The Ridiculous Realities Of Christianity

I was thinking about this the other day as I watched the biography of David Koresh, the leader of the Waco Brach Davidians who claimed to be a messiah etc. I could write an entire blog on him, but really I was just thinking about this one idea I got from it. That maybe cult leaders aren't as crazy as I always thought, because Christianity has some ridiculous claims.

If you actually do believe that Jesus will immenently return to earth or that the Anti-Christ could appear at any time and start seizing Christians, and that as Joel prophesied that the moon will turn to blood and the Day of the Lord will come upon us, it makes it hard to focus on alot of the more medial parts of life. I mean who wants to be doing laundry and miss the 2nd coming, really maybe those adventists and joho's who sat on mountains waiting for Jesus to return were just extremely sincere. I'm not advocating any of this - I'm an Amillenialist, so I won't be waiting on mountains anytime soon. But the reality is that if you really believe these ideas, you cannot be a normal person.

If you actually do believe that Jesus said 'go and sell all you have and give it to the poor among you' then you have to either live in a desert or the suburbs to find a loophole to the 'among you' part. But I mean it just doesn't make sense to me how Jesus preached take up your cross - equivalent to saying - take up your nooses, your handcuffs, and follow me. Sell everything. Basically become a communist. I'm sure alot of 'metaphorical' metaphors exist and that there are impressive exegetical gymnastics to get out of all those commands, but honestly, when people say 'you don't need to be so extreme' - where is that in the bible? Where is that in Church Tradition, or Christian history. Just read the life of St. Anthony of the Desert, he'll tell you what those verses mean. Ask the first generation of Christians that were labelled as masochists because they so desired martyrdom. I would be more open to someone telling me that Jesus was wrong or that his words are unapplicable to us, than someone telling me when he says 'take up your cross' he really means 'experience slight discomfort while praying in a restuarant' or any of the other 'modern equivalents'.

If you actually do believe that people will be sent to an eternity of eternal damnation for not hearing about Jesus, then maybe the people who ram the gospel down your throat are just acting in an honest way. If you believe that someone who is born in Mongolia and knows nothing about the Christian Triune God and will suffer the wages of sin for it, and you have the intellectual boldness to say that out of every single religion, out of every philosophy, mine is the only right one (or if you're 'humble' - my churches' philosophy). I've actually seen alot of this last one in my conversion to Catholicism, it's amazing how much people care about perceived 'heresy' (ironically defined as 'any teaching in conflict with the Magesterium of the Roman Catholic Church') more than about Christian living or about any of the above. I'm sorry for jabs at protestantism but I have to include the idea of one Eastern Orthodox who claimed all Protestants are crypto-papists (hidden papists) they believe that the Pope is not infallible but that they are. So congratulations Christendom we have acheived the appropriate level of Doctrinal honesty, we have hated enough and acted proud enough in our bold assertion of our own mutual claims of infalliblity... maybe we could start on the poverty issue now, and all the rest.

I guess I'm just trying to say, that in my mind, sometimes I think that you can't be a Christian and be normal. Sometimes I think (like Leo Tolstoy) that if Jesus Christ was on earth today, a very small group of people would like him. I don't think an honestly and integrally Christian worldview can ever be popular. I mean it is predicated on Jesus' statements that you will be persecuted. St. Paul says 'for all who wish to live a Godly live in Christ Jesus MUST be persecuted (Tim 3:12). You never see that verse on a bookmark at a Christian bookstore. I'm NOT saying that I live this out, please hear me again and again in saying that I do not live what I am complaining about out. I am no better than anyone I have criticized in practice. I just have come to believe that the only people I really think who are living out a biblically and historically Christian life are persecuted Christians of all kind in the 3rd world, missionaries, priests and all clergy who take vows of poverty, chastity, and celibacy, and others who can honestly say 'if I wasn't a Christian you wouldn't even be able to recognize me I would be so different' - I cannot say that, but I certainly am starting to think that being able to have the honesty to live a 'Real' Christian life, filled with worldly faillure, poverty (which is historically viewed as a Christian virtue), suffering, and the deepest devotion and Sacrifice for Christ, is alot more important than half the stuff we waste our lives caught up in. I'm not saying that those things are good in and of themselves, I mean there are many Muslims who do all that for their faith, I just mean motivated out of a love for God and grounded in that, all those things are to be our 'signs of success' in Christianity.

Thus I've come to believe that to truly be a Christian in the strictest sense, you have to be crazy.

Christian Ethical Dilemmas and Christ Alone

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations... when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy." -Deuteronomy 7

"God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God...You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also...“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. " - Jesus Christ (Matthew 5)

To me it disturbs me as I debate with others who know the bible and that God commands genocide. I know that they were 'sinful', but it still disturbs me greatly. I was watching a debate between Dr. Alister McGrath - a genius Anglican Priest and Scientist, and Christopher Hitchens -all around atheist douchebag (sorry about the ad hominem). Here it is:http://fora.tv/2007/10/11/Christopher_Hitchens_Debates_Alister_McGrath

McGrath keeps quoting St. Paul from Colossians saying that Jesus is the Image of the Invisible God and so he is the final revelation and that he is the final interpretation. He says reading the Old Testament in light of this makes it 'ok'. But how can you read those two statements and reconcile them. Hitchens is smart enough to know alot about Christianity and says that Christianity denounced Marcion who wanted to only leave Luke and Paul's writing in the bible and erase the 'jewishness' and in a way I think he's right that McGrath is a bit guilty of that.

So as I read the commands of God (the Father) in the Old Testament - whom I believe to be of the essence as Jesus (the Son) like any good trinitarian, I am deeply troubled as what appears to be a contradiction in character. Maybe God isn't all good, after all, "from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come" Lam 3:38. This sounds scarily like Calvinism's ideas that God arbitrarily assigns wrath to people and salvation to others... I am not sure if I am capable of worshipping such a God, not because I can disprove this from the bible, so much as it is simply awful.

So my conclusion is that I realize that Alister McGrath, and Karl Barth have taught me alot about Christo-centric theology. It is the idea that Christ is the basis of all scripture and the find their authority in Him. The Bible is only important in that it tells us accurately about Jesus and God's incarnation. This is the Old Protestant ideal: Solus Christus - Christ Alone. Jesus is the centre of everything, he IS the very WORD of God, the Logos, the great icon of Deity, he is the picture of God and his revealed character, it is as St. John of the Cross said "In giving us his Son, his only and definitive Word, God spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word, and he has no more to say".

Intelligent and Honest Conversation with a Deterministic Atheist

I just had about a 40 minute conversation with a guy in my Philosophy class. We normally have conversations after class and today it was Nietzsche's critique of Christianity as Platonism.

It was a fair conversation, and for once I decided to be open and honest, instead of trying to convert him. That sounds so stereotypical for a Christian to say, but I genuinely mean it, when is the last time you admitted to someone who was 'searching' (as Hybels would say) that you don't understand how God died on the cross but was yet alive and existent.

First I had to talk about Christianity and how it is distinct from Platonic Dualism and Gnosticism (wow we have screwed up in promoting this as Christians). I talked about how God looked at created matter and called it good. I talked about how the New Heaven and Earth would be established ON Earth and would be Material as well as spiritual. He admitted that Nietzsche had misrepresented Christianity and was intrigued. I thank God that I listened to Rob Bell's sermon/lecture on the Judaistic and Truly Christian idea of Heaven as Nature in a perfect remade state.

Then we talked about logic and how I believed it was limited and so I was a bit of a postmodern/existentialist and threw in alot of Kierkegaard and Pascal quotes. It is frustrating because we were trying to label each other, because our whole philosophies are about disproving the other. So while I did a good job disproving Materialism and Evolution he admitted that it might be wrong and that I still had to prove my view. And I admitted that I don't have a theory on how the universe was made and that I didn't believe the earth is 6000 years old.

So it was more than a discussion, it was an honest dialogue, it was a recognition that both of us don't have it all together. Maybe I should've run to my Reformed Theology - I know everything approach, but I decided to tell him that I had faith, and that one of the biggest proofs of my religion was my religious experience - which I admitted people have in religions I consider 'wrong' (he's a psych major, he would've told me this anyway).

I used the Socratic method to get him to admit that there is some logic that is universal and transcendent and then showed him that John 1:1 says that Jesus is the logos - the ancient stoic concept of universal reason/logic which holds all together. He admitted it was pretty smart. I told him that if I was 100% honest with him I would tell him Deism is the most 'logical' or rational approach, but that I believed in Kierkegaard's leap of faith and Pascal's wager and my own personal experience.

It was a strange conversation and in the end I didn't know whether he was angry at me or just confused, but he asked me about my life and I told him of my journey from practical and almost theoretical atheism/deism to Christianity and how God called me into ministry. He actually seemed a bit interested, and I told him that I met good people at bible school and he jumped up - "HA WHAT IS A "Good Person" and so I just calmly told him about John Thomas the man trying to help bring water and education to kids in Darfur, and that in a Darwinian standing he had nothing to gain, and that he was truly acting altruistically. He said something about having a Jesus complex.

In short, I ended it by saying 'well I believe in reason like you, but I also have faith and believe alot of things you don't, but maybe sometime you could tell me what you believe.' He agreed and we parted ways.

I can't stop thinking about it, what I could have said... I explained the atonement and how Jesus died because no one could live perfectly and that God's wrath was satisfied - which he cringed at. He asked me if I believed he is going to Hell. I said 1) Christ tells us we are not to judge anyone else and should worry about our own lives. 2) The Neo-Orthodox/Karl Barth Idea that God is free and can save whoever he wants, so I cannot say. and 3) That when Jesus was on the cross he cried out 'Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing' and that Christ's very character was to forgive. I am not a universalist, but I can hope for it. I know that some people will go to Hell, but I think that I have no place in saying who. He brought up why Jesus said 'God why have you forsaken me' on the cross and claimed it was a sin. I said it was a fact that God had forsaken him in his wrath and that therefore it was not doubt, and that Jesus was quoting Psalm 22:1 referencing prophecy that this would occur. I also explained that Blasphemy is not the unforgivable sin, but refusing (or blaspheming) the Holy Spirit was - a.k.a not accepting Jesus.

I feel like this kind of conversation worked alot better than traditional apologetics, I don't know though. I just was honest about the fact that I believe alot of unreasonable things, but alot of reasonable things as well, and that atheism is alot less reasonable. May God help him, and all of us.