The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

and for the people, shall not perish from the earth” Lately it seems that some Christians believe that once something is legal, or constitutional, enacting it becomes moral, and that our lawmakers, and executive rise above moral responsibility when they act within the law. This is dangerous non-sense.  Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg pose the most ethically challenging description of a democracy in the modern era. They underscore this simple fact: In the United States the people, the voters, bear direct moral responsibility for the actions undertaken on their behalf by the government. They created the government and they have to own its actions.  Of course the term “government” is misleading. It isn’t just the voters who are responsible for government. The government itself is made up of elected individuals. Because legislators have the power to create, change, and end laws they individually bear moral responsibility for their actions as law makers.  And even the executive ...

Not us. I heard another one of those sermons, another us-centric distortion of the meaning of scripture. The passage was Matthew 4:1-8, the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. You know the story. Jesus has been fasting 40 days and nights when Satan appears and twice challenges him to prove he is the Son of God. “If you are the Son of God . . . .” The third time Satan makes an offer: "“All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”  You don’t have to be a genius interpreter to see that Jesus is the central character in this story, and that the central question is what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. The Son of God is nourished by God’s Word. The Son of God does not put the Lord to the test. And finally the Son of God will not, for anything or even everything, worship someone other than God. In the temptation of Jesus we find essential parameters for understanding what the claim that Jesus is the Son of God means. He is not his own lifestyle c...

We're responsible even when we’re not to blame. As our nation considers the question of who, when, and how we’ll allow immigrants to come into the US, and our president leads with his well known moral constancy, it is worthwhile to consider what Christians believe about the relationship between responsibility and blame.  The answer is easy. The life of Christ, and the parable of the Good Samaritan make the same point:  We are responsible for the welfare of others even when we are not to blame for their suffering.  And as Christ showed on the cross, it isn’t just a matter of innocent victims. As he took responsibility for us because of our entirely self-inflicted sin, so we have responsibility even for those who brought their problems on themselves.  The problem we face living out a Christ-like life is that we have multiple overwhelming and conflicting responsibilities for the welfare of our neighbors and family. They are overwhelming because no amount of personal tim...

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature as exposed to our method of questioning.” Werner Heisenberg Heisenberg’s observation would be just as true if we removed the limiting term “nature” and replaced it with “reality.” Either way it is a reminder that the answers we find in any inquiry are in part determined by ourselves as questioners. The imagined objective perspective is at the least not omnipotent, and is in fact shot through with subjective interests. In the end we only ask the questions that interest us. Michael Polyani noted half a century ago that these questions are inextricably caught up in a community of inquiry, and with that community, a tradition of inquiry.  This is obvious if one reads almost any work in modern physics. I have recently undertaken a genealogy of the quest to understand scientifically the origin of the universe. Reading over a variety of works by Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking, Adam Frank, Carl Sagan, Richard Jastrow, and many others I ha...

This week at the American Society of Missiology a common theme emerged, one which is really common sense. From firey activists with anecdotal evidence to soft spoken scholars like Amos Yong, with his thoroughly systematic explorations, there was a common consensus relating to developing Christian love for persons of other religions. Changing minds doesn't necessarily change hearts or behaviors. Orthodoxy doesn ’ t create morality. We academics put far too much faith in the capacity of the intellect and the will to generate Christian behavior. Which humans have known since Aristotle and Confucius, not to mention Jesus and Paul, is nonsense. The will becomes capable of responding to the intellect only through long training and the formation of habits that are the muscles of the will. It is common sense that having a theoretical knowledge of tennis, down to the physics of string on ball, will not make you a Wimbledon champion. You get there by training. By actually hitting a ball hu...

No.  The term “secular,” in terms of a public realm absent all religion or reference to transcendent values didn’t exist in the time of the founding of the United States. The founders of the United States were careful to exclude both religion generally, and distinctly Christian expressions specifically, from the constituting of the US as a nation. And of course the First Amendment forbids the government from establishing a religion.  Yet references to transcendent values that are assumed to guide the public are foundational to the beginnings of the United States. Take the Declaration of Independence: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel...

I’m re-reading Sunquist and Young,  The Gospel and Pluralism Today.  It is a review with responses, 25 years later, of Leslie Newbigin's groundbreaking work  The Foolishness to the Greeks .  In it I came across a remarkable quote: “Newbigin maintains that epistemology is the key to missiology in the West.” (Esther Meek) What Dr. Meek means by this is that Newbigin sought to demonstrate that the epistemic foundations of modernity are both incoherent and antithetical to the gospel. Neebigin proposes an alternative epistemology, one that has been eagerly embraced by western Christians. It is built upon the centrality of faith in God as revealed in Christ providing the framework through which Christians comprehend reality.  There is a great deal to be said, and written, for Newbigin’s work, and that of Michael Polyani who is a key resource in his thinking. And there are many others who in one form or another have taken up the epistemological crit...

No. Although it is a nation with a lot of Christians.   Recently Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, as well as many other evangelicals have sought to assert that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Their arguments are a tissue of half-truths and misrepresentations, but need to be addressed.  https://ptv.org/america-is-a-christian-nation/  will give you as much insight as you wish into the way in which Jeffress frames his argument. Assertion 1: " 52 out of the 55 signers of the constitution, the framers of the constitution, were evangelical believers. ”Clearly this argument turns on the anachronistic application of the modern term “evangelical” to men who lived over 200 years ago, before the term was ever used. So what about the founding fathers in context? If we turn to Encyclopedia Britannica we find a more nuanced answer that is far from Jeffress’ assertions.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-C...

The Dallas Morning News ran an article on the recent school shooting in Sante Fe, Texas. It noted that in the aftermath of the shooting not only explicitly religious responses, but religion (almost entirely Christian) in the school itself was increasing. The instinctive response of this East Texas community was to turn to God for both answers and solace. Prayer meetings, vigils, memorials, and now Bible studies and prayer groups are an outcome far more visible than Texas governor Gregg Abbott’s three hastily called meetings with lawmakers and community leaders. We don’t know which will be more consequential,  but its clear nothing will happen quickly in the realm of public policy. This is a stark contrast to the responses following the shooting at the Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. That shooting led almost instantly to student outrage turned to political action. And consequential political action. The state of Florida quickly changed some of its gun laws and the students ...

What!!!!!  But wait. It might be worthwhile to consider the man.  Because if the reports are true you can say this about Paige Patterson: his behavior over his career as a pastor was completely consistent, and completely consistent with an unwavering commitment to the teaching of scripture.  After all, what would Paul do? Would Paul ever counsel a woman to divorce an abusive husband? That wouldn’t have even been a possibility in Paul’s time. He would have told the man to behave better. That is clear. So would Dr. Patterson.   What about reporting sexual abuse to the authorities. Well Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, as well as Paul were pretty clear that conflicts between Christians, not least husbands and wives, need to be resolved inside the Christian community, with excommunication as a last resort. (And I note, that doesn’t do much for the woman.) And this was completely consistent with 1st century Jewish, and indeed subsequent Rabbinic Jewish teaching. When you live u...