David Bennett's A War of Loves

 

                                                         (Downtown Monroe)

Since the 1970s I have read, extensively, all sides of the gay marriage discussion within Christianity.

Yesterday I picked up yet another book on this issue. It's free, on Kindle, if you have prime.

A War of Loves: The Unexpected Story of a Gay Activist Discovering Jesus, by David Bennett

The Foreward is by N. T. Wright, who says, "This is a brave and wise book."

Editorial Reviews

Review

David Bennett’s page-turning writing gripped me from beginning to end, and I feel sure that his perspective on what it means to give our sexuality to God is something that every Christian of our generation needs to consider. -- Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing, director, Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing, director, Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics

This is an incredibly raw and authentic book! David paints a beautiful and compelling picture of what it looks like to desire Christ above all else. His affections for Jesus make me excited to be a Christian. -- Preston Sprinkle, president, Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, Preston Sprinkle, president, Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender

A refreshing and powerful book. This is one of the top books I will recommend to Christians who want to know how to better love their LGBTQI friends and also to seekers---whether gay or not---who are open to considering Jesus’ invitation. -- Sean McDowell, professor, Biola University; speaker; author, Same-Sex Marriage, Sean McDowell, professor, Biola University; speaker; author, Same-Sex Marriage

A timely, thoughtful, and often moving story which will be hugely helpful to a lot of people. David’s honesty and humanity shine through these pages, even as he handles difficult questions through the lens of his experience. This is a gift to the contemporary church. -- Andrew Wilson, teaching pastor, King’s Church London, Andrew Wilson, teaching pastor, King’s Church London

Here is a voice as countercultural as it is compelling, capable of engaging the whole Christian community, whether gay or straight, in a vital debate. I have no doubt that David Bennett’s story is going to become an essential part in a complex jigsaw for many. -- Pete Greig, 24-7 Prayer International and Emmaus Rd, Guildford, Pete Greig, 24-7 Prayer International and Emmaus Rd, Guildford

Many lesbian, gay, and bisexual people feel they cannot be true to both their sexuality and the Christian faith. David demonstrates that integrity and authenticity are possible for gay Christians, sharing beautiful insights about love, friendship, and following Jesus too. -- Rev. Dr. Sean Doherty, Christian ethicist; author, The Only Way Is Ethics, Rev. Dr. Sean Doherty, Christian ethicist; author, The Only Way Is Ethics

This book is designed to make all of us think about our ultimate love and to work through how we should engage in a long debated area, whether inside of the church or outside of it. It is well worth the read. -- Darrell L. Bock, Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Darrell L. Bock, Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary

David Bennett’s book presents a particular lived Christian experience which deserves hearing. I am grateful to all who are contributing their learning, experience, study, and prayer to help us all to proclaim afresh the gospel of Jesus Christ. -- Sentamu Eboracensis, Archbishop of York, Sentamu Eboracensis, Archbishop of York

One of the most significant books on one of the church’s most pressing subjects by one of today’s most inspiring young thought leaders. David Bennett is a prophetic witness, a truth teller, a tender pastor, and a faithful follower of Jesus. This generation needs to hear this man. -- Rev. Simon Ponsonby, author; pastor of theology, St. Aldates Church, Oxford, Rev. Simon Ponsonby, author; pastor of theology, St. Aldates Church, Oxford

This is the searingly honest story of one romanced by God against all expectations. Bennett’s example of giving his whole self, including his sexual self, to the Christ who died for him is an act of Christian witness for our time. -- Rev. Dr. Michael P. Jensen, rector, St. Mark’s Darling Point, Sydney; author, Martyrdom and Identity, Rev. Dr. Michael P. Jensen, rector, St. Mark’s Darling Point, Sydney; author, Martyrdom and Identity

About the Author

David Bennett is from Sydney, Australia, and is reading for a DPhil (PhD) in theology at the University of Oxford. He is a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and holds an Oxford postgraduate degree in theology, as well as a master’s degree in analytic theology from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

Our Concept of God Makes a Praying Difference

                                                                        (Grand Haven, Michigan)

Does my concept of God affect how I pray? Yes.

Does a praying life affect my mental health? Yes. The more I pray before the God I understand reduces fear and anxiety. 

For some recent empirical research to back up this idea see "Sociologist: Concept of God impacts power of prayer, anxiety-related disorders." Prayer seems effective in combating psychological challenges, like relieving anxiety. The level of effectiveness is connected with the person's concept of God.

Baylor University sociologist Matt Bradshaw received a Templeton Grant and published his findings in the journal Sociology of Religion - "Prayer, Attachment to God, and Anxiety-Related Disorders Among U.S. Adults." 

"According to his study, people who prayed to a loving and supportive God whom they thought would be there to comfort and protect them in times of need were less likely to show symptoms of anxiety-related disorders — irrational worry, fear, self-consciousness, dread in social situations and obsessive-compulsive behavior — than those who prayed but did not expect God to comfort or protect them."

Perceived characteristics of God - such as loving, remote, or judgmental - affect the relationship between prayer and mental health.

For the praying person, what we think of God makes a difference.

I write more extensively in chapter 2 of my book Praying - "Praying and the Nature of God."

Churches - Experience the "Is-ness" of God

(Linda, walking at Sterling State Park on Lake Erie in Monroe)

(I develop these ideas further in my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church.) 

In Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Presence, theologian John Jefferson Davis calls for a return, in worship and in the people of God ("church"), for ongoing encounters with God. It's not about the preaching, or the musicians. It's not about the stage lighting, or the coffee. It's not about you or me.

Davis talks about the transcendent "heaviness" of God, and the comparative "lightness" of all material and human things. He writes: "To say that the God of the Bible is "heavy" is to draw an intentional contrast with the weightlessness of God in much of contemporary culture and church life." (Davis, Kindle Locations 481-482)

Davis refers to Exodus 3:14, where, when asked by Moses for his name, God replies, "I am that I am." Davis writes:

"My colleague Gary Parrett has remarked that in Ex 3:14 God is saying to Moses, in effect, "I am not who you may think I am, or who you may wish that I am; I am who I am, and you need to adjust your thinking accordingly."" (Davis, Kindle Locations 2572-2573)

Davis cites John Durham's commentary on Exodus.

"Durham states that "I AM WHO I AM" also connotes the sovereignty and freedom of God in his self-disclosure: "By revealing himself as `I AM WHO I AM' the Lord had in effect said, `Yes, I have committed myself to you to be actively present with you, but I am not at your unfettered disposal. My active presence is mine and mine alone to exercise as when and under what conditions I choose" (p. 70)." (In Ib., Kindle Locations 2574-2576)

You and I can dispose of any idea that we have power to control God, or control our relationship with God.

God cannot, and will not, be manufactured, marketed, hyped, billboarded, bought, sold, or controlled. God IS. "This "is-ness" has the sense of "active presence"; this divine presence and reality is not "a bare `is' but a living force, vital and personal." (Ib., Kindle Locations 510-511)

This is what is missing in the Second Temple Judaism Jesus encountered. This is what is needed for influence to activate in the Church.



***
In my book Praying I have a chapter "Prayer and the Nature of God," emphasizing how our ontological conception of God shapes how we pray.

Two Posts for Christian Parents on Influence and Investment

 

Church-Involved Parents Influence Their Children

(Monroe county)

This is a reality check.

If you are a Christian parent but don't have time to gather with other Jesus-followers (which means: "church"), don't expect your children to be Jesus-followers. They will grow up to be like non-attenders or sporadic attenders like you. 

"Non-churchgoing follower of Jesus" is a self-contradiction. This is because Jesus came to establish "church" and work through this community of his followers. The person who says, "I'm a follower of Jesus but don't go to church" is misguided. Every real Jesus-follower is the church. "Church," therefore, is not something you either go to or not.

If you are a Christian parent and follow Jesus (which means you know you are "church" and gather with Jesus' church),  then the odds are your children will do the same. This is the conclusion of Notre Dame University's Christian Smith. "Parents are the #1 influence helping teens remain religiously active as adults." 

Smith writes: 

"The holy grail for helping youth remain religiously active as young adults has been at home all along: Parents.

Mothers and fathers who practice what they preach and preach what they practice are far and away the major influence related to adolescents keeping the faith into their 20s, according to new findings from a landmark study of youth and religion.

Just 1 percent of teens ages 15 to 17 raised by parents who attached little importance to religion were highly religious in their mid- to late 20s.

In contrast, 82 percent of children raised by parents who talked about faith at home, attached great importance to their beliefs and were active in their congregations were themselves religiously active as young adults, according to data from the latest wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion.

The connection is “nearly deterministic,” said University of Notre Dame Sociologist Christian Smith, lead researcher for the study.

Other factors such as youth ministry or clergy or service projects or religious schools pale in comparison.

“No other conceivable causal influence … comes remotely close to matching the influence of parents on the religious faith and practices of youth,” Smith said in a recent talk sharing the findings at Yale Divinity School. “Parents just dominate.”"

Smith adds: "One of the strongest factors associated with older teens keeping their faith as young adults was having parents who talked about religion and spirituality at home."


***

The Power of Investing Spiritually in Our Children

(Kitty Hawk, NC)

I have served for many years in our church's Children's Ministry. This is so good for me, as a pastor. I get to know our kids; they get to know me. I get to spiritually invest in their lives. This is among the most important things I do as a follower of Jesus.

Philosopher James K. A. Smith writes:

"Spiritual formation in Christ requires a lot of rehabituation precisely because we build up so many disordered habits over a lifetime. This is also why the spiritual formation of children is one of the most significant callings of the body of Christ. Every child raised in the church and in a Christian home has the opportunity to be immersed in kingdom-indexed habit-forming practices from birth. This is why intentionality about the formation of children is itself a gift of the Spirit. It’s also why carelessness and inattention to the deformative power of cultural liturgies can have such long-lasting effects. The “plasticity” of children’s habits and imaginations is an opportunity and a challenge."

(Smith, James K. A.. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Kindle Location 1031. Emphasis mine.)

***
My three books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (Co-edited with Janice Trigg)

DECLARATIONS OF IDENTITY

 

                                                               (Our office downstairs)

JOIN US at Redeemer this morning as we declare our identity in Christ!

https://www.youtube.com/c/RedeemerMonroe

DECLARATIONS OF IDENTITY

•         At the cross I was made a new creation; therefore, I do not have to be influenced by any baggage of the past.

•         I am not who my past experience says I am; I am who God says I am.

•         I have been set free and released from all bondage through what Jesus has done for me.

•         Today is the day of my breakthrough — I am free!

•         I am clothed with Christ, therefore I release His presence everywhere I go.

•         My touch releases the healing grace of Jesus.

•         I am a God-pleaser, not a people-pleaser.

•         I am able to prophesy, heal the sick, deliver the oppressed, and walk in increased wisdom, boldness, and creativity through the power of the Holy Spirit.

•         God’s Kingdom will advance everywhere I go and in everything I do.

•         I am constantly stumbling into the favor of God.

•         My life overflows with God’s love, making it impossible for me not to love others.

•         People’s responses to me do not determine how I love them.

•         I am permanently tapped into Heaven’s infinite supply of love.

•         I often experience an open heaven.

•         I speak to any worry, stress, or anxiety, and I say you cannot stay. Peace reigns in this temple.

•         My heart and mind are guarded and protected by God’s peace.

•         As a child of God, it is my privilege and birthright to hear my Father’s voice.

•         As I focus on Jesus and spend time in His presence, I am being transformed into His likeness.

•         God’s love for me is not dependent upon worldly measures of success.

•         It’s impossible for me to spend time in God’s Word and not be radically transformed.

•         I encounter God’s love and power every time I am in His Word.

•         I belong to Jesus. My identity is: Beloved child of God.

Release from Shame

 

                                                                      (My back yard.)

Adam and Eve were both naked.

And they felt no shame.

Genesis 2:25

I've had a couple of surgical procedures in my life that required me to be in an operating room. One was having my diseased gall bladder removed.

I remember being awake as I was brought into the room. The entire space was filled with light. Around me, I saw no darkness at all.

I am thankful the surgeon and technicians did the operation in the light. The light would reveal anything in me that was dangerous. In the light, disease gets exposed. 

Darkness, on the other hand, is the place of hiding and deception.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food 

and pleasing to the eye, 

and also desirable for gaining wisdom, 

she took some and ate it. 

She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, 

and he ate it. 

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, 

and they realized they were naked; 

so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God 

as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, 

and they hid from the Lord God 

among the trees of the garden.

Genesis 3:6-8

They felt shame.

Shame beckons people to hide. Shame's environment is darkness. This is a spiritual darkness, a breeding ground of Satan, who tempts shame-filled people to sin in order to cover up their shame. Which, hellishly, gives birth to yet more shame; which inclines the shame-diseased person to sin to cover up shame; which produces more shame..., hence more deception....

It's the age-old battle between light and darkness. It's binary. This is not about "shades of gray." That idea is postmodern nonsense.

As a follower of Jesus, I know that Jesus is not ashamed of me. He calls me out of darkness, into his marvelous light. I want to be in the light. I want to be exposed, so that any darkness in me will be revealed and surgically removed by the Great Physician. Search me, O God, and know my heart!

This is the message we have heard from him 

and declare to you: 

God is light; 

in him there is no darkness at all.

1 John 1:5

God has taken my shame, and called me by a new name.

If we walk in the light, 

as he is in the light, 

we have fellowship with one another, 

and the blood of Jesus, his Son, 

purifies us from all sin.

1 John 1:7

I now release you from the self-perpetuating cycle of shame.

You belong to the Light, not to the darkness.

Amen.

TWO SERMONS ON HEALING OF SHAME

 

                                                      (Monroe County Community College)

Here are two sermons I gave on Healing of Shame.

HEALING OF SHAME: PART 1

This audio does not have the story I told to introduce the message.

The story was this.

Linda and I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from a friend. It was ordered through Monroe Florist (they do a great job!). The flowers had a card on it, from our friends.

We kept the flowers in a vase on our kitchen table.

When the day came to throw them away, Linda took them and placed them on a bench on our front porch.

I was out doing something at the time. When I came home, I saw the flowers on the porch. I thought, "How nice - someone has given us a gift of flowers. I read the card. I saw the tag that said "Monroe Florist." 

And I saw the horrendous condition of the flowers - hung over, decaying. And I felt anger.

Anger - that Monroe Florist would deliver flowers like this to us!

So, I called Monroe Florist. "You delivered worn-out, beat-up flowers to our house!" 

The florist person checked her records. "Sir, we have no record of delivering flowers to your home."

"I have them before me. I am reading the tag that says "Monroe Florist" right now!"

"I am sorry sir. We have no record of such a delivery.

I hung up. What was going on?

Then Linda came into the kitchen. I told her the story. She said, "You called who?!"

Monroe Florist.

"John, these are the flowers given to us a few weeks ago. I put them on the porch to have you throw them into the garbage."

Oh.

I felt embarrassed.

The sermon picks up at this point...

HEALING OF SHAME: PART 2

Overcoming Shame

(Monroe County Community College)

(I am re-posting this for a friend.)

I have struggled with shame, even as a follower of Jesus. 

One resource that has helped me is Lewis Smedes' beautiful book Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don't Deserve, Smedes was a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. Like me and many others, Smedes had inner wars with shame and self-hatred.

Shame, says Smedes, is different than guilt. We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are. "A person feels guilt because he did something wrong. A person feels shame because he is something wrong." (9) 

Guilt is a good thing when it is God-given. We should feel guilt, we should have a conscience, if we hurt someone. But shame, the unhealthy feeling of unworth that is distorted, exaggerated, and utterly out of touch with our reality, is an emotion out of hell.

Smedes writes:

"If you have a nagging feeling that you do not measure up to the person you ought to be..., the generic label for what you feel is shame. We have shame when we persistently feel that we are not acceptable, maybe unworthy, and are less than the good person we are supposed to be. Shame is a vague, undefined heaviness that presses on our spirit, dampens our gratitude for the goodness of life, and slackens the free flow of joy. Shame is a primal feeling, the kind that seeps into and discolors all our other feelings, primarily about ourself but about almost everyone and everything else in our life as well."

Smedes says the "shame equation" is this: one wrong act equals one bad person. If that were true (which it is not), then I am a very, very bad person. I have done wrong, even to people I love, and then whipped on myself for days afterwards. Even though I know Jesus died on the cross for my failures, I have crucified myself over things I have done.

How dark can shame be?

Smedes tells the tragic story of a gifted piano player named Lech Koplenski, and an adoring fan named Chenska Wolenka. Lech played piano at a local cabaret, and Chenska, an attractive woman, loved Lech and wanted to see him get a break and become a concert pianist. There was a producer of concerts who would come to the cabaret, and Chenska became friends with him. She hoped to draw his attention to Koplenski's gifted piano playing. The producer told her that he would help if she would sleep with him. She did. He made good on his part of the bargain. Lech Koplenski became a concert pianist star.

Lech never came back to the cabaret. Smedes writes: "All that Chenska had left over was a deep shame of herself. One early morning in May she jumped from her apartment window to her death. Taped to her mirror was this sentence: I am filth." (18)

The perverted Cartesian reasoning looks like this: 

I failed. 

Therefore, I am.

If you live with unhealthy shame, what's the way out of it? Smedes says "the experience of being accepted is the beginning of healing for the feeling of being unacceptable." (107) "Being accepted is the single most compelling need of our lives." (Ib.) 

This is where God and his grace enters in. "The surest cure for the feeling of being an unacceptable person is the discovery that we are accepted by the grace of One whose acceptance of us matters most." (108) 

God, in his grace, overcomes our shame. He loves you.


***
My two books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God 

I co-edited, with Janice Trigg, Encounters with the Holy Spirit.

Lord, Show Me What to Do

 

                                           (Sunset in Grand Haven, reflected in a window.)

Someone asked me this. "In these crazy times of the coronavirus, gender confusion, racial tension, economic uncertainty, abortion issues, cancel culture, microaggressions, uber-politicization, and culture wars, how is it that you know what you are doing in leading a church?"

My answer to them was: "I don't."

I don't know what I am doing.

This past Sunday morning, as I was worshiping with our people, I prayed "God, I don't know what to do. Please show me what to do next."

I do not always know what to do. My verse has become Hebrews 11:6.

By faith Abraham, 

when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, 

obeyed and went, 

even though he did not know where he was going.

Abraham did not know where he was going. Yet Abraham obeyed the call of God, and went. By faith. Abraham stepped out, not knowing where his feet would land.

Faith has to do with the unknown. Out of the mouth of the person of faith come the words, "I don't know." Because when I know, it's not faith.

Faith is RISK. Risk means cognitive uncertainty. 

As a pastor, as a follower of Jesus, I do not have to act like I always know what I am doing. But I do have to live as someone who knows the One who calls me and goes before me. 

I just need to know the next step. Step by step, my God will lead me. That has been my constant experience, in fifty years as one of His sheep. My faith is rooted in an existential certainty that the Lord is shepherding me through the dark valley.

By faith he made his home in the promised land 

like a stranger in a foreign country; 

he lived in tents, 

as did Isaac and Jacob, 

who were heirs with him of the same promise. 

For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, 

whose architect and builder is God.

Perhaps you are a parent. You are having to make hard choices about your children's schooling. Or, you are an employer, who is facing difficult decisions with your employees. You work in a hospital, exposing yourself to risk every day. You own a small business; how can you remain open? You have lost your job and can't find work; how will you put food on the table? 

Your mother is quarantined in a nursing home; when will you hold and touch her again?

You have contracted the virus; what's next?

When facing the unknown, what's next is either nihilism or faith, despair or hope, the decadent city or the city with foundations.

As I think back over fifty years of following Jesus, it is evident that he has never failed to guide me. He has always heard my cry. As I place my trust in him, i am confident that he is about to show me what to do.

Spiking the Infinite Regress

 

                                                         "Who sanitizes the sanitizer?"

I saw this cartoon in today's New Yorker. 

The question sets off an infinite regress.

This is the problem Plato and Aristotle dealt with; viz., how to "spike" the infinite regress. Is it Plato's Forms? Or Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover." 

The question (its form; its implication) - even today - fuels metaethical discussions.

Be Still

 

                                                              (Grand Haven, Michigan)

Linda and I practice being still before God. Daily.

I was doing this yesterday, while reading Scripture. This is a habit for me.

Linda spends time in our living room, quietly, before God. She does this for up to a half hour. She slows down in her heart and mind. She listens for the voice of God. She gets spoken-to by God. 

Our hearts have been captured Psalm 46:10, which reads: "Be still, and know that I am God."

The Hebrew word here for "be still" is raphah. It means things like: 

"Be slack" (re. your arms).

"Be idle" (stop working and striving).

"Take leave" (of all your busyness).

"Cease struggling" (with God).

Even, "be weak" (so God can be strong).

"Chill out, and know that I am God." 

"Let go, and know that I am God."

Ps. 46: 10 does not instruct us to:

"Overwork, and know that I am God."

"Be busy, and know that I am God."

"Multi-task, and know that I am God."

"Try harder, and know that I am God."

"Get uptight, and know that I am God."

"Shop, and know that I am God."

We can draw a line connecting Psalm 46:10 with John 15, where Jesus tells us to "abide" and "rest" and "remain" in him, like a branch is connected to a vine. The promises for us include: Jesus will give us his peace, his joy, and reveal to us all the Father has made know to him. 

This is the incredible invitation to "be" with God, with the seminal Jesus-idea that being is prior to doing; viz., being-with God precedes all relevant "doing" in the name of God.

The "be still" thing is a heart-thing. You don't have to be in a physically quiet place to have a still, quieted heart. A "stilled" heart can be had in the midst of outer chaos. Jesus himself walked into many dark, chaotic situations. We don't see him freaking out and taking on the outer chaos in his own, inner heart. There is a focused calm about Jesus that's all about his ongoing abiding in the Father. How does he do this? Who wouldn't want to live like this? How is this possible? In John 14-15 he gives us the answers.

Jesus says: "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work." 

Then, Jesus gives his disciples, and us, this amazing invitation: "Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." The Father and Jesus the Son will come and "make their home in us." (John 14:23)

If God is in your "home" (= heart), struggling ceases, and stillness remains. If the Lord is my fortress, and in his fortress I dwell, what shall I fear? Who wouldn't want to live like that?

Be still before the Lord today by:

1. Taking 10-15 minutes and just "be" in God's presence. For no purpose other than to "be still, and know that God is God."
2. Doing this again tomorrow. And the next day..., and so on...
3. Not striving to make something happen. You might say to God, "I want to know how to be heart-still, that I might know You better."
4. Listening
5. Watching, over time, how God meets you in that secret place, which is your heart.

There might be so much chaos in your life right now that you are thinking, "I can't find time to do this with all the stuff that's going on!" Or: "I could never get still before God with all the clutter in my heart!"

I can tell you from personal experience, from much time doing this, and from teaching this to many pastors and leaders over the years, the following: "Being still" will seem counter-intuitive in our crazy world of incessant, irrelevant "doing." But it is precisely what is needed, and what God calls you to do. In the phrase "know that I am God," it is important to understand that "knowing," in Hebrew, is a relational, experiential thing.

Psalm 46:10 is a "call to relationship" with God. As are the last earthly words of Jesus in John chapters 14-17.

The Existential Thirst That Never Goes Away

Butterfly House, in Whitehouse, Ohio

As a philosophy professor I've done a lot of teaching, talking, coffee-breaking, and reasoning with a broad spectrum of students. I spend time teaching and relating to theists, atheists, and don't-know-what-ists.

All of them have a worldview. Few have evaluated their worldview. This is across the board, no matter what their belief system.

They have one thing in common, because the deeper we go inside people, the more we are the same, in terms of life's important issues. They all have a metaphysical urge for the transcendent. Yes, even if they say they are atheists. 

This gives me hope when relating to my philosophy students. In the depths of the human heart there are reasons that not even reason can fully satisfy. As the French philosopher Pascal said, "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing." (One helpful book here is Existential Reasons for Belief in God: A Defense of Desires and Emotions for Faith, by Clifford Williams.)

The British writer Theodore Dalrymple confesses, “It is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God.” After confessing that he is an atheist, he proceeds to describe the void.

"Believing there is no God does not make the thirst go away. Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever. In like fashion, however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose . . . To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of." (Quoted in Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?, p. 31)

***
My two books are: 

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

The Moral Relativist as Enemy of the Oppressed

(This is wrong, right?)

As a (retired) professor of logic, much of the chatter on social media drives me crazy. But it gives me a feast, a harvest, of formal and informal logical fallacies. Including the absurdity of cultural moral relativism.

I'm listening to Bruce Cockburn. (My favorite lyricist ever?) There's a line in "Down Where the Death Squad Lives" that has never left me. He writes:

Sometimes I feel like there's a padlock on my soul

if you opened up my heart you'd find a big black hole

but when the feeling comes through it comes through strong

if you think there's no difference between right and wrong

just go down where the death squad lives

Correct. 

Where evil reigns, lines become clearer. Moral relativists appear, if they do at all, as voices of injustice as they say, "right for you, but wrong for me. Who are we to critique Isis beheaders?"

Hitler was from another culture. (I read Mein Kampf.) Who are we to tell him he was morally wrong? If cultural moral relativism is true, we can't. In this way the moral relativist is the enemy of the oppressed.

Cockburn:

goons in blackface creeping in the road

farm family waiting for the night to explode

working the land in an age of terror

you come to see the moon as a bad news bearer

down where the death squad lives

they cut down people like they cut down trees

chop off its head so it will stay on its knees

the forest shrinks but the earth remains

slash and burn and it grows again

down where the death squad lives

Want to know something that's scary? Teaching philosophical logic in a relativistic world, where relativism is the air we breathe, while going unnoticed by most university students. 

Pause here. Logic is about "truth." Logic looks at statements, and uses words like "true," "false," probably true," "probably false." These words leave the logician's mouth, and horrify the student-relativists. 

I received a logic text to review - Critical Thinking Unleashed, by Elliot Cohen. The book is pretty much a standard logic text, except for the introduction, where Cohen's passion and sense of urgency falls from above like nuclear logic-bombs on our Facebook nation. Cohen writes, "Enculturation, or the socialization of children to cultural norms, is another factor in creating barriers to rational thinking." (4)

Uh-huh. That's it. The herd (Nietzsche), the crowd (Kierkegaard), mindlessly follows the culture. As Kierkegaard famously wrote: The crowd is untruth.

When I teach about the fallacious nature of ad hominem circumstantials, tu quoques, and various forms of the genetic fallacy, I have this sense that, for a number of the students, I might as well be speaking ancient Greek. It's not that these students are unintelligent. It's that they have been enculturated and baptized in the warm waters of moral relativism. As Allan Bloom recognized decades ago. (See here. And yes, I read the entire thing, if you know what I mean.)

In a logic class the professor uses uses statements like "This is true," and "This is false." After all, that is the philosophical point of the whole thing. Then, predictably, one cultural clone of a student will say, "That's just what you happen to think," as others nod silently, in Stepford-wife-like agreement. 

But there be be one, just one, freethinker in the class, who is engaged in a meta-activity that may result in a break from cultural bondage into freedom. They are interested in truth - does it even exist? Can one get at it?

Cohen writes, "conformity to slanted norms routinely replaces self-reflective thinking." 

I agree. 

Now note this. Cohen is ethics editor for Free Inquiry magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism. I'm a theist, Cohen is a secular humanist, yet we're both in agreement that we're living in a time when reason has been abandoned. I suspect we both feel a bit like Nietzsche's madman, except that everyone else seems to have left the land for the relativistic seas while we're standing on the philosophical shores waving, "Come back!" I presume Cohen and I want to reason and argue about our differences from the same logical foundation, as we reject the silly waters of il-logic.

Is there objective evil in the world? Only a subjective moral relativist would deny it. And in their denial, they oppress the victims of objective evil, while claiming an objective truth (which is: Moral values are subjective to cultures.), which leads to a self-contradiction.

Cockburn concludes:

I've got friends trying to batter the system down

fighting the past till the future comes round

it'll never be a perfect world till God declares it that way

but that don't mean there's nothing we can do or say

down where the death squad lives

the world can be better than it is today

you can say I'm a dreamer but that's okay

without the could-be and the might-have-been

all you've got left is your fragile skin

and that ain't worth much down where the death squad lives