Rant On Proposition 8

At the same time as the presidential election, the state of California voted on Proposition 8 – whether or not to amend the state constitution by adding, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Doing so passed.

Now I recognize that this issue is quite contentious in my native Christian circles. The widely-respected Focus on the Family, (though even writing the name makes me cringe) using language like states being “vulnerable to pro-homosexual forces” and warning us that “the Senate in 1996 came within a single vote of passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have wreaked havoc on American culture. This legislation would have made sexual orientation a protected class equivalent to racial minorities under federal civil rights laws.” That made me feel quite enraged, Mr. Dobson, if that’s what you want, but somehow not at the “homosexual activists”.

This reddit comment made a better point, but still not quite where I would place my views:

I am an evangelical Christian … Personally, I do believe that the practice of homosexuality is morally wrong. I also believe most abortions are wrong. At the same time, I do not believe that it is the government’s prerogative to legislate on these matters except insofar as there are scientific or otherwise objective (i.e. not moral or religious) grounds for said legislation. If demonstrable harm to society results from a certain practice, generally that’s a good reason to restrict or outlaw it. Until that is shown, however, I will not speak against the government recognizing civil unions between people regardless of what I believe the moral status of that union is. Marriage is indeed a religious institution and I believe that the government’s choice to recognize that institution as having civil ramifications is a good one. Who am I, and for that matter, who are religious organizations in general, to say that the government cannot or should not also recognize other unions in the same way?

However, I question this person’s assumptions that (1) the government acts, or ought to act objectively, and (2) the domain of religious organizations stops where government begins.

Rather, some observations:

• There are many generally accepted laws that fall short of enforcing Christian “values”. For instance, it is not illegal to conceive a child out of wedlock, although most Christians I know would say doing so is immoral.
• There is no one set of “values” that all Christians hold. For instance, according to the Pew Forum, even on the hot-button issue of abortion, 24% of evangelicals say abortion should be “legal in most cases”.
• I wish to challenge the concept of “values” altogether. I would define such as moral conclusions. Would not the route taken be of more interest? I also have a huge amount of pent-up distaste at groups such as those lead by Dobson, which use the concept to make it morally unacceptable to disagree.

I thus am not afraid to say I would have voted against Proposition 8, had I been a Californian.

My original train of thought would be that marraige ought to lie outside the state’s domain. However, there are things that only the state can provide that are beneficial to married life, such as visitation rights in hospitals.

Rather, I think that since the state needs to get involved, it ought not to care who marries. I pay taxes, regardless of whether I am Christian, Muslim or Hindu. I am allowed to use the roads, regardless of my gender or sexual orientation. In the same vein, if the marriage must be a state “service” (for lack of better word), it ought to be disinterested in who I am.

Also, I see no pragmatic reason the state should care. I don’t feel allowing homosexuals to marry would endanger marriage at all, especially in light that divorce is legal and common, even in evangelical circles, (13% are divorced, not including those who have remarried, according to the Pew Forum) which is by all accounts, incredibly destructive. Should I ever get married, (cue Ryan: ha ha-ha ha) I would find divorce much more “devaluing” (if indeed I was to care) than allowing a gay person to visit their partner when they are about to die.

Perhaps if people wanted something worthwhile to complain about, officially changing the spelling of “marriage” would help a lot more.

On Truth

At the most basic level, I think truth describes how a statement relates to reality. This has the basic assumption that reality can be known somehow, as the concept of truth is unnecessary and worthless otherwise. However, it is just as evident that reality is a difficult thing to grasp. Kant noticed that the “thing-in-itself” isn’t accessible to us except through our senses, and I am inclined to agree with him. This makes discerning what is true or not with the preceding definition rather difficult, as we can’t even know if our senses correspond at all to reality. Again, I assume that our senses are at least somewhat accurate, as a concept of truth is meaningless otherwise.

There are different senses of the word “truth”. I am less concerned here with logical truth as that which relates to belief. Asserting “Socrates is a man” may have a truth-value, but likely doesn’t concern anyone’s belief system much. These are related closely, but logical truth concerns epistemology, not my focus here of religion-type belief.

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I would like to propose that these sort of truths can be classified into two categories, depending on whether they can be verified personally or not. For instance, I can verify, to a reasonable degree, “All people die”, even without much effort. If I was a bit more evil, I could make even more certain. However, it is impossible to verify a statement like “there is an afterlife”, and still be able to contribute to the literature.

I would also propose that statements of religious truth come in coherent systems, rather than being scattered all over reality. It is rather useless if I hold, as a fundamental truth, “the sky is blue”, unless I believe other things that pertain, for instance, to the origin or nature of the sky which makes it so; truth isn’t valuable except as part of this sort of system. Such a thing has been called a ‘world-view’.

Because isolated truths aren’t worthwhile, truths are considered together in these world-views. Religions are comprised of coherent world-views containing many co-dependant truth-claims. While it is possible to adopt for oneself only part of one of these, any religion wanting to convince anyone of its truth-claims must show that it is thoroughly true, with both its verifiable and non-verifiable parts.

For instance, I don’t believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Before I would accept the FSM’s truth-claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world, which is non-verifiable, I would need a good reason as to how the Flying Spaghetti Monster predated the invention of spaghetti. Because I am unconvinced when I can verify its truth-claim, I find no reason to believe it about that which I cannot be certain of.

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The most applicable application(!) of this for me is Christianity. Christianity makes a number of truth-claims, often what I feel is too many, and believing that Christian truth is worthwhile and beneficial for everyone, I would like to see a Christian truth-claim that is convincing.

However, I think my own argument needs to be undermined when discussing Christian truth. I would like to argue the (admittedly speculative) point that Christians can’t claim truth in these sense at all.

Claiming that one has ‘the truth’ is incredibly strong, and I firstly don’t think anyone can say this rightfully, and secondly think it more of a claim to superiority. I see it as an assertion my judgment is innately superior than yours, as you have chosen wrongly whereas I have not. Whatever I experienced to arrive at my conclusion is more important than however you got to yours.

I believe such claims can rather only rightfully be made by God himself.

One could object that since we have the Bible, given by God, we have The Truth accessible. However, the vast majority of the Bible is not so suitable as a book for quoting The Truth out of – the Bible is not a list of true statements, rules, or anything of the sort. Rather, it is a narrative, both in content and in overarching themes. This article by N.T. Wright (which deals with the related issue of Biblical authority, and is a very good read), put it nicely:

… How, for instance, can the book of Judges, or the book of Acts, be authoritative? It is one thing to go to your commanding officer first thing in the morning and have a string of commands barked at you. But what would you do if, instead, he began ‘Once upon a time…’?

I think God, by doing this, is rather relating his experience (if God has something of that sort), that of reality, to us. The truth is God’s, he alone can understand it, and he alone can give any comprehension of it. And going even further, I don’t think we can say truth even exists independent of relationship with God.

Therefore, I don’t think we can say to ourselves, or anyone else, that “I have the truth from God”. Rather, I think we ought to point people to relationship with God to find what knowledge of his truth he gives. However, this is not to say that other people can’t help one listen or interpret it.

Thanksgiving (see Gloating)

Today being Thanksgiving here in Canada, there has been more discussion about our abundance of material things, and how we ought to thank God for giving them to us.

As well obvious, there is lack of almost nothing here. Many families are celebrating their good fortune with dinners of unusual size. Even the homeless in the city are well-fed. Though things aren’t exactly as they ought to be, saying so is being overly picky.

At the same time, I read an article yesterday, describing people in Haiti that are so poor as to literally eat baked mud, for lack of anything else.

However, I would propose that those with excess have been given the greater problem, for they, empowered with wealth, cannot let things be, as it is the epitome of injustice to withhold another’s necessity. There is something disturbing about eating huge dinners while other people eat mud.

And sometimes I fear thankfulness is even a celebration of inequality. Perhaps an analogy would help my explanation:

There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up; it grew up with him and his children. It ate his same food and drink from his cup, and it would lie in his arms, as it was like a daughter to him.

The rich man, living next door, held a great feast one day. There was foodstuffs of all kinds, and the meat of choice was lamb. Seven lambs he slaughtered for he and his friends to eat with relish. Now seven lambs were too many for the banqueters; there was a great quantity of meat left over. The rich man fed it to his dogs.

The poor man, insulted greatly by the rich man’s sense of worth, looked on this with overwhelming disgust. The rich man and his friends conversed about how glad they were not to be a poor like him.

It troubles me that we put emphasis on being thankful alone. It seems like another way of us asserting how much more blessed we are than those Haitians, and therefore how much more favoured in God’s eyes we must be. We eat fancy meals to convince ourselves we have excess wealth to make ourselves feel assured of our worth. We thank God in prayer that he spared us from being like the rest of the world, being his chosen fortunate ones.

To show then that we don’t have this lack of humility, I believe that it is very necessary to live in a generous way. Living generously then means that I am not the prime beneficiary of my work – I work to better the lives of others, and afterward use what I need to maintain myself. With such an understanding of resources, I am not morally trapped by having much, because it is not primarily for me.

Re: A Salvific Paradox

The solution to this can be rather elegant.

The problem with the argument lies in the presumption that one’s salvation can be denied, exchanged, etc. at one’s will. The person’s salvation needs to belong to them.

However, this is not the case. Salvation is God’s, and it belongs to him even when bestowed on a person. Thus it is being rather presumptuous to wish to do whatever one wants with it. The saved person has no intrinsic right to their salvation.

Thus, as it is impossible for anyone to barter with their salvific status, one should not be guilty about not using it to obtain salvation for others. One may as well want to trade their ability to fly so that someone else might have a purple unicorn.

Incidentally, this gives the same philosophical benefit that Duckett wanted out of his argument.

A Salvific Paradox

I stumbled upon Craig Duckett’s excellent site a few days ago. Most of the material of interest there pertains to his rejection of Christianity, maintaining there a list of reasons he is not a Christian, and the story that got him to this point.

While I disagree with his conclusions, one of his arguments I find rather perplexing and vital:

1. Only if one is a Christian will they enjoy eternal bliss in heaven. Others will suffer eternally in hell.
2. A Christian is called to live a life of love, following e.g. Jn 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (ESV)
3. Thus an ethical Christian must lay down their eternal life for their condemned friends.

Duckett had such a friend, in fact many, perish in the unsaved state. M was one of his best friends who died in a car crash. His expression of point 3. is this:

Dear Heavenly Father:

Although I am content with the knowledge of You and feel the presence of Your love in my heart, I could never be content in Heaven knowing my friend M was suffering in Hell. I could, however, be content in Hell knowing M was in Heaven. So, God, here’s the deal. Let me take M’s place in Hell. I know Jesus was supposed to do this, but He didn’t do this if M is in Hell. I know what I’m asking and I know precisely what this means. I’m asking this with open eyes. Because, don’t you see, God? How could I accept Heaven with M in Hell? I could not! It would be Hell for me. But I could accept Hell knowing M was in Heaven. I would rather suffer an eternity of physical torture than to live with the mental anguish of knowing my friend was in Hell while I enjoyed the fruits of Heaven. How could I enjoy anything? What kind of person would that make me? And M doesn’t even have to know how it was done, Lord. The deal that was made. He never has to know what I did for him, that I traded places with him, that I took on his punishment. I don’t need acknowledgment or recognition or thanks. I don’t need anything from him. I just want to save him! Please, God! Please! Allow me to take M’s place in Hell! Please take back my Salvation and give it to M!

But he later realizes even this is not enough. He summarizes the argument himself well in his expression of it:

Dear God:

I realize that it isn’t enough that I am willing to take a friend’s place in Hell. As hard a decision as this may be, it is still relatively easy since it is offered on behalf of a friend and loved one.

On the off-chance that all are not saved and that some will be condemned to Hell I must be willing in my heart to take each of their places as well, even that of my worst enemy. Since I am only one person, it is impossible for me to offer to take all their places. If Jesus already accomplished this, if all are saved, then glory! Hallelujah! He is truly the savior of all mankind. If not, then the only ethical thing for me to do is to return my salvation, to reject it on moral grounds, as long as anybody is condemned to Hell. In other words, God, if even one person is damned then consider me damned as well. What kind of person would I be to accept heaven knowing others are suffering in Hell? The only ‘Christian’ thing for me to do is to reject my salvation, to hand it back to You, and forfeit my place in Heaven.
If there is a Hell, then it would be wrong of me to consent to Heaven while others suffer. If there is a Hell, then I want no part of Heaven. If all are not saved, then take back my salvation and send me to Hell with them. It would be immoral and shameful of me to accept Heaven under these conditions. It would be worse then the worst sin imaginable. I would have proven myself the very worst kind of person. No, send me to Hell as well. It would be the only way I could live with myself.

Even though I don’t agree with his interpretation of ethics (as he is essentially wanting to take on God in ethical argument), he has a point, a serious one, that uncovers a paradox:

1. If I am a Christian, (at least begin to) love everyone as myself. As a Christian, I am saved into eternal bliss.
2. If I love everyone as myself, this includes the unsaved. But in love, their eternal suffering is mine too. Therefore, either:
   • I ask to be condemned with them, and if that isn’t granted,
   • I am in eternal compassionate anguish even if I am in heaven.

Is there a resolution to this, or am I within the wrong paradigm?

Psalm Translations Suck

I am disliking more and more the way the Psalms are mangled in our Bible translations.

When working with the Psalms in the Hebrew, one feature that stands out distinctly is a sense of rawness, not crude, but brutal and unfiltered honesty. The psalms are the direct outpourings of the hearts of the poets, and carry force and depth because of this.

However, this is lost in many translations in their smoothing of the text.

For example, we have Psalm 70, written by David. The content points to him being in quite some distress because he is being hunted down.

The first phrase of the Hebrew can be translated (and unusually directly) like this:

God, to deliver me,
Lord, to help me,
hurry up!

We can easily observe several poetic features which are present in the Hebrew (even if you can’t read it):

• The names of God come first in each clause.
• The parallelism between the first two lines is really, really obvious as they share the verb.
• The tone is simple and direct. There are only five Hebrew words here.
• The reader can see it as somewhat close to what they would say in such a situation. It isn’t Shakespeare.

But in these areas I have grievances with the translations I have around me.

My preferred translation, the ESV, puts David’s plea as follows:

Make haste, O God, to deliver me!
O Lord, make haste to help me!

The parallelism is preserved by keeping the verb constant, but this does sound (almost exactly) like Shakespeare. (read it aloud!) I think the eloquence harms this much – it sounds practiced rather than brutally honest, and the recognizability is completely lost.

The TNIV says thus:

Hasten, O God, to save me;
come quickly, LORD, to help me.

I actually don’t mind this one as much. The verb coming first helps the tone stay urgent, and the consistent sentence order helps it stay parallel. However, it still isn’t something I could envision myself saying.

And I shall include the Message’s version also:

God! Please hurry to my rescue! God, come quickly to my side!

I really have no idea where Peterson got those verbs from. Disregarding that (if possible), it is very recognizable and east to identify with.

I know I’m being very picky here, but because most people need a translation to interface with the Scriptures, it is so important that it be transparent and enjoyable.

CRC Synod 2008: Agenda Part 2

This post is part of a summary of the Agenda. If you want to see what I have written about what has actually happened at Synod this week, please see the front page of this blog. I will keep these summaries updated throughout the week. The official CRCNA Synod page is here.

I finally finished reading the rest of the Agenda for Synod 2008, and here are my highlights: (not that the material left out is unimportant):

The Candidacy [for ministry] Committee examined the issue of the status of ministry associates. It was their understanding that being a ministry associate does not automatically allow one to preach, [167]  but is determined by the mandate of the position the MA fills. Synod 2007 decided that MAs can be called as solo pastors given that “economic need” is present and the other relevant Church Order articles could not be followed. [170] The Candidacy Commitee recommends dropping the “economic need” clause, [171] and adopting a guideline to give a standard for whether it is appropriate to call a MA. [171]

The Contemporary Testimony revision seems excellent. They revised the report to avoid cliches and keep the wording meaningful, also responding to new issues in our changed contemporary situation. Scriptural references are listed at the bottom with explanatory sentences rather than footnotes in the text, which turns out to be very nice. As they changed some of the thematic developments, the report discourages word-for-word comparison with the 1986 version. [211] I don’t have the patience to study the whole document, but it reads well and is clear and relevant, as is its goal.

The Faith Formation Comittee had in its mandate two issues of most interest: children’s communion and infant dedication. Children’s communion is studied intensively, but no recommendations are stated for this year; they plan to end up producing thorough documents about this. [241] They plan to organize communication about topics in this area: putting together a web site, sending discussion points to councils, and organizing representative correspondents. [239-240] They put forth an interesting recommendation that Synod hold a discussion about these matters in the form of a luncheon. [241]

There were a few overtures concerning the new hymnal, slated for release in 2013. Overtures 6 and 7 deal with some proposal not to include the confessions in the hymnal; I didn’t see anything about this (perhaps I just missed it). Overture 8 wishes to ensure there is a seperate Psalm section in the hymnal, as in all previous. I think this issue has sides that are about balanced – having a seperate Psalm section reinforces the importance of singing the Psalms, however it also makes them harder to find, discouraging their use.

Overture 9 asks Synod to establish an “Environmental Policy Task Force”, to write up a list of guidelines for those that wish to live environmentally responsibly. I would have thought this should fall outside of Synod’s juristiction, however it is painfully obvious even at my own church this is needed, as people do not all see environmental responsibility as the important moral issue that it is. I strongly urge Synod to adopt the recommendation in this overture.

If I forgot anything important, be sure to let me know!

Do We Need an “Evangelical Manifesto”?

Do we need an “evangelical manifesto”?

I definitely think so.

Based on my own experiences, I have markedly seen evangelical Christianity looked down upon. Based on most of what I see, I would too.

Some evangelicals irked much of the mainstream through their creation of what is now called the “religious right”, trying to put Christian morality into of modern conservative politics. Some philosophers note that this is misguided, as Christianity and modern politics have completely different presuppositions. To many this looks like infringement upon civil liberties.

And this group, though less vocal, has seen some negative media coverage. For example, the movie Jesus Camp, released in 2006, portrays a certain evangelical/charismatic Christian retreat. People therein pray over bowling balls, pass out tracts to random people, participate in an anti-abortion protest, and pray over a cardboard George Bush. One feels that evangelicals are very much out of touch with reality after watching this. (It is a very excellent documentary; if you haven’t seen it, you need to.)

Therefore, evangelicals have been blasted twice: once because of a few that embark on a misguided political project, then again when a similar group seems very aloof and uninvolved with real issues. This is obviously not an accurate view of all the churches and people that would be grouped under evangelicalism. However, especially these few, through the megahorn of the media, have begun to define evangelicalism for many people.

Therefore, this needs to be corrected by something. The recently-released Evangelical Manifesto, though not perfect, counters these perceptions very well in the second and third sections. It is a way for evangelicals to regain the ability to define themselves, instead of the media or people’s developed biases doing so for them. However, I am quite unsure of whether it could have any lasting influence.

As for a closer examination of the content, James Smith did a far better job than I ever could, on the Generous Orthodoxy blog.

Suburban Church Case Study: The Well, Feasterville

In an earlier post, I highlighted Todd Hiestand’s essay about being church in suburbia. I discovered that he indeed was putting these ideas into practice in a church, called The Well, in which he serves as one of the pastors. The Well is situated in the suburbs of Philadelphia (Feasterville).

The Well chose to have a warehouse as their building, as they put it “a new kind of church building that we believe will allow us to best be a blessing to our community”. This is because they see fostering the arts as an integral part of their mission:

More than likely you’ll notice a lot of really diverse and exceptional art on the walls when you come in. We use our space as an art gallery and concert venue for the local and greater Philadelphia artists and bands. This is a way for us to be a blessing to the world around us and allows us to simply try and be representatives of Jesus Christ in our world. While people who do not call The Well their church home do much of the art, we do have a number of gifted artists in our community. Often, you will see some of our artists painting during the service.

It is well worth looking at their flickr stream. Especially considering it is a warehouse, this is a beautiful place!

They also have an emphasis on the service as a time of community. This is something that has been bothering me at my church, where people hold almost all their talking until after the service, which I think negates some of the value of having a service. I very much enjoy their approach to ensuring this doesn’t happen:

People often say that the centerpiece to our Sunday morning is community. Whether it’s the 5-10 minute conversation/greeting time in the middle of the service, worshiping together or even a Q & A time during the message we understand and want to practice the fact that we are in this “faith thing” together.

To ensure they are continuing to examine their role in their context, they hold “midrash mettings” quarterly:

Because we believe that theology is best discussed in the context of a community of faith, we come together four times a year to discuss issues of theology and practice that are important to our community so that we may be more effective in being a part of God’s kingdom becoming a reality on earth as it is in heaven.

This all ties into the church’s suburban location, which Hiestand’s article shows has individualism at its core. Art fosters community by being an accessible expression of someone else’s feelings and thoughts. Including fellowship into the worship service provides an environment for community to grow. And the church values being continually relevant through regular re-examination of its context.

A Second Look at the CRC Form of Subscription Debate

“In a world where celebrity equals talent, and where make-believe is called reality, is is most important to have real love, truth, and stability in your life”
–Bernie Brillstein (on my Starbucks cup)

In my past post examining this issue, I expressed my view that the new Doctrinal Covenant is a positive step for the CRC. I still hold to this position, though I wish to highlight some of the rather well-presented and opposing views I found among the overtures in the Agenda for Synod 2008, which have lead me to see that some changes are necessary.

There were six overtures and one communication concerning the Form of Subscription. However, Overture 19, presented by Classis Northcentral Iowa, I thought presented an insightful view of why the new Covenant needs at least revision.

Their first concern was the replacement of orthodoxy with postmodernism. They had issue (as I did) with the report saying that “A regulatory instrument is needed to keep us orthodox … is increasingly being called into question“. They raise the very valid point that in the relativistic postmodern times, the church needs to be a haven for absolute truth, which means it needs to hold that doctrine is still valid today.

They were also concerned with the divide between “contextual” and “timeless” truth. I enjoy their point that “the ambiguous statement that our historic confessions are merely ‘faithful expressions of the gospel in their time’ leaves open the question of whether the gospel itself changes over the years.” They note that flexibility is antithetical to the point of subscribing to a form/covenant. I think this point is very valid, yet see a danger in declaring the doctrinal standards “timelessly true” – I find this hermeneutically troubling. For example, in Article 36 of the Belgic Confession, the Anabaptists are put grouped with anarchists. This statement was properly footnoted in 1985, as this was not longer applicable at that time. Although parallel examples are not many, we must have the ability to say that certain parts of the confessions are historically conditioned and need interpretation in that context.

Their last concern was that the Doctrinal Covenant does not call for officebearers to actually believe the confessions personally. Thus, they explain, it falls short of being effective at being an instrument of orthodoxy. This, I believe, is a point that requires consideration by Synod. I never saw this before, but this is extremely critical for the Doctrinal Covenant to include. However, it is again quite difficult to include this without saying something like the old FoS: “we sincerely believe [the doctrinal standards] … fully agree with the Word of God“, which is again a bit hermeneutically troubling to me, but so is the language in the Doctrinal Covenant, saying officebearers need “to be shaped and governed by them“.

Therefore, I would propose the following to revision to the third paragraph in the Doctrinal Covenant:

With thankfulness for these expressions of faith we promise, in being shaped and governed by them, to wholeheartedly act in accordance with them and to promote them in our various callings: preaching, teaching, writing, and serving; making grateful use of the church’s testimony of faith for our time, Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony.

I think this would resolve most of this last problem. By not trying to regulate belief, interpretations are allowed to vary somewhat. However, this would keep belief within the bounds of what one could call orthodoxy, saying the expression of those beliefs needs to accord with the confessions. This keeps the unity of action that the CRC values as a confessional church, while allowing for diversity in interpretation.