Understanding Sexual Identity

Green Lake, Wisconsin

Our staff at Redeemer Church is reading together Mark Yarhouse's Understanding Sexual Identity: A Resource for Youth Ministry. 

We've all got a copy.

We'll bring the book to our staff meeting tomorrow and begin the discussion!

Leading the Presence-Driven Church Seminar - Session 3

The third, and final, session of my Leading the Presence-Driven Church Seminar, is Sunday, March 11, 5-6:15 PM, at Redeemer Fellowship Church.

I'll teach on chapter 7 ("The Language of the Presence-Driven Church"), ch. 8 ("Leading the Presence-Driven Church"), and ch. 9 ("God's Presence Will Win the Day").

The book is available HERE.

For questions or information please contact me at johnpiippo@msn.com. 

Your Identity: Who You Are Not, and Who You Are

Mad Max - captive in a wasteland of identity dissolution

One area of ongoing study for me is philosophical anthropology. What is the nature of personhood? Who am I, and who are you?

The atheistic alternative is: a person is a purely physical thing, a material thing with no immaterial properties such as "mind," "soul," "free will," and "moral values." (Physical things, as physical, are not value-laden.)

Philosopher J. P. Moreland writes: "For the physicalist, I am merely a functioning brain and central nervous system enclosed in a physical body. I am a material substance characterized completely by physical properties and in which occur merely physical events, a creature made of matter - nothing more, nothing less." (Moreland, The Soul: How we Know It's Real and Why It Matters)

The Christian theistic worldview on personhood is:

You are a creation of God, in the image and likeness of God. You share spiritual characteristics with God, things like personality, intelligence, and free will. You are made for relationship with God. You have been given authority to rule on behalf of God (Genesis 1:26). You are made to reflect the glory of God (Psalm 8:5).

John Walton defines "image" as "a physical manifestation of divine (or royal) essence that bears the function of that which it represents; this gives the image-bearer the capacity to reflect the attributes [such as love, faithfulness, justice, and wisdom] of the one represented and act on his behalf." 

(Walton, Genesis, 131) 

John Goldingay says “God is a different league of person from us, but God is a person like us, not an abstract force or a principle. So despite the huge difference, Genesis says we are made in God’s image. You as a human being are the kind of thing God would be if God were earthly. 

You have a soul. (See Moreland, op. cit.; and see A Brief History of the Soul, by Stuart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro.)

As a follower of Jesus, your status is "in Christ."

You are a God-created, soulish, embodied, "in Christ" person. 

This means there are some things you are not. For example, 
You are not what you do. 

To define yourself by what you do is to live on a spiritual and emotional roller coaster that is a function of your accomplishments. Your identity does not depend on what you have accomplished. Your productivity does not define you. Your worth is not the same as your usefulness. 

You are not what you have. Do not define yourself by your stuff. If you do, then when you lose your stuff you will slip into an identityless darkness.

You are not what other people think of you. If people think well of you, say thank you. If people think ill of you, pray for them. But  do not go up and down and in and out on the basis of others' affirmation and disaffirmation. Refuse to let other people define you.

You ARE what God thinks of you. Period. Case closed. Colossians 1:27 says, "To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

When you understand this, three things happen.

1. You are set free from the punishing hierarchical honor-shame systems of the prevailing secular culture.
2. You are free from the striving that happens on the ladder of the honor-shame hierarchy.
3. You are free to love others.

I look at our culture and see a massive identity crisis. What once was a normal period of human development is now Western humanity's sad, seemingly permanent condition.

The good news for me is that when God found me, I also found my true self, who and what I am, and who and what I have been made for. 

***
My first two books are...

Praying: Reflection on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing...

Technology and Spiritual Formation

How God Changes the Human Heart: A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation)

Plantinga's Free Will Defense Against the Logical Argument from Evil Against the Existence of God

The river in our backyard

(For my MCCC Philosophy of Religion students)

Philosopher-atheist J.L. Mackie constructs an argument from evil intended to show the incoherence of theism. One cannot, thinks Mackie, simultaneously affirm the following three propositions (known as "Mackie's Triad"):

1) God is all-powerful.

2) God is all-good.

3) Evil exists.

Just as one cannot simultaneously affirm:

1) John is a bachelor.

2) John's wife's name is Linda.

Or:

1) Object X is square.

2) Object X is circular.

With this last example, we see that there is no possible world where an object, X, can be at the same time square and circular. There is, e.g., a possible world where a talking sponge can exist; i.e., it is logically possible that a talking sponge can exist. The term "talking sponge" is not logically impossible (logically incoherent). But "square circle" is. Mackie's claim is that theism, the idea of an all-powerful, all-good being, is incoherent on the existence of evil. That is, one cannot imagine a possible world where an all-powerful, all-good being coexists with evil.

As convincing as Mackie's argument sounds, it is false. To defeat Mackie all one would have to show is that there is a possible world (or there are possible worlds) where the existence of an all-loving, all-powerful being is compatible (coherent) with the existence of evil. This has been done. (Note: this is modal logic stuff.)

Nearly all philosophers, to include atheists such as William Rowe, believe Alvin Plantinga has defeated Mackie's logical argument, and that therefore theism is not incoherent.

Students - here's what I want you to say.

#1 - To defeat Mackie's argument all Plantinga needs to do is show that there is a possible world in which Mackie's Triad can be affirmed. If Mackie's Triad was logically inconsistent, there could be no possible world where an all-powerful, all-loving being existed with the existence of evil.

Plantinga does this by showing a possible world where:

#2 - It is possible that God has given persons libertarian free will.

"Libertarian free will" is: the ability to make a choice (such as, e.g., a moral choice) that is not fully reducible to antecedent (or prior) causal conditions. For example, making a moral choice not fully reducible to neurochemistry, environmental conditions, or both. 

#3 - It is possible that God has counterfactual knowledge.

To say that God could have counterfactual knowledge is to say that God knows the truth value of future conditional statements that describe possible states of affairs. (Note: if one thinks that God's counterfactual knowledge eliminates free will they have just made an error in modal logic - see 

here.)

For example: If John faces a moral choice tonight then either
a) John will choose good; or
b) John will choose evil.

It is possible that God knows which choice John will make. (All that's needed here is logical possibility, not actuality).

If God knows John will choose evil, then God cannot make a world where there is no evil, since to do that would contradict John's having libertarian free will.

But what if, Mackie asks, God made a world where all persons on all occasions chose good? Plantinga responds by saying that it is possible transworld depravity exists. 

#4 - It is possible that transworld depravity exists.

By "transworld depravity" Plantinga means: in all possible worlds human agents will commit at least one evil act.

If, then, there is a possible world where libertarian free will exists and God knows what choices John will make, and knows that John will choose evil on at least one occasion, then God cannot make a world where John is faced with that choice and chooses good. This is because it would violate John's free will.

If so, then we have a world where one can affirm the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving (as well as all-knowing) God exists, as does evil. Mackie's logical argument is defeated.

Presence-Driven Leaders Confess Ignorance While Trusting in God

Moon over the River Raisin

In Leading the Presence-Driven Church I state that a mark of a leader is that they do not often know where God is taking them. The classic example is Abraham, who followed God even though he did not know where he was going. (Hebrews 11)

It is honest, it is more than OK, for a leader to confess, "I don't know where to go, or what to do, but I am trusting in God."

If the leaders say they don't know where they are going, while not trusting in God, then we have problems. If the leaders think they know where they are going, while ignoring God, then we have disaster. 

Presence-driven leaders confess their ignorance, while placing their trust in God. Like Jehoshaphat, as he stood before the people and said,

"Our God..., we are powerless against 

this great multitude that is coming against us. 

We do not know what to do, 

but our eyes are on you.”

2 Chronicles 20:5-12

To trust in God implies that we do not often know the outcome. Trust always means unknowing. 

Our prayer should be that of 17th-century poet John Donne:

"O Lord,

never let us think

that we can stand by ourselves,

and not need You.

Amen."

Listening: Love Is Able to Wait

Monroe

In one of my pastoral counseling classes in seminary we watched a video where psychotherapist Carl Rogers was interviewing a very withdrawn, hospitalized schizophrenic patient. The interview was called "A Silent Young Man." 

Rogers' therapeutic strategy was non-directive. I remember thinking how patient Rogers was with this twenty-eight-year-old man. Rogers was famous for his "active listening." 

In the video there were many breaks of silence that seemed excruciatingly long, as Rogers waited for the man to say something. The silences lasted anywhere from ten seconds to eighteen minutes. (!)

Today I am thinking about this video, which I saw forty-three years ago. It helped me, by showing that understanding must always precede evaluating. Never judge someone or something before you understand. Love is able to wait.

This is one of the reasons I was attracted to Linda. I remember a night, before we began to date, and I was struggling with something. I had met Linda in the campus ministry we were both part of. We had been in some group situations together. That night, I wanted to talk with someone. The best person I could think of was Linda. She would listen to me, and that was what I needed. 

Carl Rogers said the therapist tries "to hear the sounds and sense the shape of the other person's inner world. He asks himself, 'Can I resonate to what [the person] is saying, can I let it echo back and forth in me, so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of yet would like to communicate, as well as those meanings he knows." (In Godfrey T. Barrett-Lennard, Carl Rogers' Helping System: Journey and Substance, p. 93)

Rogers' listening gift shows me that truly hearing someone is deeper, more attentive, and more empathic than I have ever thought. 

Adam McHugh has written an excellent book that helps us here - A Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness In a World of Distraction. McHugh says listening is a form of kenosis, a self-emptying, so the thoughts of another can find a place to speak in you. He writes,

"Listening is central to the gospel. Emptying yourself, assuming the role of a servant and submitting to others is not only the description of Christ's incarnation, it is also the description of a true listener." (P. 36)

***
My first two books are...

Praying: Reflection on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing...

Technology and Spiritual Formation

How God Changes the Human Heart: A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation)

The First Task of the Church Is to Be Itself

Cancun moon rising, cruise ship in the distance

Stanley Hauerwas said, "The first task of the church is to be itself."

Miroslav Volf writes that the church that wants to survive and flourish in these dark, marginalizing days, must emphasize its distinctiveness.

Moses said, how will people know we are distinct if your presence is not with us?

To be yourself implies not striving to be someone else. Today, and perhaps ever since the Garden, masses of humanity are trying to be something other than their own selves. Since we are what we desire (see here), and we desire what we are not, herds of people are mindlessly seduced by the marketers of relevance (see here, e.g.).

Church - be yourself? And what might that be? My candidate for the church's core identity is the presence of God, with its many implications. My intent is to start the conversation with my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church.

Our Young Narcissists

Wall mural in Columbus, Ohio

"But I need to get a good grade in this class!" pleaded Student X after I graded her an 'F' on the first exam of my Philosophy of Religion course. "I know this material," she said.

Student X had not studied for the exam. Yet she was angry because I failed her. X thought she could slide through the class without studying, just like she did in high school. She felt she "deserved" a good grade. She had a sense of entitlement. I had seen this many times. 

In "Seeing Narcissists Everywhere" Dr. Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, has "concluded, over and over again, that younger generations are increasingly entitled, self-obsessed and unprepared for the realities of adult life. And the blame, she says, falls squarely on America’s culture of self-esteem, in which parents praise every child as “special,” and feelings of self-worth are considered a prerequisite to success, rather than a result of it."

“There’s a common perception that self-esteem is key to success, but it turns out it isn’t,” Twenge says. Nonetheless, “young people are just completely convinced that in order to succeed they have to believe in themselves or go all the way to being narcissistic.”

"Narcissism" - an inflated view of self. Student X was out of touch with the reality of her. "A study [Twenge] published last month in Social Psychological and Personality Science... found that the number of students who consider themselves above average continued to increase during the recession, even as the focus on materialism has ebbed."

Not all millenials are selfish. But Twenge thinks narcissism is on the rise, a view I see verified in my college classes. 

A narcissist looks at the world and sees only their own self. For a narcissist, entitlement precludes understanding. A narcissist will judge first, and not have the needed humility to understand others before judging them.

For more see Twenge and Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement.

Linda and I are vacationing in Cancun this week. I brought Twenge's recent book iGen with me.

***
My first two books are...

Praying: Reflection on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing...

Technology and Spiritual Formation

How God Changes the Human Heart: A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation)

Jesus and the Parable of the Pit

Pond, at Monroe County Community College

In John 9 Jesus, who has just referred to himself as the “light of the world” and the “light of life,” walks out of the temple in Jerusalem at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. Outside the temple he and his disciples see a beggar who has been blind from birth.

Blind people, in ancient times, were often reduced to living outside the city and coming in to beg for food and money. They were marginalized and ostracized. This added great inner suffering to their already-difficult physical condition.

Jesus and his disciples stop in front of the blind beggar and to talk. The disciples ask, “Who sinned – this man or his parents?” They assumed, as did many during that time, there was some kind of cause-effect relationship between illness and sin. Imagine the blind man listening to this. He’s heard it before. He already feels bad enough, being blind, and begging to put food on his table.

Then Jesus says words that, even though he couldn’t see, must have filled him with hope. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” Then, Jesus heals the man. The man, instead of being a rejected thing, becomes a follower and worshiper of Jesus. He is set free physically, economically (no more begging for money) and, most importantly, emotionally and spiritually.

Jesus rejects the theological speculation and dialogue the disciples want to engage in and says, “Forget that stuff. It’s time to do the work of God!” Which is, precisely, things like healing blind people and setting oppressed people free.

This reminds me of something called “The Parable of the Pit,” which I heard John Maxwell give in a message many years ago. It goes like this.

A man fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out.

• A subjective person came along and said, “I feel for you down there.”
• An objective person came along and said, “It’s logical that someone would fall down into that pit.”
• A Pharisee said, “Only bad people fall into a pit.”
• Confucius said, “If you would have listened to me you wouldn’t be in that pit.”
• Buddha said, “Your pit is only a state of mind.”
• A realist said, “Now that’s a pit!”
• A scientist calculated the pressure necessary, pounds and square inches, to get him out of the pit.
• A geologist told him to appreciate and study the rock strata in the pit.
• The building commission said he needed to build a detention pond near the pit.
• An evolutionist said, “You will die in the pit so you can’t produce any more pit-falling offspring.”
• The country inspector said, “Did you have a permit to dig that pit?”
• A professor gave him a lecture on the elementary principles of the pit.
• A self-pitying person said, “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen my pit!”
• An optimist said, “Things could get worse.”
• A pessimist said, “Things are going to get worse.”
• But Jesus saw the man in the pit, took him by the hand, and lifted him out.

The United States: A Country Obsessed With the Worship of its Own Moral Ignorance

Cancun

Thank God for people who do not get their moral values from the majority. Thanks to those who do not infer from The majority believe X is right/wrong, to Therefore, X is right/wrong.

Yet, this is what most people do; viz., infer from the majority. The opinion poll is their shepherd, and that's why in America we are morally wanting.

Writing in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville said, "In America the majority builds an impregnable wall around thinking." (In Os Guinness, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times, p. 40)

Novelist James Fennimore Cooper wrote, “It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law.” (Ib.) The Supreme Court is not my shepherd.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill warned that “the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.”(Ib.) 

Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote in his journal, “The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality.” (Ib.) Which means: utilitarianism; Bentham's hedonic calculus; the metricization of morality.

Everyone's moral opinion is not equal, just as everyone's opinion is not equal. Physicist Robert Jastrow was lecturing in support of President Reagan's plan to develop space-based missile systems. An undergraduate student challenged Jastrow. When the student realized a world-class physicist was not going to change his mind after a few minuts arguing with a sophomore, the student said, "Well, your guess is as good as mine." To which Jastrow responded emphatically, "No, no, no, my guesses are much, much better than yours." (In Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, p. 83)

Some people's moral judgments are much, much better than others. Some have moral expertise. Most do not.

"The United States," writes Nichols, "is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance." This includes a rapidily growing moral ignorance that is as unstudied and unreflective as an emoji. 

If you are a follower of Jesus, listen to the plea of Os Guinness. "For the Hebrew prophets, “Thus says the Lord” was decisive, not the opinions of the people. And in fact, the pursuit of truth, beauty, excellence, whether in art, science or spiritual growth, has rarely taken its cue from John Q. Public or from Mr. and Mrs. Average. It aspires to the standards of the few and the exceptional—the great masters, the inspiring heroes and the extraordinary saints." (Op. cit., p. 41)

***
My first two books are...

Praying: Reflection on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing...

Technology and Spiritual Formation

How God Changes the Human Heart: A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation)