The Internet Monk Archives

Saturday with Michael Spencer: Things You Can’t Say Around Other Christians

Saturday with Michael Spencer
From a 2008 post

Sorry to disappoint, but I suppose the career of the Internet Monk has been full of the kind of things I couldn’t say around Christians or in church, but felt I could say to thousands of readers on the same journey via the blogosphere. Mistake? Depends on whom you ask, and when, and where they were in the journey. But in thousands of posts, I tossed a few good pitches and I hit a few batters. I’d take some things back (and have,) but other things will be there for those on the same journey I’ve been on for as long as I can find the space.

There are some places that Christians will allow you to stand up and say “the sermon is pop psych” or “I’m not a young earth creationist” or “why do we act like we just invented Christianity this year?” What a gift it is to be able to speak truth and be supported by a community of the one who IS the truth.

In the church I grew up in I always heard that we believed in freedom of conscience, the right of private interpretation, the priesthood of the believer, soul competency and the sacred right to differ from the majority.

I heard about all of that, and I heard that it was other denominations, with their bishops and their hierarchies, that were hung up on conformity all the way down the line.

Well….let’s just say that it’s a good thing they don’t give awards for “Ironic Reversals of Reality” anywhere. Someone would need to build a shelf. A long one.

I’ve discovered there’s a good reason you can’t speak your own convictions among many church and denominational Christians. And I’m not just talking about a crabby email or comment.

My own denomination has a population of leaders who have been openly condemning certain bloggers for several years now, as for the first time, the usual regime of assumed power-preachers and denominational power-brokers discovered there was actual, real, thoughtful, articulate dissent being published out there. And that dissent was treated as a threat to the denomination’s unity and mission of evangelism, to the point that bloggers were publicly ridiculed in many denominational speeches in the past 2-3 years.

Be clear on this: I have no problem disapproving of the blogger who uses his/her power of personal publishing to lie, insinuate, gossip and undermine. But I am stunned and saddened to see how legitimate dissent, honest questioning, personal struggle, authenticate analysis and necessary discussion or consequences have been called sinful and destructive. It’s a tragic error.

Some bloggers have been irresponsible. I may have been too honest, too vulnerable, too transparent in my blogging at times. But when we mistake the silence of pre-programmed, enforced conformity with Christian unity, we’re already the victims of our own delusions.

There are still doors in Christendom where the truth needs to be nailed, and some of them aren’t far away from where you are.

We need to talk about what is and is not happening among real Christians living real lives.

We need to hear the truth about the Christian experience, not just the scrubbed and glowing testimonials.

We need to have the assumed wisdom and answers of denominational leaders scrutinized, just like every pastor has to face his critics in every healthy church anywhere.

We need a vibrant discussion of the “whys” and the “what fors” in the things we require of one another in church, denomination and ministry.

We need courageous writers who will tell the stories that can’t be spoken among Christians who are determined to create a culture of secrecy and religious conformity.

There may be a price for honesty, asking questions and telling our stories. But there will never cease to be a need for someone who has the courage to ask tough questions and tell honest experiences in the midst of organized religion. We won’t ever get the truth of our human and Christian journeys from the official spokespersons or the press releases. We have to speak it to one another and support one another in the consequences.

We can’t speak falsehood to ourselves, one another and our children. Even if the truth is clumsy, painful, inconvenient or unwelcome, it is still the truth and we should love it for Jesus sake.

Some things you might not know about Chaplain Mike…

Today is my 63rd birthday. I won’t be celebrating much this weekend, but will be on call, officiating funerals, and trying like heck to get my overgrown lawn, saturated by spring rains, mowed at last. Anyway, I thought this occasion might provide a chance to help everyone here get to know the real me a bit better.

• • •

Some things you might not know about Chaplain Mike…

John Denver songs still make him cry.

He is old enough to have had a Nehru shirt, to have worn dickeys under his shirts, to have had to abide by school dress code rules, to have worn a leisure suit, to have worn a powder blue tux and platform shoes, and to have had a pair of jeans held together by patches from the crotch to the knees.

He inhaled.

He once thought being a faithful Christian meant he had to give up playing baseball.

Genealogical research suggests he might be related to the Martin Luther family.

He wishes his next car would be an electric vehicle, but he’d settle for a plug-in hybrid.

He didn’t like the Beatles much when he was a kid; he preferred the Dave Clark Five.

On HS graduation night, he crashed his girlfriend’s father’s car. Just before he was married, he crashed his fiancee’s father’s car. Once in downtown Chicago, he had a wreck while driving his sister-in-law’s car. A couple of years ago, he was in a crash with his wife’s car. For some reason now, women don’t like to let him drive their cars.

He thinks the book is always preferable to the movie.

He once dressed up in a Michael Bolton wig and sang “When a Man Loves a Woman” at a church Valentine’s Day banquet.

He remembers seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Hullabaloo, weekly episodes of Perry Mason, the Iowa girl’s high school basketball tournament (back when they played by “girls rules”), Dick the Bruiser on late night wrestling, and Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese calling the Saturday Game of the Week.

He still tries to attend a reunion of his 8th grade classmates every year.

He thinks C.S. Lewis’s idea of “Joy” is one of the most insightful concepts ever propounded.

He once preferred Carole King’s rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend” (the greatest singer-songwriter ballad ever written, in his humble opinion) to that of James Taylor. His preference has changed over the years, but he still loves Carole’s version too.

So, for today, why don’t we listen to both of them both singing it? Here they are, with a song of tribute to all my fantastic Internet Monk friends.

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Is There Purpose in Biology? The Cost of Existence and the God of Love. By Denis Alexander, Chapter 3: Biology’s Molecular Constraints

Is There Purpose in Biology?: The Cost of Existence and the God of Love
By Denis Alexander

Chapter 3: Biology’s Molecular Constraints

We are reviewing the book: Is There Purpose in Biology? The Cost of Existence and the God of Love. By Denis Alexander. Chapter 3: Biology’s Molecular Constraints. Alexander begins the chapter with a quote by Paul Davies, well known physicist, atheist, and author of such books as; God and the New Physics, The Cosmic Blueprint, The Mind of God, The Last Three Minutes, and, How to Build a Time Machine. The quote is:

“The fact that the universe conforms to an orderly scheme, and is not an arbitrary muddle of events, prompts one to wonder – God or no God – whether there is some sort of meaning or purpose behind it all.” (Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma, 2007, p.16)

A number of commentators in the last post raised the issue of design (or purpose; if something is designed a purpose is assumed) and the fact we do not have a counter example of a non-designed universe. Commenter Robert F put it:

“If the universe is designed by a creator, then everything in it is designed. We indeed would have no way of comparing what is designed with what is not, because we have no instances of non-design.”

While strictly true, I suppose, from a strictly empirical viewpoint, I don’t give much weight to the argument for the same reason I don’t give much weight to Solipsism – the idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside of the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. While possibly true and impossible to falsify, to me, it’s just no BFD. We are all going to go on pontificating and commenting regardless. So check your tired puddle-analogy at the door, after all we are not going to discuss (hat tip to Ken Nahigian):

Unintelligent Design (UD)
Stupid Design (SD)
Clumsy Design (CD)
Malicious Design (MD)
Design for Some Other Purpose, Causing Accidental Life (DeSOP-CAL)

Since we are all assuming we are intelligent (yes, I know, BIG assumption) we are going to assume God is intelligent as well. Even if we are atheists, as the Davies quote shows, we still think and act as if our intelligence might just be purposeful. Otherwise – see Solipsism above. So, can we move on, please?

This chapter is a continuation of the previous one, except instead of dealing with the macro-sized constraint features, Alexander deals with the micro-sized ones; at the molecular level. This chapter is a difficult read for those without a science background, indeed, it was difficult for me because Alexander is a molecular biologist and he goes deep; so I’m going to lightly summarize.

One of the most amazing and elegant features of the world is the genetic code. There are four “letters” (U,C,A,G) in the DNA and each “genetic word” is composed of three letters and known as a codon. Randomly mix up 4 letters to arrange them into 3-letter codons and what you get is the 64 codons shown in the figure. The 64 codons combine to form 20 different amino acids. The amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, of which we are mostly composed. The genetic code then is the code our body uses to convert the instructions contained in our DNA into the essential materials of life.

The big question for our present context is: how did such an elegant genetic code ever get established? Are there some chemical and physical underlying principles, associated with systems analysis, which could mean that this particular genetic code might just be the best code that there can be? There are three main theories of the origin of the genetic code. Alexander says this:

“… all the ideas summarized in the three main theories very likely play key roles along the way to the genetic code we have today. What is important to highlight in our present context is that all these ideas depend on orderly, systematic, biochemical ideas and observations. Were stochastic (chance) events involved in the generation of the genetic code? Of course – no doubt billions of them. But there appear to be good reasons why the code we now have appears to function so well in all living things today of planet Earth: physical and chemical constraints ensured that its generation was shaped by the needs of optimum functionality. If we find life on another planet, as seems very likely (and assuming we don’t contaminate it with Earthly molecules), it also seems a reasonable expectation that information-containing molecules like RNA and DNA will be present in its life-forms, and it would not be at all surprising to find a genetic code if not the same, at least similar, to the one we have on planet Earth.”

Alexander then talks about the physical restraints on RNA molecule selection and protein evolution. He notes that in the structure of molecules it turns out that basic physical constraints mean that in most situations the full range of possibilities generated by randomizing the options is never achieved, and so natural selection can only act with reference to specific subset of possibilities. He cites a study by Ard Louis of Oxford that seemed to bear this out. You can read a summary of the study here. The study found:

“When you think about evolution, ‘survival of the fittest’ is probably one of the first things that comes into your head. However, new research from Oxford University finds that the ‘fittest’ may never arrive in the first place and so aren’t around to survive.

By modelling populations over long timescales, the study showed that the ‘fitness’ of their traits was not the most important determinant of success. Instead, the most genetically available mutations dominated the changes in traits. The researchers found that the ‘fittest’ simply did not have time to be found, or to fix in the population over evolutionary timescales.”

A fully armored stickleback from the ocean near Loberg Lake (top), and a low-armored stickleback taken from Loberg Lake in 1994 (bottom). The fish have been stained with a dye called Alizarin Red S, which stains bones, in order to highlight their differences. Photos courtesy Michael A. Bell, Professor of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University.

One reason this occurs is due to the discovery of “hotspot” genes. More than 350 such hotspot genes, meaning genes that are more “evolvable” than others have now been identified. Alexander cites the example of the 3-spined stickleback fish, which have evolved in the relatively (geologically speaking) short time period since the last retreat of the glaciers trapped ocean sticklebacks in freshwater lakes.

The genes in this case is PITX1 gene that is involved making armor plating (with spikes). The main environment that they live in contains different predator. One environment, the freshwater lakes, contains dragonfly larvae that can catch the fish by latching on to the spikes. Hence, the environment allows stickleback to evolve with no armor plating. Alexander says:

“So sticklebacks are predisposed to remarkably rapid changes in their pelvic spines at multiple levels: the relevant regulatory gene is located in a highly changeable area of the genome; the gene in question can act as a master-control body-armor switching apparatus; and variants reduce pelvic spines will be rapidly selected in environments where those spines decrease fitness. Without such clever “evolvability” living things wouldn’t exist – including us. It’s yet another example of “Goldilocks biology” – unless the evolutionary systems have these very particular kinds of properties, we certainly wouldn’t be here to discuss the question. But isn’t that a circular argument – we wouldn’t exist to have the discussion unless precisely these kinds of well-organized systems were in place? Precisely so, that’s just the point.”

Well, there you have it. It would be nice to have some extraterrestrial biology to test his speculations. I will note over 15 amino acids have been identified in the Murchison meteorite by multiple studies, so maybe his speculation is not that far off. The molecular constraints he points out are a fact, just as the physical constraints are. The question is; how do you interpret the facts? Is it mere happenstance? Totally coincidental chance? Or something more? And how would we know? Next week we will delve into Chapter 4 – Biology, Randomness, Chance, and Purpose. Should at least be interesting, yes?

Always the Road Redux

Always the Road Redux

All my life I’ve thought one day this wandering will end,
The place I seek appearing, and there I am — at home.
Some sweet promised, fruitful, verdant, restful land.
I smile, breathe it in, and settle down.

There we laugh and feast and play ’til dark
Then lie within each other’s arms and sigh
And sleep as those untroubled or perplexed,
Wake to breathe the dew and steaming coffee mist.

Along the way I’ve sat at pleasant tables,
I have drunk the hospitality of friends;
Laughed until our bellies ached, falling on the floor
Ticking clock no check to end our revelry.

And then again the road, always the road,
Waving, shrinking figures in the rear view mirror.
Digging through the bin I find my sunglasses,
Visor down, driving toward the light.

But now more often I am tending roots,
Good and wholesome work that grounds me too.
Not quite a place of rest, though. Too much
Wind has passed beneath these well worn wings.

Now and then it comes to me — a highway that goes ever on,
Which I must follow if and when I can.
And eager, anxious, restless feet trying to find some larger way.
The question haunts: “And whither then? I cannot say.”

• • •

Read “Always the Road”

Return from the West

Return from the West

It has been a long, gray, gloomy, wet winter/early spring in the Midwest, and we’re still going through its dreariness. In addition, as we’ve shared here, we’ve had a lot of sadness in and around our Internet Monk family. I’ve been ready for a retreat for some time, and this past week we took some hideaway time in Arizona.

The travel and details of the trip turned out to be a bit crazy, and we won’t actually get home until well after this is posted, but I thought I’d share some of the pictures from our trip. These pictures, as you see them, represent only initial edits and enhancements, but I think you will see some of the wonders of this land to which we escaped. Most of our time was spent in central and north-central Arizona, so these won’t be the typical desert pics.

I almost forgot: Thank you, thank you for all who contributed posts this past week to make our getaway possible.

Damaris Zehner: Rebranding Christianity

Rebranding Christianity
Damaris Zehner

Christians have a bad name these days. There have been scandals, of course – abusive priests, sexually immoral Christian leaders, cult-like churches, financial irresponsibility, hypocrisy, and more. There have also been a lot of people in the public eye who have identified themselves as Christian while espousing hateful or ridiculous points of view. To many Americans, Christians of all denominations are at worst hate-mongers and at best buffoons, Westboro Baptist protesters or creation science theme park operators. It’s gotten to the point that well-meaning people are hesitant to say they’re Christians because they know they’ll be immediately pegged as one or both.

So how do we reclaim the public view of Christianity? Here are a few things that we shouldn’t do.

Public legislation. Fighting to pass laws to protect exclusively Christian points of view is not going to work. First of all, not all Christians agree on the content of laws concerning marriage, birth control and abortion, education, public display of religious symbolism, or legalization of drugs. And even when various Christian groups agree that a particular thing is right or wrong by biblical standards, not everyone agrees that legislation is the correct way to address the problem. The very public arguments over these issues have made Christians seem, fairly or unfairly, to be divisive, harsh, narrow-minded, and legalistic. Christianity under these conditions shows itself to be a religion of laws and conformity – though a careful reader of the New Testament can see that Jesus’ intent was exactly the opposite. We simply need to accept that the days of the American Christian Empire are at an end, if they ever existed. (And when we see the complications that have arisen in the past when government and Christianity have been conflated, we should honestly be grateful that they no longer are.)

Of course I would rather live in a country where everyone respects all life and lives according to moral and natural law – but even if that is possible, we have for the present ruined our chances of it. Before laws can be imposed from the outside, they must first be written on people’s hearts – or the act of legislation is like building a sandcastle when the tide comes in; every new wave washes it away.

Culture wars. I have a new coworker – a nice woman, hard-working, caring, and responsible – who is also aggressively Christian. She has hung a poster on her office wall that displays the words of a hymn; I stuck my head in to tell her that I liked that hymn, too. “You’re going to see a lot of that kind of stuff when I get everything unpacked,” she growled. “And I don’t care what anyone says; they’re not going to stop me from doing what I believe.” Well, all right. But honestly, no one would have stopped her. She didn’t need to come out swinging. She can say “Merry Christmas” if she likes, and no one is going to care one way or another, even those who aren’t Christian. But I’m afraid that she, like so many Christians, imagines herself engaged in a battle for the soul of America, a battle that must be fought by offensive (I use the term in both the military and the interpersonal sense) symbols that, for modern non-believers, are stripped of all Christian content and are just annoying. Will any wandering soul ever be saved by seeing a poster on your office wall or being whapped in the head by a rosary when he gets into your car? In fact, the insistence on public placement of objects of religious symbolism skates close to idolatry, by presuming that a plaque of the Ten Commandments or a statue of Jesus have any power in themselves to effect change or to save.

Apologetics. Well, to some extent. There are good books out there that portray Christianity in an attractive light and that answer sincere questions about the content of the faith. St. Francis de Sales, C.S. Lewis, Phillip Yancey, G.K. Chesterton, and others do a wonderful job of portraying the joys and honest struggles of Christianity without being hateful to people who think otherwise. There are also wise and gentle people who chat with their non-Christian neighbors over the backyard fence, who wait to be asked and who answer simply. But the proliferating television stations, the films produced as propaganda and not as art, the vitriolic blogs and websites, the shoddy trade in “Christian” fiction and self-help books, all make Christianity look like a commercial brand or a cult group. Even the call-in radio shows focused on apologetics don’t do much good. They might help clarify the beliefs of people who are already Christians, but I shudder to hear most of the questions that are asked: “My brother is gay. How do I convince him he’s in danger of hell?” “What can I say to my Muslim neighbor to show her that Mohammed was just a fake prophet?” “Our pastor is doing church wrong,” and so on. Some hosts are careful to give irenic advice, but mostly the goal of both the callers and the apologist seems to be the stockpiling of weapons in the war of the Just against the Unjust. Even if the individuals involved are innocent of judgmentalism, the shows don’t come across well to listeners who happen to tune them in.

Again, I would love to see excellent literature, film, and radio that portray true Christian values. One day we can return to that – but when we do, those books shouldn’t be marked with a cross on the spine in the library, and those movies and radio shows shouldn’t have as their premise that being poorly made is a guarantee of religious sincerity.

As far as I can tell, these three currently ineffective techniques are the go-to items when discussions of Christianity in America arise. Christian groups spend a lot of time, energy, and money on them and feel as a consequence that they have done something positive. But we have, by the bad behavior of many, forfeited our audience’s sympathies. Let us turn instead to the simplest, hardest, and most effective means of redeeming Christianity in our age: a humble life of service.

This requires no funding, no entrée to the corridors of power, no study. The poor and the wealthy, the prominent and the simple, the educated and the uneducated can live this way. A humble life of service may be a full time vocation, but it doesn’t need to be. Anyone in any profession can offer it. Physical and mental handicaps do not prevent Christians from following this calling. It is content with the simplest acts of kindness, done simply out of kindness and not for manipulative purposes. It doesn’t broadcast its motives. It doesn’t require publicity or reward. It is not a marketing technique. While it may organize for greater effectiveness – as the Little Sisters of the Poor did, for example – it can and must also be pursued individually. People living humble lives of service do not ask to “win,” to ride a wave of triumph into the public eye. If they are obscure, they are content. If they fail in the eyes of the world, they are not discouraged. If they are martyrs, they fix their eyes on God only.

In the past, this humble life of service was overtly identified as Christian. Religious orders and movements made it clear by their names, clothing, and disciplines that they were Christians. That was – and is – not wrong, but I might suggest that laypeople at least avoid overt identification in the current era. Christianity has become so odious to so many that even acts of mercy may be seen as manipulative or hypocritical. Instead let people know that we are good people, gentle, helpful, supportive, and quiet, only by the way we act; we can talk later.

The humble life of service will be more effective in redeeming our faith in the eyes of the world than any of the techniques discussed above. It will also be an act of penance for all of us who have tried through pride, power, and pushiness to further the cause of the Suffering Servant, who died a shameful death in an obscure backwater as a means of saving the world.

Another Look: Living as Easter People (1)

Note from CM: Back in 2011, we did a series called “Easter People.” I’ll be re-posting these on Sundays during this Easter season.

• • •

We’ve had many posts here at Internet Monk commending the use of the church calendar for spiritual formation. When we follow the Church Year, we live in the story of Jesus.

We anticipate his coming in Advent.
We celebrate his incarnation in Christmastide.
Our mouths drop in amazement at the revelation of his glory in Epiphany.
We learn to walk with him to the cross during the forty days of Lent.
We experience the high drama of Holy Week, reliving the Passion, from the midday darkness of Good Friday to the mysterious, surprising dawn of resurrection grace on Easter Sunday.
For fifty days in Eastertide, we try to wrap our minds around the fact that Christ lives, and because of him, so do we.
We watch him pass from earthly sight to take his throne on Ascension Day, and then celebrate the birthday of the new community our risen, exalted Lord creates on Pentecost.
For the rest of the year, we learn to live day by day as citizens of heaven and messengers of his Good News in the world (Ordinary Time).

We have just entered The Great Fifty Days of Eastertide.

Easter is not simply a day, but an entire season of celebrating the presence of the risen Christ and learning to walk in newness of life. Last year, during this season, we did a series on the Gospel stories about Christ’s appearances after the resurrection. This year, we will focus on texts that point us to the new life that is ours in him, and how we may live that out in the world.

We begin with Colossians 3.1-4:

Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (NASB)

I will make a few comments on this passage, and then invite your participation in discussing its implications for our lives as “Easter People.”

This passage forms a transition between the section in which Paul warns the Colossians against following false teaching (2:6-23) and the section in which he encourages them to walk together in ways that fit their new life in Christ (3:5-4:5).

As such, this passage serves as a theological summary which grounds Paul’s exhortations. These are the indicatives out of which the imperatives flow. Here Paul reminds them of their true identity as Christians before he talks to them about how they should live that out in the church and the world.

Paul is reminding them of their baptism as the concrete action that changed their lives. See 2.11-15; also Romans 6:1-4.

What happened to them? By God’s grace, through faith, by means of baptism, they died to their old life. To use another image, their old life was “cut away” from them, as is the flesh in the act of circumcision (2.11). Furthermore, the God who raised Jesus from the death, raised them up with him into new life, forgiving their sins and overcoming all the powers of evil, sin, and death that had held them captive (2:12-15).

Having been “raised up with Christ,” their new life now is “hidden with Christ in God.” That is, their identity as God’s people is not defined by adherence to certain religious practices (2:16-17). Nor are they marked out as God’s people through ascetic disciplines or ecstatic experiences (2:18-19). It is not by following codes of moral regulations that they are identified as belonging to God (2:20-23). Instead, their “life” — their status as God’s people, accepted by him and recognized as members of his forever family — is found solely in their living relationship to Christ. They are members of God’s new creation, citizens of a realm that is now “above” (out of sight), but that will one day be “revealed” (made visible in glorious fashion in this world).

The Colossian Christians are therefore to “set [their] mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” This does not mean that they are to walk around all day thinking about “heaven.” It means they are to base their identity before God and their perspectives on life in this world on what God has done for them in Christ, and not on the kinds of “earthly” practices that lead to spiritual bondage. Being a Christian and living as one is not, at its root, about religious requirements, ascetic disciplines, ecstatic experiences, or moral codes (what Paul warned against in ch. 2). It is about Christ, being united to him, and being a living member of his new creation.

These are my cursory thoughts on this passage. As “Easter People,” we live out of our baptismal identity. We have died, not only to sin, but also to all false ways of trying to relate to God and be identified as his people. Instead, by God’s grace through faith we have been raised up as new people in a new creation, united to Christ who is our life, and freed from bondage to the “elementary principles of the world” (2:20) through forgiveness and Jesus’ victory over the powers. We find our identity in him alone.

Now it’s your turn. What do you think?

Saturday with Michael Spencer: The Things that Won’t Go Away

Saturday with Michael Spencer
The Things that Won’t Go Away

They’re back.

My sins, that is.

Just in case you need to know, my name is Michael Spencer. I’m a Christian minister who has given 33+ years of my life to telling people…

My sins, O the bliss of this glorious thought
My sins not in part, but the whole
Were nailed to the cross and I bear them no more
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul…

and other similar things about sin and forgiveness.

Unlike some people in this business, I actually believe this stuff. Like the creed teaches me, I believe in “…the forgiveness of sins…” As a reformation type Christian, I’ve got it all worked out how my sins were atoned for, taken away, tossed into the depths of the sea, put behind God’s back and so on.

The problem is that while God has forgiven me and God has put my sins on Jesus and God has replaced my sins with the righteousness of his own Son, etc., etc., some of the persons I sinned against have taken a different route.

They’ve brought my sins back up. They’ve been holding on to them for years, filed away, still affecting them and now at a particularly point of clarity in their own journey, they’ve brought those sins back to me, put them on the table and announced we have a big, big problem here.

We have a song we often sing where I work, saying that Jesus died for our sins AND for the sins that were done to us. Because I’ve sinned against many other persons, I’ve always liked that verse. Apparently, too much; now I have to deal with my sins- several decades of them- and Jesus’ death, forgiveness, etc. is going to be of limited help. Those I have sinned against say that these sins matter and life is unalterably changed by them.

I’ve grieved over these sins, and I’ve asked forgiveness many times. But I haven’t successfully repented of all of them or abandoned all of them. Again and again, some of these sins have reappeared in my life. Prayer, accountability, counsel, more prayer, good theology, tears, more prayer…..none of it has killed off these sins entirely.

Jesus may have forgiven me, but my sins have followed me. Their footprints in the lives of those I’ve sinned against are still there, and they are calling me to an accounting.

I don’t know what to do about these sins.

I can’t honestly promise that I won’t sin again. I can say that with all my heart and all my efforts I will fight to never sin in these ways again, but these are sins that are deeply wound up in my personality, my upbringing and my physical/emotional make-up. Promising to never get angry again would be very unrealistic, and talking some pietistic trash would be deceptive. Somewhere out there, this sin will reappear.

I once knew this guy….well…I’ll let him talk…

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

What I’d like to ask that guy is this: Jesus may love you, but what about the people other than Jesus? The ones who can’t love you with those sins you don’t understand still on the record? What do we do for those who aren’t interested in imputation, but want accountability? Payment? Consequences? What about those who have been sinned against, but aren’t offering me the Gospel, but purgatory?

How do we take hold of the grace of God for ourselves but then deal with people who aren’t God and can’t be God? People who are going to hold us to the law for their own protection, and who won’t risk further dealings with me until guarantees of repayment and promises of no future sin are on the table?

Protestants are often faulted for having a view of “cheap grace.” Is this what “cheap grace” looks like? The forgiveness of the prodigal’s father on the one hand, and the real-world demands for repayment and improved behavior on the other?

Roman Catholics often refer to the Protestant Gospel as a “legal fiction.” Is this what they mean? A sinner enjoys forgiveness, but cannot adequately make amends, repayment or restoration for his sins against those he loves?

My sins have returned. God may have forgotten them. Other persons have not.

What do I do?

Damaris Zehner: Evangelizing in a Time of Collapse

The Future Is Uncertain. Photo by Geoff Livingston at Flickr

Evangelizing in a Time of Collapse
Damaris Zehner

The Church’s task is to make the Good News attractive and comprehensible to our audience, and that activity changes with time and place. Because what people believe about the world around them will affect how they hear the Gospel, there are two challenges to all of us who spread God’s Word: What do people believe about the world today, and how does that belief affect how we present the Good News? I don’t have an authoritative answer to either question. I am not a church leader but a teacher at a community college. However, my students are emphatically among the people who need to know God, so I am a stakeholder in this activity, and perhaps also I can provide some insight into what young people are thinking.

To address the first question, I think people – Americans, Westerners – believe we are living in a time of collapse. News, books, politics, and entertainment are either warning about the form that collapse will take or arguing against the claims of collapse. We hear about climate change, which, if the worst-case scenarios are true, might mean the collapse of our species, not just our civilization. The Doomsday Clock, which tracks the threat of nuclear war, just ticked closer to midnight. Our government seems to be stuck in a rut of disunity and obstruction – no surprise, because our society seems to be stuck there, too. Income disparity between rich and poor keeps rising. The march of technology against the worker, begun with the Industrial Revolution, has become a gallop. The population has more than doubled in my lifetime. Peak oil theorists warn us that the world based on fossil fuels is coming to an end – and will we be able to feed the population and maintain a healthy economy when we run out of oil?

It’s not important if any of the predictions are accurate when it comes to considering our means of evangelization. What’s important is whether people believe them.

Most people, it’s true, don’t seem overtly to care about the big questions of the future. They are thinking about shopping, vacations, kids, work, etc. They are like the people in the days of Noah, according to Matthew 24:38, eating and drinking and marrying. But there are signs that indicate some deep-seated worries. Look at the news, blogs, interviews, etc., and notice how many times you hear optimists say about the future, “They’ll think of something!” and pessimists say, “Who cares? I’ll be dead by then.” Neither of these is the response of confident people. The fact that the threat of nuclear war is greeted with shrugs and comedy suggests a deep cynicism as well – whether it is cynicism about war and annihilation or cynicism about the media and leadership that bring us that information isn’t entirely clear. Even the popularity of apocalyptic storylines in books, television shows, and movies hints at a concern with the future.

So how does the Church evangelize people who are reluctant to think about the future, who are living lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau would have it, refusing to imagine a drastically different life to come? Do we deal with the big questions of civilizations and species, death and eternity and judgment? Or do we talk about the daily issues facing everyone?

The big issues are hugely important, and they are also probably the ones that we, with our Christian faith, have thought a lot about. But many of our listeners don’t share our worldview or our confidence in God. Talking about the big issues can make them feel powerless, which can lead to despair or hedonism – or both.

When I asked my community college students how they think the world will end, they didn’t talk about the winking out of the universe or what happens after death; they talked about people having to get to work differently because gas will run out. Talk devolved from discussion of life, the universe, and everything to political, economic, and personal issues. Societal collapse, in their eyes, is the end of the world, and there’s nothing they can do about it but to binge-watch The Walking Dead. They don’t want to talk about the big questions.

So we have to start with the small questions. What if I can’t pay my student loans? Should I marry my child’s father? How do I deal with my horrible boss? Why can’t people be polite these days? These are what people really want answers to, and these are what we have to start with – being careful that we don’t just end up dealing with the earthly troubles and neglecting the Gospel – or that we listen impatiently to the troubles and then hit people with Scripture. I don’t have a perfect answer for these little questions, just two suggestions.

One suggestion is sharing Micah 6:8 in words and in behavior – not just inside the church but everywhere we go. “You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice and love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Everyone can hear the beauty of this message and enjoy the fruits of such a life. Those three things are simple – though infinitely difficult – and lead people gently to the thorny topics of sin and judgment. People who aren’t sure about God still see how lovely justice, goodness, and humility are – especially if we pray daily that they might occasionally see those things in us.

The second suggestion is something I tried when I was working as a missionary in poor villages in the mountains of Central Asia. The people I dealt with there were as different as they could be from modern Americans, but they too, for their own reasons, were less concerned with the big questions than with day-to-day survival. I couldn’t fix all their economic or political problems; I couldn’t feed their children or provide them with decent medical care, though I did what I could. So one day I sat down for tea with a group of women and asked them, “What are the difficulties and sorrows in your life right now?” They talked about illness, family stress, financial need, cold, hunger, and persecution from their neighbors. The day before, I had anticipated everything I thought I might hear, and after all the women had spoken, I turned to the Scriptures and showed each of them how Jesus had suffered the exact same thing. (It was a leap of faith – what if they came up with something I hadn’t prepared for? But it worked out.) I didn’t solve their problems for them, but they saw that they were not alone. God himself endured what they endured. To these women that was a comforting thought. They knew their life wouldn’t get fixed. They only wanted to know that God saw them and understood them. I hope it also helped that I saw and understood them, too.

These are the things that we – leaders and laity – can do and say to modern Americans who worry that the future is dark and that life is cruel, that Christians are hateful and God is a killjoy. We can humbly pursue justice and goodness for ourselves and our neighbors. We can tell them this: Keep company with Jesus in your sorrows. Know that you are seen and understood. Know that you are not alone.

The big questions can come later.

Is There Purpose in Biology? The Cost of Existence and the God of Love. By Denis Alexander, Chapter 2: Biology’s Grand Narrative

Is There Purpose in Biology? The Cost of Existence and the God of Love. By Denis Alexander

Chapter 2: Biology’s Grand Narrative

We are reviewing the book: Is There Purpose in Biology? The Cost of Existence and the God of Love. By Denis Alexander. Chapter 2 is Biology’s Grand Narrative. In this chapter Alexander asks the question: “What happens when we look at the general features of biological evolution – the overall “grand narrative” – in the light of the claim that it is necessarily purposeless? What do we actually observe?” His first chapter point is that we observe increased complexity over time. The first 2.5 billion years things rarely got bigger than 1 millimeter across. There were no birds, no fish in the sea, no animals wandering around. Gradually, through photosynthesis and other factors complex and not completely understood, the oxygen in the atmosphere built up to the 21% levels of today. Another major transition came with the development of multicellularity. Once multicellularity evolves, there is a huge scope for increased specialization in cell functions and in the construction of organs. There is good evidence that multicellular forms of life have evolved many times independently from all three forms of single-celled life, the bacteria, the archaea (archaea constitute a domain of single-celled microorganisms. These microbes are prokaryotes, meaning they have no cell nucleus.), and the eukaryotes (an organism consisting of a cell or cells in which the genetic material is DNA in the form of chromosomes contained within a distinct nucleus).

Figure 1 from the book gives the example that Alexander is talking about. Multicellular volvocine algae first started appearing 220 million years ago. Somewhere at some time a single –celled alga divided and the two daughter cells remained embedded in a chemical known as a glycoprotein. So from now on this chemical binding meant that different cells had to contribute to the common good, at least as far as that organism was concerned. It is then possible to track through the fossil record what happened next. Different cells became specialized for different functions already by 200 million years ago. Some cells started specializing in motility, in movement, and so they had to sacrifice their own reproduction. As the author of a recent review comments: “The importance of cooperation, conflict and conflict mediation in the early stages of the transition is likely a general principle for origins of multicellularity” (Herron, M.D. 2009. Many from One: Lessons from the Volvocine Algae in the Evolution of Multicellularity. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 2:368-70).

Figure 2 from the book illustrates the main point in the present context that, taken overall, evolutionary history has seen a huge increase in complexity as assessed by the sheer diversity of plants and animals. It is the “big picture” which is so striking. Alexander quotes evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a Nature interview:

Life’s contingent history could be viewed as an argument against any direction or pattern in the course of evolution or the shape of life. But it is obvious that larger and more complex life-forms have evolved from simple unicellular ancestors and that various innovations were necessary for the evolution of new means of living. This raises the possibility that there are trends within evolutionary history that might reflect the existence of general principles governing the evolution of increasingly larger and more complex forms.

Alexander himself notes:

As we stand back and look at the sweep of evolutionary history, we see huge creativity in life, immense diversity, but in a highly organized way, in which the ways of being alive for both animals and plants are constrained by the physical necessities of living on a planet with light and darkness, with this particular gravity, with particular atmospheric conditions at particular times, with particular temperature ranges. So, given carbon-based life, there do seem to be only so many ways of being alive on planet Earth.

Alexander then brings out the second main chapter point that has come to light in recent decades; that of convergent evolution. Convergent evolution is the process in which organisms that are not closely related independently evolve similar features. It is often thought that evolution is a purely random process and that over the billions of years since life began the process might have gone in any direction, not necessarily resulting in the kind of intelligent life-forms we see on the planet today. The question of evolution’s predictability was notably raised by the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who advocated the view that evolution is contingent and unrepeatable in his 1989 book Wonderful Life. “Replay the tape a million times … and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again”. Gould also famously likened evolution to a drunk on a sidewalk staggering around in a random manner. Alexander takes up and unpacks the meaning of “random” and “chance” in Chapter 4, so I will wait for that chapter to have that discussion.

The person who has done the most in recent years to investigate and popularize the idea is Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Paleobiology at Cambridge. His research group has also developed the Map-of-Life website highlighting many examples of convergence. The site says: “The name “Map of Life” reflects the way that evolution has repeatedly arrived at, or converged upon, the same adaptive solutions from more or less unrelated starting points, as though evolutionary trajectories were following a metaphorical “map” to the same destination.”

In the chapter, Alexander spends some time discussing the development of “camera eyes” in cephalopods (octopuses, squid and cuttlefish), cubozoans (jellyfish), and vertebrates (i.e. humans). This website lists “10 Striking Examples of Convergent Evolution in the Animal Kingdom” which would include:

1. Ichthyosaurs and Dolphins

2. Sparassodonts and Cats

3. Phytosaurs and Crocodiles

4. Foxes and Thylacines

5. Hedgehogs and Echidnas

6. Hyenas and Dogs

7. Tapirs and Pigs

8. Hyracodonts and Horses

9. Mudskippers and Tiktaalik

10. Placodonts and Turtles

Alexander notes:

This brief section on convergence in eye evolution has only just touched the surface of a huge subject. If you live on a planet of light and darkness, you are very likely to get eyes at some stage of evolution. The adaptive advantages are huge and obvious. This even led Dawkins to suggest that evolution is “progressive”, a notion Darwin himself found problematic, Dawkins writes, “the cumulative build-up of complex adaptation like eyes, strongly suggests a version of progress – especially when coupled in imagination with some of the wonderful products of convergent evolution.”

In a commentary on Gould’s idea of ultimate randomness in evolutionary history, Conway Morris writes that it is:

… now widely thought that the history of life is little more than a contingent muddle punctuated by disastrous mass extinctions that in spelling the doom of one group so open the doors of opportunity to some other mob of lucky-chancers… Rerun the tape of history of life… and the end result will be an utterly different biosphere. Most notably there will be nothing remotely like a human… Yet, what we know of evolution suggests the exact reverse: convergence is ubiquitous and the constraints of life make the emergence of the various biological properties (e.g. intelligence) very probable, if not inevitable.

Two other major evolutionary products that seem to be ubiquitous are cooperation and intelligence. Another related striking feature of evolutionary history is the rapid increase in brain size in hominids that has taken place over the past 2 million years, in which the brain more than tripled in size from around 400 cc all the way up to an average 1300-1400 cc.

Alexander concludes that, as we look at the “grand narrative” of evolution, taken as a whole, the claim that it is necessarily Purposeless begins to look increasingly implausible. There is an obvious arrow of evolutionary time – from ultra-simplicity to incredible complexity. We cannot avoid the constrained features of the evolutionary process, dependent ultimately upon the laws of chemistry and physics. Constraint and convergence are all around us.

I think he makes a very strong case here… and he’s not done yet.