The Relative Irrelevance of the "New Atheists"

Ann Arbor

I'm in my 14th year of teaching philosophy at Monroe County Community College. I currently teach three classes a semester - 2 Philosophy of Religion classes, and Introduction to Logic.

I have 80 total students in all three classes this semester.

Because this is philosophy we teach about things like meaning ("Does life have meaning?"), epistemology ("What can we know?" "How is it possible to know?"), moral theories, truth (e.g., the notion of truth in logic), and God ("Does God exist?"; philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God).

I poll the students and ask: "Have you heard of any of the following - Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Bart Ehrman, and William Lane Craig?" 98% of my students over the years have never heard of any of them. Their writings are a massive non-issue among the students I teach.

Occasionally, a student has heard of one or more of these. I then ask: "Can you tell me anything about Dawkins? Hitchens? Ehrman? Craig? What are they writing about?" 98% of these 2% who have at least heard of Dawkins et. al. can say nothing meaningful about their writings. 2% of 2% = .0004%. Only 4 ten-thousandths of my students can say at least one relevant thing about the "New Atheist" discussion.

Conclusion: The "New Atheist" discussion is relatively irrelevant among the college students I teach.

But...  are these same students interested in engaging in discussion over matters of meaning, truth, morality, and God? Do they want to talk about these things? The answer is: Yes, overwhelmingly so.

Speaking in New Jersey This Weekend

I'll be speaking on "Leading the Presence-Driven Church + doing a Spiritual Formation Seminar in New Jersey this weekend. If you're interested here are the details.

ABCNJ Academy Presents – Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries

• January 29, 2014
• by wezlo
• in Events,Regional Life
• No comments yet

Course Description

Come embrace an opportunity for spiritual growth and formation within the presence and power of the Holy Spirit for clergy and laity. Paricipants will be guided through one of two teaching/workshop tracks. One for laity and one for clergy. The day will end with a panel discussion and question & answer time with the teaching team from Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries.

Date and Time

Saturday, March 8, 2014 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM (EST)

Location

We are pleased to be hosted by Columbus Baptist Church:

24260 West Main Street
Columbus, NJ 08022

Follow this link for directions.

Cost

• There is a $25 registration fee to attend this event.

Register Online

To register for this Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries event, follow this link.

Leadership Team

• Dr. John Piippo, Professor of Spiritual Formation at Payne Seminary and Senior Pastor of Redeemer Baptist Church, Monroe, MI
• Norelle Lutke, workshop leader and Vice Chairman of Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries, Witchita, KS
• Dr. Clay Ford, workshop leader and Chairman of Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries, San Diego, CA
• Dr. Ed Senior Pastor, Olivet Baptist Church, Lansing, MI

Downloads

The Icy Mocha Syndrome and Church Conflict

I really like James Van Yperen's Making Peace: A Guide to Overcoming Conflict. Van Yperen's principles would help overcome a lot of interpersonal conflict, like marital conflict.

For example: 

"In the Spirit-formed community our identity is changed from self (whether our collective self or personal self) to that of the Cross.
Instead of gathering around the personality and gifts of a central leader, instead of going to church to boost my self-esteem, have my needs met, or increase my knowledge, I gather with brothers and sisters in mutual submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ. We meet one another at the foot of the Cross, becoming the body of Christ, a living witness to what is possible when people live into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When the church is formed around self-esteem, we condemn our members to live lonely, powerless lives, each one trying to grow in human strength. In biblical community, by contrast, believers grow up together as all submit to the truth of Scripture and to the operation of God’s Spirit to and through one another.

So, while our identity changes, our reality changes also." (p. 75)

(Here's a criticism: I want Van Yeperen to get away from all language that talks about "going to church." It's misleading and is, unfortunately, the DNA of "Christians" today. If you are a Jesus-follower you don't "go to" church, you are the church. Talking like this helps avoid an us-them mentality.)

"Church" is not about having "my needs met." That never was the idea. But in our consumer culture "church" is some external "other" that either succeeds or fails in meeting my (the consumer's) needs. If my needs aren't met I shop somewhere else. What a mess we are in! And, BTW, that's heresy, isn't it?

If you are a Jesus-follower fix your eyes on Jesus. You are "church." Submit to Jesus as Lord, to the moving of God's Spirit, and to one another. That would be radical.

Find church people who serve up Pure Jesus rather than icy mochas. The icy mocha syndrome lies at the root of church conflict. Call this the logical fallacy of "appeal to the consumer."

Sundae Sunday at Redeemer

Thanks to Lin Andreoli! 



Over $4000 raised for the pastors in the Amazon rainforest of Peru.

On the Presence-Driven Church

Here are some things I've written and reposted on "The Presence-Driven Church."

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

The Distinctive of the Presence-Driven Church

The Basic Questions of the Presence-Driven Church

Some More on the Presence-Driven Church

The Presence-Driven Church & the Lost Art of Worship

The Distinctive of the Presence-Driven Church

Billboard, in downtown Detroit

My observation is that the students in my MCCC philosophy classes are neither impressed nor lastingly interested in "relevant" churches; viz., churches that spend their money on being, e.g., an Entertainment Church in the middle of our entertainment culture. This, I observe, is not working. There may be Entertainment Churches that are large in size, but what they have gathered is an audience, not a movement. 

For the Jesus Movement to move we must not make it our goal to "blend in." "Blending in" signifies the loss of any movement. What we must do is lock into our distinctives and go with them. 

For example, we have God and God's presence. We have answers to the ultimate questions. We have Christ in us, the hope of glory. That's not bad. And, BTW, the core distinctives cost no money to maintain.

Check out Yale theologian Miroslav Volf's observations about this. Volf writes:

"Christian communities will be able to survive and thrive in contemporary societies only if they attend to their “difference” from surrounding cultures and subcultures. The following principle stands: whoever wants the Christian communities to exist must want their difference from the surrounding culture, not their blending into it. As a consequence, Christian communities must “manage” their identity by actively engaging in “boundary maintenance.” Without boundaries, communities dissolve." (Volf, Miroslav. A Public Faith, p. 81)

The Jesus-community is different from the surrounding culture. Shore up that which is distinctive to Christian culture and strengthen that which is central.

The Basic Questions of the Presence-Driven Church

Green Lake, Wisconsin

The basic questions of the Presence-Driven Church are variations on the basic question, which is: What is God saying to us?

The variations include:

• Where is God leading us?
• What is God telling us to do?
• What does God think of this?
• What does this look like from God's perspective?
• Is God building this house, or are we?
• Are we hearing God correctly?
• God, what are you saying to us?

These are the questions to ask, primordially. Agree not to do anything or build anything or move in some direction just for movement's sake, but only as God has told us to do so.

The basic requirement of anyone who is a leader should be: one who abides in Christ, and hears the voice of God.

This is one of the reasons why, as leaders and as a people, we don't vote on things. If the voters are not in an abiding relationship with Christ then the voting will be in vain. If God isn't allowed into the house-building, then we are striving in vain.

In some contexts simply to raise the question "What is God saying to us?" creates tension. The person who asks this might be viewed as arrogant, or naive, or uneducated as to the correct protocol at "church meetings." If this question cannot be raised, then the church will be self-guided at best, demonically inspired at worst.

If these questions are unfamiliar, one might ask: "But how can we know what God is saying to us?" That's a good question. Optimally, as a leader you want your co-leaders to know the answer to this. Begin to instruct your people on: A.S.L.O.

If some are skeptical that God speaks to people today (or ever), then you've got deism. At this point the church is on their own, sans the leading of God. It makes me weary to even think of this, as a pastor.

Ask the question.

When Prayer Changed (PrayerLife)

The River Raisin, Monroe County

N.T. Wright, in his new book Paul and the Faithfulness of God states that with Paul, the Jewish idea of prayer and praying changed in a radical Reformation-like way. Ben Witherington notes this and writes:

"As it turns out, the real radical Reformation did not take place shortly after Luther (and in reaction to him). No, it happened in the first century when Paul revamped the whole symbol system of early Judaism. When someone reorients and reinterprets things like Temple, Territory, Torah, Prayer, Family, Battle etc. then they are messing with the vital parts of an ancient religion, not merely its thought world, but its praxis. So Wright correctly points out how different prayer looks in Paul’s letters– its not said to be a set times of day, its not said to involve a particular geographical orientation (pray towards the Temple in Jerusalem where God is said to dwell), it is not said to involve a set or rote prayer. Rather Paul says pray at any time and all the time, pray without ceasing, pray to the Father through the Son, pray at all times through and by means of the Spirit, and so on (p. 365). This entails a major modification of ancient Jewish monotheistic praying, not to mention the modification of the Shema in 1 Cor. 8.4-6 as well."
- "Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God - Part Fourteen"

So prayer...

• need not be at set times of the day
• need not have some special body posture or position
• need not be in some special location
• does not involve formulaic praying
• is to be engaged in any time and all the time
• is addressed to the Father, through the Son
• is Spirit-enabled
• and so on...

The historical Jesus-event unleashed prayer and praying into deeper relationship and greater freedom.

We Come to God By Love and Not By Navigation (PrayerLife)

Monroe County, MI

The heart of my spiritual formation classes is: pray one hour/day, 5 days/week, for six weeks. I was led to do it this way many years ago. A life of prayer, of actually praying, lies at the heart of all relevant and authentic spiritual formation, transformation, renewal, and restoration.

If prayer is talking with God about what he and I are doing together, then to pray is to be intimate with God. To pray is to love God, and to be loved by God. Prayer-engagement is relationship with God.

It was St. Augustine who once wrote that we come to God "by love and not by navigation." This means we come to God by entering into relationship, not by reading books about relationship. We learn more about God and the God-life by actually praying than by reading books on prayer. Books can keep us at a theoretical distance from God. To pray is to be intimate with God. That is the place where soul restoration happens.

As James Houston writes: "Prayer is the way that we shape our inward life to imitate the mind of Christ." (Houston, The Transforming Power of Prayer: Deepening Your Friendship with God, 42)

Praying In the Fields of God's Grace (PrayerLife)

Paul writes in Romans 5:1-5: 



¹ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.



The points are:

1. Everyone who trusts and places their faith in Christ is "justified." Rectified. Straightened out. Placed on the straight path of life. That is, made right with God. From this it follows that...
2. Followers of Jesus have peace with God. We are brought into relationship with God. Here is the Jewish idea of shalom. Shalom is a robust, physical concept. The image is of two hands meeting in a handshake, of two persons who were once enemies coming together in an embrace. While we were once God's enemies (Romans 5:10), as sin caused us to fall short of the glory of God, now the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross has reconciled us to God. We are brought into the presence of God, not as a result of our performance or lack thereof, but by the grace of God. Keep this in your heart and mind. God loves you. Period.
3. By placing our faith in Christ we have gained access into the fields of God's grace. New Testament scholar Ben Witherington puts it this way: “Grace here seems to be seen as a sort of sphere which the believer enters and stands within. The image may be of a weak person who is able to stand up and withstand whatever life brings through the divine power and love of God.” (BW, Romans, 134) If you are a Jesus-follower, you stand in those gracious fields now.
4. You have been made right with God, brought into shalom with your Maker, and stand in His fields of grace. N.T. Wright says: This is “the beginning of something so big, so massive, so unimaginably beautiful and powerful, that we almost burst as we think of it. When we stand there in God’s own presence, not trembling but deeply grateful, and begin to inhale his goodness, his wisdom, his power and his joy, we sense that we are being invited to go all the way, to become the true reflections-of-God, the true image-bearers, that we were made to be.” (NTW, Romans) This is what we were created for; viz., to host the presence of God. (See, e.g., C.S. Lewis's beautiful "The Weight of Glory.")
5. But there is more than this. "When we are reconciled to the God who is our Father, we discover that he wants not simply to enjoy this one-to-one relationship, but to enlist us in his service in working for his kingdom. And that will bring all kinds of pressures and problems which will require us to hang on in faith and hope even when we don’t sense his presence, even when it doesn’t ‘feel’ as though there’s anything happening." (NTW, Ib.) In other words we suffer for the cause of God's Kingdom and the Gospel. The suffering of a Jesus-follower, as they are engaged in the Mission, is not for nothing, as an atheist's suffering ultimately is. The purpose of life is not to avoid suffering and achieve happiness, as, e.g., much of our culture and the Dalai Lama says it is. We go through suffering, through the "valley of the shadow of death." In our suffering we have real hope, and we boast of it.
6. What we boast in affects how we suffer. Some boast in their own wisdom, strength, and riches. (Jeremiah 9:23-24) In the middle of suffering these personal accomplishments have their limitations. Ultimately, in death, they all fail. But for those who trust Christ, have been made right with God, are in shalom with their Maker, and stand in the fields of His grace, suffering looks and is different. When my son David died at birth and his twin Joshua was fighting for his life Linda and I looked at each other and said, "How could anyone go through this without Christ?" In that difficult time we not only stayed with Jesus, but it strengthened our resolve to do so. At such times one's personal trophies mean nothing. I have learned to glory ("boast") in the hope of the glory of God.
7. In suffering with Christ endurance is formed. Character is developed. The Greek word Paul uses for character is dokimos. This word is used to describe the fiery purification of precious metals. God redeems our suffering and uses it to burn away all that is peripheral in life to establish His moral and spiritual being and glory within us. As this happens, "I finally find where I belong, to be with You, to be with You."
8. Because of this I have hope. Eschatological hope. Which means: future hope. The first biblical verse that stood out to me when I turned to Jesus at age 21 was Romans 8:18 - "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth being compared to the glory that will be revealed to us." Today, 44 years later, these words come back to me and mean much more than ever. I have placed every one of my eggs into this basket of hope.
9. One existential reason for the hope I have is this: God's Spirit has poured out His love for me, into my heart. My verification for this is first-person subjective experience. The words "pour out" are used, in other contexts, to describe a rainstorm's deluge of water. God's love does not come as a meager trickle, but as an Outpouring. I have experienced this. The language of God's love is pure, experiential language. It is one thing, and not a bad thing, to intellectually acknowledge that "Yes, I know God loves me." But "love" is not essentially an intellectual thing, though it includes that. God's love, real love, is a visceral-experiential-encounter thing. The reality of God's love, poured into every Jesus-follower, is undeniable. A Love-Outpouring is something that is felt.

Pray for the Outpouring as you kneel to pray in the fields of God's grace. A new, fresh, rain-deluge of the love of God, flooding the fields of God's grace, in which you stand with the One who made all things right between you and your Creator.