First, I'll tell you about an incident in the Bible which I often tell young people about when they are just getting started with Jesus. It's the last part of the 6th chapter of John's Gospel, which is the 4th book of the New Testament.
Jesus had been doing some preaching, some of which was intended to make the audience understand that it wasn't enough for them to do this or that good deed; they needed to have a relationship with Jesus Himself. Many of His hearers decided that this was too heavy for them, so they quit listening to Him. Jesus then asked His closest friends, the Apostles, "Will you also leave?" Then the Apostle Peter--for whom Peter in the Narnia stories is named--replied, "Lord, whom could we go to? YOU have the words of eternal life; and we believe, and have come to know, that You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
This episode shows that there is no substitute for Jesus, no "Plan B." Sometimes an emotional mood, having nothing to do with actual facts, makes us feel as if the Christian life isn't working out. At such times, it's important to remember that Jesus is THE ONLY hope.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
A Poem, As A Reminder That Spring Will Return
I wrote this in rebuttal to faith-debunkers who try to
convince us that everything spiritual is "really" only
a clumsy interpretation of naturalistic phenomena...
The trees condense a cloud of leafy mist;
And, like the robins coming home to perch,
Once more the skeptic and materialist
Wield springtime as a flail against the church.
“Your Resurrection’s just a metaphor
Of spring’s renewal!” Saying this, they tell
The world that they don’t know, or they ignore,
The different climate in old Israel.
There, winter was the growing time, and spring
Meant harvest, endings, dryness—not rebirth;
Yet there and then the resurrected King
Leaped far above the seasons of the Earth.
While spring, as we know spring, serves for a sign,
There’s more than metaphor in the Divine.
convince us that everything spiritual is "really" only
a clumsy interpretation of naturalistic phenomena...
The trees condense a cloud of leafy mist;
And, like the robins coming home to perch,
Once more the skeptic and materialist
Wield springtime as a flail against the church.
“Your Resurrection’s just a metaphor
Of spring’s renewal!” Saying this, they tell
The world that they don’t know, or they ignore,
The different climate in old Israel.
There, winter was the growing time, and spring
Meant harvest, endings, dryness—not rebirth;
Yet there and then the resurrected King
Leaped far above the seasons of the Earth.
While spring, as we know spring, serves for a sign,
There’s more than metaphor in the Divine.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Originally from September 2006: "The Enigma of the Enabler"
When King David was nearing the end of his days in
I Kings 1, "Then Adonijah the son of Haggith [Haggith
being a member of David's harem] exalted himself, saying
'I will be king' [in disregard of God's decree that
Solomon must inherit David's throne]....And his father
had not displeased him at any time in saying ' Why hast
thou done so?' "
I am not sitting at the keyboard to discuss front-line,
over-the-top evildoers who wake up every morning eagerly
planning how they'll do harm today. Neither am I here
to discuss persons who are forced to do the bidding of
evildoers by direct threat of death, like the Western
journalists who recently were forced at gunpoint to
recite nonsense about how the dogma of their Islamist
captors was so good and merciful. I have in mind a
vast, blurry spectrum of enablers--persons who do NOT
wish to do evil, and who don't have guns at their heads
either, but who are externally deceived or self-deceived
into passively or even actively helping evildoers to
succeed in wickedness.
King David, with whose case I began, is easy enough to
remark on. He had committed such great sins himself that,
after he had repented of them, he felt as if he had lost
moral authority to rebuke others. Thus he had been
indulgent with his selfish son Adonijah, and likewise
with Absalom before this time; and each of these princes
had rewarded his indulgence with open rebellion and
attempted usurpation. But there are other enablers
of evil who themselves have never sunk so far in moral
degradation as David had sunk for awhile...who really
do not wish to do wrong or to acquiesce in wrong
...and yet who still find themselves giving a green
light to the most blatant and aggressive sins by others.
Just as there are various motives for the aggressive sins,
there are also various reasons why well-intentioned
bystanders hold the door open for the offenders.
Where David was inhibited from opposing wrong because of
his individual guilt, others may be similarly inhibited
because they feel that they fall under a collective guilt.
Many white Americans are conditioned to think that, if
they criticize any black person for any reason whatsoever,
this will prove them to be racists--or anyway, cause them
to be accused of racism. Jesse Lee Peterson, an outstanding
African-American clergyman, deals excellently with this
area of enabling in his book "SCAM." I recommend it
unreservedly; and along with it, I recommend Joseph C.
Phillips' autobiography "HE TALK LIKE A WHITE BOY."
Next, and symbiotic to the previous, are persons who hold
themselves to be members of an innocent-victim group--and
who, though they would not commit crimes themselves, are
prepared to make excuses for fellow victim-group members
who do. Thus, there are Muslims who would never
themselves wish to murder or terrorize anyone, but who
make excuses for Muslim terrorists because they think that
the terrorists have legitimate grievances.
Of course, the terrorists love having decent, civilized
Muslims run interference for them. Fascists and Marxists
always love to trick well-meaning people into identifying
with them. One of the sneakiest tricks the Nazis pulled
off was to make many civil-service jobs part of the SS!
In this way, harmless accountants and clerks found
themselves wearing SS uniforms...and wanting to believe
there was nothing wrong with the agency to which they
now belonged.
But let's bring it back down to a more personal level.
I said earlier that I was not concerned with people giving
in to a natural fear of a threatened violent end; but
there are forms of cowardice which are not about physical
danger. Suppose, for instance, that a go-along-to-get-
along male executive works in an office where one or
more female coworkers are known to be skillful at playing
victim. One of these women, having chosen to take a dislike
to a new male employee, concocts a false accusation of
sexual harassment against him. The executive, afraid of
being falsely accused of enabling the imaginary harassment,
is quick to join in the condemnations, pompously telling
the falsely-accused man, "YOU KNOW what harassment is!!"
Actually, it's the spineless executive who "knows" what
something is: he knows that, for politically-correct
lynch mobs, the mere fact that an accusation is made at
all is proof that the accusation is true (provided that
the accuser is part of a sacred-cow more-victimized-than-
thou group). Having once taken the side of the false
accuser, the executive has a stake in NOT searching for
the actual facts; if no defense for the accused is
allowed, the executive will manage in a day or two to
convince himself that he ISN'T a wimpy coward and he
ISN'T enabling slanderers.
Keeping peace within a family is a root of all sorts
of craven concessions. The squeaky wheel not only gets
the grease, it may also get preferential treatment by
its parents, cousins, etc. If one could study all the
group activities of an assortment of extended families,
one would sometimes find all selections of activity
(baseball game vs. movie, swimming vs. museums, etc.)
leaning heavily toward ONE family member's preferences
--because that one is grossly and stubbornly selfish,
and all the others give in to him or her just to
"keep the peace."
Christians not only are not immune to becoming enablers
of wrong conduct; often we EXCEL at enabling. C.S. Lewis,
in "The Screwtape Letters" and elsewhere, warned against
taking only one portion of Christian doctrine and
regarding it as being the whole thing; but it still
happens. And partial following of Biblical ethics leads
to indulgence of whatever sins are not recognized
as being prohibited by that part of God's Word on which
we focus.
In past generations, many Christians fixated on doctrines
about authority and submission, and thus (to our lasting
shame) would make excuses for slaveowning and wife-abuse.
But now the big fashion is to fixate only upon tolerance
and forgiveness --with a result amazingly similar to the
older fashion, in that wrongdoers STILL get a free pass.
The way it works now is that, precisely because a blatant
wrongdoer makes heavy demands on our patience and forgiveness,
by concentrating our attention on being patient with him
we can feel good about ourselves. "Look how much Christian
love I'm showing to him!" we tell ourselves--while we
completely forget the less-demanding and thus less-
interesting persons whom our favorite injures.
Christians of the invertebrate sort want us to "forgive"
--read, CONDONE AND APPROVE--a female "Christian" singer
and a male country-music star for having both left their
first spouses to marry each other. The husband whom she
abandoned, and the wife whom her lover abandoned, are not
straining our patience, and so are not contributing to our
pride in how tolerant we are; therefore, that abandoned
husband and that abandoned wife don't count. All the
grease goes to the squeaky wheels.
Even if there were no dictatorships or terrorists for us
to make useless appeasing concessions to, there would
still be this problem of making wrongful concessions to
the sinful conduct of individuals all around us. Preferring
the offender OVER his victims only does more harm in the
long run. Easy there, I am NOT suggesting that we all be
severe, judgmental critics of everything others do; but
for all of us there will be some occasions where the right
and wrong are clear, and we must make a stand for
what's right instead of pampering the troublemaker.
Proverbs 28:4 says, "They that forsake the law praise
the wicked; but such as keep the law contend with them."
We need not forget about grace and mercy to oppose evil;
in fact, sometimes it IS precisely our OPPOSITION to evil
that wakes wrongdoers up to their need of repentance. Many
a soul will needlessly end up lost because he was "lovingly"
enabled in unrepented sin when he should have been reproved.
God help us, not to enjoy condemning others, but also NOT
to be foolish or cowardly enablers of what's wrong. Of course,
the enemy of our souls will try to confuse us on the question
of what is enabling and what is valid Christian tolerance;
that's why we must always pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance.
I Kings 1, "Then Adonijah the son of Haggith [Haggith
being a member of David's harem] exalted himself, saying
'I will be king' [in disregard of God's decree that
Solomon must inherit David's throne]....And his father
had not displeased him at any time in saying ' Why hast
thou done so?' "
I am not sitting at the keyboard to discuss front-line,
over-the-top evildoers who wake up every morning eagerly
planning how they'll do harm today. Neither am I here
to discuss persons who are forced to do the bidding of
evildoers by direct threat of death, like the Western
journalists who recently were forced at gunpoint to
recite nonsense about how the dogma of their Islamist
captors was so good and merciful. I have in mind a
vast, blurry spectrum of enablers--persons who do NOT
wish to do evil, and who don't have guns at their heads
either, but who are externally deceived or self-deceived
into passively or even actively helping evildoers to
succeed in wickedness.
King David, with whose case I began, is easy enough to
remark on. He had committed such great sins himself that,
after he had repented of them, he felt as if he had lost
moral authority to rebuke others. Thus he had been
indulgent with his selfish son Adonijah, and likewise
with Absalom before this time; and each of these princes
had rewarded his indulgence with open rebellion and
attempted usurpation. But there are other enablers
of evil who themselves have never sunk so far in moral
degradation as David had sunk for awhile...who really
do not wish to do wrong or to acquiesce in wrong
...and yet who still find themselves giving a green
light to the most blatant and aggressive sins by others.
Just as there are various motives for the aggressive sins,
there are also various reasons why well-intentioned
bystanders hold the door open for the offenders.
Where David was inhibited from opposing wrong because of
his individual guilt, others may be similarly inhibited
because they feel that they fall under a collective guilt.
Many white Americans are conditioned to think that, if
they criticize any black person for any reason whatsoever,
this will prove them to be racists--or anyway, cause them
to be accused of racism. Jesse Lee Peterson, an outstanding
African-American clergyman, deals excellently with this
area of enabling in his book "SCAM." I recommend it
unreservedly; and along with it, I recommend Joseph C.
Phillips' autobiography "HE TALK LIKE A WHITE BOY."
Next, and symbiotic to the previous, are persons who hold
themselves to be members of an innocent-victim group--and
who, though they would not commit crimes themselves, are
prepared to make excuses for fellow victim-group members
who do. Thus, there are Muslims who would never
themselves wish to murder or terrorize anyone, but who
make excuses for Muslim terrorists because they think that
the terrorists have legitimate grievances.
Of course, the terrorists love having decent, civilized
Muslims run interference for them. Fascists and Marxists
always love to trick well-meaning people into identifying
with them. One of the sneakiest tricks the Nazis pulled
off was to make many civil-service jobs part of the SS!
In this way, harmless accountants and clerks found
themselves wearing SS uniforms...and wanting to believe
there was nothing wrong with the agency to which they
now belonged.
But let's bring it back down to a more personal level.
I said earlier that I was not concerned with people giving
in to a natural fear of a threatened violent end; but
there are forms of cowardice which are not about physical
danger. Suppose, for instance, that a go-along-to-get-
along male executive works in an office where one or
more female coworkers are known to be skillful at playing
victim. One of these women, having chosen to take a dislike
to a new male employee, concocts a false accusation of
sexual harassment against him. The executive, afraid of
being falsely accused of enabling the imaginary harassment,
is quick to join in the condemnations, pompously telling
the falsely-accused man, "YOU KNOW what harassment is!!"
Actually, it's the spineless executive who "knows" what
something is: he knows that, for politically-correct
lynch mobs, the mere fact that an accusation is made at
all is proof that the accusation is true (provided that
the accuser is part of a sacred-cow more-victimized-than-
thou group). Having once taken the side of the false
accuser, the executive has a stake in NOT searching for
the actual facts; if no defense for the accused is
allowed, the executive will manage in a day or two to
convince himself that he ISN'T a wimpy coward and he
ISN'T enabling slanderers.
Keeping peace within a family is a root of all sorts
of craven concessions. The squeaky wheel not only gets
the grease, it may also get preferential treatment by
its parents, cousins, etc. If one could study all the
group activities of an assortment of extended families,
one would sometimes find all selections of activity
(baseball game vs. movie, swimming vs. museums, etc.)
leaning heavily toward ONE family member's preferences
--because that one is grossly and stubbornly selfish,
and all the others give in to him or her just to
"keep the peace."
Christians not only are not immune to becoming enablers
of wrong conduct; often we EXCEL at enabling. C.S. Lewis,
in "The Screwtape Letters" and elsewhere, warned against
taking only one portion of Christian doctrine and
regarding it as being the whole thing; but it still
happens. And partial following of Biblical ethics leads
to indulgence of whatever sins are not recognized
as being prohibited by that part of God's Word on which
we focus.
In past generations, many Christians fixated on doctrines
about authority and submission, and thus (to our lasting
shame) would make excuses for slaveowning and wife-abuse.
But now the big fashion is to fixate only upon tolerance
and forgiveness --with a result amazingly similar to the
older fashion, in that wrongdoers STILL get a free pass.
The way it works now is that, precisely because a blatant
wrongdoer makes heavy demands on our patience and forgiveness,
by concentrating our attention on being patient with him
we can feel good about ourselves. "Look how much Christian
love I'm showing to him!" we tell ourselves--while we
completely forget the less-demanding and thus less-
interesting persons whom our favorite injures.
Christians of the invertebrate sort want us to "forgive"
--read, CONDONE AND APPROVE--a female "Christian" singer
and a male country-music star for having both left their
first spouses to marry each other. The husband whom she
abandoned, and the wife whom her lover abandoned, are not
straining our patience, and so are not contributing to our
pride in how tolerant we are; therefore, that abandoned
husband and that abandoned wife don't count. All the
grease goes to the squeaky wheels.
Even if there were no dictatorships or terrorists for us
to make useless appeasing concessions to, there would
still be this problem of making wrongful concessions to
the sinful conduct of individuals all around us. Preferring
the offender OVER his victims only does more harm in the
long run. Easy there, I am NOT suggesting that we all be
severe, judgmental critics of everything others do; but
for all of us there will be some occasions where the right
and wrong are clear, and we must make a stand for
what's right instead of pampering the troublemaker.
Proverbs 28:4 says, "They that forsake the law praise
the wicked; but such as keep the law contend with them."
We need not forget about grace and mercy to oppose evil;
in fact, sometimes it IS precisely our OPPOSITION to evil
that wakes wrongdoers up to their need of repentance. Many
a soul will needlessly end up lost because he was "lovingly"
enabled in unrepented sin when he should have been reproved.
God help us, not to enjoy condemning others, but also NOT
to be foolish or cowardly enablers of what's wrong. Of course,
the enemy of our souls will try to confuse us on the question
of what is enabling and what is valid Christian tolerance;
that's why we must always pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Clarifying the Definition of Self-Pity
When I was a college boy, I felt very sorry for myself
because I couldn't get dates with girls. Pop psychology
would say that I had low self-esteem, that I did not see
myself as good enough to deserve attention from girls;
but pop psychology would be dead wrong. I did think I
deserved to get dates; my _high_ self-pity co-existed
with _high_ self-esteem, as I resented being denied the
respect I always thought I deserved.
The cluelessness of pop psychology about what is entailed
in self-pity has also infected the evangelical realm, as
I have seen terribly often.
There have been countless times when I've heard pastors
preach a message amounting to: "Your problem is that you
don't think you're good enough to be loved by God; you
think you're so bad that He'll never forgive you. Well,
here's the good news: you can quit beating up on yourself,
because God's love is unconditional! Yayyy!" On some of
these countless occasions, I have said to the pastors
afterward, "Where are you _finding_ all these people who
are so ashamed of themselves, who want God's forgiveness
but think they're too sinful to receive it? I haven't
been finding them; what I find are conceited, arrogant,
stubborn rebels who not only _don't_ think they need
God's forgiveness, but even flatter themselves that
they're _better_ than God and He owes _them_ an apology!"
Then the pastors always assured me that yes, they really
do routinely encounter humble souls who fully understand
and admit their guilt for sin, and whose _only_ problem
is not having confidence in God's unconditional love.
This discrepancy baffled me for a long time, since I
was sure those pastors would never knowingly lie.
Then it struck me.
I'm not a pastor...so people talking to me don't feel
compelled to say what they assume a pastor would want
to hear! Suddenly it all began to fall into place.
Now, I am convinced that there are many people who
_want_ to say, "God's demands are unreasonable; I'm
afraid that I'll never get His approval, not because
I'm so bad, because He is insanely vindictive." That's
what they _really_ think; but they don't dare say this
to a pastor, so they change it to "I'm not good enough
to be forgiven." The well-meaning pastor goes into
his memorized pep-talk about unconditional love; and
the person counselled goes away with his or her actual
self-pity problem completely unaddressed and unresolved.
I'm not saying that there are no genuine cases of people
deeply remorseful for their sin and meekly afraid of
being condemned; but there's already _more_ than enough
unconditional-love talk circulating to meet their needs.
What _isn't_ circulating nearly enough is discussion of
REPENTANCE: the very thing that is needed to break some
self-pitying souls out of the mental bondage in which
they imagine themselves _entitled_ to approval without
having to change any of their own attitudes.
because I couldn't get dates with girls. Pop psychology
would say that I had low self-esteem, that I did not see
myself as good enough to deserve attention from girls;
but pop psychology would be dead wrong. I did think I
deserved to get dates; my _high_ self-pity co-existed
with _high_ self-esteem, as I resented being denied the
respect I always thought I deserved.
The cluelessness of pop psychology about what is entailed
in self-pity has also infected the evangelical realm, as
I have seen terribly often.
There have been countless times when I've heard pastors
preach a message amounting to: "Your problem is that you
don't think you're good enough to be loved by God; you
think you're so bad that He'll never forgive you. Well,
here's the good news: you can quit beating up on yourself,
because God's love is unconditional! Yayyy!" On some of
these countless occasions, I have said to the pastors
afterward, "Where are you _finding_ all these people who
are so ashamed of themselves, who want God's forgiveness
but think they're too sinful to receive it? I haven't
been finding them; what I find are conceited, arrogant,
stubborn rebels who not only _don't_ think they need
God's forgiveness, but even flatter themselves that
they're _better_ than God and He owes _them_ an apology!"
Then the pastors always assured me that yes, they really
do routinely encounter humble souls who fully understand
and admit their guilt for sin, and whose _only_ problem
is not having confidence in God's unconditional love.
This discrepancy baffled me for a long time, since I
was sure those pastors would never knowingly lie.
Then it struck me.
I'm not a pastor...so people talking to me don't feel
compelled to say what they assume a pastor would want
to hear! Suddenly it all began to fall into place.
Now, I am convinced that there are many people who
_want_ to say, "God's demands are unreasonable; I'm
afraid that I'll never get His approval, not because
I'm so bad, because He is insanely vindictive." That's
what they _really_ think; but they don't dare say this
to a pastor, so they change it to "I'm not good enough
to be forgiven." The well-meaning pastor goes into
his memorized pep-talk about unconditional love; and
the person counselled goes away with his or her actual
self-pity problem completely unaddressed and unresolved.
I'm not saying that there are no genuine cases of people
deeply remorseful for their sin and meekly afraid of
being condemned; but there's already _more_ than enough
unconditional-love talk circulating to meet their needs.
What _isn't_ circulating nearly enough is discussion of
REPENTANCE: the very thing that is needed to break some
self-pitying souls out of the mental bondage in which
they imagine themselves _entitled_ to approval without
having to change any of their own attitudes.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
In Fairness to the Left
Although some liberals want to believe that persons like
me refuse ever to see anything wrong with private enterprise,
it is not so.
Some weeks ago, I was listening to a bit of Air America, and
Robert Kennedy Jr. was denouncing the Chevron Oil Corporation
for dumping toxic chemicals, untreated, right into the water
supply of many South American towns. He told of numerous people
and domestic animals being poisoned because of this criminal
negligence. From what I heard, I see no way anyone could get
away with faking this report for long; so I do believe that
Kennedy was telling the truth.
Contrary to stereotyping, social conservatives do not actually
desire to see the whole biosphere incurably poisoned. So if it
takes a liberal to expose this particular crime, go for it!
me refuse ever to see anything wrong with private enterprise,
it is not so.
Some weeks ago, I was listening to a bit of Air America, and
Robert Kennedy Jr. was denouncing the Chevron Oil Corporation
for dumping toxic chemicals, untreated, right into the water
supply of many South American towns. He told of numerous people
and domestic animals being poisoned because of this criminal
negligence. From what I heard, I see no way anyone could get
away with faking this report for long; so I do believe that
Kennedy was telling the truth.
Contrary to stereotyping, social conservatives do not actually
desire to see the whole biosphere incurably poisoned. So if it
takes a liberal to expose this particular crime, go for it!
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