"Church" Is Not an Institution, But a Movement

Years ago I was in Singapore eating dinner with Pastor Albert Kang, and we were talking about Christianity. Albert leaned over the table and said, “Christianity is a movement, not an institution.” That’s correct.

When I hear people say things like “church is boring” they are talking about the “institutional church,” not the real church. I’ve been on the inside of the institutional church, and it’s a struggle. The institutional church is political, bureaucratic, slow to move. Pastors and priests of institutional churches are viewed as butlers who are there to please parishioners.

The “church” we see in the New Testament was nothing like this. There, the word “church” meant a “people called out to follow after God,” rather than a “building.” “Church” has nothing to do with buildings. Some “churches” meet in buildings, but they don’t need to.

The real Church is like an army, ready and alert and on the move and flexible. “Church” is about people, not buildings or political institutions. The real Church is revolutionary; the institutional “church” is but a reflection of it’s culture’s institutions. Institutional churches “vote” on things, like what color the carpet should be in the nursery. (Institutional churches have split over that kind of thing!) I hate to burst your bubble about this, but the word “vote” only appears once in the actual Bible. It’s in Acts 26:9-11, when Paul talks about his former Christian-persecuting life and how he would “cast his vote” to punish Christians.

“Church” is not something you “go to” on Sundays. If you are a follower of Jesus, then you are the “church.” How odd it is to say “I’m going to church today,” which is the equivalent of saying “I’m going to myself today.” Sounds a bit self-serving, doesn’t it? The next time someone asks you “Where’s your church at?” you can just point to your own self. You are the church. This doesn’t change, even if you lose your building.

We are the church. Jesus is our Lord. Jesus is on a mission. The mission is about his kingdom, and introducing others to it. “Christians” are people who follow after Jesus. They don’t “vote” for Jesus; they follow him. In the process sex addicts get free of their addiction, prostitutes find the love of God, marriages get reconciled, drifters find a home, the homeless and hungry get cared for, children get to keep their biological parents, life takes on meaning, hope gets restored, paradigms gets shifted, and one discovers the glorious presence of God. Nothing can separate a person from that - not famine or nakedness or persecution or the economy or even death. That’s “church” as I see it. “Boring” is not the word to describe it.

Charles Taylor - A Review (+ A Comment on Richard Rorty)

I (like you?) read a lot of books at one time. I'm still slowly reading through Charles Taylor's brilliant A Secular Age. There's an entire universe of ideas in this book - what a read! I am now thinking that if I were stranded on a deserted island and could take only a few books with me, Taylor's would be one.

Here's a nice review from an agnostic on Taylor's book.

Note the comment on Richard Rorty. "I’m not prepared to argue, as Richard Rorty does, that there is no transcendent basis for my commitment to human rights and that it is a purely contingent historical formation. Rorty is mighty sure of himself. I just don’t know. So there is what appears to be a permanent gap in my belief system. If I were a religious person, I guess I’d be entitled to call it a Mystery. This gap doesn’t trouble me. All belief systems have Mysteries."

Personally, were I an atheist, I'd have to side with Rorty. I fail to see how his statement could be false. If there's no God then it seems to analytically follow that "there is no transcendent basis for my commitment to human rights." That leaves: "a purely contingent historical formation.

Bill Craig & J.P. Moreland - The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology

The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, will come out this May. The cost: a mere $159.96!

Here's the Table of Contents:

1. The Project of Natural Theology (Charles Taliaferro).
2. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument (Alexander R. Pruss).
3. The Kalam Cosmological Argument (William Lane Craig and James D. Sinclair).
4. The Teleological Argument (Robin Collins).
5. The Argument from Consciousness (J. P. Moreland).
6. The Argument from Reason (Victor Reppert).
7. The Moral Argument (Mark D. Linville).
8. The Argument from Evil (Stewart Goetz).
9. The Argument from Religious Experience (Kai-man Kwan).
10. The Ontological Argument (Robert Maydole).
11. The Argument from Miracles (Lydia McGrew and Timothy McGrew).

Chapter 11, by McGrew & McGrew, can be found here in its 75-page entirety - "The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth."

Can Thinking About the Great Depression Cause a Great Depression?

Philippians 4:8 reads: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." Here is the idea that the things we think about (in the sense of pondering them and meditating on them) affect our whole being. Such as: much time spent playing violent video games and watching violent movies results in a reduction of helping behaviors. A recent University of Michigan study supports this. (See my 2/22/09 post on this.) This does not mean that if one plays violent games and watches violent movies that one will be violent. The study does claim to show that "violent video games and movies make people numb to the pain and suffering of others."

At Saturday's nytimes.com there was an article of another kind that supports the Philippians 4:8 truth. It's called:"Can Talk of a Depression Lead to One?" For example, thinking about the "Great Depression" "serves as a model for our expectations, damping what John Maynard Keynes called our “animal spirits,” reducing consumers’ willingness to spend and businesses’ willingness to hire and expand. The Depression narrative could easily end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Today "the Great Depression appears truly relevant, and many people have been spooked by the story." The article claims that the Great Depression was itself "partly driven by the retelling of earlier depression stories." Note: this presents a strange loop for the philosophical naturalist. Can one choose not to think about the Great Depression? If one chooses to think about it, then one's thoughts appear to have causal influence in some way.

Forget for a moment the economic event called the "Great Depression" and think, but only briefly, about mental depression. As I have counseled many people over the years re. mood disorders, if they are followers of Jesus I refer them to Philippians 4:8 (if I think the origin of the person's depression is clinical I do this and refer them to a good clinician). Because I and they believe the Bible contains God-inspired truths, I encourage them to carry a list of such truths around with them and think much on them in the sense of meditating on them. For me personally, and for many others I am familiar with, depression lifts. The recent cover story of Time magazine lends support to the idea that people who have a strong faith in God generally fare better when it comes to physical and mental health.

For me none of this is some merer "positive thinking" technique. I want truth. As I fill my heart and mind with things that I find good, true, noble, pure, and lovely, I believe God forms my heart in light of such things.

So in my church, as a pastor, I don't want to bury my head in the sand re. the economic situation we now are in. I want to know which of my church family members are being hit by this and reach out to them and seek God re. helping them. And I'll continue to place my hope and trust in the God who years ago tore me out of a life of drug-darkness, and communicate this to our church family. On Sunday mornings we'll worship God for his greatness, love, and glory, and preach about the Real Jesus. I wonder what would happen in our community and country if we spent our days meditating on these things rather than meditating on the Great Depression?

Does the Brain Create God?

Neuro-studies are replacing the liberal arts (aka the "humanities"). Universities have science departments and these are not to be construed as humanities departments. But this is changing. Soon, there may be only science departments. This will create an unusual problem, which I'll visit below. Theology ("religious studies") is one area of the humanities destined for a fall.

It's Sunday night, I'm sitting in our family room with Linda awaiting the Academy Awards show. My laptop is, literally, on my lap. Late Sundays for me are often "New York Times" times. I've for some time now abandoned the hard copy New York Times for nytimes.com. On today's "front page" is a link to an archived article: "Darwin's God." (2/4/07) The article begins: "God has always been a puzzle for Scott Atran." Atran's burning questions include: are we humans hard-wired to believe in God? If so, how did that happen, and why? And, if one so explains religion, does one then explain religion away?

Re. the first question, the discovery that we humans are hard-wired for God-belief can be used in support of both theists and atheists. The theist can argue that, if the noetic framework of theism is true, then it's not improbable that God would make us "hard-wired" to connect with God. The nytimes article says: "What does this mean for belief in the supernatural? It means our brains are primed for it, ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic."

Atran teaches at the University of Michigan. I went to his website and checked out some of the links. This took me to a recent New Scientist article called "Born believers: How your brain creates God." (2/4/09) Atran's view is not that religion has evolved as an adaptation that increases the chances of survivability. His idea is that "religion emerges as a natural by-product of the way the human mind works." This is the "hard-wiring theory."

Psychologist Pascal Boyer says that, if this is true, it cannot mean that adults who believe in God are "childish or weak-minded." Put another way, those of us who believe in God are not the simple idiots Richard Dawkins takes us to be. Paul Bloom of Yale U. says that religion is an inescapable artefact of the wiring in our brains. Bloom states: "All humans possess the brain circuitry and that never goes away." Olivera Petrovich of Oxford U says that " even adults who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics are prone to supernatural thinking." Studies done on atheists show that "they often tacitly attribute purpose to significant or traumatic moments in their lives, as if some agency were intervening to make it happen. They don't completely exorcise the ghost of god - they just muzzle it."

"If religion is a natural consequence of how our brains work, where does that leave god? All the researchers involved stress that none of this says anything about the existence or otherwise of gods: as Barratt points out, whether or not a belief is true is independent of why people believe it. It does, however, suggests that god isn't going away, and that atheism will always be a hard sell. Religious belief is the "path of least resistance", says Boyer, while disbelief requires effort."

The hard-wiring theory "challenges the idea that religion is an adaptation." Atran says religion "arises as an artefact of the ability to build fictive worlds. I don't think there's an adaptation for religion any more than there's an adaptation to make airplanes."

This leads me to conclude that the statement "Humans are hard-wired to believe in God and the supernatural" could not be used, if true, to disprove the existence of God and the supernatural. Isn't it all, in that case, but a very big, juicy example of the genetic fallacy?

Of course, if the hard-wiring theory is true, then it's positively ignorant for "atheists" who have expended tons of mental effort to repress the hard-wiring to blame we who go with the flow. At most, their valiant Everest-kind-of-struggle does not conclude with "God does not exist" but in wearing a t-shirt that says "I climbed Mount Improbable."

As for the "agnostic," that poor creature, if there is a true one, is seen as someone whose hard-wiring is defective, leaving them with either no God to believe in and therefore no struggle to overcome should they "choose" to overcome it. Using Atran's reasoning, my guess is that an agnostic is not someone who does not "know" there is a God but who is refusing to make a "decision" to embrace the hard-wiring or climb Mount Improbable.

Finally, what will all this look like when the "humanities" are absorbed into neuro-studies? All that will be left will be "science." But by "science" we can't mean "science" as some understand it today, viz., as some kind of quest for "understanding and truth." The scientist herself is an emergent creature, rising out of the neural fabric that has either evolved for adaptibility or is hard-wired to "think scientifically" or a mixture of both. "Truth," which has always belonged to the humanities (as Hume and many others have shown us), will have disappeared.

Violent Video Games & Movies Numb People to Others' Suffering

The Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan reports that a study shows that "violent video games and movies make people numb to the pain and suffering of others." Exposure to violent media produces "physiological desensitization" and reduces "helping behavior." "People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song."

"People who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a nonviolent game—73 seconds compared to 16 seconds. People who had played a violent game were also less likely to notice and report the fight. And if they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a nonviolent game."

Bertrand Russell & the Argument From Design

Russell, in Why I Am Not a Christian, critiques the Design Argument for God's existence and rejects it, giving him yet another purported reason to remain a-Christian. Russell writes: "everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design."

Russell then argues that, like Richard Dawkins, Darwin's evolutionary theory shows us that apparent design can be explained without reference to a Designer God. What can we say to this?

I would first point out the existence of theists such as Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller who also agree with evolutionary theory. Collins and Miller make powerful cases for the acceptance of evolutionary theory while not eliminating the existence of God.

Secondly, we still have scientists who are interested in intelligent design theory. And we still have scientists who have questions about macroevolution. Note: ID theory is greatly despised by a number of scientists who are very vocal about this. One's position as a scientist could be in jeopardy if one raised questions about natural selection. Even the suggestion that one might like to at least investigate the claims of ID theorists can be enough to bring down on oneself a desert storm of ad hominem abusives. For some rational dialogue (with an admittedly theistic bias, yet containing essays by Wesley Elsberry and Nick Matzke, as well as atheist Michael Ruse) try something like this.

Philosophically it's significant that former philosopher-atheist Antony Flew has been persuaded by a version of the design argument and has come to accept the existence of a God. It was humorous to see the reaction of a few atheists (not all, by any means; and probably a number of them don't really care since they aren't interested in "evangelistic atheism" and wearing "I Ride the Atheist Bus" t-shirts). These few were scrambling to analyze Flew's mental capabilities. Evangelistic atheism simply in unable to comprehend that one could be a "bright" philosopher or scientist and still believe in God.

As for Russell, he was not familiar with anthropic coincidences and the fine-tuning argument which states that the fine-tuning of the unverse is not improbable on theism but is very improbable on the atheistic single-universe hypothesis. It's this latter argument that especially interests me.

Russell continues: "When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?"

I find this reasoning unpersuasive. Since Russell cannot see sub specie aeternitatis, he's in no position to judge that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. And even if he could make that judgment, it is not clear that on Christian theism we should be concerned to show that we live in the best of all possible worlds, since whatever our world once was it has long since fallen from that state. Precisely, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. The KKK and Fascism exist because we have been given free will. See here, for example, the arguments of Alvin Plantinga (his work on evolutionary naturalism) and Greg Boyd.

Russell's criticism here is facile and unstudied. He has yet to give me any significant reason as to why I should not remain a follower of Jesus.

Plantinga's Refutation of Mackie's Logical Argument From Evil Against God's Existence

Here’s “the Logical Problem of Evil,” as formulated by the philosopher J.L. Mackie. This has been called "Mackie’s triad":

1. God is all-powerful.

2. God is wholly good.

3. Evil exists.

These three are thought to be logically inconsistent. This means one cannot affirm - simultaneously - the truth of all three statements.

Mackie adds some explanatory rules to make the inconsistency more obvious. Mackie believes that:

iv. A good being would always stop evil from happening. This means that a good being always eliminates evil as far as it can.

v. An all-powerful being is able to stop evil from happening. It can do anything. There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do.

With these two explanatory rules added, Mackie thinks the logical inconsistency is obvious. Thus, for Mackie, to believe in the existence of God is positively irrational (= illogical).

Mackie's argument can be put in the form of what is called a logically "inconsistent triad". In this argument form, three propositions are inconsistent with each other such that one cannot hold all three at the same time without holding a contradiction. Holding such a contradiction would be like believing that:

a. This object is round.

b. This object is square.

It’s impossible to consistently or rationally believe both of these at the same time. Thus Mackie's argument from the problem of evil is an argument that seeks to demonstrate that the traditional theistic definition of God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil. It concludes that God cannot possibly exist if evil exists. Mackie argues that the theist cannot rationally believe in God's existence given the existence of evil.

Now NO ONE ACCEPTS THIS ARGUMENT AS A PROOF OF GOD’S NON-EXISTENCE TODAY. (See William Rowe's footnote #1 at the end of his essay in Pojman, Philosophy of Religion.) WHY NOT?

The decisive refutation was given by Alvin Plantinga.

To refute this all Plantinga needs to show is that it is possible to affirm (1), (2), and (3) together.

Here it is.

Plantinga argues there are possible worlds which God cannot actualize. His argument has to do with what are called “counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.” A counterfactual statement is an “If… then…” statement. An “If… then…” statement is a hypothetical statement.
Such as: “If A… then B…” Because the statement is hypothetical, there is a “counter” statement to it which says: “If A… then not-B…” ONLY ONE of these statements can be true. (In modal logic counterfactual statements are about possible worlds.)

Some “If… then…” statements are about creaturely freedom. E.g., “If John is faced with choice A, he will choose B.” Or, “If John is faced with choice A, he will not choose B.” These statements are about creaturely free will. Only one of them can be true. They cannot both be true.

Logically, it's possible that God has "counterfactual knowledge." If God has counterfactual knowledge then God knows with certainty the actual, contingent truth-value of all counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. This does not entail that God has, however, control whatsoever over the truth-value of these counterfactuals. This is because it is possible that persons have free will. On this view God does not control our choices. Here’s an example.

Suppose God wants John to freely refrain from taking a bribe. God will not control John’s choice, because John has free will. All God can do is give John free will.

So, one of the following propositions is true. But only one can be true. If one is true, the other is necessarily false.

c) If John has free will, then John will take the bribe.

d) If John is free, then John will not take the bribe.

If (c) is true, then John will take the bribe and God won’t get what he wants. Only if (d) is true will John do what God wants him to do.

So, we have two possible worlds. One possible world is where (c) is true. Another possible world is where (d) is true. But if (c) is true, then God cannot actualize a possible world in which (d) is true. This is because (c) and (d) are “counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.” (CCFs) Only one of them can be true. Depending on which one is true, it means that the counter-proposition is false.
Therefore there is at least one possible world which God cannot actualize. Therefore God cannot actualize all possible worlds.

Remember, God knows the truth-value of all CCFs. God knows what John will do. But John has free will, so it does not mean that God controls or determines what John will do. Because God knows whether (c) is true or (d) is true, God cannot actualize a possible world where the counterfactual of either (c) or (d) is true.

Plantinga then argues that it is possible that every creature suffers in fact from transworld depravity. So, although there are possible worlds where creatures are free but commit no moral evil, these were not feasible worlds for God to actualize, since the truth-values of the relevant counterfactuals of freedom were not under His control. Because it is logically possible that God has given creaturely agents free will, has counterfactual, and transwordl depravity exists, then God cannot create a possible world where things work out just as he wants.

Therefore Mackie's triad does not present us with three logically incompatible statements. It is possible to affirm: 1) God is all-powerful; 2) God is all-loving; 3) evil exists.

Thus, God cannot always eliminate evil.

Be Weird For the Right Reasons

I think of myself as a follower of Jesus, who is called to be a pastor, and who has been blessed to worship and dwell and work with a wonderful group of Jesus-followers. Some view us as "charismatic." I prefer "followers of Jesus."

The more I read and study and meditate on the central person in the Christian Scriptures, Jesus the Christ, the more I am taken by his central message, which is about the kingdom of God. It's clear to me that Jesus both proclaimed the good news of God's kingdom, demonstrated it with miraculous signs and wonders, and understood that the real conflict was a spiritual thing involving the kingdom of Satan (aka the kingdom of darkness). I believe all of the above.

I also understand that I live in a secular age. (See Charles Taylor's brilliant work to understand the depths of this.) So, when I stand before my philosophy students in the community college I teach at and say "I believe in Jesus" and mean by this "I embrace Jesus' message of the kingdom, that miraculous signs and wonders are part of actual Christianity, and that we battle not merely against people but against dark spiritual forces," some students view me as, I think, a bit off. Some are intrigued. Some don't know what to do with this. To help them I remind them that the class is philosophy of religion, and the Christian "religion" is one of the Big 5. I realize my take on what actual Christianity is is not universally shared, but it is a major interpretation of Christianity.

In a secular, post-Christian, de-sacralized world, what I believe and expect is weird. Increasingly, I don't mind being that kind of weird. Actually everyone is "weird," if we understand "weirdness" as "not fitting in with my worldview." In that sense I find atheistic expectations and incongruencies weird.

If you're going to be weird, be weird for the right reasons. But don't be weird for weirdness's sake. "Weirdness" qua weirdness is no virtue. Spiritually, it's even dangerous. Today, as it has been in every era, we have "Christians" who love weirdness more than they love the real Jesus. So they bring in all kinds of cultural inebriation into the church. It's here that I point you to Lee Grady's recent article "Strange Fire In the House of the Lord." If you're a follower of the Jesus who still works the miraculous and still delivers us out of the kingdom of darkness, you would do well to read the wise counsel of Grady here. He's the editor of Charisma magazine, and a person who wants the real fire of God, which is a fire that heals and delivers and restores and reveals the beautiful kingdom of God to people, and sees actual, genuine miraculous signs as "signs" which are not to be worshiped themselves but which point people to the one thing they need more than any sign; viz., God the Sign-Giver.

Younger Jesus-followers who are zealous for the fire of God continue to need older mentors to steer them through their journey and help them learn to discern the real activity of Jesus from the fake. Thanks to Lee Grady for helping us do that.

Atheist Buses: Belief in God = Belief in Fairies?

This picture shows one of the signs appearing on "atheist buses" in cities like London. It reads:



"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom if it too? There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."



Hmmm... Years ago I got a personal paradigm shift from a kind of deism and even a practical atheism to theism. I became a theist. Concurrently, I became a follower of Jesus. I didn;t believe in fairies before my shift, and I don't believe in fairies now. The words on this poster make a connection like this: Belief in God is equivalent to belief in fairies existing at the bottom of one's garden. This reasoning feels like the kind of thing I've heard some atheists say, e.g.: "I reject belief in God just like I reject belief in Thor, Zeus, etc. etc." Well, I reject belief in all those finite quasi-gods too.

The God of theism with the requisite omni-attributes is quite different than a "fairy" with whatever attributes such a thing would have. An argument like the fine-tuning argument for God's existence reasons that whatever caused the fine-tuning of our universe could not have been a fairy. Therefore, the logical equivalence "God" and "fairy" fails. Logically, belief in God does not entail fairy-belief. So one can believe in God and reject the existence of fairies, or conclude that "probably" there are no fairies.

This particular bus poster reminds me of religious posters that make false claims. It only preachers to members of the choir who accept such irrationality.