supporting the theater (which did show R rated movies) and we would be supporting the Disney Corp, which hired gays (I know, we were a sad bunch) and even have a Gay day at Disneyworld. But now I can really enjoy an R-rated movie . . . if it is a good movie to start with. Life is R and even X rated at times. The Bible is certainly R rated.

But this brings me back to the local high school situation. My broader question is when do we oppose the society in which we live? In my current thinking, the culture wars are over and the Evangelicals lost. I also doubt the benefit in trying to impose Christian morality on the non-Christian. Moral non-Christians might live better (because they live closer to the way they were designed to live) but it doesn’t’ change the big equation.

So imagine that a group of concerned Christians did cause a ruckus at the high school, what would be the benefit? The pastor, I imagine, thinks that the school would be far less prone to put on a play with such adult themes. If the audience were not exposed to the visuals and story that they would be less prone to sin. Regarding the students themselves, by being involved with a play with couple of homosexual hints and a sexually provocative dance number, does that make them more prone to sin? Certainly no one is going to suddenly become gay because of being in a play that portrayed gays. Maybe, just maybe students would be slightly more prone to be involved in sexually activity by being part of the play or even watching it. It is the thing of making extra-marital sex more and more normal.

But there are negative effects to the protest as well. Will some students be more alienated to the Church? I can imagine that if you were a student who worked you butt off and did a wonderful performance, then to only hear from the Church that they were offended, it would be hurtful. They really deserve that greatest of praise for their talent.

So, what is the proper Christian response to such a play?

The Victims of a Greater Devil

I know . . . that's a horrible picture . . . but it is latex.

I think it is only right to put a “book-end” discussion up about the opposite of having a lesser God (or not) and that is having a greater devil than what most evangelicals believe in.

It was about a year ago that Denise and I went out to dinner with friends, one a pastor and the other couple ex-missionaries. The story came up that the ex-missionaries’ (18 year old) daughter was working in a nursing home. She basically worked the night desk as the only employee in the nursing home from midnight until seven A. M. . She told her parents that she would start to feel spooked about three in the morning. It was dark and she could hear the heavy breathing of the patients, some moaning or talking in their sleep.

As I listened, I was thinking, “That sounds pretty normal. I think I would feel the emotion of “spooky-ness” in the same circumstances, as would most people.”

The pastor had a different take on it. “I need to meet with your daughter. This sounds demonic and she needs to protect herself spiritually from the forces that she may be facing.”

The missionary couple shook their heads in so much agreement that I decided, again not to be a jerk, to just keep quiet. I smiled.

The pastor looked at me, “Mike, you were a missionary in the Muslim world. You must have seen a lot of demonic activity?”

I looked surprised and shook my head to the negative. “Hmm. Not really.”

When most of my Evangelical friends talk of Satan’s influence they speak of these mystical spooky scenes. That’s why they think the devil dwells in the pages of a Stephen King novel, Harry Potter or in a horror flick. “Burn the Ouija Boards,” was a cry I heard from pastors in my Bible-belt community. “Satan is in them there (remember this was Tennessee dialect) weeegeee boards!”

I think the worse nightmare of those who think this way would be living out the movie The Exorcist, in real life. However, my devil is different. My nightmare is living out the movie Love Story in real life. That movie scares the hell out of me much more than The Exorcist. Why? The devil in Love Story is really much worse than the one portrayed in The Exorcist.

Love Story (for those over the age of 50 and who remembers it), tells how wonderful falling in love can be. Then, in the midst of the total romantic bliss, the one you love can is taken from you by cancer. There is nothing your love can do to protect or save them. That is real hell, far more than having a girl’s head spin around and her puking on you. This real hell on earth happens all the time. That’s what makes it so scary.

While, of course God is the victor and death has been conquered, still the fall is real as is the horrible pain of it. The devil that we must face dwells within that fall and its aftermath.

In the Love Story theme, I think right now of Denise Spencer. While there is comfort in the Gospel for her, the nightmare is still very, very real. I bet she would trade places with the priest in the The Exorcist on any given day. I know I would prefer to spend a thousand nights in the house with the head spinning girl than to watch my spouse or one of my children die while I stand by watching in tremendous, but impotent love.

I saw two patients this week that had lost siblings as teenagers due to car wrecks.

I remember attending a church in Marquette, Michigan. Our youth group just attended a big Christian Woodstock-type festival. They came back to church on an emotional high. They took turns at the podium, crying and telling about their experiences. Then one young man shared how he was having a great time clapping and being swept away in the spirit . . . when he looked down and he had chewing gum on his pants. He said it was a Satanic attack to distract him from the music. If the devil was just going around sticking chewing gum on my pants, I could live with that in a heart beat.

But this life is filled with the workings of a much greater devil than the one illustrated by the sermons and legends of many Evangelicals. This fallen life on earth is filled with a lot of real pain. Yes, God is the victor and all of life will be redeemed some day. Even now there are wonderful bright spots, a sunset, beautiful prose, the birth of a baby, a wedding of two in love, someone coming to Christ. Those wonderful things are equally real, yet we still on see in a mirror dimly the true redemption that we do not know yet.

Children of a Lesser God?

“Mike, your God is too small.” I just heard that again a few weeks ago. It was in response to my statement that some of us don’t believe the universe is only 6 thousand years old. I was perplexed by the statement because I had assumed that a god who created a universe that was 14 billion light years across and did it over 14 billion years was a pretty, darn, big God.

But I hear this about once every six months and most of the time it comes in response to me questioning a miracle. But I’m not some kind of jerk who enjoys going around popping people’s “miracle bubble” with an Empiricist’s pin. I’m not the one to say to someone, who is praying for their dear grandma’s cancer to be cured, “Sorry . . . ain’t going to happen.” Actually, I only show my hand when I’m pressed into a corner and have no choice but to lie or show my skepticism.

One example of this figurative corner was when my Christian friend came over when I was looking for the buried electric cable that brings power to the house. I was digging a ditch and wanted to avoid it. He confidently told me that God had given him the gift of dowsing. After walking up the driveway with the copper wires in his hand, he said, “Dig here.”

Now if I dig into my cable, I could be killed. So I said I would go and get my metal detector instead. I think that this really offended him. I had to show my hand because I don’t believe in dowsing, certainly dowsing as a gift from God. The Great Randi has a million dollar award waiting for the first person to do dowsing that is more accurate than pure chance. No one has claimed the money thus far.

Another example is where I’m in a conversation at church and it usually goes like this, “That was certainly a miracle by God wasn’t it . . . wasn’t it . . . wasn’t it?” So I either stand there in silence with a smirk or disclose my doubts. I’m really not into lying as much as I use to be when I was a full-blown Evangelical.

Then the same comment usually comes, “Mike, you have a small God.”

These days I carry this perpetual feeling of guilt and spiritual-inferiority. It is most manifest when I’m with a group of Christians and I am the only one to question a miracle, like landing a plane on the Hudson.

But the other day I was reading something that David Hume (fellow skeptic and British empiricist) said. He, in my paraphrase, said, that the only rational basis for believing that something is a miracle is that all alternative explanations are even more improbable.

I don’t come at this skepticism from a philosophical or even a theological position.

An example of a theological reason happened when I was a sophomore in college. A charismatic wave swept through our campus Christian ministries. Weird things were happening left and right. Not only were we speaking in gibberish every time we prayed but people’s legs were growing right before our eyes, God was speaking to us with an audible voice from the flames in our fireplace and etc.

As this same movement swept through our Campus Crusade counterparts, it created an issue. Most of them attended a large Baptist church just off campus. The pastor of the Baptist church, in response, preached a series of sermons against the charismatic movement. I went to listen to it . . . partially thinking this man was trying to quench the spirit of God . . . and partially to see if there really was another way of thinking. He preached from strictly a theological position of being a cessationist.

In my humble opinion, you can argue from scripture until you are blue in the face, you can twist and manipulate passages (milking them for all they are worth) but you can not reach an absolute answer on either side, if miracles still do happen or stopped with Christ.

A philosophical reason would be the case if I were a Naturalist, thus not accepting that supernatural could happen. Well, that certainly is not my position.

My thinking is, like David Hume’s, based on my life experiences. I’ve lived over fifty years and I’ve witnessed hundreds if not thousands of weak miracles . . . things that can easily have other explanations. Some of them quite cheesy (like the pastor stretching legs to cure all aliments). However, I have never witnessed a Biblical-grade miracle.

For example I’ve never seen someone who had been dead for days, buried and stinking, suddenly come back to life. I’ve never seen a huge body of water split right down the middle. I work in medicine and I’ve never seen a healing that wasn’t logical . . . such as someone eaten up in cancer and the next day it is totally gone.

However, because we are all fallen (and the Christian is only a mouse’s eyebrow better than the most horrendous nonbeliever), we all lie, embellish and deceive. It is part of our nature. I really piss off some of my Christian friends when I suggest that a Christian, somewhere, has lied. I don’t mean to be judgmental as I am capable of the worse kind of deception.

So my position about miracles is that those in the Bible are true and certainly did happen. But, I haven’t seen any real ones in my life. The closes I’ve seen was in Pakistan 25 years ago. But even that story was subject to the person embellishing about what had happened to them.

So, when I hear about a super-natural event, I think that I should be skeptical. After all, according to Hume, what is most logical? That a Christian could lie or embellish (in the midst of intense social coercion to do so) or that the event really did violate all the laws of nature?

But does this make Christian skeptics like me the child of a lesser God? I often feel like it does. I know that am often viewed that way. I do sometimes envy those days when I was considered “godly” by so many and I would testify (falsely) about miracles left and right.

But I really don’t believe that we skeptics have an inferior deity. First of all, my God breathed and a 14 billion light year wide universe came into being right out of his nostrils. Along with matter, came energy, time and space. That’s a pretty darn big miracle in my book. I’m convinced that the same God is still there and He hasn’t aged and gotten weaker . . . like I have.

I also believe that this God is a God of truth and is so powerful and deserves so much respect that I tremble at the thought of promoting lying, especially lying for Him. So does this make us skeptics unspiritual? Are we really children of a lesser God?

The Health Care Debate - Why is One Side "Christian?"

It is another one of those perplexing things in life. In my view, God has given us great creative freedom. Some of us love bluegrass music, some of us heavy metal. Some of us love collecting painted thimbles, some of us love rock climbing.

So, when it comes to politics, I believe that God has given us tremendous freedom according to our likes and dislikes. Because of this, I can have great respect for Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians.

Of course there are a few issues that are essentials . . . but just a few. Abortion may be one, but even that is not so black in white when it comes to politics. What I mean is, that while the Republicans might stand more in the defense of the unborn, sometimes the Democrats stand more in the defense of the born . . . including the moms.

But what I find scary is when people wrap their political views around the cross. That is sad. I saw the video on the news of people screaming against the health care bill. Some of these people are the home-schooling, very conservative Christian groups who see the health care bill as another plot by Satan . . . you know good guys Vs bad guys.

I really think, and Frank Schaeffer brought this to my attention first, that the Republican party has bought the Evangelicals. The price the republicans paid was being pro-life. But once they got the Evangelicals in their camp, they kept them. Therefore whatever view the Republican party has, becomes become the mantra of the Evangelicals.

I vote both ways. Most of the issues are the non-essentials. We have Titanic freedom to be completely for high taxes and comprehensive single - payer health care. We also have the freedom for wanting low taxes and a free-market health care system. It is about taste, not religious dogma. God is silent on those trivial matters. Why did this become a Jesus issue? Keep Him out of it!

I just had to say something because I've been very involved in the past few days about the health care bill. But all my involvement is about my personal views, my professional views and has nothing to do with Jesus.

Spring is Divine

I absolutely fell in love with Spring when I was living in Marquette, Michigan. There the ground disappears beneath feet of snow, staring in late October. You start seeing glances of dirt or brown grass reappearing in late April. In other words, the winters were very, very long.

I can remember so clearly how spring would then burst onto the scene the first week of May. The piles of brown snow would melt rapidly and tulips and daffodils would be sprouting. The bountiful apple trees would blossom and our sheep would lamb. There is nothing more glorious than watching little lambs trying out their new legs to leaps and bounds here and there.

Here is the northwest, we are not buried beneath feet of snow for months, but beneath thick ocean clouds. That's not a bad thing as I like the melancholy of a gloomy day. and the sound of drizzle on our metal roof.

But I'm still a lover of spring. Here, spring comes earlier but no less glorious. Our cloudy skies abruptly give way to skies of total blue. Each year they seem a deeper blue than the year before.

In our valley we are surrounded by snow-capped mountains in almost a 360 degree circumference. The sea around our island, mimicking the sky above goes from a foamy gray to a brilliant blue. Now the sea is dotted with white triangles of sails.

Between the jagged, iced peaks the North Cascades, lies some of the flattest land I've ever seen. The contrast is profound. Our number one crop in this richly agriculture basin are flowers. The early Dutch settlers brought in tulips and daffodils. It is surreal to walk these fields that are so deeply purple, or red or yellow that it makes you dizzy. I would love to walk them with Van Gogh and then sit in silence as he worked his impressionistic magic on the canvas.

Spring does bring a feeling of hope eternal. Of God really being there and a future that is bright in this life and in the near more perfect earth. The worries of the winter, the pessimism all seem to melt away like that nasty brown snow of Marquette.

All this was to lead up to a poem about spring by Frost.

A Prayer in Spring

Robert Frost (1915)

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. And make us happy in the darting bird That suddenly above the bees is heard, The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, And off a blossom in mid air stands still. For this is love and nothing else is love, The which it is reserved for God above To sanctify to what far ends He will, But which it only needs that we fulfil

How's Your "Christian" Video Library?

About two years ago I ordered the video series by Francis Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live. The best source was a reformed (Christian) on-line book and video store. Well, now I'm on their mailing list.

About once every week or so I get ads to buy more videos. Once before I talked about the one about Global Warming. But I wanted to share a few more with you, and see if you think any of these belong in a Christian bookstore.

In case you can't read the titles on the photos, I will list them here:


(Wonderful stories about the founders of the Tea Party Movement)

Hillary Uncensored

Masculine Christian Leadership

Harry Potter Witchcraft

The Drugging of our Children ADHD

The Biblical View of Global Warming

Shakey Town/ Gays in San Francisco

and

Monstrous Regiment of Women.

So my question is, what the hell do these topics have to do with Jesus? I could see these videos in some right wing group headquarters or possibility a (conservative) Republican office . . . but in a Christian book store?

It is fine to align yourself with all kinds of personal interest groups. But whenever you mix Jesus with these interest/political groups . . . it is always a huge problem. This is what I think it is talking about in Colossians 2:8

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."

Please understand that I'm not speaking against the right wing agenda . . . nor the left. I'm speaking against mixing Jesus with topics that are political and were NOT addressed in scripture.

The Intellectual Green Zone and The "Dangers" Lurking Outside

Three things brought this to my mind over the week end. It all started Friday night when I came out of the gym and was listening to Terry Gross' Fresh Air.

The first part of her program had Bible scholar and author, Bart Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible ). I didn't know anything about him and still know very little. But apparently he was a conservative evangelical, graduate from Moody Bible College . . . who then, step by step slid away. He now considers himself to be an agnostic, but he talks like an atheist. What I mean, is he speaks with great confidence that God is not there nor is there an after life.

The thing that caught my attention and gave me a reason to ponder was something Mr. Ehrman said. While he was an evangelical, he allowed himself to question the "Christian un-questionables" such as, is the Bible true. This open-mindedness is what eventually led him to his present position.

The very next segment of Fresh Air was about the movie "The Green Zone." I didn't listen to that interview because I was on my way up to the high school where I was meeting my wife and son to watch a school musical, "The Wedding Singer." But I started thinking about this concept of a "Green Zone" of thinking, outside of which lurks incredible dangers (just like in Iraq's worst days).

I remember after my first great disillusionment with Christianity (and was a momentary-agnostic) I told my missionary boss that, "I want to go back home and think through my faith."

I remember sitting in his living room in Nicosia, Cyrpus. He was stroking his goatee and sipping some wine and he gave me this stern warning, "That's a very dangerous thing to do. I knew another missionary who tried to think his way through his faith and now he is an atheist."

But, I really had no choice. I was at a point that if I just simply stopped thinking altogether I would have been an Evangel-zombie for the rest of my life, or stayed in an agnostic purgatory.

But is there an intellectual Green Zone outside which, we should not allow ourselves even to ponder or disaster will come? I honestly don’t think so because the denial of knowledge never seems like the best way to preserve our faith. But I’m open to thinking about it.

The next event, which is connected to (loosely) to the above comments, was the play itself. I knew very little about the play except that is was a musical and based on the same story as the movie by the same name (staring Alan Sandler). As we entered, there was a sign that said on the door, “Warning. Content Rated PG.”

I have to say, the play surprised me by the sexual content and language. I wasn’t offended. But I did feel uncomfortable hearing high school students taking God’s name in vain as part of their script. The dancing was provocative too. Especially one number performed right in front of us (as we were near the front row) where a girl had the main character on a bed and did a song and dance that was just shy of a pole dance and wearing a little more than panties.

Okay, I’m speaking honestly here (and I am candid in what I write here) that I wasn’t tempted personally, but just felt awkward. I would be horrified to see my daughter performing that number. But we sat through the whole musical and I focused on the fantastic talent that the kids exhibited and I thought about the tremendous work to memorize the lines of dialog and the choreography. But even though I felt awkward, the thoughts of walking out never crossed my mind. I’m not sure what the point of that would have been.

However, it became a topic of conversation at our church yesterday. A couple of church members had family in the play (mostly playing music). Some church members walked out. They didn’t walk out at the G-D words or the pole dance, but much earlier than that. They walked out when a very brief dance number had two boys dancing together and then (as each dancing pair did) one drop down on his knee and propose to the other. There was another gay scene later in the play (just where one of the main characters confessed to being gay).

So, when it comes to behavior and tolerance of behavior is there a Green Zone, outside of which we are in trouble? I'm not talking about doing the behavior (pole dancing) but watching a movie or play with those things in it. The people who confessed to walking out on the school play were esteemed as doing the right thing and having greater than average integrity, such as ours (no one said that and they didn’t even know we stayed, but speaking in general terms).

My boundary has always been things that could make me, personally (or those with me) stumble. Nudity is the obvious one for most men. But I could imagine that if someone had been abused as a child, it would be outside the “Green Zone” for them to go to a movie or play that glorified (or even dealt with) child abuse.

But is there a “Green Zone” besides this?

I have more thoughts that I wanted to throw out but this is getting long and I have more patients to see.

I will mention that the third related topic was about our pastor doing a discussion on the book The Shack last night. He (which didn’t surprise me) opposed the book on most accounts . . . while he could see some benefit in extreme situations. He had three issues about the book that would put it on his black list. One of them was that the author, William P Young, has a very low view of the local church (not sure what he wrote that suggested that) and the pastor warned that “Anyone with a low view of the local church is dangerous, because God has a very high view of the church.”

His opinion left me thinking that the pastor probably thinks (and if he knew what I really thought) would consider me as a very, very dangerous man (outside the Green Zone). But I have a deep love for the Church. I long for the Church. That’s why imitations frustrate me so much.