An Anti-Christian Rant

Martin Luther once said `Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.`

Buddha once said `Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.`

Why are Christians so bitter? Are they unhappy with themselves and their bigot of a God?

Why does their God kill and show admonishment towards his followers? Is it because he has held a grudge since the times of Adam and Eve?

Why is knowledge sinful? Is it because their God`s word should be accepted without question?

Why are most Christians closed minded towards scientific breakthroughs? Is it because they are taught from a young age that reason and the ways of self faith are wrong?

Why should one blindly believe in the most violent and hateful entity in religion, if one cannot have the ability to believe in themselves and question the world around them?

Okay.  How to answer that?  Well, this is how I look at it:

One thing I would consider is this:  Do not consider one person, i.e. Martin Luther, the spokesperson for Christianity.  The Bible over and over again presses the issue of using our minds.  A few examples:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  (Matthew 22:37)”

“Come let us reason together…(Isaiah 1:18)”

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God… (1 John 4:1)”

“they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so (Acts 17:11).”

Far from being a religion of blind faith and ignorance, Christianity offers itself to be tested for its historical veracity.  As far as Martin Luther goes, while he made many commendable contributions to our faith, he himself was not without his own faults (bouts of anti-Semitism and the like), and I certainly would not evaluate the whole of Christianity based off of one quote that may or may not be being used entirely out of context.

Also, I would ask, what do you mean that “Christians are so bitter?”  Everyone succumbs to the weight of a heavy heart every once in a while, but to say that “Christians are so bitter” is a bit of a faulty generalization.  Many Christians are very joyful indeed. Indeed, however, there are some who profess the name of Christ with their lips only to embrace a different path in practice.  Those people should not be looked at as an example of the faith of Christ.  Also, I would ask why do you consider God a bigot?  After all, Peter says

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance… (2 Peter 3:9)”

It is not God’s desire to kill and destroy everything that lives on earth, nor even is it His delight to eliminate certain races and peoples such as the Amalekites and the Ammonites.  God does not, however, tolerate unholiness, and a people as consistently wicked as those two examples (they sacrificed children to idols and engaged in horrid behaviors in worship to their gods) will eventually be given their just punishment.  To say that God is violent and hateful is to ignore the witness of scripture:

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6)”

“The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression(Numbers 14:18)”

“And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?  That is why I made hast to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster (Jonah 4:2)”

There are 56 instances in the Bible where God is referred to as slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.

Knowledge is by no means considered a sin.  Again, God wants us to reason.  The church was the sole bastion of learning during the Dark Ages, and were it not for the efforts of the church, learning would have ground to a halt and would have been forever hindered during those times.  Most Christians are not closed minded to scientific breakthrough.  However, many times science is used in the hands of those who actually distort the evidence to prop up support of doctrines such as evolution (look at the number of faked fossils, the amount of academic dishonesty that goes into supporting evolutionary theory) and Christians guard themselves against such faulty science and equip themselves with a balanced view on Science.

Again, there are 56 references in the Bible to God that say He is slow to anger and loving.  Faith is not a blind jump into an abyss of stupidity.  For myself, faith has been something that I have developed in time based on a realization that there is historical support for the veracity of the Judeo-Christian God.

provided to www.gotquestions.org

Which Set of Standards?

I received an interesting response from a reader about a post I wrote on moral relativity.  The commenter brought up a good point in saying that with all the religions claiming truth, which one really is true?  Because of the number of religious systems available to people, which system is right?  Since there is such relativity in the world, the commenter’s opinion is that atheism is the best answer for developing a system of absolute morals.

First, I applaud this person for being a thinker and not merely parroting something he read from Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins.  Thanks for really turning your brain on, because you are doing better than many atheists just in doing that.  I would hazard a guess, however, that to this person, the relativity in religion is at least in some part due to the lack of desire to judge or be intolerant of another person.

Tolerance has been redefined in today’s society to a level that is no longer tolerance, but the theater of absurdity.  Tolerance today means that everyone’s beliefs are equally valid, and that you and I are both right.  In reality, tolerance is the idea that the holders of the ideas are equal.  We should be egalitarian towards other people, but elitist in our thought and beliefs.  The new tolerance is a weird mixture of cowardice and noncommitment.  We don’t know enough about what we believe to stand for it, and we don’t know enough about another person’s beliefs to prove them wrong even to ourselves.  Therefore, we consider it easier, more tactful and tasteful, to not just agree to disagree, but agree to agree with no basis in agreement.

The problem with religion from the terms of relativity is this:  Religions in and of themselves require the adherent to make a value dcision, and religions in and of themselves are value/truth systems.  No one becomes a Hindu because “they didn’t have anything better to do.”  No one espouses Sufism or Islam because you get a cool turban.  There is a reason that resonates inside of the religion to the adherent.  The reason for that is that the religion is making some kind of truth claim.

With that in mind, one must consider this: if all religions make some kind of truth claim, there are going to be areas where these “truths” become contradictory and instead of harmonizing, compete with one another.  A Muslim and a Hindu by definition cannot agree with one another on the basis of Theism, because while Muslims are staunchly monotheistic, Hindus are polytheistic, and to an extent, pantheistic.  Therefore, it is impossible for these two religions to come to terms with one another.  With that in consideration, there are only two conclusions that are valid:  Either both are wrong, or parts of each one are right, and it requires one to blend some odd syncretism to reconcile the two.  This comparison can logically be drawn between all of the different religions of the world.

When this process is duplicated with Christianity versus any other religious system, a distinct pattern emerges:  Judeo/Christianity time and again proves itself historically verifiable, either by archaeology or historical writings.  The Judeo-Christian theology has proven itself venerable enough to convince men who are staunch skeptics, like Sir William Ramsey, C.S. Lewis, Simon Greenleaf, and Anthony Flew.  Like it or not, there is no skeptic alive who has proven one single statement from the gospel of Luke wrong, no one who has determined beyond a doubt that the bible contains fallacious reporting.  There exists proof of David, Solomon, the temple of Solomon, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Hezekiah, and many other biblical figures.  Unlike many religious texts, the Bible does lend itself to be tested historically.  The same cannot be said of many scriptures, such as the Book of Mormon, or the Vedas.

It was the fact that Christianity makes truth claims and can be tested that drove me to make a decision to follow Christ.  While other religions contain some truth, Christianity offers a system that time and again has withstood the test of the archaelogist’s spade, the textual critic’s razor sharp brain.  For 2,000 years, Christ continues to be “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  As such, my response is that even the search for truth is not a relativistic nightmare, but a simple endeavor of reading the Bible and seeking after the mind of the One Who IS, Who WAS, and Who IS to come.

Craig and Hitchens

Bill Craig and Chris Hitchens debated at Biola University on Saturday night.  For those who don’t know the two men, Bill Craig is a Christian apologist, and Chris Hitchens is an atheist and editor for Vanity Fair magazine.  Hitchens is representative of the new breed of atheist, who are militant against religion in general and claim that religion is nothing more than a great source of evil.  Craig is one of the foremost Christian philosophers on the planet.

I regret that I haven’t been able to review the debate in full, but I was browsing through www.christianpost.com where I was able to read the review.  As usual, the same thing surfaced.  Mr. Craig offered his argument for the veracity of Christianity, while Chris Hitchens offered nothing solid for atheism.  As is typical, Mr. Hitchens spent his time attacking Christianity, attacking God, the cross, etc. and etc.  In the end, you are left with the same thing as usual:  atheists typically offer any kind of attack possible while refusing to understand that you can’t play skeptic without having anything concrete to offer on the contrary.  Typically, it goes like this:  “I am the atheist, I don’t have to prove anything, and its all up to you to prove God.  Otherwise, I can stick my fingers in my ears and sing and stay in my little atheist bubble!”

I challenge atheists to at least be intellectually honest:  in order to prove that there is decidedly not a God, you would have to be everywhere and know everything.  Guess what?  Then, YOU’RE GOD!  So you see, the only way to argue intellectually is to at least say you are agnostic and do not know whether or not there is a God.

Hitchens, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, and a host of others are out and about spreading vitriol towards religion in general, and Christianity in particular.  Their arguments are, for the most part, incoherent, illogical, and devoid of any philosophical and/or theological training.  Christians need to equip themselves to know the truth.  If you look at the site links on the right of my site, you can find any number of resources that can direct you to rational arguments against atheism.  One in particular, www.equip.org, offers several items to read in order to not fall for the new modes of atheism.  It’s called Confronting the New Village Atheists, and it is really a great resource.

The God Question and Suffering

One of the most disastrous questions for a Christian to encounter, even moreso than the questions of evolution, biblical inerrancy, and various other difficulties of the faith, is the question of suffering.  Why do people suffer?  Why does a good God allow bad things to happen to those who are His faithful?  Why, for that matter, does God allow atrocities every day that shatter the hopes and dreams even of those who are not His by word and commitment, but are still His by creation?  When the sobs of the heartbroken and painful mourning of those who weep reach the heights of Heaven seemingly unanswered or uncared for, where is this God who “neither slumbers nor sleeps?”

This question stops more Christians in their tracks, leaves more skeptics continually scoffing at the “love of God” and eats the faith of more people than any other question.  Why do we suffer?  Buddhists and other adherents to eastern religious philosophies maintain that suffering is but an illusion and only once we get past that illusion will we reach peace.  Legalists in the Judeo-Christian background of faith can sometimes point at suffering as the result of something we have done.  Stoics believed that suffering was “our fate” and only by letting go of our feelings can we reach peace.

What are Christians to make of suffering?  How do we answer that question?  Well, first and foremost, one way to counteract the idea that evil disproves the existence of a loving God is this fact:  In order to evaluate something as “evil,” there must be some standard by which we evaluate what is “good.”  By this I mean that without a standard, we can’t really evaluate evil as evil.  How would we know what evil is if there was no good.  There has to be some objective standard by which we measure “good” and “evil”.  Hence, the argument can work equally well in reverse:  Suffering proves the existence of God because if there is evil, there is good.  Therefore, the presence of good in the world is evidence for the existence of God.

Another way to look at suffering is that, in some ways, humans ARE responsible for human suffering.  Galatians 6:7 states that “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.”  Very logically, there are actions that we partake in that lead to our suffering.  The unfaithful husband who is finally left lonely by his wife, love long dead from stupidity and selfishness, has rightfully reaped from the seeds which he has sown.  The young unwed mother now contemplating the future that she has carved for herself and now a child through her irresponsibility in tandem with the irresponsibility of her young lover has reached this point due to her own actions.  Indeed, some of the suffering we feel is due to our own behavior.

What do we do then, with suffering that is through no fault of our own?  What do we do with the pains that people feel that they never brought upon themselves?  The tragedy of starvation in Africa, the pain of the young mother holding a dying child in her arms, the grief stricken wife burying her husband, all her hopes and dreams dying along with the youthful man?  What then?  Where possibly can God be in that?  Who do we lift our hands to in anger?  Who do we scream to in the midst of all of this?

The easiest answer for the Christian to give and indeed, to hold onto in answer for their own faith is this:  God took the question of suffering, laid it upon Himself on the blood-stained nails of the old rugged cross, and dashed suffering to the ground in defeat.  You see, those who cry can know that Christ Himself, the living Lord and the God of Tears Himself stands waiting there.  He meets you in your suffering, this God of pain, this one and only Messiah.  Our suffering here, the death and despair, the agony and tears, are felt full force by that God-Man that lives for us, interceding moment by moment in front of our Father.  He assures us daily that in the midst of our failings and tragedies He is there, weaping with us, waiting for the time of divine restoration right along beside us.  Mother Teresa, the suffering saint of Calcutta, equated the awful sufferings of this world to no more than “a stay in an inconvenient hotel” when compared to the joys God’s saints will experience in heaven.  It is for the reason that we have this hope in Christ, the suffering messiah, for resurrection and restoration, that Paul says that “you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”

God created a perfect world.  He created mankind in His own image of rationale, judgment, and the ability to choose for himself.  Mankind chose to bring evil into the world.  Despite our culpability in the problem of pain and suffering, God chose to insert Himself into this world, take all of the pain, suffering, and tears of our lives, take them upon Himself, and die with arms wide open.  If nothing else comes out of pain and suffering, there is the loving God who offered Himself as a balm for our pain.  How can you not love this God?

I don’t offer this as a pat answer.  As Christians, it is our call to be the hands and feet of the living God here on earth to salve the pain and hurt of others.  It is our responsibility to do the godly thing when it comes time to intervene in the lives of others.  God has already done has job by accepting our suffering upon himself.  That, I believe, is the only real answer necessary for the question of suffering.