Authenticity & Freedom

(The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island)

The word “authentic” comes from a Greek word, autos, which means “self.” We get a lot of other English words from autos, like “automobile” (a self-driven vehicle), “automatic” (runs by itself), “autograph” (a self-writing), and so on.

We could translate “authentic” as meaning “the real thing,” “the genuine article.” When it comes to Christianity, an “authentic” Christian would be someone who actually, genuinely, follows after Jesus. An “inauthentic” Christian would be someone who fakes it in front of other people (like on a Sunday morning) but in their own home or in their workplace is someone different.

My own feeling is that who you and I are in our own homes is who we really, authentically, are. And who we are when no one is looking is who we truly are.

It’s important to note that authenticity is not about perfection. No one is perfect (Jesus was, we’re not). It’s what we do with our imperfections that gives clues to authenticity. For example, I’ve at times met people who are self-admitted jerks who pride themselves by being consistent in their jerkiness. Authentically, they are the real thing when it comes to being rude or abrasive. A difference between them and a real follower of Jesus would be that the authentic Jesus-follower would be internally broken and saddened by their non-Jesus character and would cry out for more heart-transformation.

The question of authenticity thus has two components: 1) the goal - “real-ness” = “Christlikeness”; and 2) integrity - which means the reality of a growing Christlikeness is evidenced in every environment, whether alone or with others, whether at home or in the sanctuary.

The result of authenticity is nothing less than freedom. Acting and faking it takes a lot of energy. It’s a tiresome thing to try to be someone you were never intended to be. And “freedom” is not just being anybody or anything, but being like Christ, who was the truth, and whose truth sets us free.

The Bible & Literal & Figurative Truth

(I'm writing this from Mackinac island, where I took this picture of the Straits of Mackinac yesterday.)

Today a former philosophy student of mine wrote me the following:

"I was watching a television show on gay marriage and how they feel about what the bible says regarding it. According to them, the bible can't be taken literally and gay marriage is really OK in a Christian God's eyes. I believe you once told me that your doctoral thesis was on biblical interpretation, so I was wondering what you have to say on the subject. Also, the Bible states that if you see lustfully, then you should tear that eye out, what do you think about that?And what I think to be a tough one, if the Bible cannot be taken literally then what about Jesus rising from the dead? What if he rose from the dead spiritually and his friends didn't see him rise, but visualized him rising, or something like that?"

My response to him was as follows:

Here are some thoughts I have.

It's mistaken to take the Bible "literally," if "literal" means non-figuratively. Instead what's needed is to get at what the Bible is saying. In this regard many biblical things are "literal" in the sense that they describe actual historical events and historical times and historical places. Just to cite one out of countless examples, when in John chapter 9 we read the story of a blind man who was healed when Jesus told him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam, there really was and still is a Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. I was in Jerusalem a few months ago and saw it. Many, many examples can be given like this.

Was this blind man healed? I believe we can take that, also, literally; viz., the man was blind, and then as a result of meeting Jesus he could see.

But many biblical things must be taken figuratively precisely because they were intended to be taken figuratively. One example is the one you give - "if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out." This is figurative language, and Jesus meant it that way. No one thought he meant that literally. But just because it's figurative does not mean it contains no truth. We often use figurative language to express truth. My Ph.D dissertation was on metaphor theory and figurative language. To cite but one of a billion examples, when we're watching a baseball game and the announcer says "The right fielder lost the ball in the sun" this is not to be taken to mean that the player was actually on the sun and lost the ball there. In interpreting the Bible, like any text, one must determine what's to be taken literally and what's to be taken figuratively. "Literal" is not "better" than "figurative," nor vice versa. The core issue is: what is the text saying? How did the people read the text; how did the people hear, e.g., what Jesus was saying?

All of this implies that someone who says "the Bible can't be taken literally" is making a nonsense statement. That isn't even the point of the whole thing. The point is: what does the text say? And, that there is literal truth and figurative truth, and one's not "better" than the other.

Re. homosexuality, the argument your note presents fails. It goes like this:

1. The Bible cannot be taken literally.

2. Therefore what the Bible says about homosexuality cannot be taken literally.

Premise 1 is false because essentially misguided.

Re. Jesus' resurrection, the biblical texts mean that literally Jesus was dead and then came back to life. The word "resurrection" is used to describe the literal event. "Resurrection," says theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, is used metaphorically to speak of a literal event. We often use metaphor to speak of factual events because those events contain more meaning than the steel nets of literal language can hold. My doctoral dissertation (Northwestern, 1986) was on the nature of figurative and metaphorical truth.

Robert Sapolsky & the Overlapping of Non-Overlapping Magisteria

In the Templeton Conversation over whether science makes belief in God obsolete, Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky makes a a very good point about the nature of science only to make a very non-scientific value claim about science and religion.

Sapolsky is an atheist who recognizes that "belief offers something that science does not." He writes: "Science isn't remotely about a scientist stating things with a degre of certainty." And in this I think, for the most part, that Sapolsky is correct. The only wondering I now have about this is when someone like Francis Collins rejects Gouldian NOMA in favor of POMA (partially overlapping magisteria, the "magisteria" being "science" and "religion").

The attractive Sapolskian point for me has always been and now is that science qua science can tell me how much a strand of DNA weighs, but the moment someone refers to that strand as "elegant" they have left science. "Elegance" is not to be found in the laboratory or under the microscope. "Elegance" cannot be weighed, measured, or quantified. The rose I am now looking at has leaves containing chlorophyll but surely it is not, scientifically, "beautiful." All of which is to say that science concerns itself not with values like love, truth, beauty, evil, right, wrong, heavy, light (in terms of weight), and so on.

Therefore if there is a battle between "science" and "religion" it's not a battle over "truth," as if one of the two has the "truthier truth." Agreed. If this is so than science qua science says nothing either for or against religion. They are, Gould again, N (non-)O(overlapping)M(magisteri)(A(a).

But then Sapolsky leaves science by asking the question "of whether religion or science is better for society." He writes: "On this front, there's no question which approach has produced more historical (and contemporary) harm." No question? On what basis? Surely not science, since science isn't remotely about the truth of anything. Truth is an abstraction, a non-empirical value, or perhaps a Platonic Form. Or truth is a relationship. But no one puts a bug under a microscope and sees truth alongside a pair of antennae. And what can Sapolsky mean by "harm?" Historically, religion and philosophy are the disciplines that try to answer such a question. Sapolsky writes: "The blood on the hands of religion drips enough to darken the sea." Maybe, maybe not. Such a metaphorical statement surely, as many metaphors do, contains a Ricoeurian metaphorical excess or extravagance. What is it's literal meaning? Is it that religion is "evil" or "bad" or "horrible?" Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing is for sure about this: science isn't remotely capable of making a judgment here. All it could say is something like: "If all the blood spilled as a result of religion were poured into the sea 0.000003% of the sea would be blood."

Sapolsky claims that "religiosity as an alternative [to science] has a spectacular potential for harm." What can we do with such a claim as this? Science can't help us. And why is religion to be considered as an "alternative" to science? What could this mean? Especially if the magisteria don't overlap.

I find Sapolsky's first point about the realm of science to be accurate. But he almost seems to forget this when he presents "science" as an alternative to "religion," or presents religion as more harmful than science, as if the values of "harm" and "good" had anything to do with science anyway.

Should We Be Praying to Jesus?

As followers of Jesus should we pray to him? The answer is yes. The best synopsis in support of this is in Putting Jesus In His Place: The Case For The Deity Of Christ, by Robert Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski. Here’s their reasoning, briefly.

In the Old Testament the only object of prayer is God. God is the one who answers prayer (Psalm 65:2). “Prayer” is, essentially, communication with God.

Because we see, in the New Testament, prayers being given to Jesus, the pray-er approaches Jesus as God, since the only object of prayer is God. Since Jesus’ cultural-religious context was monotheism (belief that there is only one God) to pray to Jesus is only possible if Jesus is himself divine.

In Acts 1:24-25 we see the first Christians praying to Jesus. Before choosing a new apostle the early Jesus-followers prayed like this: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” By addressing their prayers to the “Lord,” we can conclude they meant Jesus. This is because:

1) Luke most frequently used “Lord” to refer to Jesus.
2) Peter had just referred to “the Lord Jesus (Acts 1:21) prior to this prayer to the “Lord.”
3) It was Jesus who had previously personally chosen his apostles.

In Acts 7:59-60 Stephen, as he is being stoned to death, prays to Jesus. We read that “He prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.”

The great Yale historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan comments on this passage: “For Stephen to commit his spirit to the Lord Jesus when the Lord Jesus himself had committed his spirit to the Father was either an act of blatant idolatry or the acknowledge of the kurios Iesus [Lord Jesus] as the fitting recipient of the dying prayer of Jesus.”

In 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 we read that three times Paul prayed to Jesus to deliver him from some kind of infirmity.

In John 14:14 Jesus himself encouraged his followers to pray to him when he said, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do.”

In addition to these things, the book of Revelation closes with a prayer asking Jesus to come back soon – “Come [Maranatha], Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20-21)

When we pray to Jesus we are on solid historical grounds. And, to pray to Jesus is to acknowledge that Jesus is God the Son, since only God is to be addressed in what we call prayer.

The Definition Of A Great Song

As a songwriter I found myself agreeing with something Tommy Walker said about writing songs. Here's his quote from christianitytoday.com:

"Well, just to plug Chris Tomlin, it's not easy to write an incredible song that's also simple. He is so good at what he does, and I totally give him props for that. As to whether the song is simple or difficult to play, who gives a rip if it's hard to play when no one wants to hear it anyway? A great songwriter knows how to write a melody that makes you want to push the repeat button. That's the definition of a great song."

Science Does Not Make Belief in God Obsolete

I've had a very busy week and am just now sitting on my back deck enjoying some solitude with a few books and a to-do list that needs attending to. Last Thursday Linda and I went to Illinois for her nephew's high school graduation. Got back Saturday evening, and went promptly to Monroe County's Relay for Life (cancer funding), where our church had a tent for people who wanted prayer. I think there were 5000 people there at the event. We had a lot of people from our church who got to pray for many people - I'm getting good feedback from this thing.

Then, after a big day Sunday with our church family (morning service, followed by a picnic and softball game where I proceeded to coach the losing team), I was part of a leadership strategizing retreat for our denomination, held just north of Lansing. This thing was held from Monday through yesterday afternoon. I greatly enjoyed that time and felt it was very productive, to include allowing me to connect with a lot of good friends I have not seen in a while. It looks like I will be part of a team that seeks God to lead our 150 Michigan churches into deeper spiritual renewal and transformation. If that happens I will be very excited!

When I returned home yesterday I was pleased to see the free book I ordered from the John Templeton Foundation. It's a series of short essays by scholars responding to the question "Does science make belief in God obsolete?" You can get this booklet on Templeton Foundation's website here.

I just read the excellent little essay by University of Maryland scientist William D. Phillips. Phillips is a Nobel Laureate in physics. His answer to the above question is: "Absolutely not!" Here's a little part of his essay.

"Why do I believe in God? As a physicist, I look at nature from a particular perspective. I see an orderly, beautiful universe in which nearly all physical phenomena can be understood from a few simple mathematical equations. I see a unvierse that, had it been constructed slightly differently, would never have given birth to stars and planets, let alone bacteria and people. And there is no good scientific reason for why the universe should not have been different. Many good scientists have concluded from these observations that an intelligent God must have chosen to create the universe with such beautiful, simple, and life-giving properties... I find these arguments suggestive but supportive of belief in God, but not conclusive. I believe in God because I can feel God's presence in my life, because I can see the evidence of God's goodness in the world, because I believe in Love and because I believe that God is Love."

The Atheistic Fable About Galileo

Atheists, in attacking religion in general and Christianity in particular, present the cases of Galileo and Copernicus. Both scientists, some atheists claim, were not merely treated unfairly but were persecuted and even tortured. I remember, in an undergraduate philosophy of science class, reading Galileo's "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems." Two of the main interlocutors are "Simplicio" and "Sagredo." Simplicio represents those Aristotelian scientists who maintain that the sun revolves around the earth, and Sagredo (Galileo himself) represents Copernican heliocentrism.

So what happened to Galileo? Carl Sagan said he was placed "in a Catholic dungeon threatened with torture." (cited in D'Souza, 101) Sam Harris writes of the Christian tradition of "torturing scholars to the point of madness speculating about the nature of the stars." (Ib.) Bruce Jalosky writes: "Copernicus's views were not embraced by the church; the history of his persecution is well known." (Ib.) And, writes Dinesh D'Souza, "Daniel Dennett singles out the Catholic church and faults 'its unfortunate legacy of persecution of its own scientists.'" (Ib.)

So I always thought. And I was wrong. See Stanford's D'Souza, in his brilliant What's So Great About Christanity, Chapter Ten - "An Atheist Fable: Reopening the Galileo Case."

Briefly:

1. Neither Copernicus nor Galileo were "tortured" for their scientific views.

2. Galileo was treated fairly by the Inquisition. D'Souza cites historian Gary Ferngren, who writes: "The traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and a victim of the church's opposition to science has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature." (Ib., 110)

3. Galileo was found faulty for certain religious teachings that had nothing to do with science.

4. Galileo was correct in affirming Copernican heliocentrism. But Galileo's proof for this was incorrect. For example, one of his main arguments was that the rapid motion of the earth around the sun was responsibile for the ocean tides. As we now know, this is false. And, it was questioned at the time.

5. After Galileo recanted from lying, he was treated quite nicely and allowed to continue other forms of scientific research.

See the entire chapter for many more details as D'Souza gives a historically convincing argument that all the atheistic fuss about the church mistreating and even brutalizing Galileo and other scientists is simply a fable.

New Testaments Torched Outside Tel Aviv

For the CNN story go here.

Many Jews are condemning this act - e.g., see here.

See a Jerusalem Post article here.

I don’t personally see this being a dangerous situation for Messianic Jews in Israel. But I do notice a growing Jewish concern over Messianic Judaism and an increasing Jewish suspicion re. Christianity.

National Geographic's Serious Error About a "Good" Judas

The 2006 National Geographic special on The Gospel of Judas was wrong about Judas being a "hero." Actually, the correct interpretation of GJ is that Judas is even more villainous than how he is portrayed in the biblical Gospels.

To see how people ate this up "Good Judas" stuff up check out these reviews at amazon.com. For the debunking of the "Good Judas" interpretation see this essay in the current Chronicle Review. To whet your appetite, here are some direct quotes from this essay.

“In all of its materials, the view of Judas as good guy was front and center. In an online video clip, Meyer calls the text's Judas the "most insightful and the most loyal of all the disciples." In Ehrman's essay, Judas is "Jesus' closest friend, the one who understood Jesus better than anyone else, who turned Jesus over to the authorities because Jesus wanted him to do so." The teaser on the documentary's DVD case asks, "What if this account turned Jesus' betrayal on its head, and in it the villain became a hero?" The discovery of an ancient document titled "The Gospel of Judas" is exciting enough. But the twist of a good Judas — well, that's a great story."

"Reporters ate it up. Word of the discovery made the front pages of newspapers around the world. "Ancient Text Says Jesus Asked Judas to Hand Him to the Romans" was The Arizona Republic's headline. USA Today said the gospel "recasts" Judas. The Austin American-Statesman put it this way: "Ancient Judas as 'good guy,' not Jesus' betrayer." More than seven million viewers tuned in to see the documentary (counting the first couple of reruns), and 300,000 copies of the book containing the translation and the critical essays are now in print. The barrage of media coverage, aided by the good-Judas spin, seemed to have the desired effect.”

“One of the seven million people who watched the National Geographic documentary was April D. DeConick. Admittedly, DeConick, a professor of biblical studies at Rice University, was not your average viewer. As a Coptologist, she had long been aware of the existence of the Gospel of Judas and was friends with several of those who had worked on the so-called dream team. It's fair to say she watched the documentary with special interest."

"As soon as the show ended, she went to her computer and downloaded the English translation from the National Geographic Web site. Almost immediately she began to have concerns. From her reading, even in translation, it seemed obvious that Judas was not turning in Jesus as a friendly gesture, but rather sacrificing him to a demon god named Saklas. This alone would suggest, strongly, that Judas was not acting with Jesus' best interests in mind — which would undercut the thesis of the National Geographic team. She turned to her husband, Wade, and said: "Oh no. Something is really wrong.""

"She started the next day on her own translation of the Coptic transcription, also posted on the National Geographic Web site. That's when she came across what she considered a major, almost unbelievable error. It had to do with the translation of the word "daimon," which Jesus uses to address Judas. The National Geographic team translates this as "spirit," an unusual choice and inconsistent with translations of other early Christian texts, where it is usually rendered as "demon." In this passage, however, Jesus' calling Judas a demon would completely alter the meaning. "O 13th spirit, why do you try so hard?" becomes "O 13th demon, why do you try so hard?" A gentle inquiry turns into a vicious rebuke."

"Then there's the number 13. The Gospel of Judas is thought to have been written by a sect of Gnostics known as Sethians, for whom the number 13 would indicate a realm ruled by the demon Ialdabaoth. Calling someone a demon from the 13th realm would not be a compliment. In another passage, the National Geographic translation says that Judas "would ascend to the holy generation." But DeConick says it's clear from the transcription that a negative has been left out and that Judas will not ascend to the holy generation (this error has been corrected in the second edition). DeConick also objected to a phrase that says Judas has been "set apart for the holy generation." She argues it should be translated "set apart from the holy generation" — again, the opposite meaning. In the later critical edition, the National Geographic translators offer both as legitimate possibilities."

These discoveries filled her with dread. "I was like, this is bad, and these are my friends," she says. It's worth noting that it didn't take DeConick months of painstaking research to reach her conclusions. Within minutes, she thought something was wrong. Within a day, she was convinced that significant mistakes had been made. Why, if it was so obvious to her, had these other scholars missed it? Why had they seen a good Judas where, according to DeConick, none exists?

"Maybe because they were looking for him. “ [Emphasis mine]

The fiercest criticism of the National Geographic team came in the form of a New York Times opinion essay by DeConick, published in December. It is, like the professor herself, plain-spoken and blunt. She writes that "a more careful reading" makes it clear that Judas is no hero, implying, none too subtly, that the National Geographic team was not careful. She accuses its members of making "serious mistakes" and wonders aloud whether they are guilty of intentional mistranslation. "Were they genuine errors, or was something more deliberate going on?" she writes. "This is the question of the hour, and I do not have a satisfactory answer."

“Some of the sharpest digs have been reserved for Ehrman, who was the first member of the National Geographic team to publish a book on Judas. Publicly Ehrman has been the most vocal in embracing Judas as hero, and he has been pilloried for it. Scholar after scholar at the Rice conference took shots at him. Turner said he didn't read Ehrman's book because he "wouldn't expect to learn anything from it."

Ehrman thinks he has been unfairly caricatured as a cheerleader for the positive Judas theory.”

“Then, concerned that she has been too harsh, DeConick tries to soften the blow. "I don't want you to print that they messed up," she says. "Say there were errors. There were serious errors."”

Lenny Kravitz Sings About Jesus

It’s Memorial Day and I’m enjoying the sun and 80 degrees and doing lawn work and listening to Lenny Kravitz’s songs about God and Jesus. I’ve been playing his “Baptized” over and over -whew! It’s a killer song with a deep groove.

Also - “Believe,” “Love Revolution,” Storm,” “Bring It On,” and “God Save Us All.”