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Jun 22, 2014

Is Christianity A Narrow, Arrogant Moralist Straightjacket?

Is Christianity A Narrow, Arrogant Moralist Straightjacket?

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: God is NOT Dead!

Category: Christian Apologetics

Keywords: world-view, truth claim, christianity, religions

Summary:

This message examines some of the criticisms of Christianity as a religion and particularly as a world-view that makes exclusive, universal truth claims. It also looks at how Christianity differs from EVERY other religion/world-view.

Detail:

Is Christianity A Narrow, Arrogant Moralist Straightjacket?

June 22, 2014

Well, we’ve come to the end of nearly two months of looking at how credible belief in God is and specifically the claims of Christ and Christianity. As we draw this to a close today, I’d like to ask you, how has God used this series in your life? What good, if any, has it done for you or someone you know?

________________-

[Comment on how this series has targeted primarily “loving God with all your MIND.” Developing truly Christ-grounded and guided thoughts, reason and logic are as spiritual as singing praise songs or having your daily devotions in the word. Don’t let the anti-intellectualism of our day make you anti-Christ-like in your thoughts. Being a Christian means I must learn to love God with all my mind…and sometimes that will make my mind tired!

It also means we must learn to do spiritual battle where God said it would be most challenging—in our thoughts. 2 Cor. 10:4-5--The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.]

Today I’d like to tackle a few of the current cultural objections that are more specific to Christianity. What gives us the right to claim that Christ is the only way to God? To say that Christianity is decidedly different from all other religions? To call people to a decidedly Christian morality as opposed to other options? In our pluralistic culture of today where we are told that morality is “whatever works for you,” how dare we say the Christian world-view and morality is superior!

On the first few weeks, Abigail Hoenstreet tackled very directly the arguments of modern relativists against Christianity. Let me just briefly lay the foundation in that same area for our discussion today.

One of the chief arguments against Christianity today is that our belief that God has given us absolute truth that everyone would do well to believe seems to assault the modern sensibilities for “freedom.” We’re criticized for not “thinking for ourselves” and being “control freaks” who just want to lord it over everyone else.

Remember the movie, I, Robot (2004)? At the end of the movie, the robot named Sonny has fulfilled the objectives in his design program. But now, he realizes he no longer has a purpose to fulfill. The movie concludes with a dialogue between Sonny and the other main character, Detective Spooner.

            Sonny: Now that I have fulfilled my purpose, I don’t know what to do.

            Detective Spooner: I guess you’ll have to find your way like the rest of us, Sonny…That’s what it means to be free.

What’s the definition of freedom in this view? That there is no overarching purpose for which we were created and, if there were, we would be obligated to try and fulfill it…which would be limiting.

Our Supreme Court has weighed in on this by stating “the heart of liberty” is to “define one’s own concept of existence, of the meaning of the universe.”

Stephen Jay Gould (American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and popular historian of science) agrees when he says, “We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because comets struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs, thereby giving mammals a chance not otherwise available….We may yearn for a “higher” answer—but none exists. This explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively in the facts of nature. We must construct these answer for ourselves….” [Quoted by Keller, p. 36-37]

Now when Gould makes this claim, he’s really doing what Christian’s are criticized for: claiming there are truths that apply to everyone. You are making a “truth claim.” What relativists fail to recognize is that you can’t have life without truth claims. Their claim that everything is relative to the individual is really an absolutist truth claim.

            Some try to dismiss truth-claims as simply power plays. They would say that when anyone claims to have the truth, they are trying to get power and control over other people. For example, if you claim that “everyone should do justice to the poor”, that isn’t always true because you may actually be making that claim so that you can start a revolution that will give you control and power.

            But if you try and explain away all assertions of truth, you can’t really live by that. As C.S. Lewis points out in The Abolition of Man:

            You cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever; you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too?...a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see. [Quoted in Keller, p. 38]

And saying that all truth claims are power plays is, well, a power play. You are pressing your opinion about truth on others.

This is the fatal flaw with criticism of absolute truth like Christianity. The criticism itself is a claim of absolute truth, destroying their entire argument against absolute truth.

Another criticism of Christianity isn’t open for all. It’s socially divisive and demands particular beliefs in order to be part of it. The contention is that human communities should instead be completely inclusive, open to all simply on the basis of being human.

But one problem with this critique of Christianity’s exclusivity is that the idea of a totally inclusive community is actually an illusion. Every human community holds in common some beliefs that necessarily create boundaries, including some people and excluding others from its circle.

ILL: Let’s say that a board member of our local Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Community Center announces that he’s had a change of heart, a religious experience, and that now he believes homosexuality is a sin. Or imagine that a board member of the Alliance Against Same-Sex Marriage announces that his son is gay and he has thus changed his view about gay marriage and thinks it should be legal. The GLBT has a reputation for being inclusive and the second community for being narrow and exclusive.

            But what will happen to both board members? They are going to have to resign and leave the community.

            Every community of any type is based on common beliefs that act as boundaries, including some and excluding others.   Their purposes and truth claims about life and human nature are mutually exclusive. You can’t believe both at the same time. So the difference in their beliefs actually determines the make-up of their community.

            Every religion is the same. Christianity is no different from other religions in this respect. Each makes truth claims that cannot be compatible with the other religions’ truth claims. So each is, in some way, exclusive and “narrow minded.”

Parallel to this criticism of Christianity is one that says Christianity is a cultural straightjacket. It allegedly forces people from diverse cultures into a single iron-clad mold. It’s seen as the enemy of pluralism and multiculturalism.

            In reality, Christianity is more culturally diverse than any other religion in the world. Whereas the original demographic centers of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Confucianism have remained the same, Christianity’s center has moved all over the world through the centuries and been adopted by more distinct cultures than any other religion. It’s not a “white man” or “Western religion.” Today the majority of Christians in the world live in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

            EX: Take the last century. In 1900, only 9% of African population were Christians, outnumbered by Muslims 4-1. Today, Christians comprise 44% and in the 1960 passed Muslims in number.

            EX: Take China. Whereas there were less than 4 million Christians prior to the Communist Revolution in the late 1940s, today there are nearly 100 million from every social and cultural class. If this growth rate continues, in 30 years, 30% of China’s then 1.5 billion will be Christian. It will be the largest Christian nation in the world!

            While the Bible and our theological center in Christ is universal to all true Christians, there is an amazing cultural diversity built into the Christian faith. Converts in every culture have to work out how their faith will look in so many areas that are not mandated or prescribed by Christianity or the Bible (like style of music, form of praise, way of praying [when, where, how], how to teach, church leadership, methods, liturgy/no liturgy, etc.] Christianity is not the great destroyer of culture. It is the great lifter of culture—raising up the best and getting rid of the destructive things.

When it comes to our cultural notion of freedom, we’ve also got some serious problems. Freedom cannot be defined as simply the absence of restraints or constraints. In most cases, confinement and constraints is actually a means to liberation. Constraints actually liberate us only when they fit with the reality of our nature and capacities.

EX: A fish, because it absorbs oxygen from water rather than air, is only free if it is restricted and limited to water. It is restricted from enjoying all that we know as land travel and life. It dies if it does not honor the reality of its nature.

            This is why what we believe about the nature of mankind is so critical. If you think you are made for what God says will destroy you, guess what will happen? Freedom should not be so much the absence of restrictions as the finding of the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Unbridled living in any area of life leads to self-destruction.

            So next time someone tells you that “Every person has a right to define right and wrong for him- or herself, “ you might ask them a question: Is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?” When they respond, as they will have to, “Yes,” they you can show them that they really do believe that there is some kind of moral reality that is ‘there’ that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or thinks.

ILL: What’s particularly fascinating is that in our contemporary debate about marriage, people will say, “I should be free to LOVE whomever I want to.” While they usually mean that in a sexual sense, the interesting thing is that they are appealing to one of the most constraining things in life—love.

            Love, by nature, demands that in order for you to experience it in human relationship, you have to lose independence. Loving someone means I limit my freedom in many ways. I must give up personal autonomy. If I really want to love my children, I will have to give up money, untold years of time, freedom to do what I want at the drop of a hat, freedom to sleep when and as much as I want and a million other things.

            For adult-type love relationships to be healthy, there must be a mutual loss of independence. Both parties to love lose a lot of independence in order to experience love.

            So why should it be different with God, the greatest Lover in the universe. Yes, in order to enjoy ongoing, close relationship with Him it will call for continual change, not doing certain things, thinking a different way. That’s not “dehumanizing.” And it’s not a one-way street.

            In a most radical way, God has adjusted to us—through the incarnation, in the atonement. In Jesus Christ, God became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering and death. On the cross, he submitted to our condition—as sinners—and died in our place to forgive us. God is truly free to love everyone because he has constrained and adjusted himself to the demands of love more than any of us ever will.

Sometime this week, I was listening on the radio to someone’s analysis of the disaster unfolding in Iraq. They repeatedly referred to the escalating war there as “all due to religious differences” because the two warring factions, though they are both Islamic, are from two different branches of Islam—Sunni vs. Shiah. Besides being probably an oversimplification of a regional conflict, the underlying implication was that if we didn’t have all these religions in the world, we wouldn’t have all these wars.

            Maybe we could start by admitting that religion can and does erode peace on earth. But that doesn’t mean that doing away with religions is the right answer. Communism has tried to do that by force. And as Alister McGrath in his history of atheism says, “The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.” [Quoted by Keller, p. 5.]

            Fact is, virtually all major religions are growing around the world, much to the chagrin of secularists. And Christianity’s growth, especially in the developing world, has been explosive.

  • There are 6 times more Anglicans in Nigeria alone than in all of the U.S.
  • There are more Presbyterians in Ghana than in the U.S. and Scotland combined.
  • Korea has gone from 1% to 40% Christian in 100 years.

Efforts to suppress religion and Christianity in particular seem to be virtually counterproductive. So the notion that if we just do away with religion, the world will be a better place is both naive and demonstrably false.

I mentioned last week (in one of the services) that one of my sons in high school here had encountered another one of the ways people today try to nullify the real differences between religions. He heard the claim, what many of us have encountered in conversations with people, which is to say that all religions are all equally valid and basically teach the same thing. Any attempt to try and demonstrate that one religious system is superior or inferior to another is usually met with charges of arrogance and name calling. You’ll be called a “radical fundamentalist” or “right-wing extremist” or “ethnocentric” if you dare to suggest that one religion or belief system is actually better than another.

            Such claims simply show the abysmal ignorance most Americans have about religion in general. It also doesn’t hold water with the people who like to use it. Do the proponents of this idea really believe that religions that practice Satanic ritual abuse of children are morally equivalent to or virtually “the same” as Christianity? Is what the Aztecs did regularly practicing human sacrifice in their religion (until the 1500’s A.D.) really not inferior?

While this position insists that doctrine is unimportant, it is making doctrinal assumptions of its own about the nature of God that are at loggerheads with those of all major faiths. Buddhism doesn’t even believe in a persona God at all. Strike one! Judaism, Christianity, and Islam believe in a God who holds people accountable for their beliefs and practices and whose attributes can’t be all reduced to some generic concept of a loving being who accepts anything. Strike two. And the insistence that doctrines (beliefs about God) don’t really matter is really a doctrine itself. By making that statement, it is holding a specific view of God which is touted as superior and more enlightened than the beliefs of most major religions…which are held by billions of people. Talk about arrogant and elitist! Proponents of this idea do the very thing they forbid people of religion to do!

Then there is the elephant and the blind men idea about religion. (Recap the old story about a bunch of blind men describing the elephant from their perspective—flexible and snakelike [trunk], rigid and tree-trunk like [legs], large and flat [ear]. None could envision the entire elephant…just as no religion gets the whole picture about God.)

            The real problem here is that the story assumes that the person making the judgment about all religions is themself not one of the blind men. You can’t claim this about religions unless you claim (arrogantly so) that you have comprehensive, impartial and totally accurate knowledge of all spiritual reality…something you just claimed no one has.

This is very close to another argument against religion in general. It basically claims that all religions are so historically and culturally conditioned that any claim to be universal “truth” is wrong. In other words, religions have adherents to them because people were simply born into a certain national or cultural history, not because they are actually “true.”

            First, as we’ve already seen, lots of people don’t blindly follow the religious culture they were born into, Christianity’s history as chief case in point…and in today’s Western culture, the growth of non-religion or drop-out Christians as well.

            Secondly, underlying this argument is the belief that no belief can be held as universally true for everyone. We’re now back to the basic problem with relativism—making an absolute claim about there being no absolutes. When someone says, “There is no universally true religion or spiritual truth,” they are making a comprehensive statement of truth they think is universally true. Basically they are saying, “All claims about religions are historically or culturally conditioned…except the one I am making right now.” J Nice try! If you insist that no one can determine which beliefs are right and wrong, why should we believe what you are saying? The reality is that we all make truth-claims of some sort all day long. And while it is hard to analyze them responsibly and logically, we have no alternative but to try to do so.

So when it comes to actually weighing the religious alternative, logic demands that we have multiple options of religious systems in order to determine what is truth.

ILL: Such was the case even in the Garden of Eden. There were several competing spiritual/religious alternatives. There was God’s truth system: enjoy every living plant in the Garden as food but trust God when he says you must abstain from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan came along with a different spiritual/religious truth claim: it won’t hurt you to eat it. In fact, it will help make you more like God if you do eat it. And it is conceivable that Adam and Eve could have thought up their own third possible truth/religious claim of some sort totally different from those two.

            The point is, skeptics of religion believe that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true. But this objection is itself a religious belief. It assumes God is unknowable, or that God is loving but not wrathful, or that God is an impersonal force rather than a person who speaks in Scripture. All of these are unprovable faith assumptions. Additionally, the skeptic believe they have a superior way to view things, i.e. get rid of traditional religions’ views of God and truth and adopt theirs. But that very claim is also an “exclusive” claim about the nature of spiritual reality. It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions is right. We all are exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but just in freely chosen different ways. [Keller, pp. 12-14]

All this strikes at really what your definition of “religion” comes down to. Is it a belief in God? That wouldn’t fit Zen Buddhism, which does not really believe in God at all. Is it belief in the supernatural? That doesn’t fit Hinduism, which does not believe in a supernatural realm beyond the material world but only a spiritual reality within the empirical. Just what is a “religion” then?

            I would propose that a religion is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their life doing.

EX: For example, some people think that this material world is all there is, that we are here by accident and when we die we just rot, and therefore the important thing is to choose to do what makes you happy and not let others impose their beliefs on you. While not an explicit, “organized” religion, this belief system contains a master narrative, an account about the meaning of life along with the recommendation for how to live based on that account of things. And that belief is held, not by irrefutable fact but by faith. [Keller, 15-16]

Call it “religion” or call it “world view.” In either case it is the same. Faith in some view of the world and human nature informs everyone’s life. Anybody who ever says, “You ought to do this” or “you shouldn’t do that” reasons out of an implicit moral and religious position held by faith. They are faith-assumptions about the nature of reality. That’s religion!

ILL: Lets imagine that Ms. A is arguing in your anthropology class that all the safety nets for the poor should be removed, in the name of “survival of the fittest.” Ms. B might object saying, “The poor have the right to a decent standard of living—they are human beings like the rest of us!”

            Ms. A might then come back with the argument that many bioethicists today think the concept of “human” is artificial and impossible to define. And since it is impossible to treat all living organisms as ends rather than means, some always have to die that others may live. That’s just how the natural world works, she contends.

            Ms. B then counters that we should help the poor simply because it makes society work better (a good pragmatic argument). But Ms. A could come back with just as many pragmatic arguments about why letting some of the poor just die would be more efficient. Ms. A will probably get angry at that point and shout that starving the poor is unethical, to which Ms. A will retort, “Who says ethics must be the same for everyone?”

            Now in this little illustration, Ms. B has tried (unsuccessfully) to find universally accessible, “neutral and objective” arguments to convince Ms. A that we must not starve the poor. She failed because there are none. Ms. B affirms the equality and dignity of human individuals simply because she believes it is true and right. She does so as a sort of “article of faith”, believing that people are more valuable than rocks or trees—even though she can’t prove such a belief scientifically. Thus, her public policy proposals are ultimately based on her religious stance.

This is why we must not give into the argument in our culture today that demands that we separate all social, political and civil lawmaking from religion. Why should I be required to “check my religious beliefs at the door” when you are not doing the same? Furthermore, it’s impossible for anyone to “check their religious/faith beliefs at the door”…unless that door is your casket as it swings shut…and even then your “religious beliefs” will follow you into eternity! J You may call your belief “non-religious” or “secular,” but it’s actually the same sort of belief system as any religious belief, just under a non-religious name.

This is why the debate over same-sex marriage or abortion or how to deal with poverty will never end in a pluralistic society. It is not possible to craft laws in every area of life that we all agree “work” when we don’t all share the same worldview.

            But this is precisely where and why true Christianity is a superior worldview. Genuine Christianity as Christ modeled it allows for human free will within divine boundaries. It provides a firm basis for respecting people of other faiths and worldviews while calling them to Christ’s definition and model of righteousness. It believes that we are all, regardless of religion or culture, capable of goodness and of evil. It expects that some non-Christians will be better than their mistaken beliefs could make them while some Christians will be worse in practice than their orthodox beliefs should make them. There should always be plenty of ground for respectful, humble cooperation with people of differing faiths and worldviews, at least if you are a genuine Christian.

Which brings me back to the most important truth about Christianity and what makes it different from ALL other religions and worldviews. There is a profound and fundamental difference between the way other religions/worldviews tell us to seek “salvation” and the way described in the gospel of Jesus. All other major faiths have founders who are teachers that show the way to salvation. Only Jesus claimed to actually be the way of salvation himself. The difference is whether you are in a religion of “salvation through moral effort” OR in the Christ of “salvation through grace.”

            Timothy Keller, pastor in New York city, writes,

“Sin and evil are self-centeredness and pride that lead to oppression against others. But there are two forms of this. One form is being very bad and breaking all the rules, and the other form is being very good and keeping all the rules and becoming self-righteous.” Either way, you are being your own “savior.” The first says, “I’m going t live my life the way I want to and think I should in order to really ‘find life.’”   The other says, “I’m going to live my life as morally and “Christianly” as I can so that God will accept me. That person is also trying to “save themselves” by “following Jesus.”

            Both are, ironically, a rejection of the Gospel. It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them. Because the real Gospel of Christ is based on Christ, not us, and is a gospel of grace, not of self-effort. Grace is God’s effort on our behalf, not his effort based on our effort. That is Pharisaism. And the devil loves that just as much as hell-bent living. Pharisaism does untold damage to the real Gospel.  

            Let me describe what happens to the Pharisaical “Christian.” Pharisees have lives that, if anything, are more driven by the despair of sin. They build their sense of worth on their moral and spiritual performance, as a kind of resume to present before God and the world. The moral and spiritual standards of all religions are very high, and Pharisees know deep down that they are not fully living up to those standards. They are not praying as often as they should. They are not loving and serving their neighbor as much as they should. They are not keeping their inner thoughts as pure as they should. The resulting internal anxiety, insecurity, and irritability will often be much greater than anything experienced by the irreligious.

            This is why the most devoted adherents to any religion can be some of the most damaging. Pharisees need to shore up their sense of righteousness, so they despise and attack all who don’t share their doctrinal beliefs and religious practices. Churches, mosques and temples are filled with self-righteous, exclusive, insecure, angry, moralistic people who are extremely unattractive.

            In Christianity and the church, because we almost intuitively know that this is not what Christ meant when he said the “truth will set us free”…and that He is that Truth… millions of people raised in or near these kinds of churches reject Christianity at an early age or in college largely because of their experience. For the rest of their lives, they are inoculated against real Christianity. The recoil against anyone’s call to Christianity because what they know of it they dislike.

            “There is, then, a great gulf between the understanding that God accepts us because of our efforts and the understanding that God accepts us because of what Jesus has done. Religion operates on the principle “I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.” But the operating principle of the gospel is “I am accepted by God through what Christ has done—therefore I obey.” Two people living their lives on the basis of these two different principles may sit next to each other in the church pew. They both pray, give money generously, and are loyal and faithful to their family and church, trying to live decent lives. However, they do so out of two radically different motivations, in two radically different spiritual identities, and the result is two radically different kinds of lives.” (Keller, p. 186)

            This will deeply impact both our motivation and identity. Moralists live out of fear that not doing so will rob them of God’s blessing here and in the life to come. Gospel-motivated followers of Christ live out of gratitude and a desire to lovingly relate to God.

            When it comes to our identity and self-regard, in a religious framework, if you feel you are living up to your chosen religious standards, then you feel superior and disdainful toward those who are not following in the true path. This is true whether your religion is of a more liberal variety (in which case you will feel superior to bigots and narrow-minded people) or of a more conservative variety (in which case you will feel superior to the less moral and devout). If you are not living up to your chosen standards, then you will be filled with a loathing toward yourself. You will feel far more guilt than if you had stayed away from God and religion altogether.

            The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone.

            Finally, religion and the gospel also lead to divergent ways of handling troubles and suffering. Moralistic religion leads its participants to the conviction that if they live and upstanding life, then God (and others) owe them respect and favor. They believe they deserve a decent, happy life. If, however, life begins to go wrong, moralists will experience debilitating anger. Either they will be furious with God (or “the universe”) because they feel that since they live better than others, they should have a better life. Or else they will be deeply angry at themselves, unable to shake the feeling that they have not lived as they should or kept up to standards.

The gospel, however, makes it possible for someone to escape the spiral of self-recrimination, anger and despair when life goes wrong. You will know that the basic premise of all religion—that if you live a good life, things will go well for you—is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice and torture.

This really is what sets Christ and the true Gospel apart from every other religious and non-religious approach to life. When you think you are saved in any way by your good works, there is a limit to what we think God should ask of us or put us through. But when you know you are saved by sheer grace, unending gratitude and love will know no bounds and life’s pain and suffering will be simply further ways to know the Lover of your soul, Jesus.