The second problem with modern anthropology

As we continue in Genesis, we see the second big issue that we have to face for a Biblical doctrine of anthropology. (Again, I'm using "anthropology" in its theological, not scientific, definition.) Chapter 3 unfolds the saddest story in human history: the Fall. Adam and Eve were created good, in the image of God, and given just one command to obey. Yet enticed by the temptation of the serpent, first Eve, then Adam violated that command. They did get what the serpent promised, a knowledge of good and evil, but only by engaging in evil themselves.

The result of Adam's choice was the entry of sin into the world, not only for Adam and Eve but for all of humanity. Paul deals with this in 1 Corinthians 15, where he compares the arrival of sin through the first Adam with the arrival of redemption through  Jesus, the "second Adam." Sin permeates all of humanity, and as a result all people are guided by a fallen, sinful, selfish nature that must be reborn to  be made right with God.

Modern culture tells us that people are all basically good, and that if we only provide the right education, finances, and opportunity people will behave properly and do what is right. The inner drive of humanity, according to this view, is to be good and to do right. We are good, and only become evil when we are deprived of what we need materially, emotionally, and spiritually, so if we make the world a better place all evil will end.

Here we can rely on empirical observation. As we see the news, read the headlines, and observe our family members, colleagues, and friends, which do we see people drawn to: doing what is right or wrong? Do people, knowing that certain behavior is destructive for them physically, mentally, and relationally, then refuse to engage in that behavior? Which do you have to teach a new baby to do: be good, share, and cooperate, or be selfish, rebellious, and self-centered? If we are honest, our observations show us that people are, at their very core, evil.

That's why there are laws, rules, and governments. Evil must be restrained. Good must be promoted. We won't do the right thing unless we are taught it and sanctioned for doing the opposite. Evil somehow manages to thrive despite all attempts to restrain it, demonstrating just how ingrained it is in the human heart.

Which view you hold on this issue sways what you believe about the need for God. If we really are good and can perfect ourselves, we have no need for any god, since we are effectively god to ourselves. But if we see our own corruption and selfishness, we will recognize that we need something bigger than us, even bigger than all of humanity, to change us and make us the good we want to be.

Unfortunately, the dismissal of the divine does not tend to make people better, but worse. This aligns with what we see in human behavior. It also underscores a need to seek for something beyond us which can bring about the kind of change we need personally and societally to make the world a better place.

Explore the Bible: 1 Peter 4:1-11

The lifestyle of a committed Christian should look much different from the lifestyle of someone who is still living according to their own standards. Sadly, this isn’t the case in our society anymore. Polls about attitudes and practices consistently show that professing Christians, even evangelicals, live in a way that is barely distinguishable from the world around them. There is an attraction that sin holds that can tempt any of us to stray from God’s standards. The lure is the same as it was in the Garden of Eden: to be like God, determining for ourselves what we will do.

Peter reminds his readers that their lives have changed in this passage. The time that they lived as pagans in the past is more than enough time to have indulged in sin. This isn’t a comment on the quantity of sin that is expected of the unbeliever; instead, it is a comment that any time spent in sin is more than enough time. In light of the change brought by Jesus, sin is to be a past practice. While we know that in this life we never achieve perfection, we should be more and more drawn to following Jesus and to turning away from the sins that we practiced in our past.

The list of sins in this passage is typical of the lists we see in other New Testament passages, and is not meant to be a comprehensive list of sins but a list of sins that typically reflected pagan practices. Overindulgence in food, wine, and sex were rampant throughout the Roman world, and people generally expected their friends and neighbors to participate in wild parties. When Christians did not, it surprised those around them, and maybe even made them a little suspicious of what they were up to. It certainly would lead to pressure being put on the Christians to conform to the world around them.

Now read that last paragraph again, except change “pagan practices” to “American culture.” I joked with my group studying this passage that verse 3 sounds just like college life! In many ways, our culture is reverting to the ethics and morality of the pagan cultures that thrived around the early church. We’re told that humanity is essentially good and getting better, but when we look at what people actually do we see this isn’t so.

So what are we as Christians to do in light of the “paganization” of our culture? We need to do what Peter encourages the readers in his day to do: to live out our faith consistently in the eyes of the world. It won’t be easy, and we should expect opposition when we challenge the world’s value system, but we need to show Jesus Christ to a desperately sinful world. This is what the early Christians did, and it was their lives, even more than their words, that caught the attention of their unbelieving neighbors. We can’t afford any longer to have the church look like the world.

Both our lives and our words should speak of Jesus every day. The time for sin is past, and we need to commit ourselves to living more for our Lord every day. We will stumble, but as we live, serve, and witness together, we will help each other grow to be like our Savior, and we will bring a message of truth, love, and hope to those around us.

The flaw in modern philosophies

Reading the "Comments" section under many online articles can be very entertaining. Most of the time it seems like commenters are just like little kids on the playground- "You're stupid!" "Yeah, well, you're stupider!" "I know I am, but what are you?" (This is especially true on political/news web sites, and even more true on sports web sites.) Sometimes, though, there can be a real exchange of ideas (if by "exchange" I mean an expression of one's thoughts without regard to what the other person is saying). In these instances, you can occasionally see the underlying philosophy that guides someone's thought.

Because I frequent web sites that express Christian viewpoints, I see a lot of dissent from what is being presented in the article. Some of this dissent is emotionally driven assaults on the viewpoint expressed, without much regard for what is actually said. (Let me say here that Christian responses to these posts, or that are posted on other web sites expressing alternative points of view, can be just as thoughtless and vitriolic.) But some set out the poster's reasons for disagreeing with what is stated, with their own resoning for their viewpoint.

One recent spate of posts I read expressed a general disagreement with an article on the motivations of people who invite others to church. Several of the respondents prided themselves on having a "rational" worldview, in which they understood the truth about the gradual evolution of the universe and humanity, and expressed confidence in the essential goodness of people in contrast to what they characterized as an angry, vengeful God. Such ideas certainly are common among many in our culture.

I believe that this kind of thinking, which is found in many modern philosophies (formal and informal), is the biggest flaw in those systems. What's more, I believe that this can be shown to be true without any reference to the Bible or God. The essential goodness of humanity is a false concept that can easily be seen to have no basis in the real world.

I'm sure by now many of you are wondering how I come to this conclusion. It's actually pretty simple. Those who believe that humanity is essentially good have their reasons for the evil (or anti-social, if they prefer) behavior of people. Some say it is due to a lack of knowledge, and that with proper education no one would behave badly. Others argue it is caused by poverty, and if we only give people enough to meet their needs they won't have any reason to do wrong. A third group might argue that it is due to oppression, and that when the existing powers are overthrown and power is given to people, they will use it responsibly. There are several other alternatives given for the existence of evil/wrong/social unacceptable behavior that fit into this same mold.

I don't have space here to counter all of those ideas, except to say that anyone who thinks about it will see that none of these solutions has worked. We've raised educational levels, provided economic assistance, seen revolutions topple dictators, and so on down the line, and the world is not appreciably better behaved. If you argue from our experience of humanity, the goodness of mankind is hard to see.

This is the flaw in most modern philosophies. However, if we flip the statement on its head and argue for the essential selfishness and corruption of humanity, we find that the empirical data support it. We aren't really good at heart; we want what we want, and often shape our beliefs to make that self-centeredness the very rock of our moral and ethical beliefs.

I have often asked this question: "Which do you have to teach a child- to be good and care about others, or to be selfish and self-centered?" If you're a parent, you know the answer. This hurts us, and insults us. We want to think we are better than this, and that our inner nobility just needs a little help to come forth.

Christianity is often thought by those who are not believers to teach that what Christians are is perfect people who look down on the badness of others. This is the exact opposite of the truth. Christians know that we are sinners, self-centered and selfish, and that we are ourselves desperately in need of something or someone to make us right. (OK, I'll confess that I've known some Christians who think they are "all that," but they're just as wrong as anyone else who thinks they're good enough.) No amount of effort, education, government assistance, political power, or anything else is going to suffice to make us right.

The good news is that we don't have to do it ourselves. Jesus took care of that for us by His sacrifice, and through Him and the power of the Holy Spirit we can be good. Our very nature has to change, and this can only happen through Christ. Christianity takes a hard and real look at what we are, and tells us something we don't want to hear. But in the end, it also proclaims to us the only way to overcome our problem.

The enormity of sin

A subject that has come up several times in my recent reading and listening has been the way that people, especially Christians, view sin. It's not a topic that many are comfortable with, and some preachers and churches try to shy away from the subject and dwell instead on what they would consider more "positive" aspects of salvation, like God's love and His plan for your life. (This is not true in my own church; our pastor is very clear about sin and its effects on everyone's life.) "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," they might respond to criticism of their approach.

Certainly some people come to Christ through the revelation of God's love expressed in Him. Still, there has to be some explanation for just how that love was expressed on the cross. This has been an issue throughout the history of Christianity; views of the Atonement have sparked controversy and produced an enormous amount of writings as theologians argued their points. No matter what approach you take, however, you still have to explain how the love of God for us required Jesus to go to the cross.

Part of the problem is that in our contemporary Western society we have lost a sense of the enormity of sin. In American culture, you are more likely to see sin applauded than condemned. People who live for sex, money, power, and vanity are looked up to by many, and what they do to achieve their successes is seen as something to emulate, not avoid. "As long as no one else is getting hurt, why worry about it?" is the question posed to those who would criticize from a Biblical worldview.

I think where the confusion comes is in the difference between the seriousness of the effects of sin here on earth and the enormity of sin in God's sight. We tend to think of sin on a sliding scale: a white lie isn't as bad as shoplifting, which isn't as bad as dealing drugs, which isn't as bad as killing someone, which isn't as bad as genocide. In terms of the temporal effects of those sins, there is some truth to this. However, this scale of sin fails to take into account what eternal effect of sin is.

In the end, all sin results in one dramatic and horrific effect: the nailing of God to a cross. Our sin, no matter what the individual act may have been, resulted in the death of Jesus. Given that effect, all sin is an offense against a holy and loving God. Sin is an infinite offense against an infinite God, and separates us from God by an infinite gulf that we cannot bridge ourselves.

It is because sin is this serious that it took Jesus' infinite sacrifice to enable us to be restored to God. Our sin separates us from the God who loves us, and He is the One who, through Christ, makes it possible for us to be brought back into His family.

To view sin as anything less is to take a human-centric perspective and assume that is reality. Popular religious belief says that if you just do more good than bad in your life, you'll get to heaven. God will give you a pass on your sin if you've done enough good deeds to offset them. If this is true, then there was no need for Jesus to die. God could have simply hand-waved away sin without Jesus having to suffer so much.

To do so, though, He would have to suppress much of who He is. In my previous post about the simplicity of God, we saw how all of God's attributes are of equal, interdependent importance. A God who winks at sin is no longer just or holy, among other things. To remain true to Himself, God has to view sin as it is, and we need to understand, as well as we can, just how serious sin is in His sight.

Once we realize the enormity of our own sin, we can understand out need for divine intervention for the forgiveness of our sin. Then we are open to the good news of Jesus' sacrifice for us, and can respond with hearts that are humbled, contrite, and grateful for all He has done for us. Remembering how serious sin is also helps us to "go and sin no more." True, we will stumble and fall sometimes, but knowing what it cost for those sins to be forgiven ought to at least begin to motivate us to avoid sin out of our love and thankfulness to our Lord and Savior.

Leviticus

I began reading through the Bible in a year about 30 years ago. Although there were some years I chose to pursue a different devotional approach, I think I can safely say I've read through over a dozen different translations (some, like the NIV, more than once). While I make no claims at being an expert at reading through the Bible, I think I do have some insight into the discipline it takes to read through God's Word.

When reading through on a "straight through in order" plan, such as I'm following this year, you find a few critical points at which the project may break down. The first of these is usually the book of Leviticus. Sure, there are the genealogy passages in Genesis, and the details of the Tabernacle in Exodus, but Leviticus is where the Old Testament legal system starts to become a bewildering place for many contemporary Christians. Offerings, sacrifices, dietary laws, sanitary laws-it can be a bit of a "wilderness" for us to wander through.

I just started Leviticus in this year's reading, and I must say that over the years the book has grown on me. Partly this is due to my growing love for the OT in general. But a bigger part is the desire each year to examine all of the laws, especially the sacrificial laws, with an eye to the bigger picture they paint about God and our relationship with Him. If you are reading through this book, let me make some suggestions.

First, look at how serious sin is. When an Israelite sinned, even inadvertently, it required a specific offering done in a particular way to atone for that sin. This was true even more so for the priests and leaders of the nation. When we think about the Tabernacle and later the Temple, we think of the beauty and majesty of the furnishings and decoration. Yet I'm guessing that what might have stood out to people who went to those holy places was a smell like a butcher shop, combined with the constant aroma of burnt meat. The contrast between those two sensory experiences would put our position before the Lord in perspective.

Second, look at what sin cost the sinner. The one who offended had to take one of the best animals from his flock or herd, or the best of his produce, to make an appropriate offering. Repeated sin was expensive. Perhaps it caused people to think of how much of what they had could be consumed just in trying to pay for their sins. Sin is costly, and later when Jesus paid the price once for all that piece of good news had to strike the average Israelite as unbelievably gracious.

Third, look at how carefully God's people had to live in order to remain in a condition in which they could come into His presence. While many modern scholars look at the sanitary and dietary laws as God's way of keeping His people healthy, they would indeed impose a burden on any person who wanted to remain ritually clean. Purity in God's sight wasn't easy.

All of these help us see just how radical the good news of Jesus Christ was. He truly lifted the burden off the back of people who wanted to remain right with God, and in His mercy removed all of the ritual requirements of the law while making us right with His Father.

So don't let Leviticus get you down. Look at just what we are set free from by Jesus. The narrative will resume soon enough in Numbers, and then it's pretty smooth sailing until the beginning of 1 Chronicles. (Maybe when I get there I'll post some help for that section, too.)

What we really are

In my annual reading through the Bible, I've reached the book of Hosea. This is one of my favorite books of the Bible. I know, most people don't even know how to find the Minor Prophets, much less read them. And for those who do, it's probably more of a slog than a pleasure. I have found the Minor Prophets to be a truly fascinating section of the Bible, and Hosea in particular moves me every time I read it.

You  may know the story of Hosea. He was the prophet commanded by God to marry a "wife of harlotries," whether she was one at the beginning of the marriage or became one later. (The translation I am currently reading, the NET, makes an interpretive translation which leaves out the fuzziness and calls her a prostitute, but there is some dispute as to her character at the time of marriage.) She bears Hosea one son, then gives birth to two other children who are apparently not his. Eventually she abandons Hosea (and presumably her children) for other lovers.

The Lord then interprets Hosea's home life for Israel. Through Hosea, he says, "This is what you are to me-people who are pledged to me in covenant, but who have rejected me and pursued other gods. You aren't the faithful bride I rescued from distress, and you are giving what belongs to me to others." If the story ended there, you would expect the "divorce papers" to follow quickly.

But Hosea is told to go and buy his wife back. He pays a paltry sum for her, and, after a time of waiting, their relationship was restored. (Interestingly, the Bible doesn't tell us about their future together. Some scholars think this means the "restoration" was actually another object lesson with another woman, but I think that  undercuts the message of the book.)

This is what God does with us. We are estranged from God, people who should be His but who follow after other gods, whether money, sex, career, power, or whatever takes His place. The Lord has every right to send us away, to condemn us to an eternity of judgment for our unfaithfulness. Yet Jesus Christ bought us back from our slavery to sin through His own blood, and makes it possible for us to have a new relationship with God.

There is a heart-rending passage in Hosea 11 that speaks about God's love for His people Israel:

“How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboyim?
My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.
9 I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man— the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities.
10 They will follow the Lord; he will roar like a lion.
When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west.
11 They will come from Egypt, trembling like sparrows, from Assyria, fluttering like doves.
I will settle them in their homes,” declares the Lord. (Hosea 10:8-11, NIV)

This is the love God has for us. Who are we? Not the good, godly folk we sometimes pretend to be, assuming we're good enough that God has to accept us as we are. We are the rebellious, the unfaithful, the ones who scorn and reject God's love. Who is He? The one who loves us and who paid the price to redeem and restore us.

I encourage you to go read Hosea. It will break your heart, but it will also give you a glimpse into God's heart.

Saying "No" to yourself

I'm something of a news junkie. I watch several news broadcasts before I leave for work in the morning, and visit a number of news and commentary web sites in the evening. The one bad thing about being a news junkie is that you are exposed to a lot of bad news. I could list the events of today, but they would soon be pushed aside by a new set of a discouraging or evil news. If you want a list of negative headlines, just go watch the evening news for whatever day you read this post.

Many people, from a wide variety of viewpoints, want to stem the tide of evil, corruption, and just plain bad news that seems to engulf our world. They propose striking at any number of root causes-poverty, racism, education, immorality, and pretty much anything else you can name. Some of these efforts are incompatible, and the fights between the proponents of those viewpoints creates more bad news.

I think there is a root cause for all of these problems. Yes, I said all of them. OK, I'll make an exception for natural disasters, but even the way we deal with those can exhibit what I'm about to discuss. The root problem is the inability of most people (or more likely all people) to say "no" to themselves.

Jesus drove this point home during His ministry on earth. In Matthew 16:24 He says, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (NIV) People often speak about their "cross" as some ailment, annoyance, or trial that comes into their life. That's not what Jesus means here. The cross was an instrument of torturous death, and Jesus asks us to die to ourselves. Our own wishes and desires become subservient to those of God.

This doesn't only run counter to what the secular culture believes, it runs counter to what many Christian teachers promote. They teach that the Christian should have success in life because God wants to bless us, and that if we want something we should just ask God for it and it will be ours. Jesus never teaches that. He does promise blessing, but on His terms, not ours. It doesn't always mean material success.

When people don't say "no" to themselves, they essentially decide that whatever they want they deserve, and if they deserve it no one has the right to keep them from it. It doesn't matter what other people want, or what they think, or how they might be affected; it's all about getting what I "deserve." There's a theological term for this attitude. It's called "sin."

We were not created to live for ourselves. Sin came into the world through Adam and Eve, and we live with its effects today. What Jesus calls us to do is to break the power of sin, and say "no" to our selfish desires and "yes" to God's desires for us. He created us, and knows what we need to function best. It can be hard to say "no," and it is definitely counter-cultural. But until we can do this, and spread this through our society, we will never be able to overcome the bad news we see.

Sunday sermon: "The War Within"

 Why do Christians struggle with sin? If, as we see in the beginning of Romans 7, we are freed from the control of sin, why do we still do it? This question has perplexed Christians since the very beginning, and we see here at the end of Romans 7 that even the apostle Paul saw this as a struggle.

One easy way to deal with this passage is to say it only applies to those who have not come to Christ. They may want to do the right thing, but can't. This avoids the issue of saying that Christians still sin, but it fails on two fronts. First, all of Romans to this point teaches that without Christ we are dead in sin, helpless, and seek only to fulfill our own desires. Without the saving power of Jesus, we don't want to do good, so we don't have this struggle. The second problem is that it doesn't have an answer to the question raised in this passage, which is why Christians still struggle with sin. If we aren't supposed to struggle with sin, we come to a point of despair as the reality of sin intrudes on our life.

The struggle ensues because there are two principles at war within us. As those who are new creatures in Christ, we have a desire to do what pleases God, and we begin to align ourselves with His will. Still, our old self wants to follow its own desires. We have self-centered habits to break, and the more we mature in our Christian life the more we see in ourselves that needs to be cleansed.

Ironically, it is those who we often extol as the greatest of saints who are most aware of their sin. I would be thrilled to be as mature as the apostle Paul, yet he considered himself to be a "wretched man" when he thought of his sin. Paul understood how serious sin is in God's eyes, and how any sin violates our relationship with God. I believe, contrary to some teachers, that as we grow in our understanding of God's will and in our Christian walk, we will become more conscious of sin, rather than reaching a point where we believe we are sinlessly perfect.

The conclusion of chapter 7 gives us hope: "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this dying body? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" While we may struggle, we do not need to rely on our own strength to overcome the power of sin. It is through Jesus that we conquer sin. The Holy Spirit gives us the strength to resist temptation and to do what we know is right. Part of growing in Christ is learning to become dependent on the Spirit rather than self. As we do that, we gradually find sin's power waning, the desire of our self to seek its own way weakening, and our ability to serve the Lord strengthening. We may still have that struggle within, but through Christ we can find victory more and more.

Sunday sermon: "You Know Better"

As a child, when we did something wrong occasionally our parents would admonish us with the line, "You should know better!" Other kids may have gotten away with the same thing we did, but what mom or dad was saying was that we were raised to follow a higher standard. Truth be told, we probably did know better, but we let our own desires and our own will have control instead of doing what was right.

Paul reminds us in Romans 7:7-14 that this is exactly what the Law of God does for us. It reminds us of the higher standard that God holds for His people. If we did not have this standard revealed to us, we might be able to convince ourselves that we aren't so bad after all. Paul says he was "alive" before he knew the Law. We know from his previous discussion that objectively he was still dead in his sins, as we all are, but here I think he is trying to say that he felt alive. It was the Law that revealed what sin was.

Not only does the Law show us what sin is, it shows us what the consequences of sin are. Sin breaks our relationship with God fatally. When we breach the Law, we are separated from God, eternally condemned to death. If we didn't see God's standard, we wouldn't realize just how impossible keeping the Law is.

Yet this revelation of our condition before God is the beginning of the good news. Before we can understand our need for the saving work of Jesus Christ, we need to know that we have that need. As long as we think we can take care of ourselves, we won't look for an answer from Him. Once we know we are dead, and unable to help ourselves, we start to look for the way out. That's when we are open to hearing the good news that our sin was paid for by Jesus on the cross.

Sometimes Christians disparage the Law. "We aren't under Law, but under grace!" we cry. That's certainly true, but we need to have the attitude toward God's Law that Paul had. Without it, we wouldn't know the high holiness of God, the absoluteness of His standard, and the ways we fall far short of it. Without the Law, we wouldn't realize we need Jesus. The Law has a purpose, even for us today. 

The Depth of Sin

In preparing for this Sunday's sermon, I came across this quote from Spurgeon about the true meaning and depth of sin. May this motivate us all to seek to honor our Lord by resisting temptation today.

"After all his tenderness, in which he has acted towards us as a father to his child, we have turned against him and harboured his enemy; we have found our pleasure in grieving him, and have called his commands burdens, and his service a weariness. Shall we not repent of this? Can we continue to act thus basely? This day, my God, I hate sin not because it damns me, but because it has done thee wrong. To have grieved my God is the worst of grief to me. The heart renewed by grace feels a deep sympathy with God in the ungrateful treatment which he has received from us. It cries out, “How could I have offended him? Why did I treat so gracious a God in so disgraceful a manner? He has done me good and no evil, wherefore have I slighted him? “Had the Eternal been a tyrant and had his laws been despotic, I could imagine some dignity in a revolt against him; but seeing he is a Father full of gentleness and tenderness, whose loving kindnesses are beyond all count, sin against him is exceeding sinful. Sin is worse than bestial, for the beasts only return evil for evil; it is devilish-for it returns evil for good. Sin is lifting our heel against our benefactor-it is base ingratitude, treason, causeless hate, spite against holiness, and a preference for that which is low and grovelling-but whither am I going? Sin is sin, and in that word we have said all."

(From "The Monster Dragged to Light," Sermon 1095, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Vol. 19)