Manuscript

Sermon Manuscripts

World Religions

Hinduism and the Bread of Life

Buddhism and the Way The Truth and the Life

Islam and the Good Shepherd

Judaism and the Light of the World

New Age and the Gate to Abundant Life

A Mother’s Day Story – Amber Sees the Big Picture

Mormonism

Objections to the Christian Faith

How Can There Be Only One True Religion?

How Could A Good God Allow Suffering?

Doesn’t A Biblical Faith Collide With Science?

How Accurate Could The Bible Really Be?

The Church Is Full of Hypocrites!

________________________________________________________

"Stories of Life -- Good Is Stronger Than Evil" - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb. Trust in the LORD, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security. Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday. Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices.

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil. For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land. Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity. The wicked plot against the righteous, and gnash their teeth at them; but the LORD laughs at the wicked, for he sees that their day is coming.

The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to kill those who walk uprightly; their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. Better is a little that the righteous person has than the abundance of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the LORD upholds the righteous.

Psalm 37:1-17

Some time ago I was teaching a Bible study in which we happened to come upon a story in the book of Acts about Peter bringing back someone from the dead. One of the participants commented on her surprise to find such a story in the Bible. It gave me an idea to look at the stories of life found in the Bible as preparation for Easter, stories that have something to say about resurrection. There are surprisingly more of these stories then most of us realize. We know that Jesus was resurrected, and perhaps we've heard the story of Lazarus, but in fact there are half a dozen additional stories of people who came back to life. We need to be careful to observe that these people were re-vivified, not resurrected because, as far as we know, all of these people died again at a later time. (Although I have seen claims in the National Enquirer that someone has located Lazarus still living on a remote island in the Mediterranean…) Still, each of these stories of life shows some part of the larger truth of what full resurrection is like, and the story we consider today illustrates the resurrection truth that good is stronger than evil.

Good is stronger than evil. It’s a rather audacious claim to make. Whatever your politics, whatever your view of this war, thoughtful people know that we don't have to look very far to see that evil too often triumphs over good. And even without the brutality of war, the news is full of stories about evil on the march. For many of us this experience is personal: we have been good, and we have been victims. "Why be good?" we might ask in despair, "look what it's gotten me." Cynicism and pessimism are to be forgiven, perhaps, when we look around and see evil people getting ahead, and getting away with it. While many of us in the church will continue to do good because we think it’s the right thing to do, we have an uncomfortable suspicion that evil is stronger than good, and that if we were really smart, or really gutsy, or really free from all our middle class values, we could be a lot happier if we lived like those around us: living for today, living for ourselves, and to hell with everyone else.

Harder to make and defend is the claim that, in fact, good is stronger than evil. And yet that is the claim of our faith. As the psalmist says,

"Do not fret because of the wicked, do not be envious of wrongdoers,

for they will soon fade like the grass…

Do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices

For the wicked shall be cut off.

The wicked draw the sword…to bring down the poor and needy,

But their sword shall enter their own heart

The wicked plot against the righteous

But the Lord laughs at them

For he sees that their day is coming.

The words of Psalm 37 recognize the reality of what we see around us. The wicked are getting ahead, there is no justice. But that's not the last word. The Lord laughs, because the day is coming when the wicked will fade like grass, when they will be cut off, when the sword in the hand of the wicked will be plunged into their own hearts. The day is coming when there will be vindication, when there will be justice, when the meek will inherit the land, and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.

What we’re really talking about is a resurrection claim. Because it turns out that belief in resurrection is more than belief in an afterlife, as important as that may be. The resurrection is a claim on the future that covers all of creation. The resurrection is about God's insistence that the original beauty and goodness of creation not be thwarted, that the fullness of life intended at creation and lost through sin and death will be reclaimed (Note in Oxford RSV on Matt 22:31-32). To this end the later chapters of the book of Revelation describe God's ultimate recreation of the new heavens and a new earth, the absolute perfection that God intends for God's people, a situation where death and crying and pain will be no more (Rev 21:4). This is not pie in the sky by and by, this is the solid theology of our belief in a future resurrection, and it can greatly impact how we live in the here and now, because it affirms that evil and injustice are not the last word, that God will have the last laugh, as the psalmist says, and it will be a hearty one!

Our story today comes from the Old Testament. Resurrection hope and truth, while only fully realized in Jesus Christ, are not the domain of Christians only, and in the Old Testament we have a wonderful story from the life of the prophet Elijah. Perhaps you recall the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, when each were given a chance to ask their respective gods to make it rain, and only Yahweh, the God of Elijah, was able to do so.

That story from 1 Kings 18 really begins in 1 Kings 17, when Elijah announces to the evil king Ahab that Yahweh is going to cause a three year drought, which is exactly what happens. During this time Elijah is lead by the Spirit to go to Zarephath, a city outside of Israel, because there God has arranged for a widow to feed Elijah. Here's how the story goes:

Elijah set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.”

Elijah is essentially saying to her, "Do you trust Yahweh? If so, fix something for me first, and then you will have plenty for yourself…" She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah.

After this the son of the woman …became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. She then said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” But he said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. He cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” So the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”

Our faith as Christians means that, in the last day, and perhaps even before then, truth will triumph over evil, because the Lord is risen indeed. This is a resurrection faith, a faith that good is stronger than evil.

Amen.

________________________________________________________

"Stories of Life -- Truth Is Stronger Than Falsehood" - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

The disciples of John reported all these things to him. So John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” When the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’” Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Luke 7:11-23

"What is truth?" According to a recent poll, Americans are likely to answer the question based on how they feel at any given moment. By more than a 3-to-1 margin American say that truth is relative to a person's situation, and that they are likely to make moral and ethical decisions on the basis of whatever feels right or comfortable in a situation. Truth in America is relative.

Truth in first century Palestine may have been equally difficult to ascertain. John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus "are you the truth?" Now, just to remind you, John the Baptist was Jesus' cousin. They had grown up together, but despite this long history, John still isn’t sure it Jesus is the truth.

The disciples of John are invited to observe the evidence: at the hand of Jesus the blind receive sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the poor hear good news. Oh, and one other thing: the dead are raised (vs. 21-22).

The dead are raised? Jesus almost makes it sound like an everyday occurrence. How often it happened we can’t know for sure there are three stories in the gospels that involve Jesus raising people from the dead, and one of these comes just prior to the arrival of John's disciples.

In our story from Luke 7 Jesus has left Capernaum, where he carried out quite a bit of his ministry when not in Jerusalem, and goes to a town called Nain. At the gate of the city Jesus and his disciples encounter the funeral procession of a man who has died, his mother's only son, and she is also a widow. Jesus had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep, and then breaks all religious and social custom by touching the coffin, which brings everyone to a stop. Jesus then says, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" He does and Jesus, Luke tells us, gives the man back to his mother.

Now the first detail for us to notice is the obvious parallels between this story and the one we looked at last week about Elijah. Both involve a widow, both involve the death an only son, which is to say, the death of the widow’s only means of support, and in fact, each story concludes with the almost identical phrase, that is, that both Elijah and Jesus, upon raising the son, "gave him back to his mother." It is very clear that Luke tells his story in such a way as to show the parallels between Elijah and Jesus. Elijah is generally recognized as the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, Luke is telling us that someone greater than Elijah is here, someone who did all that Elijah could do, and then some. Jesus doesn’t go through all the stuff Elijah did, stretching himself out over the boy three times, and crying out to God to act. Jesus acts himself and does so by giving the command, “Young man, I say to you arise.”

The second thing to note, if only briefly, is that in verse 15 Luke gives us the detail that the son, upon being raised, “began to talk." As you have heard me say before, there are no wasted words in the Bible. This is not simply stray background material to move Luke’s story along. These words function very much in the same way as another little tidbit we have in John’s gospel: that following his own resurrection Jesus ate some fish. The message in both cases is clear: ghosts neither talk nor eat because ghosts have no body and thus no means of vocalizing nor of processing food. The fact that this son began to talk is proof that it was not a ghost, but a physical being. He was brought back to life.

Finally, as if we needed to know, Luke tells us in verse 16 that fear seized the people and they glorified God. Some scholars have tried to soften the claim of a bodily resurrection by suggesting that the people in Jesus day were superstitious, backward, and gullible, inclined to want to believe in miraculous occurrences. These scholars would suggest that the people in Nain only think they saw a person come back to life, as an extension of their pre-scientific worldview, and due to their psychologically fragile state of mind, both of which predisposed them to make their spiritual claims in physical terms.

The view of these scholars is that the physical resurrection is too great a truth claim to make. Instead they believe that resurrection language is expressing theological truth in mythological garb. According to them, when more enlightened people say, “The Lord is risen,” they are not making a claim about the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, but instead are saying something like this, “I don’t really know what happened to Jesus’ body, but the truth is that Jesus continues to live on in our hearts. As enlightened people we do not need to make physical claims in order to believe the spiritual truth that Jesus lives, because he has influence on us through his memory and our adherence to his teachings.”

But verse 16 suggests another truth. The reaction of the people was one of shock, amazement and fear. Bear in mind that these people were much more in touch with death than are we. They were around dead people all the time, and even without a coroner they knew when someone had died--like the parrot in the old Monty Python sketch: “He's dead I tell you, dead, deceased, gone to the great beyond." In other words, the people of the first-century were no more superstitious, foolish, or gullible than we are. The reactions of the people at the funeral in Nain suggest that this was not part of their ordinary experience or expectation. What happened there was that a man who was dead came back to life, and that was very strange indeed!

The story of the man at Nain is a story of life, but not a story of resurrection. Still, it holds a resurrection claim for us, namely, that truth is stronger than falsehood. In terms of our beliefs about Christ it is the truth about the physical resurrection that we're debating, the fact that Jesus returned from the grave and spoke and ate and talked and that his body was of a different sort even than that of this man in Nain, that his body was a resurrected body, unique in ways we will deal with another time. For now it is enough to know that the people around Jesus did not merely claim the spiritual reality of Jesus in their hearts. They claimed to see Jesus as a physical presence that spoke and ate and had substance. And it was to this physical presence that they went on to give their own lives.

Christian scholar Craig Blomburg makes the observation that Christ's resurrection as bona fide historical event actually sets Christianity apart from all its major rivals. In the case of Buddhism and Islam there is no claim made for the deity or the resurrection of their originators. Both Buddha and Mohammed are merely prophets whose teachings “live on” in the hearts of their followers. And of course in some religions such as Hinduism, there is no attempt to prove the actual historical existence of their founders and gods. But Christianity lives or dies with the claim of Christ's physical resurrection from the dead. Put another way, if we were to discover the bones of Jesus, it would have a seriously negative impact on Christianity as traditionally understood and practiced (Blomburg, 308).

What is truth? Perhaps it isn't relative, but perhaps we do need to decide what truth to believe…. At the end of the story of Jesus raising the widow’s son the people say, “A great prophet has arisen among us.” …he has risen indeed!!

________________________________________________________

"Stories of Life -- Love Is Stronger Than Hate" - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

Mark 5: 25-34

Why do bad things happen to good people? How could an all loving, all powerful God allow the kinds of things that happen to the people God supposedly loves? It's a question that plagues us all, and it is usually answered in one of three ways.

The first answer is that perhaps God isn't as good as we think God is. Perhaps evil and good are cut of the same cloth, that there is really just one cosmic reality out their, and this cosmic being is a little capricious. This is the answer of many eastern religions, that there is a kind of ying and yang to human experience that reflects a deity who is good some of the time, but not all of the time.

The second answer holds intact God's goodness, but suggests that maybe God isn't really all powerful, that perhaps God isn't able to control as many things as we thought. This is essentially the answer that Rabbi Kushner came up with in his book on this subject several years ago. Basically Kushner argues that while God's heart is in the right place, God just doesn't have as much power as we'd like God to have, and so is unable to shield us from some of the things that happen to us.

Finally, some people believe that human suffering is God's way of teaching us important life lessons. These people have a strong need to believe that there is a reason for everything that happens, and so they must find meaning in the suffering that comes our way. "God must really be trying to teach you something," they will say, and not quite sympathetically. This is a view expressed by well-intentioned Christians who end up doing more harm than good.

I have to tell you that I believe all three of these views are wrong. I believe, in contrast to some eastern teaching, that God is always and completely good. I disagree with Rabbi Kushner because I believe that God is fully powerful to do all that God intends to do. And finally, I believe that looking for a reason in everything that happens is also misguided. As Philip Simmons says in his book, Learning To Fall, The Blessings of an Imperfect Life, "Wanting human suffering to fit some divine plan is like wanting to fly an airplane above tornado wreckage and see that it spells out song lyrics or a cure for acne." ("Christian Century," June-19-26, 2002, p 34).

But there is an answer as to why bad things happen to good people, and it is one we've touched on before, namely, that we have an ancient enemy who hates our guts. The Devil, Satan, our ancient enemy, hates our guts and seeks to work us woe. This enemy attacks without reason, explanation, or provocation, often with disastrous results. And before you disregard such talk as superstitious nonsense, you should know that the famous theologian Karl Barth suggests that modern Christians pass over this reality too lightly. "There exists," says Barth "a superior, relentless enemy whom we cannot resist unless God comes to our aid." He continues by saying that he doesn't care to dwell on such matters, but that it is necessary for us to know that the Devil exists (Barth, Prayer, 73).

The Devil exists, and hates our guts, but thanks be to God for the resurrection claim that love is stronger than hate, and specifically, that the love of God in Jesus Christ is stronger than the hate of our ancient enemy.

That was certainly the case for the unnamed woman in the story we heard this morning. For 12 years the ancient enemy had worked woe in her life. For twelve years she not only suffered physically, but also emotionally and spiritually, treated as an outcast and banned from participation in the temple because she was ritually unclean. For twelve years she no doubt asked, "Why me? What have I done to deserve this?" -- a question that could only be answered by making reference to a dark, evil, malicious enemy, who doesn't need a reason to hate.

But love is stronger than hate. Of course it was a risk--to be out in public, to be identified and sent away, but she had to get to the man who was said to love, a man who would perhaps be able to help her. Besides she only intended to touch his garment--who would know? She would slip in and slip out and no one would be the wiser.

According to plan she touched the fringe of Jesus' clothes, and perhaps beyond her hopes the bleeding stopped immediately. But then something unplanned happened as well. Jesus knew. He stopped. He turned and demanded to know who had touched him. Could it be that this man would be angry at her? Could it be that she was once more to be confronted by hate? No, but by a love she could scarce imagine. Not only is she healed, but in fact, she is saved.

But now…the rest of the story. You see the story we've just heard is actually in interlude, an interruption, in an even larger story of life. The woman to touched the fringe of Jesus' robe did so as Jesus was on his way to the home of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, whose daughter was sick. Curiously, this daughter had been born twelve years before, about the same time as the woman Jesus encountered on the way began to have her trouble, but beyond that there is no other connection that we know of. Except perhaps this, at the moment the woman is healed, the ancient enemy thrashes out and takes the life of the little girl. It's as if one prisoner is set free and thus Satan demands another. There is even a sense in the story that by pausing to deal with the woman, Jesus missed the chance to heal the girl before the illness could take her. No doubt this is the opinion of Jairus, the loving father. “Oh Jesus, if only you had hurried, perhaps my daughter would not have died!”

But Jesus is undeterred by the news. He tells Jairus not to fear, only to believe, and his daughter will be saved. There's that word again. Not just healed, not just restored to life, but saved. In Greek the word is sozo and it means a complete and total healing and restoration--physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. It is the word of life.

Jesus and Jairus continue to the house, where already the mourners have gathered and weep and wail. Jesus asks them not to weep, for the girl, he says, is only sleeping. They all laugh at him. They laugh! Jesus might be a great man, a wonderful teacher, a loving healer, but these people know death when they see it, and the little girl is dead.

But Jesus took her by the hand and says, "Talitha, cum," "Little girl, get up," and immediately she got up and began to walk around. Not only this, but Jesus further instructs that she be given something to eat, so that everyone knows and understands that this is a physical presence.

And once more, the hate of an ancient enemy is overcome by the love of an even more ancient God. And once more love turns the very devices of hate back on themselves, thwarting Satan's plans and bringing healing, salvation, and life. Friends, believe the Good News, the resurrection claim, love is stronger than hate, even an ancient and smoldering hate, because the Lord is risen indeed!

________________________________________________________

"Stories of Life -- Life is Stronger Than Death" - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:1-11

Will Willoman, Dean at Duke University, tells the story of a man at the school we'll call Chris. One day Chris came to visit Willoman and told him a story. Basically Chris had been a bad boy, and an even worse teenager, so bad, in fact, that he had had been sent to a camp for delinquent teens. So bad, in fact, that he broke out of the camp and escaped to the city. There he became a male prostitute and one night he rolled a business man and stole his American Express card.

Chris was caught and sentenced to hard time at the Joilet Prison. We could say that he was as good as dead. But life is stronger than death, and something happened at the prison that was unexpected. Chris was taken under the protection of an older prisoner. Every night before lock down this older man would read to the younger man a chapter of Luke's gospel. It took a long time, because the old man didn't read well, but one night they finally came to the story of the Prodigal Son. Chris told Willoman that that Jesus "body slammed" him with that story. In fact, Chris claims that he heard Jesus speak directly to him, and what Jesus said was this: "You owe me, I've got plans for you." and with that Chris was saved. He served his time, got off for good behavior, earned his G.E.D., and now was a student at Duke University. As Chris finished his story he looked Willoman in the eye and said, "I'm the only proof of the resurrection you've got."

Life is stronger than death. The Apostle Paul puts it this way, "For since we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin."

In his book Through the Valley of the Kwai, Ernest Gordon recounts the life of prisoners of war during the second world war, a life of death. "Death called to us from every direction. It was in the air we breathed--it was the chief topic of our conversation. The rhythm of death obsessed us with its beat… On one occasion" he writes, "a whole string of barges came floating downriver to our camp. Their cargo consisted of corpses--the bodies of prisoners from upcountry. They were no more than skeletons covered with skin" (63).

This constant press of death meant that such life as was lived was lived according to the law of the jungle: stealing from one another; cursing one another, their captors, and God; waiting for one another to die in order to rob the corpse of its few meager belongings. Nor was faith of any help or consolation. It may be hard to imagine for those who have never experienced it, but the total debasement of the human such that there is no shred of dignity or decency can reduce people to something even less than animals. "We were," writes Gordon, "forsaken men--forsaken by our families, by our friends, by our government. Now even God had left us" (67).

Then one day a new story of death made its way through the camp. A man named Angus had died, nothing exceptional, except in the manner of his dying. It seems that Angus had a friend who was ill, and had made up his mind that his friend wouldn't die. When someone stole his friend's blanket, Angus gave the man his own. At mealtime Angus would show up to get his food, but instead of eating it himself, he would take it back to his friend. At night he took to slipping out of the camp, denying himself sleep, in order to trade on the local black market for medicine and extra food. His friend got better, but Angus collapsed, dead from starvation and exhaustion. And someone remembered, "Greater life has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Life is stronger than death, and so this death was a turning point in the life of the men. As the story was told and retold, the men began living differently. "Death was still with us," writes Gordon, "no doubt about that. But we were being slowly freed from its destructive grip. We were seeing for ourselves the sharp contrasts between the forces that make for life and those that make for death. Selfishness, hatred, jealousy, and greed were all anti-life. Love, self-sacrifice, mercy, and creative faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its truest sense. These were the gifts of God to men" (94).

Life is stronger than death. The Apostle Paul puts it this way, "…if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."

One of the most well known stories of life in the entire Bible concerns Jesus' good friend Lazarus. He became ill, and his sisters, Mary and Martha, sent word to Jesus. But when Jesus heard it he stayed where he was for two more days, saying that the illness of Lazarus would not lead to death, but rather to the glory of God.

When Jesus finally announced to his disciples that they were going to Judea, to Bethany, within an hour's walk of Jerusalem, his disciples reminded him that the Jews there had just recently tried to stone him to death. Of course Jesus knew this, as he also knew that the jubilant crowds who would welcome him with waving palms would quickly turn into the lynching mobs of Good Friday.

When Jesus and his disciples arrived in Bethany they found that Lazarus had died four days earlier. Martha and Mary were each grieving in their own way. Martha, the practical one, was polite toward Jesus but we get the sense that quietly she was smoldering. Mary, the emotive one, simply cried. Both conveyed to Jesus their belief that, had been there, Lazarus would not have died. The shortest verse in the entire Bible sums up our Lord's response to the whole scene, "Jesus wept." Several people present noticed this, but others were critical and wondered if a man who could open the eyes of the blind couldn't have done more to keep a friend from dying.

According to middle eastern custom, the body had been buried on the same day Lazarus had died. According to Jewish belief, the soul of an individual lingered for three days against the possibility of some revivication. According to ever sensible Martha, if they opened the tomb there would be a stench. Lazarus was dead in every possible sense of the word, but Jesus insisted. In an act that would foreshadow events just weeks away, Jesus asked that the stone be rolled away. Then he looked upward, prayed a prayer of thanksgiving, and then called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." He did, still bound and wrapped in his burial cloth.

Life is stronger than death. Jesus puts it this way, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." Then he asks, "Do you believe this?"

Amen.

________________________________________________________

“The Ultimate Story of Life” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

35But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body…

42So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body…

50What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

55“Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?”

56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-44, 50-57

Someone teaching a Sunday School class asked the children this question, “If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?" "NO!" the children all answered.

"If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?" Again, the answer was, "NO!"

"Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my wife, would that get me into Heaven?" the teacher asked again. Again, they all answered, "NO!"

"Well, I continued, "then how can I get into Heaven?"

To which a five-year-old boy shouted, "YOU GOTTA BE DEAD!"

For the last several weeks we’ve been looking at some of the fascinating stories in the Bible about people who were dead and then came back to life. In total we’ve looked at only four of the ten stories in scripture that involve people coming back to life, and in each of these we’ve taken pains to suggest that in order to come back to life, “you gotta be dead.” In the process we have challenged the charge that the people in Jesus day were superstitious, backward, gullible, and therefore unable to accurately determine if someone was really dead or not. Against this we argued that when those people said someone was “dead, deceased, gone to the great beyond,” they knew it.

On this Easter Sunday, as we turn our attention to the ultimate story of life, it is again important that we substantiate that Jesus was, in fact, really dead, and there is some rather gruesome evidence to support that fact. According to medical examiner Dr. Alexander Metherell, Jesus was already in hypovolemic shock after his flogging at the hands of the Roman guards. Hypovolemic shock means a person is suffering from loosing a large volume of blood. The whips used by the Romans had bits of bone and metal imbedded in the braiding, with the express purpose of opening the flesh as much as possible, thus bringing about this large loss of blood.

From there Jesus was taken to the cross. No one is exactly sure what causes death on the cross, but one theory is that death comes by slow asphyxiation. It is impossible to take in breathe when hanging by your arms, so in order to breath the individual must push up on the spike through his ankles, tearing open his already lacerated back. Eventually exhaustion would set in and death would come due to lack of oxygen.

At the same time, as a person’s breathing slows, he goes into what is called respiratory acidosis—the carbon dioxide in the blood is dissolved and causes the acidity of the blood to increase, which eventually leads to an irregular heartbeat. This together with the loss of blood would bring cardiac arrest.

Finally, if neither asphyxiation nor heart failure get you, the Roman guards are there to either break your legs, or, in Jesus case, to puncture your heart with a spear. Again, these Roman guards knew death, and also knew that their own death would be required if they took someone off the cross prematurely. There can be no doubt that Jesus was dead.

Jesus’ body was placed in the tomb late Friday afternoon, just before the Jewish sabboth, which started at sundown and continued until sundown on Saturday. Among other things that meant that no one could come and tend to the body until first thing Sunday morning, and so it was, even before first light, that some of the women went, hoping against hope that the Roman guards posted there might move the heavy stone and allow them entry. While the four gospels differ slightly in who exactly was in this group of women, the important detail is that the four gospels agree that it was women who first found the empty tomb.

Why is this important? Because if the early church were going to fabricate this story they wouldn’t have done so with female witnesses. In Jesus’ day a woman was not considered a worthy witness, and any self-respecting group trying to establish its credibility would have put someone with credentials at the tomb if given the chance. The fact that all four gospels agree that it was women who were the first witnesses is perhaps the strongest evidence possible that this story was not a fiction written by the early church, but in fact what actually happened as God arranged events.

My favorite version of the Easter story is in John’s gospel. In his telling it is Mary Magdalene, perhaps the most suspect of all the women, who finds the empty tomb. She runs and gets Peter and John, who race back to the tomb, perhaps because they don’t believe her either. They find the linen wrappings, and while they leave convinced that the tomb is empty, they don’t really know what to make of it. John comments that “they did not understand the scripture, that [Jesus] must rise from the dead” (John 20:9). Then, probably because they are guys and can’t think of anything else to do, they go home.

But Mary…Mary stays put. She stands weeping outside the tomb because she also still believes that Jesus is dead and that someone has taken his body. Something must have caught her attention because in the midst of her crying she bends down to look inside and sees two angels sitting where Jesus’ body had been. They chat a moment and then she turns around and sees Jesus, but she thinks maybe he’s a gardener, and asks him if he knows where Jesus’ body is. As it happens, Jesus knows exactly where his body is, and furthermore he knows that this resurrected body is different than it was before. It is still a physical body, and as the story unfolds Jesus is prodded and poked by various disciples satisfying themselves on this point. But it is also a spiritual body, something quite different from the body it was before.

The best description of what the resurrected body of Jesus was like, and indeed what our own resurrected bodies will be like, can be found in 1 Corinthians 15. The Apostle Paul offers a vivid analogy on the differences between earthly and heavenly bodies. Consider a seed, says Paul. You look at a seed and it’s dry and lifeless and gives little indication that anything could possible grow from it. Then you bury it in the ground and it further decomposes. But then a mystery of life from death occurs, and that seed gives way to something vibrant and alive and really quite amazing. Yes, there is molecular and biological continuity between the seed and the plant, but the plant is about as different for the seed as it can be. So, too, says Paul will our resurrected bodies be in continuity with our current bodies, but different in ways mysterious and amazing.

Over the past few weeks we have made some amazing and audacious claims about the resurrection: that good is stronger than evil, that truth is stronger than falsehood, that love is stronger than hate, and that life is stronger than death.

Today we make one final audacious claim: namely that Christianity insists that life after death is not mere immortality of the soul, but that it is also physical. Over-against any philosophy or belief that tries to suggest that created matter is inherently evil, the Bible declares that God’s created world is good, that matter is good, that physicality is good, and that this goodness extends to include human bodies as well. Human beings were created to live in a bodily form, in a material world, and this reality will not end at the resurrection. The resurrection victory of Jesus Christ against an ancient enemy who sought to end his physical life is a foreshadowing of God's ultimate resurrection victory for all creation, a victory that, according to the book of Revelation, includes not only a new heaven, but also a new earth. Put another way, God started something back in Genesis when God created the heavens and the earth, and God intends to see that original creative purpose fulfilled. If our resurrection is simply a spiritual reality it would essentially say that God’s original intention of a physical and material world was somehow a mistake. The fact that Jesus was resurrected in a physical body is God’s way of giving us a hint of what’s to come.

To get to heaven you gotta be dead, but to get to the new heaven and the new earth you gotta be resurrected. Thanks be to God that Jesus Christ is risen indeed…!

________________________________________________________

“Hinduism and the Bread of Life” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:32-51

This is really, really bad. This is so bad it’s good. Are you ready?

Ok, as you may know, Mahatma Gandhi walked around barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him......a super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Today we begin a five-week series on the major world religions. We will look at Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Isalm, and New Age, trying to be respectful of each tradition while we get some clarity about what it is that each believes and how those beliefs might differ from Christianity. Of course it is almost a fool’s errand to try and present an overview of any of these belief systems in a fifteen to twenty minute sermon, which I guess makes me a fool. But if so, hopefully a fool for Christ, one who hopes to challenge the wide-spread assumption of our day that all of these religions are basically the same. They are not, and to pretend they are is an oversimplification that disrespects each of them. Certainly there are some similarities, and we will try to note these, but if we are to truly respect the adherents of these other religions as well as our own, we need to understand some key differences.

We begin today with Hinduism, the oldest of the major world religions still practiced today, and in some ways the most remarkable because of the great variety of practices among its adherents.

Over its 4000 year history Hinduism has gone through many changes in direction and emphasis. In its earliest form Hinduism was a blend of religions from the native Indian population infused with the beliefs of an invading Aryan culture. The Aryans brought with them a religion with gods that represented various natural forces like the sun, the moon, and the fertility of the soil, and so early Hinduism had many gods and godesses, and was primarily a form of nature worship (Hopfe, 76).

Hinduism in is most classical form came into being around 1000 BC. This form of Hinduism was very dependent on a priestly caste and on an elaborate system of sacrifice. The main religious text of the classical period, the Bhagavad Gita, is a dramatic poem mostly having to do with the god Krishna, who became incarnate to protect good, destroy evil, and re-establish true piety (Hopfe, 30).

Krishna, it turns out, is actually one of ten incarnations, or earthly appearances, of the god Vishnu. Vishnu is himself one of the three primary gods that form the focus of Hinduism today. Vishnu, is known as a god of love, benevolence, and forgiveness, as a being who loves to play, and who enjoys tricks and pranks. It is because Vishnu is so concerned for humanity that he has appeared on earth so many times in so many forms. In every case he has come to aid humankind because he is the preserver and the restorer. The two other gods in the Hindu trinity include Brahma the creator, who receives the least attention; and Shiva, who receives quite a bit of attention as the god of death, disease, destruction, dance, fertility and sexuality (Hopfe, 92).

So, while Hinduism allows for literally millions of gods and goddesses, and even though in modern times the focus is on the three we’ve just named, there is ultimately only one god in Hinduism, the god Brahman. Like the Christian God, Brahman is eternal, infinite, and without gender. But unlike the Christian God, Brahman is totally impersonal. In fact, there is no distinction between Brahman and the living beings that inhabit our world. Each living thing is really only an expression of the Brahman, each soul only a part of the great ocean of souls that make up the Brahman.

And here is one place where Hinduism is a very different religion then many others: Hinduism believes that all existence is actually an illusion arising from ignorance of the true nature of reality. A person’s individuality apart from the Brahman—the world in which we live, that which we see, hear, touch, and feel—all of this an illusion, a dream according to Hinduism (Hopfe, 82). The plight of human beings, according to Hinduism, is that we are bound up in this world of illusion and ignorance, thinking that it is real, and unaware of our true identification with the Brahman.

A story of Hinduism serves to illustrate what we’re trying to say: there once was a tiger who was orphaned as a cub and raised by goats. All of his life, he believed that he was a goat; he ate grass like a goat, he talked like a goat, he lived like a goat. But one day me met another tiger who took him to a pond where the first tiger saw his true image. The second tiger then forced him to eat meat for the first time and he slowly came to realize his tiger nature. In a similar manner, says Hinduism, human beings are deceived about their true nature and need to be set free from their illusions (Hopfe, 82). Each of us is really a god in embryo, and the purpose of life is to discover that divinity within us and be set free.

This all leads to one last thing to know about Hinduism. This quest to discover our true identity and be set free is accomplished through a spiritual journey we in the west have come to call reincarnation. Hinduism believes that the life force of an individual does not die with the death of the body, but instead moves on to another time and body, where it continues to live. Far from being a desirable thing, reincarnation is actually a curse, showing that the individual continues to be bound to the ignorance and pain of this illusory life. The goal of most forms of Hinduism to break this cycle and free from the burden of life (Hopfe, 83). This view of salvation is realized by simple cause and effect: if you do good things you reap good reward in your reincarnation, if you do bad things, you reap punishment in your next life. That’s karma. Among other things this means that someone who has a good life right now is realizing the benefit of positive actions in the past, while someone who has a bad life right now is obviously reaping the consequences of choices made in the past.

What can we make of all this? Two quick conclusions from this very quick overview: First, religious beliefs have consequences in everyday life. You may know that a feature of life today in India, where Hinduism is primarily practiced, is the caste system. The caste system divides people into different groups from lowest to highest. A person’s caste is determined by the caste of their parents, and a person’s caste determines what they do for a living, where they live, who they marry, and even what they eat. Overall, the lower one’s place in the hierarchy of caste the more that person will do menial and unpleasant labor (Hopfe, 103). People in the lowest caste, the untouchables, handle the dirtiest and most undesirable jobs.

To the outside observer it’s hard not to notice that this whole system of social stratification is completely justified by the religious beliefs of Hinduism. Untouchables must be in this situation because their karma from a previous life dictates it. If the outcasts will simply accept their duty (or dharama) of this life and not rebel against it, they can hope for a better caste in the next life (Hopfe, 104). This self-justifying social inequality of Hindu religion and society is obviously very different from Christianity’s concern for the poor and outcast. Christianity doesn’t believe in a pre-assigned reality based on a person’s previous life: instead Christians are called to take special care of cause of the poor and the oppressed. This may be one of the clearest examples we will encounter of the way in which the beliefs of one religion lead to consequences, in this case social and perhaps moral, that are quite different from the consequences reached by another religion.

A second conclusion, perhaps even more troubling, however, has to do with Hinduism’s ultimate goal of salvation. As we said earlier, the goal of this entire religious system is for the individual to achieve intimate union with the deity Brahman. But as we noted, one of the primary characteristics of Brahman is that this god is totally and completely impersonal. Brahman is almost less a god than simply an amalgamation of souls. You might say that Brahman wouldn’t know us from Adam, or perhaps more precisely put, from any atom, since all matter is part of what Brahman is. So it is that Ravi Zacharias, who is himself an Indian Christian, has noted that however much we may respect the intent of such teaching, seeking intimate union with an entity that is impersonal simply doesn’t make sense.

Another way we might say this is that, from a Christian perspective, personal union with an impersonal deity does not satisfy our yearning for relationship, our longing for communion. As Christians we propose and purpose to know a God who has been revealed as Father, we believe we can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, a relationship in which we remain distinct as individuals, and yet which promises a communion that is almost beyond what we can imagine.

Jesus makes it clear in John 6 that in offering himself as our spiritual food we are given access to the very heart of God, and to a life that is eternal and abundant. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life…the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever…” (John 6)

Religions of the World (8^th edition), Lewis M. Hopfe and Mark R. Woodward, Prentice Hall: New Jersey, 2001)

Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods, W Publishing Group, Nashville, TN: 2000.

________________________________________________________

“Buddhism and the Way The Truth and the Life” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:1-6

Did you hear about the Buddhist who went up to the hot dog stand and said, “Make me one with everything”? Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.

Today we consider the third of five world religions, looking for points of comparison and contrast with Christianity, in an effort to evaluate whether all religions are the same. Hopefully it is becoming clear that they are not the same, and that in Jesus Christ we have a truth that is wonderfully unique.

The practices of Buddhism were begun sometime around 525 B.C. The man who history would come to call the Buddha was born the son of a raja. His given name was Siddhartha Gautama. Gautama was raised by his father in a rather peculiar way. Growing up the young prince was not allowed to see a dead body, an old person, a diseased person, or a monk, for fear that exposure to these extremes would fulfil a prophecy that the young man grow up and become a religious teacher. Thus Gautama grew up surrounded by youth, beauty and health. He received a normal education, and when he was nineteen years old married his cousin and founded a happy home (Hopfe, 127).

By the time he neared middle age, however, Gautama was becoming aware of the ugliness of the real world. He became more and more troubled about the problems of suffering and pain, the issue that we suggested last week all religions must sooner or later deal with. Gautama attempted to find solutions first in the study of philosophy, and then in a full immersion into the world of asceticism. It is said that he became a sort of champion ascetic, seeking out anything that was unpleasant, painful, or disagreeable as a means by which he might find release from the miseries of this life. You know all of those supposed statues of Buddha as a plump, jolly person? Those aren’t Gautama, those are actually Chinese kitchen gods. The real Gautama supposedly reached the point of living on a single grain of rice each day, and so became quite thin. He wore irritating garments and sometimes sat for hours on thorns. For a time he slept in a graveyard, and in the tradition of many ascetics in his time, allowed filth and vermin to accumulate on his body (Hopfe, 128).

As the story goes, the turning point in Gautama’s quest came one day when he was walking by a stream. Weakened by his rigorous practices, he fainted and fell in. As the cold water revived him he suddenly realized that for all of his heroic efforts he still had not found enlightenment. He went and ate a full meal, and then sat under a tree, deciding he would meditate there until he had at last solved the problems of pain and suffering in human life. As he sat it came to him that humans are bound to the endless cycle of birth and death because of desire. It is desire that causes karma, the Hindu concept that if you do good things you reap good reward in your next reincarnation; if you do bad things, you reap punishment. Desire thus traps people in this endless cycle. As proof of this Guatama realized that he had desired enlightenment and had sought it through asceticism and knowledge, but when it eluded him and he ceased to desire it, he found it. We see some truth in this concept in our own lives: when we stop trying so hard to remember what we forgot, we remember it; many couples have found that when they stop trying so hard to have children, they have them; creative people understand that you can’t desire your way to creativity, it comes unbidden when you least expect it.

And so, with the insight that desire is the thing that traps us, and enlightenment is only reached through the cessation of desire, Gautama became the Buddha, which literally means “the enlightened one.” In many respects the practices and beliefs that Gautama came to espouse were protests against certain features of Hinduism, including the idea of a fixed caste system, dependence for salvation upon paid priests or bribable deities, and having sacred scriptures written in an unintelligible ancient language. It is important to realize that in its rejection of gods, scriptures, and priests the original practice of Buddhism is not actually a religion at all. Gautama’s main emphasis was on saving oneself from a world infected with misery, not with the help of a personal deity, or forms of worship or prayer, but instead through self-discipline and ethical behavior.

Buddhism today has basically two branches. Hinayana Buddhism, which means “the exclusive way,” is both smaller and more orthodox. Like the practices of Guatama himself, those following Hinayana Buddhism rely on themselves for enlightenment, and in this regard the monk is seen as the ideal figure. The Buddhist monk shaves his head, puts on the yellow robe, takes up a begging bowl, and seeks release from life by attempting to escape desire through meditation and self-denial. If he achieves this goal he becomes a saint, and when he dies, he attains Nirvana and thus release from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

The larger and in a sense more liberal form of this religion is called Mahayana (Ma-ha-ya-na) Buddhism, which means “the expansive way.” (Review Hinayana Buddism, “the exclusive way,” and Mahayana Buddism, “the expansive way.”) One of the key features of Mahayana Buddhism is the belief that Gautama was really more than a man, that he was in fact a compassionate, eternal being who came to earth in the form of man because he loved humankind and wished to be of assistance (Hopfe, 136). And in this regard, it is one of the great ironies of religion and history that a man whose main message was a call to a self-reliant, ethical life without need for a divine being should himself be subsequently worshipped.

Buddhism in both its exclusive and expansive ways is sometimes called a simple religion of compassion and ethics. The truth is that there is probably no religion more complex than Buddhism. Buddhism starts off with four noble truths, first that all existence involves suffering; second, that all suffering is caused by indulging in inherently insatiable desires; third, that all suffering will cease upon the suppressing of these desires; and forth, that the way leading to the cessation of suffering is the Eight-fold Path. The eight-fold path includes having right views, right aims, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplation (Zacharias, 65).

But as one enters the eight-fold path, there emerge hundreds upon hundreds of other rules to deal with various contingencies. There are 75 rules for those entering the order, and upon entering, 227 rules of discipline for men and 331 for women. There are 30 rules on how to avoid the loss of one’s discipleship status, with an additional 92 rules that apply to just one of these cases.

The most common prayer for forgiveness in Buddhism reflects this numerical maze:

I beg leave! I beg leave! …May I be freed at all times from the four states of Woe, the Three Scourges, the Eight Wrong Circumstances, the Five Enemies, the Four Deficiences, the Five Misfortunes, and quickly attain the Path, the Fruition, and the Nobel Law of Nirvana…

Contrast then, all of the rules of the exclusive way and the expansive way of Buddhism, with the message of grace found in Christianity, which has only one way, Jesus Christ, who is not only the way, but also the truth, and the life. As we have said throughout this study, the claims of the various world religions are not all the same, and in fact logically exclude one another. Both Buddhism and Christianity cannot be simultaneously true on this point. Either there are two ways, or one way, but you can’t have it both ways.

Many people outside of Christianity take issue with this exclusivist viewpoint, that Jesus is the way. (It is interesting that you don’t hear those same people attacking the exclusive Hinayana way of Buddhism…) Many Christians are themselves uncomfortable with such an idea, not wishing to offend, such is the cultural sensitivity of our time. The result is that we are left unsure about whether or not to say anything about the wonderful good news that we have: that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, that he has come to show us the way to the Father.

We might be helped to remember that it is not our claim, but the claim of Jesus Christ himself. In other words, we’re not trying to force a cultural or religious worldview on someone else, we’re trying to accurately say what Jesus said. Of course to do this well we need to first decide whether or not we believe that Jesus is truly God. If he is, then we need to listen closely to what he has to say, because whether we understand him or not, agree with him or not, like it or not, this is what he said. If Jesus said it, and if Jesus is God, then we need to try and understand why he would make such an exclusivist statement.

And if we think about it, there might be two good reasons for Jesus to say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” First, Jesus said it because it is true, and he wants us to know the truth. Second, Jesus said it because he loves us. He loves us! The point of being exclusive about the way to the Father is not that Jesus is trying to send some people to hell. We’re all going to hell without this truth! Jesus came to tell us how to avoid this fate. You can argue with the fact that there is only one way if you want, but that doesn’t change the motivation of God’s love, or the fact that Jesus Christ is God’s way for us to avoid what is otherwise our sure and certain fate.

Think about it this way: if you go to the doctor and he says that you have a disease and you will die unless you get treatment, what do you do? Do you say, “How dare the doctor tell me I’m going to die”? Do you say, “Well, I don’t want that treatment because there are a lot of other people who have my problem and never hear about this treatment, and what’s going to happen to them”? Do you say, “Well, I’ve read that some doctors say all treatments are equally valid and effective, so I choose to eat chocolate and watch TV for my treatment”? No! You do what the doctor says so you can live, and then you start telling others about how to live as well.

Friends, Jesus Christ is the doctor for our soul, the Great Physician. He has come to tell us the treatment not because he wants us to die, but for the very opposite reason, he desires us to live. All treatments, like all truth, are not equal nor effective. There is only one cure for the deadly disease of sin: Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life. Thanks be to God!

________________________________________________________

“Islam and the Good Shepherd” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

Kevin Costner’s 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves opens with Robin of Locksley escaping from a Turkish jail along with another man, Azeem, whose life Robin saves. As they make their way back to England Azeem, who is Muslim, seems scarcely able to believe that people as unsophisticated and backward as the English have somehow managed to conquer his people. In one particularly amusing scene, Azeem offers Robin the use of his telescope, a device Robin has never seen before. He puts the scope to his eye and as their enemies appear to come suddenly closer, Robin struggles to pulls his sword to fight them. Azeem simply shakes his head.

There is a tendency to vilify Muslims in our time. To do so is not only to miss the contributions of a great culture, but is also to lump a large majority of peaceful and rational people into the same camp as a few extremists. Osama ben Ladin no more represents Islam than the Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan represents Christianity.

Just as Buddhism grew out of Hinduism, so Islam, a relatively late-comer to the world religious scene, grew out of conscious opposition to Christianity. The founder of Islam, Muhammed, was born about 570 A.D. in Mecca. After the deaths of his father, mother, and grandfather, Muhammed was raised by a merchant uncle during a time of great economic disparity between the very rich and the very poor. Muhammed developed a reputation as a trustworthy and honorably man, and was well-respected in business affairs.

In a trajectory that might remind us somewhat of Gautama, Muhammed seems to have gone through a mid-life spiritual quest. He began spending more and more time in meditation and in conversation with both Christians and Jews he met along the trade routes. He often retreated to a cave on Mount Hira, a few miles from Mecca. On one occasion, during the month of Ramadan, Muhammed began to receive ideas that he believed came from the angel Gabriel. These thoughts became the basis for the Quran and another work called the Hadith.

“Muhammed proclaimed the Quran as the final and superior revelation from the One Supreme God (Allah). He banned the worship of idols and taught that a Muslim’s life must be wholly committed to Allah.” (30 Days, 5). Nor were his reforms only of a religious nature. Among other things, Mohammad forbade burying unwanted daughters alive, which was the practice of his day.

The term Islam means “submission to God,” and the word Muslim translates to “those who submit.” There are five duties laid on a Muslim, five ways that this submission is carried out, called the five pillars. The first pillar is the recitation of the Creed, the shahada, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammed is his prophet;” the second pillar is to pray five times each day; the third is a belief in almsgiving; forth, the practice of fasting, especially during the month of Ramadan; and finally, making a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during one’s lifetime.

It is important to note that while a Muslin may faithfully observe each of these pillars, there is still no guarantee of salvation. Some Muslims believe that two angels accompany each of us, one who writes down our good deeds, one who writes down our evil deeds. On the fearful Day of Judgement, Allah will open the books and weigh each person’s deeds to determine their eternal reward or punishment. “Each person hopes that his good deeds will outweigh his bad deeds. However, Allah reserves the absolute right to send individuals to whichever he pleases, hell or paradise. Some Muslims teach that the only sure way to paradise is to die as a martyr in a jihad, technically translated as “striving in God’s cause.” (30 Days, 6).

And so, while Islam believes in one supreme deity who is merciful and compassionate, this deity is also somewhat arbitrary in making decisions. Islam presents a deity who is to be “submitted to,” and who does not hesitate to rely on methods of force, fear, and reward. This submission is without the benefit of a personal relationship with this being (Hume). Whereas Christians want to know God and be conformed to God’s character in Christ, Muslims want to understand Allah’s will and become more obedient to his commands. In this regard sin is considered a mistake rather than moral corruption, and as a result Muslims do not easily understand the reason for the cross of Christ. Why would Jesus die such an unseemly death and for such a reason? This message is difficult for a Muslim to grasp. In the view of Islam, Jesus was a great prophet. As such, death on a cross would be unthinkable. Instead, Muslims believe that Jesus was taken up to heaven without dying and that Judas Iscariot was crucified in his place. Muslims believe Jesus will return to earth sometime before the end of the world to punish Jews and Christians alike for their corruption of religious faith and practice, and that Jesus will then eventually die a natural death and later be resurrected and judged with all men during the last days by Allah (30 Days, 11-12).

In contrast to a religion based on servitude and obedience we have the picture of the Good Shepherd presented by Jesus. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. This is the core message of Christianity and the central way in which Christianity is different, not only from Islam, but from any other religion in the world.

First, we believe God has revealed Godself as neither capricious nor arbitrary. While Allah is absolutely free and not bound by any moral principals, we believe God always acts in accordance with universal moral principals established by God. In further contrast to Allah, we believe that God is not austere and aloof but eagerly desires to be in relationship with creation. As Jesus said, “I know my own, and my own know me” (John 10:14).

Second, we would put forward a God who realizes that without some intervention, humanity will be lost for all eternity. Our salvation, thankfully, is not contingent on a positive balance between our good deeds over our bad deeds. We understand that we are corrupted by sin through and through, and that even our attempts at righteousness are as filthy rags before God. And here is the unique message of Christianity: we cannot save ourselves, only God can save us. God is not some mean old dude in heaven sitting with his arms crossed waiting for us to impress him. No, God saw our plight and tenderly set aside everything that would keep Him from us, coming to us, wrapping his arms around us in love, and then dying on a cross so that all our sin might be crucified and put to death. As Jesus said, “I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15).

I must tell you that I am deeply humbled to offer this sermon on Islam while Bob Blincoe sits here today. As many of you know, Bob is a Presbyterian minister who is also a veritable expert on Islam, serving as the Executive Director of Frontiers, a mission agency located just a few miles from here. The men and women who serve with Bob at Frontiers have a passion to serve Jesus Christ by engaging Muslims around the world in dialogue, to address them as the sheep of another fold that Jesus speaks of, sheep who also need to hear His voice.

Bob reviewed this sermon for me and mentioned that one of his friends in ministry, Pat Cate, once surveyed fifty Iranian Christians from a Muslim background, asking them what attracted them to Jesus Christ. The answer given more than any other was the words of Christ in Matthew 11: "Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." This view of God in Christ is quite different from the Muslim view of Allah. It seems that there are 99 names for Allah in Islam: names like king, and ruler, and judge, all names that even Christians can appreciate. But among these 99 names there is no mention of Allah as Father and no mention of Allah as a shepherd.

Every religion is not the same. Islam was founded as a conscious alternative to Christianity, and presents a god who is austere and arbitrary, distant and demanding, and whose relationship with humanity is that of master to slave. Rather than vilify Muslims, may it be our prayer, in times like these, that this great people might come to know the God revealed in Jesus Christ, a loving Lord who cares deeply for this part of his flock, who knows the name of every Muslim, and who desires to be their Good Shepherd.

Bibliography

Religions of the World, Lewis Hopfe and Mark R. Woodward

“30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus,” WorldChristian News and Books, 2003.

The World’s Living Religions, Robert E. Hume

________________________________________________________

“Judaism and the Light of the World” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

“Aunt Ada’s Rules for Jewish Living:

1) Israel is the land of milk and honey, Florida the land of milk of magnesia

2) According to Jewish dietary law, pork and shellfish are forbidden. But shrimp may be eaten in Chinese restaurants, and a pig in a blanket makes a nice hors d’oeuvre.

3) There comes a time in every man’s life when he must stand up and tell his mother that he is an adult. This usually happens around age 45

4) Always be sure to whisper the names of diseases, and if you can’t say something nice, say it in Yiddish.

We continue today our series overviewing five of the world’s major religions in an effort to determine the truth or falsity of the popular claim that all religions are basically the same. It is our contention that they are not, and further, that as Christians we need to know in what ways they are not, so as to respect better those religions and our own, and so as to know better how we can lovingly communicate the gospel.

We turn today to a study of our sister religion, Judaism. And perhaps you’ve heard me say it before, to be a good Christian you need first to be a good Jew. Christianity is not a western religion, but is in fact firmly planted in a Semitic culture, language, and world view. To be a good Christian may not mean following Aunt Ada’s Rules for Jewish Living, but it does mean understanding the Jewish roots of our Christian faith.

A quick overview of Judaism would begin with the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah. It was with them that God made the old covenant, the promise that they would become a great nation and the promise of a land. God kept these promises even though Sarah was barren at the time, and eventually a great great grandson named Joseph would arrange for the growing family to be kept safe in Egypt during a famine in the promised land. The people prospered there and became more numerous, but also lost their protector and ended up as slaves to the Pharaoh. The story in Judaism tells of the night over 3000 years ago when God sent the angel of death throughout the land, killing the first born of their Egyptian masters, but passing over the Jewish homes where the blood of a lamb was painted on the doorposts. This bedrock story of Judaism is still celebrated today in one of the key Jewish holidays called Passover.

The golden age of Jewish history spans about two hundred years, from 1100 to 900 BC, and includes the reign of three kings—Saul, David, and Solomon. Not only was it a golden age for Judaism as a religion, but also, under the reign of King David, Israel was a major political and military power as well. King Solomon, renowned for his wisdom, built the temple, and times were good. After Solomon’s death, however, political upheaval meant the beginning of the end, and the next few hundred years were not pleasant and culminated with the capture of first the northern kingdom by the Assyrians and then the southern kingdom by the Babylonians. The people were carried off into exile, and while the time there was well-spent in recording the great stories of the Jewish faith, weaving together a narrative history of God’s covenant, overall the defeat was interpreted by the prophets as a penalty for the sins of the people in not keeping their part of the covenant with God.

This question of why conquest and exile come into our lives, of how it is that we can be in the promised land one minute and by the waters of Babylon the next, this issue of evil and suffering is one of the basic concerns of life that all religions must at some point address. We learned last week that the answer provided by Hinduism to the question of evil is that it is karma, man, that suffering is simply the payback for deeds done in a previous life. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm notes that there is no single answer in Judaism to the ancient question of zaddik ve-ra to, literally "the righteous whom evil befalls." From Jeremiah to Job, from the Talmud to Maimonides (mai-man-i-dez), from Habbakuk to the Holocaust there is one constant question, why are the righteous afflicted with evil, but no single official authoritative answer that speaks for all of Judaism.

That being said, however, there is one answer in Judaism that probably gets used most of the time, an answer that, at least at its starting point, is very similar to the answer of Christianity. Suffering and pain are a part of the world, according to this answer, because human beings use their free will to choose against God and against one another. We tend to be selfish in our actions, seeking that which gains us individual advantage rather than seeking the advantage of the larger community. This use of free will to disturb, degrade, and damage extends not only the people around us, but into our environment as well. God watches all this with sadness, but in order to allow human freedom to be truly free and human morality to be truly meaningful, God refrains from getting involved. Evil in mainstream Judaism is simple cause and effect: you reap what you sow.

And so, out of their Jewish understanding the disciples ask Jesus about a blind man they encounter, phrasing their question to reflect this particular answer to the question of evil: Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind? But Jesus, as he often did, rejects simple human dichotomies, and says three things that give us a different perspective altogether.

First, Jesus says that neither this man nor his parents sinned. In saying this Jesus is not alone in rejecting the simple tidy answer of traditional Judaism. In fact some streams of thought in Judaism had been rejecting such tidy answers for many centuries. The book of Job raises point blank the fact that it is not always the case that if you do good you are rewarded and if you do evil you are punished. And although one can argue that it was all good in the end for Job, it certainly wasn’t all good in the middle, and this despite the fact that Job was a righteous man from beginning, to middle, to end. In rejecting a black and white view of suffering Jesus challenges his followers to understand a very profound truth: that while you can be sure that sin will lead to suffering, you cannot always argue backwards from suffering and find sin (Gerald Sloyan, Interpretation-John, p115).

Second, Jesus says that he is the light of the world. This is a deep spiritual claim, yes, but also a huge philosophical claim, namely, that the only way we have to recognize evil is by comparison to the good. This claim works against those who argue that the existence of evil disproves God’s existence. If God really existed, they say, there would be no evil in the world. Since there is evil in the world God must not exist. It sounds reasonable enough except for one tiny detail: how else would we recognize evil unless there were good? The only way to know that there is an alternative to darkness is to see the light.

Famed scientist Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, is one of those who believes the existence of evil disproves the existence of God. This has led Dawkins, a renowned atheist, to develop another explanation for the problem of evil. Here’s what he says, “in a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good…. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music” (as quoted in Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods, 113-114).

But if this is true then we need to ask Dawkins why people get so upset when Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot merely dance to their DNA. If this is true then we need to wonder why people object so strenuously when Jeffrey Dahmer or Osama bin Laden or any of the dozens of people picked up in this past week by Valley police merely dance to their DNA? The reason their actions bother us is that we have seen the light, and so have an expectation that life in that light is more than simply dancing to our DNA. As C.S. Lewis once argued: we get upset when we see injustice because something in us tells us that there is an alternative, an alternative that is clear to us in the light of Jesus Christ (Mere Christianity).

Finally, Jesus says that the man was born blind “so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (v 3). The real question, says Jesus, is not about the cause of evil but its cure. Jesus points us to a deep mystery that will only be unfolded in the cross, namely, that which evil intends for human harm is transformed, redeemed, and redefined for good by an all-powerful and all-loving God. Evil never challenges these attributes in God, rather, evil unwittingly allows for the full manifestation of God’s perfect power and love as the acts of evil and darkness are turned in on evil itself. A man is born blind and evil seems to have won, but with the coming of Jesus Christ an even greater triumph occurs: not only is he healed, but he is saved.

The religious leaders around Jesus were pretty shocked that he could heal someone like this, but rather than admit that they got after Jesus for breaking the sabboth laws. You see, making mud counted as work, and they were determined to bring Jesus up on charges. It was a thin plan, but it was the best they could come up with. They haul in the formerly blind man and demand that he give them some dirt, so to speak, that they can use. This happens twice, and each time the man simply tells the truth, finally saying to them that while he doesn’t know whether or not Jesus is a sinner, there is one thing he does know, and he tells them, “I once was blind, but now I see.”

Amen.

Bibliography

Religions of the World, Lewis Hopfe and Mark R. Woodward

Jesus Among Other Gods, Ravi Zacharias

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ideas_belief/sufferingevil/Suffering_Solutions_TO/Suffering_Modern_Responses/Suffering_BerkCohen_Encyc.htm

________________________________________________________

“New Age and the Gate to Abundant Life” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

If you’re at least 40 years old you probably remember the rock musical Hair and the song that was later made famous by The Fifth Dimension, The Age of Aquarius. At the time it just seemed like a catchy song about love and peace and brotherhood. Looking back one could argue that it was the theme song for an emerging religions jumble called the New Age. In fact, the term "New Age" is informally derived from astrology, and indicates that creation is on the verge of an evolutionary transition from the Picean Age of rationality to the Aquarian Age of spirituality, bliss, and the harmony of all things.

But even though the Fifth Dimension, the Beatles, and Shirley MacClaine would have us believe they’ve discovered something new, the "New Age" is actually very, very old. Generally New Age borrows its beliefs from eastern pantheism, especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism; and its practices from Western occultism, especially Wicca, astrology, divination, and the like. According to cult-watcher Craig Branch, New Age is a belief system that encompasses thousands of independent and sometime contradictory systems and organizations, all of which generally seem to exhibit one or more of the following beliefs:

1. All is one. Another way of saying this is that everything is God and God is everything. According to this belief the divine is a life-force, a cosmic mind or soul of the universe, a great unity or wholeness. Although this sounds innocent and perhaps even attractive, it leads New Age adherents to some places that are difficult for Christians to follow. For one thing, even though many New Age adherents describe "God" in personal terms, in the final analysis an impersonal life force or energy is incapable of personal relationship. This is the same kind of “god” that we met in Hinduism and is one of the places where New Age shows its eastern theological origins.

2. Since each human being is also a part of this universal God-consciousness there is no absolute truth external to any of us, only relativism and subjective experience. Another way of saying this is, “What’s true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me.” There can be no questioning of the individual, because each individual is a deity, and therefore a law unto themselves. The logical incoherence of this view, however, is witnessed by us every time we turn on the news: when my truth clashes with your truth we have lawlessness and crime, but who can challenge? As we said a few weeks ago, we’re all just dancing to our DNA. At an even more subtle level, each person being a law unto themselves can lead to power without representation, economic inequities, and the failure of justice for those who have neither power nor money.

3. Third, if God is in everything and everything is in God then it follows for the New Ager that the means to enlightenment, or salvation, or abundant life is simply to discover the god that lives within each of us. Among other things this means that human kind is not really sinful since our true essence is divine and perfect. The only discontinuity between ourselves and "God" is our ignorance of our unlimited potential. Our problem isn’t sin, it’s our ignorance of our divine nature. Salvation and a satisfying life in New Age is therefore found through expanding our spiritual knowledge. New Age teachers such as James Redfield in his Celestine Prophecy offer various occultic techniques to enable people to acquire this knowledge, including channeling, past life therapy, transcendental meditation, yoga, crystals, and so on.

4. Finally, a key part of most New Age belief systems is that life continues through some kind of reincarnation. In this view reincarnation allows individuals repeated opportunity to improve their spiritual consciousness until they are one with the cosmic consciousness that is God. According to books like A Course in Miracles, each person's goal is to come to this same self-realization of their own divinity. (Vol. 3, pp. 83-4) It is worth noting in this regard that some New Agers, like Kenneth Ring in his book Heading Toward Omega, even misrepresent Christian history and twist Scripture to support the idea that original Christianity taught reincarnation (p.158). In this view Jesus was a man who evolved spiritually to the state of being the Christ, just as Siddhartha evolved to become the Buddha, the enlightened one, both reaching the point of ultimate essence with the divine cosmic reality.. To the New Ager, Jesus the Christ, is one of many ascended masters - whose function is to awaken humanity and illumine the path. Shirley MacLaine has even claimed that Jesus traveled to India and learned New Age doctrines before beginning his public ministry (Shirley MacLaine, Out on a Limb, pp. 233-34). (The preceding overview was taken from www.watchman.org Profile on New Age).

I mentioned that people over forty are old enough to remember the beginnings of New Age influence. Conversely, people under forty are young enough to have grown up in an America where Christianity was an option, not a cultural requirement. In fact, a recent new member of to our church has given me permission to tell you the story of her own journey. She grew up very much a child of the New Age, describing herself as someone brought up to be a good agnostic. For her this meant a strong commitment to relativism, intellectualism, and a belief that all existence is ultimately meaningless. She looked into Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Native American animism, and occultism, but failed to find anything that could reconcile her deep down desire to make a difference in people’s lives with her deep down belief that those lives were meaningless.

When she turned 30 a trusted friend overheard her say, as she often did, that “it’s all relative.” “You know,” he said, “it can’t all be relative…If something is relative, it must be relative to something.” Her friend’s comment suddenly shattered the cool logic of relativism, and this coupled with her suspicion that it really wasn’t all meaningless, sent her on a new spiritual quest. Since she was intolerant of much of what she saw in Christianity, she began to look for spiritual meaning in every New Age trend to hit the streets of Sedona. Yoga, vortexes, an angel reader, astrology, and an especially powerful experience with numerology all led her to believe that her consciousness was expanding in some way. These experiences, many of them almost beyond belief, were real and powerful, if not somewhat alarming. Here’s what she has to say,

“Part of me wishes right now that I could say these events were all in my imagination, but they weren’t. They were as real as the chair you are sitting on. Initially all these amazing occurrences gave me a hope that there was a purpose to my life. It seemed clear that something or someone was communicating with me and I bought into the idea that everything happens for a good reason—It finally felt like this was all going ‘somewhere.’ Who or what was behind the reason was still an abstract principle—Light, Love, Oneness…who knows. But I was determined to figure out why I was here. New age promotes the idea that we actively and passively create our own individual reality. If our consciousness is advanced enough, they say, we can literally pull that which we want in our lives to us—including physical things. As well, before we were born we chose lessons for this life and set up tests and challenges for ourselves ahead of time to teach us these lessons. If there’s something negative around, new age believes we are pulling it to us or we chose it beforehand so that we could learn a lesson and thus raise our consciousness closer to God’s.

Unfortunately, without a personal relationship with God, or a single standard to live by, my quest to determine what my lessons were quickly spun out of control. I spent hours in bookstores and on-line “researching,” reading and writing in forums on everything from mediumship to past-lives, charkas to planetary alignments. All these books and discourses were focused on raising awareness of ultimate truths, expanding consciousness, letting go of ego and other illusory boundaries, and all were cloaked in a constantly professed veil of Love and Light. Before long, though, I had to admit to myself that I and all the other new-agers around me were simply dashing from one revelation-like idea of the moment to the next. It was a competition of signs and miracles, a meandering marathon of metaphysical musing, a continuous vision-quest with no practical purpose. I also noticed that very few participants, if any, actually went out and acted on the Love and Light they so vociferously proclaimed to live for. It appeared to be nothing short of addictive behavior and I wanted out. But, again, I didn’t know what else to do or believe.”

Woven through many of these experiences was a kind of latent Christianity. As we’ve already suggested, many New Agers borrow from biblical stories, a fact that makes it difficult sometimes for Christians to keep things straight. Our friend believes that the Holy Spirit was calling to her through some of these things, and while her hostility to Christianity was reducing, she couldn’t quite understand why she needed a savior in the first place. The New Age aversion to anything called sin caused her to wonder from whom or what she could possibly need saving.

It should come as no surprise that the New Age rejection of sin also means a rejection of the existence of Satan, although it does grant that there are negative energies and entities to avoid. As it happened in this case, an occasional boyfriend appears to have been more than just casually interested in things dark and demonic, and although our friend desperately wanted to disbelieve that anything satanic could be happening, when she allowed for this possibility some of the incongruous things in her life with him suddenly fell into place. This led her to our church, still with no intention of becoming a Christian, where she heard the gospel of Jesus Christ presented in a way she never had before, and to a ministry session where she began receiving deep level spiritual cleansing and healing.

She went home from this powerful time of prayer and started reading the Bible. She writes, “…lo and behold -- IT ALL MADE SENSE! Over the next 48 hours, my eyes, ears and heart finally opened to the reason and purpose of Jesus Christ and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I needed his help. I needed salvation because I was losing my life to the devil’s tricks and to my own sins which were helping him and his assistants along. Within two nights I was on my knees confessing my sins, accepting Christ as my savior, and surrendering my will to God. It was the most humbling experience of my life. I was reborn. I have remained reborn. I am reborn daily, sometimes hourly, and I am in continuous awe that all the answers, all the comfort, and all the meaning has been there…all along.”

Jesus said “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:7, 9-10). The promise of Christ is that whoever uses him for a gate will “be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” In other words, the abundant life that Jesus promises includes salvation, spontaneity, and sustenance.

Salvation in the forgiveness of our sins and an escape from death. It’s not something we must earn, or attain, or discover through secret knowledge or practice. It’s right there, out in the open, and a gift of grace.

Spontaneity is something of a surprise to some people, but it is true nonetheless. Jesus tells us that his gate is a gate for both coming in and going out. Our Lord’s interest is not in controlling us and limiting us, but in giving us liberty and freedom, within the abundant life-giving boundaries God knows are best for us.

And finally sustenance. The abundant life that reach through the gate of Jesus Christ also means spiritual sustenance—seen as good pasture in the metaphor of Christ the gate for the sheep, and seen by us in terms of the spiritual food that we need to live (Oxford NRSV note on John 10:9).

________________________________

“Amber Sees The Big Picture” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Top

Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use,?to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.

The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys.

You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night, when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens. People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening.

O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.

May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works!

Psalm 104:1, 14-31

Amber was at the age where she liked to draw: it was a kind of power to watch the lines appear on the page, flowing from her head, through her hand, down to a clean sheet of paper. While she couldn't have named it as such, there was a mystery and a beauty in this act of creation that surprised Amber every time it happened.

Amber was also at the age of wondering. If she drew animals, she wondered where they came from. If she drew a tree, she wondered why they grew. Lately she had been drawing pictures of her house and her family, and she wondered where she came from and why she was here. There was a lot to wonder about when you were only seven.

On this particular morning Amber was finishing a picture for her mother. It was a special picture because it was a gift for Mother's Day. Amber loved her mother, and thinking about her mother as she drew filled her with happiness. Her heart conceived her picture, and so the sun, carefully placed in the upper right hand corner of the page, had a smile too.

The rest of the picture was of Amber and her mother planting flowers, as they had a few weeks before. Amber had liked working together, had liked the fact that they had gotten dirty but had laughed because it was alright to get dirty when you were planting flowers. Although Amber couldn't have said so at the time, it was this goodness of creating something together, something that would bloom in time, that had been so special. And so in the picture her seven year old artistic sense showed the flowers being planted already in full bloom, just as the ones that they had put out were now in full bloom outside the downstairs window.

At breakfast the family talked of the their plans for the day. Lunch at grandma's and a walk in the park were planned for later, but first was church. Amber liked church, and she especially like the children's sermon. It came right after they read out of the Bible, which Amber listened to, even though she was usually drawing while she did.

Today the Bible reading was from the Psalms. It was about God, and some animals, then the pastor called the children forward. He gave them each some playdough, and with it asked them to make a lion, and then a bird and then a fish. Then he asked,

"Can you make a real lion, or a real bird, or a real fish? "NO!" The children all said. "Who can?" he asked, and after a long pause one of the children said, because they all knew it was always the right answer, "God." "That's right, God even made you and me. Let's thank God. "THANKS GOD!" they all called out loudly. "But what about your mom and dad, didn't they help God make you too?" The children all nodded their supposed agreement as the pastor continued, "And since today is Mother's Day, let's thank mom too" "THANKS MOM!" they all yelled. Then they giggled and then they prayed and then they went back to their seats.

When she sat down beside her mother Amber she started to draw a new picture. She drew a lion, and then a bird, and then a fish. Then she tried to draw God, but she couldn't, and so she drew her mother instead. She started to wonder about what the pastor had said, and a jumble of questions came to her head. She needed to know more about this special power shared by God and mommies.

In the car on the way to grandma's house Amber finally sorted out her wondering and questions.

"Mommy and Daddy," she asked, "who made me, you or God?" Her parents looked at one another, but fortunately they had been listening to the children's sermon, and one of them said,

"God made you, and we helped."

"What for?" asked Amber. Her father, assuming her question was about the relationship between God and parents, answered by saying that it was God's gift that people get to help God in making special things. He had assumed wrong. "No," said Amber, "what did you and God make me for." "We made you so there would be more love in the world." Amber's mother said. Amber fell silent while she thought about this for a minute, and her mother continued, "Before you were made we didn't have you to love. Helping God make you meant that there was more love in the world because Daddy, and me, and grandma, and God all love you. Because you were made there is more love in the world than there was before.

Amber was quiet the rest of the way to grandma's house. When they got there Amber took out the picture she was soon to give her mother and after some thought she wrote across the top:

God made the whole world to love,

mommy and daddy made me to love,

I made this picture to love you.

________________________________________________________

“Mormonism” - Dr. Brant D. Baker

A Presbyterian Perspective

Top

Historical Background

The United States of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a place of intense religious fervor. Traveling preachers emphasized personal spiritual experiences and feelings. Church authority, baptism, predestination, and the origin of the American Indian were questioned and discussed. Many new churches were being started. Skepticism of religion abounded among the educated.

Into such a time as this Joseph Smith was born to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith, in Sharon, Vermont, on December 23, 1805. The young Joseph received little formal education, but would prove to be a man with an acquiring intellect, a natural curiosity, a fertile imagination, and a keen sense of the religious needs of those around him.

According to the official history of the LDS church, young Smith had his first religious vision in 1820 when he was almost fifteen years old. In his report of this incident, he says that he was confused by the competing claims of the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists during a religious revival in Palmyra, the town in upstate New York where he and his family lived at the time. So he went into the nearby woods to pray and to ask God which church to join. There he allegedly saw a pillar of light descend upon him. When it rested on him he saw two bright and glorious figures standing above him in the air. According to Smith, one of the figures spoke to him, and said while pointing to the other one, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” Smith says he asked which of the various churches was right. He was told that he must join none of them, and that those who believe in them were “all corrupt” (Joseph Smith, The Pearl of Great Price, History 1:5-20)

Smith reports that three years later he was visited by an angel named Moroni. Moroni identified himself as a prophet of an ancient American race of people who were now extinct. He allegedly told Smith of buried gold plates upon which the history of Moroni’s people was engraved. The ancient record was said to have been written by Moroni’s father Mormon, as well as others of the race. Smith was given a vision as to where these plates were buried in the nearby woods, but he was not allowed to take possession of them until four years later when he was 21 years old.

On January 18, 1827, Smith secretly married Emma Hale of Harmony, Pennsylvania, without her father’s permission. Later that year, he reported receiving another visit by the angel Moroni, this time directing him to remove the gold plates along with some special stones, which he was told were the Urim and Thummim mentioned in the Old Testament. Smith says he used these stones in translating the gold plates from a language he called Reformed Egyptian (Joseph Smith, The Pearl of Great Price, History 1:35). His wife assisted him in this translation, writing down the words Smith called out from behind a curtain. No one other than Joseph saw the stones, but eight witnesses claimed to have seen the plates and the writing on them. Emma never saw the plates, but believed they existed. Her father, on the other hand, in whose house the alleged translation work took place, always questioned their existence. The plates were said to be swept away by the angel Moroni after Smith finished his work.

The Book of Mormon purports to be a history of people who lived in the ancient Americas. Its major story begins in Jerusalem in about 600 B.C., just before the final Babylonian conquest. Warned by the Lord, a prophet named Lehi and a small band of Hebrews left Jerusalem, traveled east over the Arabian peninsula, and set sail in boats to the west coast of America. In the course of time, they divided into two competing groups, the Lamanites and the Nephites. Because of their evil ways, the Lamanites were cursed with a dark skin (and thus the origin of the American Indian is explained, if in somewhat racist terms).

According to LDS teaching Jesus Christ visited the Americas to teach the people and organize his church after his resurrection. Two hundred years of peace followed his visit, then conflict broke out, culminating in a great battle in A.D. 421 that ended with the evil Lamanites completely destroying the Nephites. The last prophet of the Nephites, Moroni, supposedly completed engraving the record of these events on gold plates and buried them before he died. This same prophet became the angel who would later be said to guide Smith.

Thus for Mormons, the Bible is the first revelation from God, but only one of many. In itself the Bible does not contain sufficient information for salvation. It is to be understood only as correctly interpreted by proper Latter-day Saints authority, as the Bible is believed to have been corrupted through the centuries. The King James Version is the only acceptable and complete English version of the Bible. To understand the King James Version from a Mormon perspective, Joseph Smith revealed the Inspired Version of the Bible (his own translation). Other books were later revealed to Smith, key among them Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price, and these are also called “scripture” by Mormons. These later books and revelations, more than the Book of Mormon, contain the essence of Mormon beliefs (see below).

Reflection Questions

Why are certain written words called “scripture?”

What makes such words authoritative?

Observations

Despite extensive archeological activity, in America and elsewhere, by both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, no historical or otherwise independent record of the peoples spoken of in Book of Mormon has ever been found:

-no Book of Mormon cities have ever been located

-no Book of Mormon names have been found in New World inscriptions

-no genuine inscriptions of Hebrew have been found in America

-no genuine inscriptions of Egyptian or anything similar to Egyptian (which could correspond to Joseph Smith’s “Reformed Egyptian” have been found in America

-no ancient copies of Book of Mormon scriptures have been found

-no ancient inscriptions of any kind in America which indicate that earlier peoples had Hebrew or Christian beliefs have been found

-no mention of Book of Mormon persons, nations, or places has been found

-no artifact of any kind which demonstrates the Book of Mormon is true has been found

-rather than finding supportive evidence, Mormon scholars have been forced to retreat from traditional interpretations of Book of Mormon statements

Dr. Walter Martin states the matter succinctly

With one “Special Revelation” the Mormon Church expects its intended converts to accept the totally unsupported testimony of a fifteen-year-old boy that nobody ever preached Jesus Christ’s gospel from the close of the apostolic age until the “Restoration” through Joseph Smith, Jr., beginning in 1820. We are asked to believe that the church fathers for the first five centuries did not proclaim the true gospel—that Origen, Justin, Iraneaus, Jerome, Eusebius, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and then later Thomas Aquinas, Juss, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Tyndale, Wycliff, Knox, Wesley, Whitefield, and a vast army of faithful servants of Jesus Christ all failed where Joseph Smith, Jr., was to succeed.

With one dogmatic assertion, Joseph pronounced everybody wrong, all Christian theology an abomination, and all professing Christians corrupt—all in the name of God! How strange for this to be presented as restored Christianity, when Jesus Christ specifically promised that “the gates of Hell” would not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18). In Mormonism we find God contradicting this statement in a vision to Joseph Smith, Jr., some eighteen centuires later (The Maze of Mormonism, Santa Ana, CA: Vision House Publishers, Inc. 1977, p 25, 31).

Mormon Beliefs

God

Mormon theology teaches that God was once a male human being. He is said to have lived on a planet similar to Earth, and to have experienced basically what we are now experiencing as he moved through life. He wasn’t yet a god at that point, but he was on the way.

“Heavenly Father,” as Mormons call God, obeyed the god of the world on which he lived as he progressed through life. He followed the principles of the gospel set forth by that god, and moved steadily toward the status of godhood in life beyond mortal existence on that planet. He married on that earth, and he and his wife had children and lived a full life. After Heavenly Father and his wife died and passed into post-mortal existence, he achieved the status of godhood. Where the god of that world as well as that world itself came from, Mormon theology does not claim to know, nor does it address the origins of matter and intelligence, which it considers to be eternal.

According to LDS teaching, having become a god, Heavenly Father, or Elohim (the Hebrew word for “god”), planned for some the eternal matter to come together to form the earth we now inhabit. Heavenly Father and his wife then began begetting spirit children. All of the people who have lived or ever will live on this earth are spirit children of Heavenly Father and his wife (or possibly wives); therefore, all humans are literally sisters and brothers to one another.

The process of allowing these spirit children the opportunity to progress and become like their Heavenly Father and Mother unfolded as this god shaped bodies of flesh and bones for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which Mormon belief locates near present day Independence, Missouri. Their pre-mortal spirits were joined with these mortal bodies. Mormonism teaches that, as the human race grows through reproduction from these original parents, eventually enough bodies will be made available for all of the spirit children in pre-mortal existence to come to earth and pass through mortal existence.

In contrast to the Mormon view of God as having once been a human being, Christians believe that God is Spirit (John 4:24), infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth (The Shorter Catechism, 7.004). There is one God and only one God (Isaiah 45:15, 18, 21) whose authority and power is over all persons and all worlds. And although the male pronoun is used by biblical writers in speaking of God, God is not considered male or female, but, in the parent imagery of the scriptures, carries aspects of both. In the Christian tradition, humans are made in the image of God, not the other way around.

Reflection Questions

What kind of God is it you want to believe in—one who was once human and “climbed the ranks,” or one who is eternal and infinite, one who all people can eventually come to be like, or one who is substantially different from all humanity?

Why is the difference significant?

Observations

Mormon theology appears to want to claim for God what Christian theology claims for Jesus Christ, that is, that the divine took on human flesh and dwelt among us. Beyond the problematic assertion that God “worked his way up through the ranks,” there is the important distinction that, in Christian understanding, Christ’s work on earth was part of God’s saving work. The Mormon god had no apparent salvific intention in mind, only his own reward.

Jesus Christ/Salvation

In Mormon belief Jesus is the firstborn of the many spirit children of Heavenly Father. In his pre-existent state Jesus is known as Jehovah (a non-biblical word commonly used as a name for God). In a heavenly council before creation, Jesus/Jehovah volunteered to accomplish Heavenly Father’s plan for the redemption of the world. Jesus’ brother, Satan/Lucifer, offered an opposing plan that would have eliminated free will and forced total obedience with Satan/Lucifer receiving the credit for not losing anyone. Jesus’ plan was accepted and Satan’s rejected.

Although Jesus was the first born spirit child, he did not come to earth to begin his mortal existence until later. In the fullness of time, Heavenly Father had union with Mary, who was a virgin, and Jesus Christ was born to be the Savior of humankind. He was Savior in that he revealed and modeled Heavenly Father’s intentions for human character, attitudes, and actions. Although the New Testament is silent on the matter, Mormons have speculated that Jesus was married, perhaps at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, to Mary, Martha, and/or Mary Magdalene. The LDS church also holds that, following his ascension, Jesus appeared on the North American continent to the Nephites and Lamanites, and in this appearance established the church and the Melchizedek priesthood along the lines presently found in the LDS church. They also hold that when Christ returns to establish his kingdom on earth (at the beginning of the millennium?), a New Jerusalem temple will be built on a site in Jackson County, Missouri, with a companion temple to be built in present-day Jerusalem (Ether 13:5, Book of Mormon).

In Mormon belief the goal of mortal existence is to learn to distinguish between good and evil. Memory of pre-mortal existence is blocked out, and in their mortal existence on this earth people make the choices that will affect their destiny. The Mormon belief that Mormon families are the best settings for that growth is the major reason behind the large families that are encouraged by the LDS church (although some Mormons deny that there is any explicit teaching on the issue of family size). After death, those persons who have chosen to respond positively to the gospel, be baptized by a man holding the priesthood, and obediently live according the principles and ordinances of the gospel, will achieve the status of godhood and pass into post-mortal existence. There they will beget their own spirit children, and the whole process repeats itself. Joseph Smith himself suggested that very few will achieve the status of godhood.

Mormons believe that Jesus went to the cross to die and thus broke the hold of physical death over the human race. Jesus’ resurrection makes bodily resurrection a reality for all of humanity. Thus he made it possible for human beings to overcome spiritual death and to attain exaltation by their faith in the gospel. But while salvation is understood as the gift of God for all persons, it is exaltation that is necessary to achieve the highest heaven and godhood.

Exaltation requires acts of obedience as specified in the “gospel” (or Restored Gospel). These acts include tithing, temple work, celestial marriage and other temple rites, obedience to the Word of Wisdom (refrain from use of tobacco, coffee, tea, and alcoholic beverages), and the pursuit of moral purity. By obedience to the “gospel” a male achieves godhood with a female. It is LDS belief that this “restored gospel” contains the necessary ordinances for exaltation.

In contrast to the Mormon view of Jesus as the first spirit child of the Heavenly Father, Christians believe that Jesus is “the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14) who exists from the beginning with God. In the mystery of the incarnation Christian teaching affirms that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, and thus able to accomplish God’s saving work. That saving work is complete in Jesus Christ: there is no “higher” state (exaltation) that we attain by our own works. In Christian belief the emphasis is not on works of obedience but on the gift of God’s grace. Christians accept on faith (which is also part of the gift of grace) that Jesus’ death on the cross breaks not only the power of physical death, but more importantly, the power of sin. In this sense, the atoning death of Jesus Christ is a completed act that opens the way of eternal life to those who accept this unconditional act of grace: no further act is necessary from human beings in the way of works of obedience. Salvation is not a reward for works, but God’s gracious gift to all persons through Jesus Christ.

Reflection Questions

What might be some results of believing that Jesus and Satan are brothers (and thus presumably equal in power)?

What is the connection between salvation given as a gift and the holy (obedient) life demanded by the Bible?

Do you believe that there are different levels of heaven for different groups of people? What does the Bible teach in this regard?

Observations

Having applied incarnational theology to “Heavenly Father,” Mormon theology seems at something of a loss to know what to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ. It seems clear that Joseph Smith, Jr., was trying to link obedience and salvation, perhaps in well-meaning ways. His error, from a Christian perspective (and one that had been made by many before him), was to condition salvation on works, rather than seeing works as a response to God’s gift of salvation.

Beyond this significant theological error, of course, is the stratification of heaven into multiple levels: the Celestial Kingdom for Mormons (which is itself divided into three parts, the highest of which—godhood—is reserved for those Mormons married in the Temple); the Terrestrial Kingdom for honorable men (and women?) who didn’t accept Mormonism; and the Telestial Kingdom for the wicked of the world. In addition there is a Spirit Prison/Hell/Second Death condition that is reserved for Satan and his followers. To arrive at this multi-heaven understanding requires Mormons to go far afield from anything even remotely suggested in the Bible.

Holy Spirit

In Mormon theology the Holy Ghost is referred to as the Comforter or Sanctifier through whose influence wicked desires are purged, and worthy saints move toward peace and perfection. He is the personage of spirit with a body of “refined matter” who is also the source of miracles, gifts, and godly powers by which enemies are defeated and the people of God blessed. The Holy Ghost dwells permanently only with those who desire him and are worthy of him, having received him through the laying on of hands by one holding the Melchizedek priesthood.

Some Mormons differentiate between the Holy Ghost (above) and the Holy Spirit who is the “Spirit of God” or the “Spirit of Truth” and operates in the lives of those other than Latter-day Saints “striving to bring men to the knowledge of the truth” (Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 66-68).

In contrast Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is not something other than God, but the very presence of God with us. When Jesus left this earth he sent the promised Holy Spirit to be his continued presence with us. While Christians would agree with Mormon theology in viewing the Spirit as the giver of gifts, the reception of such gifts is not a matter of “worthiness” or of having had hands laid on us by the right person.

Christians do not differentiate between the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost. It may be that Smith, having access primarily to the King James Version of the Bible, followed the style of the KJV which used two terms, “Spirit” and “Ghost,” to translate the Greek word pneuma (spirit).

Reflection Questions

The Holy Spirit remains a mystery for many Christians. What do you know and believe to be true about the Holy Spirit?

Can you support your views biblically?

Church and Priesthood

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not see itself as a part of the continuous witness of Christ from the time of the apostles to the present. The Mormon church views itself as a restored church, not a reformed church. Their belief is that, following the time of the apostles, the authority of the priesthood was lost and along with it certain important practices and doctrines. Mormons are now willing to state that the Lord continued to work through various Christian traditions, preserving the essentials of the gospel, particularly the atoning work of Jesus Christ. But this is clearly not enough in Mormon opinion, and so Mormons see their mission as converting others to what they believe is Christ’s restored gospel.

Because Mormons understand that their beliefs grow out of Joseph Smith’s original vision, in which all Christian churches were condemned as “an abomination,” Mormon theology does not encourage ecumenical cooperation. Although some Mormons do cooperate in limited ecumenical enterprises, for the most part Mormon theology views Christian churches as teaching a corrupt gospel. In Mormon belief, complete sanctification and exaltation are not possible outside of the restored priesthood and ordinances of the Mormon church.

Central to advancing through earthly existence to godhood is the priesthood, which can only be held by males. There are two levels of priesthood in Mormon practice: the Aaronic (or lesser) priesthood and the Melchizedek (or greater) priesthood. These priesthoods have their own divisions, and a man must move through the hierarchy, ordinarily starting at age twelve. Mormon practices uses the word “elder” as a common title given to all who hold any level in the office of Melchizedek priest (“elder” is the first level in this priesthood). Only those holding the Melchizedek priesthood can officiate at marriages in temples and administer other gospel ordinances. This priesthood is also the key to leadership in the church at the highest levels.

In contrast to these Mormon beliefs, Christian theology affirms the priesthood of all believers (male and female). This view of priesthood suggests that all Christians are to be about the work of ministry, without distinction of “levels.” Christian theology does practice the concept of “ordination,” which is a “setting apart” for special kinds of ministry, where those gifts have been confirmed through a process of discernment. But in making this distinction Reformed Christian theology is careful not to set up a hierarchy within the church. Calvin, in particular, was suspicious of investing too much power in one or in many, and thus created the kind of shared power structure observable now in Presbyterian churches.

In further contrast, most Christians recognize that the “church” is the body of Christ around the world, present wherever the gospel is preached and heard, the sacraments administered, and Jesus Christ served. The Head of the church is the Lord Jesus Christ, and no other person can claim that place. Christians believe that a continuity exists between the church of the apostles and the present Christian church, and the Reformed branch of the church believes that the church is reformed and always reforming, as the Holy Spirit works in our midst.

Reflection Questions

Does Mormon belief in a male-only priesthood ring true to the Bible? Why or why not?

How far should we go in accepting beliefs of other Christian or semi-Christian communities? What is the standard?

Many Christians have been led to believe that Mormonism is simply a variant of Christianity, yet it is clear from Mormon theology and practice that Mormonism doesn’t hold the larger part of Christianity in the same kind of mutuality. Does this or does this not suggest that Mormonism is really not a variant form of Christianity but something quite different?

Conclusion

It should be clear from the preceding that there are more differences than similarities between traditional, mainstream Christianity and the religion practiced by Mormons. Although the LDS Church expresses its beliefs in traditional Christian terms, those beliefs cannot be regarded as an expression of historic, traditional Christianity.

Those persons who live in areas heavily populated by Mormons are perhaps the most challenged. The fact that Mormonism uses Christian terminology, but in decidedly different ways, makes basic dialogue a challenge. The aggressive proselytizing undertaken by Mormons can make for difficult relations as parents seek to shelter their children. And finally, the social consequences of being a kind of persecuted minority for so long have had the predictable effect of creating a close-knit, almost clannish Mormon community, with the expected fallout when Mormons find themselves in the majority.

Like people everywhere, some Mormons are easier to get along with than others. In general, individual Mormons tend to be quite friendly (although this friendship has been known to dissipate when evangelistic prospects seem dim). The issues seem to fall out between the perceived image of Mormonism, on the one hand, and the actions of so-called “jack” Mormons, on the other hand. In this regard, Mormonism struggles from the same kinds of hypocrisy as Christianity, with the possible exception that Mormonism has a less-sufficient doctrine of grace.

It is also clear that, whatever differences may distinguish them, Mormons may have some things to teach the Christian church. Their unabashed insistence of virtuous living, despite the failures and hypocrisies of some, is refreshing in a cultural climate that has largely abandoned personal responsibility. Their strong emphasis on family appears to be one of the major drawing cards for many who come through their doors. Their incredible evangelical fervor should give Christians everywhere pause.

But the conclusion is inescapable that Mormonism is not simply another kind of Christian denomination. Mormonism is it’s own religion. While it share words in common with Christianity, it uses these words in decidedly different ways. Mormonism has a different understanding of the person and work of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; Mormonism has its own unique understanding of the nature and means of salvation; and Mormonism has its own unique set of writings it considers to be scripture.

The fact that Mormonism is so different, that in fact it began as a reaction and criticism of Christianity, makes the attempts by contemporary Mormonism to appear as simply another branch of Christianity all the more troubling and ironic. It is not enough, in Mormon belief, to be a Christian: more is needed, and that “more” is an addition to the gospel of Jesus Christ. History is filled with religions (cults) that represent themselves as “Christ plus…” In every case the true and historic church of Jesus Christ has rejected any attempt to add to or water down the gospel.

Postscript

There is an obscure passage in 1 Corinthians 15 that refers in passage to an apparent practice of baptism on behalf of the dead. The argument in question has to do with whether or not there is to be a resurrection. Without advocating its use, Paul uses this practice against them, asking why they do this if they don't believe in the resurrection.

One of the challenges of reading Paul's letters, of course, is that we only have half the conversation. Most scholarship agrees that, if this was practiced at all, it was a practice limited to the Corinthian church (which had several other somewhat questionable practices as well!). The New Testament is otherwise completely silent about this practice; and there is no known practice like it in any of the other churches nor in any orthodox Christian community in the centuries that immediately follow. "How can such a practice be so completely unknown if in fact it had had any authorization with the churches of the first century? This complete silence in all other sources is the sure historical evidence that, if such a practice existed in fact, it did so as something purely eccentric among some in the Corinthian community." (Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, Eerdmans, 1987, p 764).

Comparisons of Mormon and Christian Beliefs

(Taken from Mormonism 101)

The God of Mormonism:

was not always God (once a man)
was not the first God
organized already-created matter in the creation of the world
cannot be in more than one place at once

The God of Christianity:

is eternally God
is the First Cause of all things
created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing)
is fully present everywhere (p 39) (see Isaiah 43:10, 44:6-8, 45:5-6, 21-22, and 46:9 on the issue that "before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me…beside me there is not God.")

The God of Christianity: The Jesus of Mormonism:

born of a sexual relationship between God the Father and Mar
elder brother of the human race
Lucifer is his brother
Reached perfection at some particular point in time

The Jesus of Christianity:

born of the Virgin Mar by being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit
is God in the flesh
Lucifer, together with all the angels, was created by Jesus and is therefore not Jesus' brother
Has been eternally perfect (p 49-50)

The Trinity, according to Mormonism:

was an invention of the apostate church
cannot be true because it cannot be understood
cannot be true because the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are merely one in purpose

The Trinity, according to Christianity:

is a doctrine that came from biblical origins
is one of the things about God that is not able to be understood by a finite, created mind
is true because there is one God by nature who is evident in three persons (p 57)

The Bible, according to Mormonism:

it is true only as far as it does not disagree with Mormon doctrine
it is the only book of the four LDS scriptures that is accepted with limitations
it is filled with alleged contradictions
it cannot be trusted by itself

The Bible, according to Christianity:

it is the Word of God that is reliable for the modern Christian
it is the only Scripture inspired by God
the context of a passage and the rest of the Bible must be considered when
interpreting supposed contradictions
it can be fully trusted (p 103)

The atonement, according to Mormonism:

provides everyone with a general resurrection and cancellation of the consequences of Adam's transgression
took place primarily in the Garden of Gethsemane
was possible before Christ had died and was raised
is not complete unless the individual demonstrates total obedience

The atonement, according to Christianity:

provides for the salvation of only those who have faith in Christ
took place on the cross alone
was possible only after Christ's death
is complete for the believer by the grace of God ( p 148-149)

Grace and works, according to Mormonism:

the grace of God provides for resurrection from the dead
works are necessary for a person to achieve exaltation, or godhood
salvation by grace alone is a pernicious doctrine
perfection is an achievable goal

Grace and works according to Christianity:

grace is provided free to those who believe
works are the result of saving faith
salvation by grace alone is a biblical concept
nobody is able to live up to the whole law, which is why grace is needed ( p 169)

Sources

“A Present Day Look at the Latter-day Saints.” Prepared by a special task force of the Presbytery of Utah, PCUSA, for the 202nd General Assembly (1990).

Mormonism 101: Examining the Religion of the Latter-day Saints, Bill McKeever & Eric Johnson (Baker Books, 2000).

“Presbyterians and Mormons: A Study in Contrasts.” Office of Theology and Worship of the PCUSA, 1990.

“Relations With The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Its People” Position Paper of the Presbytery of Utah, 1995.

A Ready Defense. By Josh McDowell, compiled by Bill Wilson. Thomas Nelson Publishers (Nashville, 1993).

________________________________________________________

How Can There Be Only One True Religion? - Dr. Brant D. Baker

Isaiah 40:12-17, 21-25, 28

Top

This is the first in a series on five of the main objections that people raise against Christianity. Responding to these objections becomes important as we realize the need to respond to some of the tough questions that others are likely to raise in conversation with us.

Take Blair, for instance. She is twenty-five years old, lives in a major urban center, has a good education and an up-and-coming career. “It’s arrogant,” she protests, “to say that your religion is superior and try to convert everyone else to it. Surely all the religions are equally good and valid for meeting the needs of their particular followers.”

A similar objection is raised by Geoff, also in his twenties, a transplant to America from England. “Religious exclusivity is not just narrow,” he suggests, “but also dangerous. Religion has led to untold strife, division, and conflict. It may in fact be the greatest enemy of peace in the world. If Christians continue to insist that they have ‘the truth’—and if other religions do this as well—the world will never know peace” (The Reason for God, Timothy Keller, p 3).

These vignettes come from Timothy Keller’s book The Reason for God, which will be the basis for this series, and which I highly recommend for your personal library. Keller goes on to tell about being a panelist at a local college, along with a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim imam. The three were asked to discuss the differences among religions, and they did so in a tone that was courteous, intelligent, and respectful. Nonetheless, each speaker affirmed that there were significant, irreconcilable differences between the major faiths.

Several of the students were quite disturbed by this. They didn’t want to believe that all religions couldn’t somehow be harmonized and brought together. Typical statements were to the effect that what mattered was only to believe in God and to be a loving person. To insist that one faith has a better grasp of the truth than others, they contended, was intolerant. Said one student, “We will never come to know peace on earth if religious leaders keep on making such exclusive claims!” (Keller, 4)

This frustration grows out of the very real fact that religion can, in its worst form, tend toward exclusivism and even intolerance. One purpose of any religion is to give its followers the “truth,” and being human beings we easily tend toward a feeling of superiority when we believe we are right. From there it is not hard to see how various religious groups come to stereotype and caricature one another, and from there to marginalize, oppress, and possibly even commit violence against one another (Keller, 4).

Clearly this is a real problem, but is the solution to simply water down the unique beliefs of each religion to create some kind of harmonious mélange that ends up not meaning very much to anyone? This kind of “one world religion” seems to be the approach preferred by at least some in our culture. Many people believe that the doctrinal differences between Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are superficial and insignificant, and that all of these religions essentially believe in the same God. Such a view clearly belies a lack of serious study of the real teachings of these widely divergent faiths. All of which brings us to the first Counter-Objection that we might raise against the idea of a “one world religion,” namely, that an attempt to harmonize all of the historic world religions ignores the very real differences between those faiths, and in fact even tends to disrespect each of those faiths and their adherents.

But there is an even more challenging difficulty for proponents of what we might call the “one-world-religion” idea. Let me illustrate with a somewhat famously told story about several blind men who were encountering an elephant for the first time. Each man is in touch with a different part of the animal, and so each arrives at his own conclusion about the “true” nature of an elephant.

“An elephant seems to be a lot like a snake,” says one man, as he holds the trunk.

“No, no,” responds the second man who is touching the leg, “it is thick and round like a tree…”

“You are both crazy,” says the third, who has his hands on the elephant’s side, “this beast is large and flat.”

And so it went, each man convinced that he had the full, true, and accurate description, but of course none of them could envision the entire elephant. In the same way, it is argued, that the great world religions each have a grasp on a part of the truth about God and the spiritual realm, but none of them have the whole truth because they are only in touch with one aspect of the immensity of the divine.

It seems like a compelling argument in favor of the view that there can’t be just one true religion, that in fact all of the religions are describing one reality beyond the own narrow viewpoint, until you realize that the story is told from the point of view of someone who is not blind and who can therefore see what a whole elephant truly is. In other words, how could you know that each blind man only sees a part of the truth unless you claim to be able to see the whole elephant? (Keller, 8-9)

And here we come to the logical inconsistency of the “one-world-religion” idea. The assertion that there is simply one All-Loving Spirit who is variously recognized and described by the several blind men of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism is itself a claim to some insider information, some higher truth. In other words, the “one-world-religion” idea becomes itself a religion, with an assertion of an absolute truth, namely the truth that there is only one God who is simply seen from these various points of view. Put another way, how could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed none of the other religions have? And so the second objection people of faith can legitimately raise to those who seek to harmonize all of the historic world religions is to point out that the claim of “one-world-religion” is itself a religious claim.

So, can there be only one true religion? It would certainly seems that if there is a God, the attributes of godliness would not be ill-defined, a vague kind of loving force in the universe. In fact one requirement we would have for any being to be worthy of the name God is that such a being be very much definable, having distinct and unique characteristics. It would further make sense to say that such a being would certainly seem to define truth as part of the divine nature. If we can agree to these things then let’s move on to make three assumptions:

1) God defines Truth

There is a unique God, and God defines Truth as an aspect of what it means to be God. In other words, to be qualified for the job of God, a being must not only be all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present, but must also contain within itself all that is really true.

As a side note we would probably want to say that this is not a Truth we can know because it is really above and beyond us. This seems to be part of what God is saying in Isaiah 40. Through the prophet Isaiah God asks a series of rhetorical questions, all of which suggest that God knows a whole lot more truth than we do. “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span,” asks God, “[who has] enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the spirit of the LORD, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?

In other words, as found in the Brant Baker translation of this text: “Hey buddy, there is stuff going on all around you that is really a lot bigger than you are. Shut up and pay attention!” Put more demurely, “Truth with a capital ‘T’ is God’s Truth alone to know.”

2) God created and is in relationship with creation and has expectations for us

But, we could know another kind of truth. That truth would stem from the further assumption that God created and is in relationship with creation, and has particular expectations, hopes, and even requirements, for that creation, and of created beings such as ourselves. These expectations, hopes, and requirements are a kind of lower case “t” “truth” that God want us to know, as again is made clear in Isaiah 40 when God says, Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?”

Finally, if these two assumptions are correct then a third assumption could follow, namely that

3) God’s truth is largely knowable through natural revelation

Christianity readily agrees and proclaims that there are many things that humanity can know about God simply by looking at creation. The technical term for this is “natural revelation” and it is an idea found not only in Isaiah 40 but also in the opening chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, where we read,

Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…, And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, [and] malice. Romans 1:20-22, 28-29a

In other words, Christianity, in its best and most balanced form, recognizes that there is truth to be found in the world outside of the church, and that includes truth that can be found in other world religions. Here again, some people cite the overlap between religions as proof that they all same the same thing. The Christian, on the other hand, understands this overlap as a result of the fact that God is not trying to be hidden, that God has in fact been revealed through natural revelation, and that other religions and philosophical systems would have equal access to this part of the truth about God.

But natural revelation will only take you so far, especially as it gets viewed through the lens of human selfishness, arrogance, and perversion. Eventually the “true” message of God got lost along the way, which is the larger argument Paul is making in Romans 1. Of course thoughtful people don’t need the Apostle Paul to tell them that even the loftiest ideals get misplaced given enough time in human hands. Because of this some additional revelation is always necessary, and the witness of Christianity is that this additional revelation, and indeed the final and ultimate revelation, came in the person and work of Jesus Christ. But please note, this special message of God’s grace and redemption comes to all people, not just to a chosen few who happen to be in the right tribe or know the right code words. Paul makes this clear in Romans 3:21 and following,

But now…the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26

So, does this prove unequivocally that Christianity is the only true religion. Certainly not, but it at least begins to open the door to consider what the marks of a true religion might be, one of which, as I’ve tried to show, is its universal accessibility. In other words, any God worth the name would not limit access to the truth humanity needed to any tongue or tribe, and race or culture. But, as I’ve also tried to show, that truth cannot logically exist equally in all religions, and so we need to look for which religion proclaims a truth that seems to most fit with the idea of the kind of God that most people seem to believe in to some extent, an all-loving Being who seeks some kind of relationship with creation.

Timothy Keller believes that Christianity has shown the most promise of being that religion, going all the way back to the beginning. He notes that the Greco-Roman world’s religious views were quite open and seemingly tolerant, a situation not unlike our world today if you think about it. Everyone had his or her own god. But where the Greco-Roman world tended to despise the poor, Christians tended to give generously not only to their own poor, but also to the poor of other faiths. And, where in the broader society women had very low status, being subjected to high levels of female infanticide, forced marriages, and lack of economic equality, Christianity afforded women much greater security and equality than had previously existed in the ancient world. Finally, during the terrible urban plagues of the first and second centuries it was the Christians who cared for all the sick and dying in the city, often at the cost of their own lives.

All of this while Christianity was at the same time very exclusive, saying that there was salvation in no other name than that of Jesus Christ. How is it that such an exclusive belief system would be so open to others? Such an exclusive belief system can be open to others because Christianity has within it the strongest possible resource for practicing sacrificial service, generosity, and peace-making. In other words, at the very heart of the Christian view is the reality of a man who died for his enemies, praying for their forgiveness. Reflection on this can only lead Christians to a radically different way of dealing with those around them (Keller, 20). Our contention would be that this radically different way of dealing with others points to a religion that is True with a capital “T,” one that calls its adherents out of themselves and into the world.

A second statement in favor of Christianity being the one true religion comes out of something that I’ve shared with you a time or two before, but which I think bears repeating. At the start of the new millennium respected news anchor Peter Jennings did a one-hour television special attempting to explain the incredible impact of Jesus Christ on the previous 2000 years of human history. Two things struck me as I watched that show. One was that, despite hedging of scholars interviewed, Jennings and company were at a loss to explain that incredible impact.

But a second and more compelling truth was not commented on, but seen. In image after image of the Holy Land what one noticed was the amazing variety of people there. People from all over world, every country, every race, every color. It turns out that Christianity is amazingly transportable. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism—these remain, by-and-large, tribal religions, with only limited appeal to those outside cultures that gave rise to them. If I ask you where most Jews live, you would tell me Israel. If I asked you where most Muslims live, you would say in the middle east. Hindus? India. Buddhists, China.

But Christianity has transcended all tribal and cultural boundaries. If I ask you where you think most Christians live, what would you say? It turns out that the smallest number, about 260 million, are in North America, and the largest number, about 550 million are in Europe. But that is still less than half of all Christians worldwide. The remainder are spread around the globe in remarkably similar numbers, about 360 million in Africa, about 312 million in Asia, and about 481 million in Latin America, with still another 140 million tucked away in various other places around the rest of the globe. (Sources: www.bible.ca/global-religion-statistics-world-christian-encyclopedia.htm; www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html)

What might this mean? To me it says that the deep down truth of Christianity is recognized by people around world, regardless of where they live, or what the predominant religion around them might be.

Friends, this is not a call for a new tribalism that asserts we have the lock on truth and everyone else better get on board. That is the worst of religions fanaticism by whatever stripe. Rather, we should humbly, thankfully, and thoughtfully engage with others, seeking to bring them to see the Truth that we find so compelling, the truth of God’s great love in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

________________________________________________________

How Could A Good God Allow Suffering? – Dr. Brant D. Baker

Genesis 50:15-21

Top

For the past several months my small group has been working its way through a very interesting book entitled, “Letters From a Skeptic.” In it Greg Boyd is writing his father Edward about some of the very difficult questions his father is raising about the Christian faith. As it happens, Greg himself wasn’t raised a Christian but is now a professor of theology at Bethel College, with a doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Our small group’s interest in the book is along the same lines as my purpose in this sermon series, to try and help all of us who have a Christian faith to be thoughtfully prepared for the tough questions that non-Christians are bound to raise as we talk with them. And of all of those questions perhaps none is more difficult than the question of suffering, as voiced by Edward Boyd in the following letter:

Dear Greg:

Nice to hear from you so soon. I’m surprised you can keep up this fast a pace of letter-writing amidst your busy schedule. But I’ve got a good bit of time on my hands, so you set the pace. Like you, I’m enjoying the chance to air our thoughts.

…[The] bigger problem I have with the idea of an all-loving God…[is] evil in the world. If God created this world and cares about it, why is there so damn much suffering in it? In your letter your answer was that God can’t be held responsible because He have man the freedom to choose to do right or wrong. But, Greg, I don’t feel that the question can be swept away so easily. When the freedom to decide to do harm results in pain and suffering to innocent people, God is simply not the “loving” God you make Him out to be.

I thought about this when I read about this lunatic down here in Florida who was released from jail after some seven or eight years for raping a teenage girl and then chopping off both her arms, leaving her for dead. It was his free choice to commit the crime, but what choice did the innocent girl have? It would appear that the “loving,” protecting God forgot all about her! Why does God value the freedom of the criminal, but not the freedom of the victim?

…[T]his world doesn’t look at all like the kind of world we’d have if there were an all-powerful, all-loving God behind it. And I don’t see that your explanation of freedom improves the situation much.

Well, enough for now. Look forward to your letter. Lots of love, Dad (Letters From A Skeptic, 21-22)

Oh, and have a nice day!

There is a very real protest and a very real anger that comes out with a vengeance when people talk about suffering, especially if they are a victim, as most of us sooner or later are, to the senseless random violence in our world. It can take quite a bit of time simply to work through the emotion that attends discussion about this topic before one can ever get down to talking through the underlying theological issues.

In replying to his father, Greg begins by acknowledging this dilemma.

“This is a very tough question,” he begins, “to the point where it is almost insensitive to even give an answer. And, indeed, under the emotional impact of this nightmare it would be perfectly understandable to be angry at God and everything else in the world.” He continues,

For those touched by this tragedy, rage is the only understandable immediate response. The Bible itself records the honest questions, and even angry prayers, of many ‘heroes of the faith’ (such as Job, David, and Jeremiah). God isn’t threatened by our anger or doubts.

But when the dust eventually settles, there comes a time to begin to think through who is really responsible for this evil. And when we do this, my contention is that responsibility can’t be attached to God.

It seems to me, Dad, that if God is going to give free wills to His creatures, He has to allow for the possibility of them misusing that freedom, even if it means hurting others. To be significantly free is to be morally responsible, and to be morally responsible means being morally responsible to each other. What is the freedom to love or not love unless it is freedom to enrich or harm another? God structured things this way because the alternative would be to have a race of robots who can’t genuinely love—but that’s hardly worth creating, is it?

So why doesn’t God intervene every time someone is going to misuse his or her freedom and hurt another person? The answer, I believe, is found in the nature of freedom itself. A freedom which was prevented from being exercised whenever it was going to be misused simply wouldn’t be freedom.

…[If] God really gives us freedom, it must be, at least to a large extent, irrevocable. [God] must have, within limits, a “hands off” attitude toward it. God creates free people who can do as they please, not determined instruments who always end up doing what [God] pleases…. If I’m correct, the horrendous evil we see people inflicting on each other in this world is a necessary possibility if this is to be the kind of world where love is possible.

I look forward to your response. As always, Greg. (Letters, 23-24)

I have to say that I think Greg’s answer hits the nail on the head exactly. A world with free will is a better than a world where that freedom doesn’t exist, even if it means that people misuse that freedom to hurt themselves and other people. As we will see in a few minutes, even that ends up proving the goodness and rightness of God’s decision to give creation freedom.

Before we get to that, however, let me offer you several counterpoints that need to be made in any discussion about the question of suffering in the world, which can be found on your sermon outline. These are drawn from the book by Timothy Keller entitled “The Reason for God,” which I have recommended to you and which, as I said last week, is the basis for most of the material in this series of sermons on what is technically called “apologetics,” from the Greek word meaning to make a defense or to give a vindication.

Counterpoint #1 – Pointless Suffering from Whose Perspective?

In his book Keller observes that, “Tucked away within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely, that if evil appears pointless to me, then it must be pointless” (Keller, 23). But this reasoning is flawed for the simple reason that, just because you or I can’t see or imagine a good reason why God might allow some kind of suffering to take place doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a good reason. The assumption being made, namely, that if we can’t discern the reason for suffering then it must be pointless, places immense confidence in the reasoning and perception of the skeptic. In fact, one might say that in this instance the skeptic has tremendous faith in his or her own powers of perception! More power to them, but I would rather have faith in God!!!

This is exactly the point of the story of Joseph. Do you remember Joseph? He was the youngest of twelve sons, and his father’s favorite, a fact evidenced by the robe of many colors given to him as a gift. Joseph is also gifted in the interpretation of dreams, including his own, and so in a moment of youthful indiscretion he tells his older brothers about dreams in which he sees them bowing down to him and he reigning over them. All of this drives the older boys to distraction and they finally fake his death at the hand of a wild animal and sell him into slavery. Joseph’s wonderful life comes crashing to an end as he becomes a slave to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh. Still he does well for himself, up until the point that Potiphar’s wife, unhappy that the handsome young Joseph won’t service her desires, accuses him of taking advantage of her. Joseph is thrown into jail and left to rot. Finally, after two years he is sent for and is at last restored to a position even better than before, but still very much a servant.

During all of this time Joseph could have easily said, “All this suffering is pointless—I’m wasting away in prison for crimes I didn’t commit—where’s the justice in that?” But in fact, if

God had not allowed Joseph’s years of suffering, he never would have later been in the position to become a powerful agent for the nation of Egypt, and more importantly, for the nation of Israel.

A lot of people will tell you, as they look back on a season of suffering in their lives, that much of what they needed for future success in life came to them through those difficult years. The bottom line, as stated by Keller, is that “If you have a God great enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know. Indeed, you can’t have it both ways” (Keller, 25).

Counterpoint #2 – Our Objections to Evil and Suffering May Be Evidence For God

There is no doubt that evil and suffering is a difficult problem for the believer in God, but it may be an even greater problem for the non-believer. This was exactly the situation for one of the most famous skeptics of the last century, C.S. Lewis. Lewis describes how he originally rejected the idea of God because he found life to be so cruel and unjust. But then one day he came to realize that simply having ideas about what was “just” and “unjust” suggested that there might be some larger intelligent purpose at work in the universe. In other words, where do we come to have notions of what is fair and just? How do we get the idea that people ought not to suffer, or be oppressed, or endure hardship, if not for some higher power at work in the world that draws our thoughts to such ideals? In point of fact, a purely godless and scientific view of the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection would tell us that the world is supposed to work by the strong defeating the weak, that death and destruction of the less able is simply the way of life, and so why be concerned about it? If a baby is born imperfect or infirm, throw it out into the snow. When people get old and can’t care for themselves, oh well, time for them to go. The fact that we recoil against such brutality and cold rationalism says that we have an objection to evil and suffering that has come to us from somewhere beyond what the theory of evolution can provide.

Philosopher Alvin Plantiga has noted, “A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort…and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (…and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful… argument [for the reality of God]. (Keller, 27).

Counterpoint #3 – We’re Not In This Alone

Timothy Keller tells of a woman in his church who once confronted him about sermon illustrations in which evil turns out for good. This woman’s life hadn’t quite turned out that way so far—she had lost her husband in an act of violence during a robbery, she had several children with severe mental and emotional problems—and so she insisted that for every one story in which evil turns out for good there were a hundred more in which there was no conceivable silver lining. We can no doubt resonate with this woman’s feelings that despite all of the cool logic of the previous two counterpoints, there is something that just still leaves us feeling outraged at the suffering we see. “So what if suffering and evil don’t logically disprove God,” we might say, “I’m still angry and all this philosophizing doesn’t get the Christian God off the hook for the world’s suffering.”

In response we offer the third, and perhaps most powerful counterpoint of all, namely, that God isn’t trying to get off the hook for suffering, but instead very deliberately entered into it all and put himself on the hook. In Jesus Christ, God experienced the greatest depths of pain, and so, while Christianity doesn’t provide a reason for each experience of pain, it does provide deep and powerful resources for facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair (Keller, 27-28).

In fact Christianity is alone among the world religions in claiming that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ, and therefore knows first hand our feelings of despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment. On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced something much more difficult—a cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours (Keller, 30). When Jesus cries out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it is not a renunciation of God but rather the mourning of one infinity calling to another, but calling nonetheless.

So, if we ask why God doesn’t stop evil and suffering and then look at the cross of Jesus Christ, we still don’t know what the answer is, but we know what the answer isn’t. The answer isn’t that God doesn’t love us, or that God somehow isn’t with us in it all and through it all. In fact, it seems that God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he entered into it, to be Immanuel—God with us—even in our worst sufferings (Keller, 30-31).

Counter-Counterpoint #1—God Is About Redemption

Which brings us to a counter- counterpoint, which is to say, a point of our own that we can offer in discussions about suffering in the world. Here’s the question: which God would be more powerful, a God that reached in and intervened, stopping suffering before it ever happened (but then contradicting human free will), or a God who allowed human free will to run its evil course and then was able to unravel the mess? To my mind it is the latter God, which is to say, the God who resurrects and redeems all our suffering who is clearly the more amazing and awesome God.

In another great book I highly recommend called The Shack, by William P. Young, God puts it this way in a conversation with the book’s main character: “…there are millions of reasons to allow pain and hurt and suffering rather than to eradicate them, but most of those reasons can only be understood within each person’s story... But your choices are also not stronger than my purposes, and I will use every choice you make for the ultimate good and the most loving outcome” (The Shack, 125).

The biblical view, and the Christian claim, is not in a future that is merely a consolation for the life we never had—“there, there, now, that was too bad but it’s going to be okay”—but a future that is a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater.

“Just after the climax of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” The answer of Christianity to that question is—yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost” (Keller, 33).

________________________________________________________

Doesn’t A Biblical Faith Collide With Science? – Dr. Brant D. Baker

Mark 8:1-21

Top

In this third of a five part series on objections to Christianity we are visiting the notion that a biblical faith collides with scientific fact. A common assertion by many in our day and time is that the advances of science have made obsolete the artifacts of religion. We live, after all, in an enlightened era, where it is assumed that objective proofs are superior to subjective beliefs. No, no: give us the data and empirical evidence of science, and spare us the soft hopes and dreams of religion. There is a certitude, a confidence, a reassurance that can only come from dealing straight-forwardly with hard, cold facts.

But, as you may have perceived by now, there tends to be a logical flaw in many of the claims brought against faith, and the flaw is that sweeping statements of certitude about the way things are tend to be based on faith that things are in fact another way. So in this series we have seen that when people say, “All religions are basically the same,” they are essentially making a faith statement. What they are really saying is that they have faith that all religions are basically the same because clearly such a statement cannot be proven to be any more true than any one of the unique claims of individual religions. Similarly when people say there is no purpose in human suffering they are again making a faith claim, essentially saying, “There is no purpose that I can see, or that makes sense to me, therefore I take it on faith that human suffering has no purpose.”

The same turns out to be true for those who make sweeping assertions about the superiority of science over religion. Not that we should be terribly surprised—science is known for making confident sweeping assertions. For example,

Ÿ In 1943, Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Ÿ In 1949, Popular Mechanics, in an issue forecasting the relentless march of science, predicted that "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

Ÿ In 1968, commenting on the recent invention of the microchip, an engineer with IBM said, "But what ... is it good for?"

Ÿ In 1977, Ken Olson, the chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

Ÿ And my favorite, from 1981, is the confident assurance of none other than Bill Gates, who said, "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

All of these men thought they had the hard empirical evidence of science on their side when they made these statements, but what they really had was faith in the science of their day, a faith which turned out to be somewhat misplaced.

And so it is that when someone says that science has proven there is no such thing as miracles, they are not making a statement of fact, but are instead taking a leap of faith. As Timothy Keller says in his book, The Reason for God, “To be sure that miracles cannot occur a person would have to be sure beyond a doubt that God didn’t exist, and that is an article of faith. The existence of God can be neither demonstrably proven or disproven” (Keller, 86).

Another way to put this is to say that science is good for what science is good for. Science has brought us many wonderful improvements of life in just about every sphere. But when science makes an assertion about the supernatural it has strayed outside of its arena. It is looking for things it isn’t set up to see, a little like a man looking for his lost car keys under the streetlight, because the light is better there. Science is looking for God under the lights in its empirical arena, when in fact God may not be best seen there at all (Keller, 86).

To investigate at this matter more closely let’s consider the work of Ian Barbour, a scholar who was awarded the 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in recognition of efforts to create a dialogue between the worlds of science and religion. As an aside, Barbour, a physicist and a theologian, was the second of three sons of an American Episcopalian mother and a Scottish Presbyterian father, both of whom taught at Yenching University in China.

In his 1965 book, Issues in Science and Religion Barbour proposed four different ways that science and religion might relate to each other, and these four classifications are still used by scholars today. The first way is to say that science and religion relate to each other primarily in conflict, and that tends to be what we hear about the most because it makes for good headlines and sound bites. Ironically enough, this end of the spectrum includes not only people like renowned scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins, but also proponents of the new earth theory, extreme creationists who argue for a rigid interpretation of Genesis and believe that the world may only be a few thousand years old.

At the other end of Barbour’s spectrum is the view that science and religion are completely independent from one another. In this view faith is a private, subjective matter and doesn’t speak to the empirical realm at all. In this view science and religion have nothing to say to one another.

As is often the case in such debates, the truth probably lies in a more complicated and nuanced view somewhere between the extremes. Barbour suggests that “dialogue” and “integration” are the two middle positions, and more and more people, scientists included, seem to be not only willing to move into dialogue, but even to search together for a truly integrated view, one that balances and respects both science and religion. Let’s take a quick look at what that might mean in terms of the two most difficult conflicts between faith and science, one of which is evolution.

An Integrationist View of Evolutionary Theory

We all know that as evolutionary theory has made its way more and more into the mainstream in the past century clashes between scientific proponents and religious opponents have became more and more pronounced. And, as you are no doubt aware, those wars continue today, although largely in obscure school districts fighting over which science will be taught.

But in the view of many who seek integration between science and religion on this point, including myself, the Bible was never intended to be taken as scientific textbook to begin with. Trying to present the Bible as the basis for a scientific theory is like trying to turn the Constitution into the basis for a religion. You could do it, but since that was never the intention of the document to begin with, you would eventually run into some pretty stout challenges. Similarly, using the Bible as the basis for science runs into its own stout challenges, not least of which is that the Bible never makes such a claim for itself. The Bible seeks to tell us about God, and the most important scientific claim that is made in the Genesis story of creation is in the first four words, “In the beginning God…” In the beginning God…, and whatever happens after that—evolution, creationism, intelligent design, or something yet to be named—no matter, it all comes from God.

The most thoughtful approach seems to be an integrationist view that says basically, yes, there is some pretty strong evidence for evolution, but there is also some really strong evidence that evolution alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Consider the cell, which is the smallest living unit of an organism. Cells are often called the building blocks of life and they are pretty amazing little things. Lewis Thomas, in his book Medusa and the Snail stands in awe at the amount of information contained in a human cell, and says that the mere existence of a cell should be viewed as one of the greatest astonishments of the earth. In fact, he says, people ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.

Why is Thomas so amazed, you ask? Because there is simply no way that a cell, even one, could have come into existence merely by chance. You see, a cell is itself made up of lots and lots of smaller parts, the predominant one being something called enzymes. A professor of applied mathematics has calculated that the statistical probability of nature randomly forming even one enzyme is 1 in 10^40,000. Here’s how big that number is: if you took all of the stars of all of the galaxies in the entire known universe, and then collected all of the atoms of all of those stars, you would have one chance that one of those atoms was the one you were looking for. Yes, responds the evolutionist, but nature has had a long time to work on this. Perhaps, you should say, but this is only one enzyme, and you need at least several dozen more for even the more basic human cell, and then you need some variety to create skin cells, and lung cells, and brain cells, all specialized to their particular part of the body, and then you need to assemble all of them in proper sequence for the 30,000 or more human genes, and finally you have to glue all 100 trillion human cells together to make a person. By-the-way, the professor who did the statistical calculation showing the improbability of even one enzyme being formed randomly in nature was an atheist, and once he had seen his own work he had to concede that this was clear evidence of some supernatural hand at work. Evolution may or may not be a process that God uses, but the bottom line is that, in the beginning, God was at work.

Miracles --Three Points for Integrationist Pondering

The issue of miracles is a bit more difficult of a challenge to the thoughtful Christian. Miracles raise not only scientific questions about the violation of the natural order but also theological questions about why God intervenes sometimes but not others.

There are at least two things the thoughtful integrationist Christian can say about miracles in the Bible. The first might be to remember that a miracle is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, what appears to be a miracle to one person may have a perfectly good explanation to another. Think about all of those Star Trek episodes where the crew of the Enterprise lands on some primitive planet and finds themselves worshipped as gods because they can heal a deadly disease. What is thought to be a miracle is simply a better knowledge of science. In fact we don’t even have to go into science fiction to understand how this works: if you and I were to travel back in time even 100 years and tell people that we had a treatment for cancer they might think us miracles workers. But if we were to travel back another fifteen hundred years and make the same claim some people would surely bow.

So the fact that science now understands more than ever about the nature of God’s creation shouldn’t be so much a cause for boasting among that community, let alone a cause to claim that God is no longer relevant, but instead should be a cause for the kind of wonderment suggested by Lewis Thomas, especially when we come to the humble realization that there is likely quite a bit more yet to be learned! Please be very suspicious when anyone claims to know everything about anything, because the very real likelihood is that there is embedded a deeper mystery still to be discovered.

And so, when Jesus performed miracles it makes sense to imagine that, as a human he was drawing on insights revealed to him by the Divine Scientist, and that the God who invented the universe has some deeper insights into how it functions than we do. Seen in this way, miracles do not so much violate the laws of science but instead utilize even deeper laws of science we have yet to learn about. Put another way, if reality is like an onion, where we can keep peeling away layers and learning more, then let’s posit that the reality of a primitive people has three or four layers. Let’s further posit that our reality has twenty five or thirty layers. So how many layers do you think God’s reality probably has? A hundred? A thousand? Who knows??? Bottom line: God knows a heck of a lot more science than even Richard Dawkins!

The second thing that the thought Christian might say about miracles is that God always leaves room for human doubt, which is to say, for our freedom to reject that a divine cause is at work. Free will seems very important to God, and it would be a violation of that free will if miracles forced us into a place that we had to believe God was acting because there was simply no other explanation.

The text from Mark 8 is a great example of this. The main action, what we usually focus on, is the miraculous feeding of the four thousand (which is different than the feeding of the five thousand). But what is so interesting is what happens next. Jesus has an encounter with the Pharisees and they ask him for …a sign! Are you kidding me??? Jesus has just fed four thousand people and they want a sign? But wait, it gets worse! Jesus gets in the boat with the disciples, the guys who have been with him 24/7, and he tries to warn them about the Pharisees by talking about leaven or yeast. The guys miss this point completely and start to stress out because someone forgot to pack the bread. “Oh my gosh,” they say to one another, “Jesus is mad because we don’t have any bread…!” No, Jesus wasn’t mad about bread, but he’s mad now that you guys don’t get it! And here it’s possible that Jesus may have raised his voice at least a little. “Do you still not understand? Do you not yet get the fact that I am Lord of all Creation, and a little thing like bread is the least of our worries?”

Well, apparently they didn’t get that, and it is hard to simply chalk that up to the boys being a little dense. You’d think that out of the twelve at least one or two would be tuned in at any given moment. How could they not see the miracles going on right in front of them? Because God always leaves room for our doubt. Need more proof? Check out the amazing statement from Matthew 28:17. Jesus has been resurrected and called the eleven together, and Matthew says, “When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.” Now there’s a statement! The resurrected Christ is standing in front of you, but there is still room for doubt!

A final point to ponder in thinking about miracles is to wonder about their intended purpose. Miracles in the Bible, says Timothy Keller, don’t lead simply to belief, but to worship. “Jesus’s miracles in particular,” he says “were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: ‘See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!’ Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be a restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus’s miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming” (Keller, 96).

Amen.

________________________________________________________

How Accurate Could The Bible Really Be? – Dr. Brant D. Baker

2 Timothy 3:10-17

Top

Last fall I called for a meeting with my son’s high school history teacher to challenge, among other things, her statement in the classroom that there are so many versions of the Bible that we can’t really know what it said for sure. It was clear to me that she was a secular person, and so I gently asked her where she came by this opinion. She waved her hand in a vague way and told me that “lots of credible scholars” have this opinion. I asked for names and sources—she is a history teacher after all!—and was given a meager reference that I was later unable to track down. I don’t really blame her for not knowing the source of her idea—we live in a culture bombarded with information and ideas flow like water across our brains: some sink in but most just leave a faint damp spot we can’t quite identify.

Whatever its source there is a prevailing opinion in secular culture that questions the origins, legitimacy, and truthfulness of the Bible. Some think that the Bible stories were written so late and cobbled together so poorly that their historical accuracy is in question. Others believe that even if we do think the Bible we have is accurate to an original source we still can’t trust what we read there because it was all made up to support a particular point of view. Still others share the view of my son’s history teacher, and claim that there are just too many differences and variations for anyone to know with certainty what the Bible may once have said.

As Christians we have some good answers to these questions and suspicions, which we will get to in just a moment, but we also have to be honest and say that in the final analysis we are accepting on faith that the Bible is the holy word of God. It is not a faith that is naïve or blind or without some fairly good supporting evidence, but in the end it is still a faith decision. This shouldn’t alarm us too much: even the atheist is exercising faith, faith that there is no God. It is no stretch to say that everyone ends up making a certain number of assumptions about how the world works, some of which are based on reasonable facts, but a number of which are based simply on what that individual believes to be true.

Have said that, let’s deal with some of the more common objections raised against placing one’s faith in the Bible, as opposed to placing one’s faith in one’s own opinion.

1) The “Accuracy” Objection

Let’s begin with what I’ll call the “Accuracy” Objection. The Accuracy Objection puts forward the idea that the Bible was written too long after the events it supposedly reports to be trusted to accurately represent what went on. This is the most straightforward and bold attack of the secular humanist, saying essentially that the Bible is at best a collection of faded memories. At worst, and probably more likely to the mind of those with this view, the Bible it is an outright fabrication.

For the sake of this conversation we’ll focus mostly on those stories of the life and teaching of Jesus, the four accounts that Christians call the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is important to note that the Accuracy Objection can most often be found in the mind of someone who has never actually taken the time to read one of the gospel accounts, let alone all four. The starting point for getting past the question of accuracy is to actually look at what the gospels say, and when we do that we find lots and lots of little details that are of the sort only found in first hand, eye-witness accounts. As noted by Timothy Keller in his book, The Reason for God, “[i]n Mark 4, we are told that Jesus was asleep on a cushion in the stern of a boat. In John 21 we are told that Peter was a hundred yards out in the water when he saw Jesus on the beach, that he then jumped out of the boat and together they caught 153 fish. In John 8, as Jesus listened to the men who caught a woman in adultery, we are told he doodled with his finger in the dust… None of these details are relevant to the plot or character development at all” (Keller, 107) These kinds of details only come from someone who was an eyewitness and, for reasons having to do with the psychology of recollective memory, has held on to a stray detail about the number of fish or doodling on the ground.

On the other hand, if you or I were making up a story about Jesus we would include some details, but they would be details that would drive the story forward in an exciting way. Above all we would clean up the messy parts that would likely be an embarrassment to later followers. So, for example, Jesus wouldn’t cry out on the cross that he had been abandoned by God—no, no, no! That just won’t do if we want to create a heroic spiritual being. And we certainly wouldn’t have women be the first ones to discover his resurrection—no, no, no! Let’s have Herod, or Pilate, or some respected Jewish High priest be the first one there. And can we please get some apostles who aren’t petty and jealous and almost impossibly slow-witted, and who in the end come out as cowards who in a variety of ways fail their master (Keller, 105)?

The fact is that when you take the time to read what is actually in the gospels it quickly becomes apparent there is a real story here, not some foggy memory or fictionalized account. And all of that before we deal with the fact that manuscript evidence discovered over the past one hundred years has forced even the most critical scholars to conclude that the gospels were all originally written quite early. That’s right, there are fragments of original manuscripts that date back far enough to prove that the gospel of Mark was written in the seventies (that’s the original seventies, not the 1970s…), Matthew and Luke in the eighties, and John in the nineties (Keller, 264). Why is this so important? Because it means that many of the original eyewitnesses were still alive when these documents were written and would have contradicted what they say if the gospel writers were lying. In fact, the gospel of Mark even invites this kind of fact checking, when Mark says that the man who helped Jesus carry his cross to Calvary was the father of Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21). “There is no reason for the author to include such names unless the readers know or could have access to them. Mark is essentially saying, ‘Alexander and Rufus can vouch for the truth of what I am telling you, if you want to ask them’” (Keller 101).

Some of you may know the name of Anne Rice. She was raised Catholic, but then became a completely secular person and grew to fame for her books about a vampire rock start named Lestat. It shocked the literary and media world when Rice announced that she had returned to Christianity, but even more shocking was the reason she gave. In researching a novel called Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Rice did extensive research about the historical Jesus, reading the most respected scholars she could find. The main thesis of these respected authors was that the biblical documents we have aren’t historically reliable, but Rice was amazed how weak their arguments were. She writes,

Some books were no more than assumptions piled on assumptions….Conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all…The whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified…that whole picture which had floated around the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years—that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read (Keller, 99).

2) The “Limited Voices” Objection (aka the Da Vinci Code Objection)

A second objection to biblical authority comes via “The Da Vinci Code.” Both the book and the movie helped forward the supposition that the Bible was put together by a small group of powerful people, and done in such a way as to secure their political and ecclesiastical positions at the expense of other voices.

The “Limited Voices” Objection doesn’t challenge the truths of scripture outright, but by casting doubt and suspicion on the selection process there is an indirect effect of degrading the Bible as a whole. You have probably read Time Magazine or watched on some PBS documentary and learned of the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Mary, or some other obscure ancient book that used the word “gospel” in the title and yet was left out of the Bible. The subtext to these arguments is clearly along the lines, “The Bible can’t be trusted if it chooses to ignore such worthwhile material.”

The truth is that a) these other so-called gospels are much later writings, and b) they are not on the same caliber as the biblical gospels. The Gospel of Thomas, the best known of these pseudo-gospels, can’t be dated any earlier than 175 A.D, or about 100 years after the canonical, or biblical, gospels were already in widespread use. Adam Gopnik, writing in The New Yorker, has said that these gospels were so late that they no more challenge the Church’s faith than the discovery of a letter written in 1950 in defense of King George would challenge the basis of American democracy (Keller, 102-103).

The idea put forward in The Da Vinci Code that Emperor Constantine supposedly determined the New Testament canon and arbitrarily cast aside other supposedly more authentic gospels flies in the face of the actually historical record, which suggests that by the time Emperor Constantine got around to asking for a firm list of books to be included in the New Testament there was almost universal agreement based on more than 200 years of practice. Rather than imposing his own preferred beliefs on Christianity in order to use it as a tool for his political agenda, it seems much more honest to say that Constantine simply went with what had already been sorted out by an up-until-then persecuted church.

3) The “Hodge Podge” Objection

The “Hodge Podge” Objection says that there are simply too many versions of the Bible, in too many languages, spread over too many years for us to have anything even remotely resembling the original. Like the “Limited Voices” Objection this view is too shrewd to come out and directly say that the Bible is untrue: it wants to allow that, perhaps once the Bible was a divinely inspired book, but over time that divine message has been lost in mis-translation and mis-handling of the original text.

This was exactly the question Lee Strobel had on his mind when he went to visit Dr. Bruce Metzger, one of my former professors at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the man who, until his death two years ago, was the leading expert on the New Testament. Strobel records their conversation in his book The Case for Christ as follows,

“I’ll be honest with you,” [Strobel] said to Metzger. “When I first found out that there are no surviving originals of the New Testament, I was really skeptical. I thought, ‘If all we have are copies of copies of copies, how can I have any confidence that the New Testament we have today bears any resemblance whatsoever to what was originally written?’ How do you respond to that?”

“This isn’t an issue that’s unique to the Bible,” said Metzger. “[I]t’s a question we can ask of other documents that have come down to us from antiquity as well. But what the New Testament has in its favor, especially when compared with other ancient writings, is the unprecedented multiplicity of copies that have survived.”

“Why is that important,” asked Strobel.

“Well, the more often you have copies that agree with each other, especially if they emerge from different geographical areas, the more you can cross-check them to figure out what the original document was like. The only way they’d agree would be where they went back genealogically in a family tree that represents the descent of the manuscripts.”

“OK,” said Strobel. “I can see that having a lot of copies from various places can help. But what about the age of the documents? Certainly that’s important as well, isn’t it.”

“Quite so,” said Metzger. “And this is something else that favors the New Testament. We have copies commencing within a couple of generations from the writings of the originals, whereas in the case of other ancient texts, maybe five, eight, or ten centuries elapsed between the original and the earliest surviving copy….”

Strobel then asked Metzger for some hard data—what kind of numbers and dates are we talking about here? Metzger replied by saying that there are more than five thousand cataloged New Testament Greek manuscripts in existence today. That number may or may not impress you, but listen to what Metzger went on to say,

“The quantity of New Testament material is almost embarrassing in comparison with other works of antiquity. Next to the New Testament, the greatest amount of manuscript testimony is of Homer’s Iliad, which was the bible of the ancient Greeks. But there are fewer than 650 Greek manuscripts of it today. Some are quite fragmentary and come down to us from the second and third century A.D. and following. When you consider that Homer composed his epic in about 800 B.C, you can see there’s a very lengthy gap.”

So, let’s review. There are 5,000 biblical manuscripts dating to within 100 years of the originals, and only 650 manuscripts of the Iliad, dating to within 1000 years of the original. And yet you don’t hear anyone debating the accuracy of the Iliad. No, the scope of their doubt is limited to the Bible, which they would have us believe is somehow untrustworthy.

Do you see what’s going on? Not to put too fine a point on it, but essentially a small but influential group of scholars hostile to Christianity have gotten enough press in Time Magazine and on PBS to re-write history and lead an increasingly secular culture to embrace a position it wants to believe. Not heard in this conversation are voices like Metzger’s, or that of Sir Frederic Kenyon, former director of the British Museum, who once said that “in no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament.” The bottom line is that there is undeniable proof to refute any assertion that suggests the New Testament documents are unreliable to the originals. It is simply not an argument that holds any water.

The little chart below is one I use in teaching our New Member Class, designed in brief to make the same point we’ve been making in this sermon, namely, that the supposed differences between the biblical versions cast doubt on the reliability of scripture. As you can see from the chart there are three basic types of translations that tend to fall along a kind of continuum, on the one end attempting to render the translation word-for-word, in the middle attempting to render the translation into current equivalent language, and on the other end, interpreting the text in a contemporary way and even adding some additional words to help clarify further. But even with all that the differences between these three basic types of translation tend to be quite minor. The Ten Commandments still say we aren’t to murder, commit adultery, steal, and so on, and John 3:16 still says that the word of God’s love to us in Jesus Christ is still a word to which we can and must cling if we are to have hope.

We have already granted that as Christians we choose to take it as a matter of faith that the Bible is God’s word, just as those who reject that word are doing so in faith as well. But our faith is not simply in human logic and wisdom, but is in the God of All Creation, who has not only gone to all the trouble to give us the Word of Life, but has preserved it as well.

Amen.

Bible Translation Comparison Chart

There are three basic types of translations that tend to fall along a continuum:

Literal	Dynamic Equivalence	Paraphrase
*Attempts a word-for-word translation*	*Translates text into current equivalent language*	*Interprets text into contem-porary idom and supplies help to understand meaning*
Example: King James	Example: New Revised Standard	Example: The Message
Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Exodus 20:13-15	You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. Exodus 20:13-15	No murder. No adultery. No stealing. Exodus 20:13-15

________________________________________________________

The Church Is Full of Hypocrites! – Dr. Brant D. Baker

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Top

A man was shipwrecked on a remote island for twenty years. After nearly giving up hope, he finally spotted a ship on the horizon. He set off flares, attracted the attention of the sailors, and they rescued him from the island. As they were leaving the captain noticed three structures on the island. Impressed, the captain inquired about the buildings. “The one on the left is my house,” the man said, “and the one on the right is my church.”

“Then what is the building in the middle?” the captain asked.

“That one?” the man sniffed, “that’s the church I used to go to, but it was full of hypocrites!”

The issues of hypocrisy and false pride are the scourge of religion in general and Christianity in particular. There just seems to be something about the church that brings out the worst in people, or perhaps more rightly said, since people tend to be worse than even they want to admit, church people tend to pretend they are better than they are. It is no secret that Jesus saved some of his most pointed remarks not for the prostitutes and thieves, but for the scribes and Pharisees. His comments about hypocrisy in the Sermon on the Mount are most obviously aimed at these religious professionals and lay leaders, warning against an outward show of piety aimed only at impressing other people. As his ministry developed Jesus became even more pointed in his critique of the religious establishment. Consider, for example, these choice words from Matthew’s gospel:

²⁵“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

¹⁵Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

²⁷“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. (Matthew 23)

Sadly, not much has changed. Now instead of scribes and Pharisees we have preachers and elders, and not too few lay people, all of whom seem prone to project a larger-than-life view of their moral purity and religious devotion. To be sure some of this exaggeration is in the eye of the beholder—it’s easy to judge someone else as thinking themselves superior when we ourselves are feeling inferior. But it is also the case that a good bit of this critique is well-deserved. How did we get into such a mess?

Two Root Causes

1) Because of what church people tend to believe is true about themselves

I believe there are two root causes to the critique that the church is full of hypocrites. The first has to do with what church people want to believe is true about themselves. Most folks have a pretty high opinion of themselves, and go to pretty incredible lengths to try and convince other people that this high opinion is the truth. The way we dress, the way we talk, the way we spend our money and our time, are in many cases all carefully planned to convey an image that we wish others to see and believe. We would like everyone around us to believe that we have it all together, regardless of what is really true.

In his book When Bad Christians Happen to Good People, author Dave Burchett imagines how it might be different. In his vision a church service that would run a lot like an AA meeting. If you showed up late, rather than staring you down, people would stand and embrace you (like the do in AA) realizing that you may not have made it at all. And when newcomers arrived they would come to the front of the sanctuary and say, “Hi, my name is ___ and I’m a sinner.”

“Hi, ---“ the congregation would respond, “We love you and we are here to help.”

More likely, however, if this were to happen, an usher would gently take us by the arm and try to lead us quietly away while a deacon called the straitjacket express… (p 28).

All this being said, I actually think that most of us here at FPC have a pretty good handle on who we really are. We largely understand that “good character” has more to do with a loving and stable family, something that is out of our control and is given to us as a gift. Ministering here in this community as we do we have a pretty good understanding of the fact that folks coming out of an unstable family background, who have had poor role models, and an ensuing history of poor decisions are, as a result, burdened with all kinds of insecurities, issues, and idiosyncrasies. Such folks may struggle with uncontrolled anger, shyness, and addictions, all of which they bring to the church in hopes of finding help and healing. For someone outside of the church to look in and say, “Wow, for a place that’s supposed to be all about high morals there are sure a lot of hypocrites there,” is unfair in the same sense that it would be unfair to criticize a hospital saying, “Wow, for a place that’s supposed to be all about health there sure are a lot of sick people there” (Keller, 54). The truth is that there are a lot of us in here who are unhealthy, and if we forget that it not only proves the truth of our lack of health, but also of course leaves us open to the charge of hypocrisy.

2) What people outside the church tend to believe is true about Christianity

A second reason that the church ends up vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy has to do with what people outside the church believe is true about Christianity. The fact of the matter is that both Christians and non-Christians really shouldn’t be that surprised when people of other faiths, and perhaps even people of no faith, live morally superior lives to our own. That may have caught you off guard, so let me say it again: both Christians and non-Christians really shouldn’t be that surprised when people of other faiths, and perhaps even people of no faith, live morally superior lives to our own.

Why? Because most other major world religions are works-based, that is, they believe that humanity relates to God mostly through living a good life. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches exactly the opposite. In the Christian view Jesus does not tell us how to live so we can merit salvation. Rather, Jesus comes to give grace and forgiveness and salvation, none of which have anything to do with our goodness. Christians believe that God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and acknowledge their need for a Savior (Keller, 19).

Another way of saying this is that by-and-large people inside the church and people outside of the church still haven’t fully processed the core message of Jesus Christ, namely, that we are in relationship with God only by sheer grace. We hear it over and over, we sing about it time and again, we speak about it among ourselves and with anyone who will listen, but the truth of the matter is that many many Christians continue to live and act as though their salvation was their own responsibility. And so, once more with feeling, please repeat after me:

There is nothing I can do

Or nothing I can fail to do

That will make God love me

Any more than God already loves

Through Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.

Ok preacher, wait a minute, are you saying that we don’t have to be good? One might come to such a conclusion, but let’s be clear that Jesus’ critique of the religions establishment in that part of the Sermon on the Mount we have before us today is a critique aimed at people who would be judgmental and condemning of others, but unwilling to look at their own lives. They have all the externals right, but it springs from a wrong motivation. Christians are to aim for goodness, but as a response to all we have received from God in Christ. We aren’t trying to earn God’s favor, rather, we are trying to say thanks for God’s grace.

Two Specific Cases

The charge of hypocrisy in the church can be made everyday in personal observation, but a much bigger charge is often made against the whole of the church over issues like slavery. There is no denying the deep stain on Christian history that has been made by the fact that the Christian religion was dominant in the nations that bought and sold slaves, and so the church must share in responsibility, along with the larger society, for what happened over many centuries. But it is also true, and somehow conveniently lost from history until recently, is that it was Christians who first challenged the institution of slavery, and who in many instances led life-long crusades against it. Many of us probably saw and enjoyed the moving story of William Wilberforce told in last year’s moving “Amazing Grace.”

Social historian “Rodney Stark notes how historians have been desperately trying to figure out why the abolitionists were willing to sacrifice so much to end slavery. He quotes the historian Howard Temperley, who says that the history of abolition is puzzling because most historians believe all political behavior is self-interested. Yet despite the fact that hundreds of scholars over the last fifty years have looked for was to explain it, Temperley says, ‘no one has succeeded in showing that those who campaigned for the end of the slave trade…stood to gain in any tangible way…or that these measures were other than economically costly to the country.’ Slavery was abolished because it was wrong, and Christians were the leaders in saying so. Christianity’s self-correcting apparatus, its critique of religiously supported acts of injustice, had asserted itself” (Keller, 63-64).

Another cause in which the institution of the church has been accused of hypocrisy, but which belies a deeper and more nuanced story of faithfulness, is associated with Hitler’s Germany. One of the men who made a difference in that conflict was the famous Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was serving two German-speaking churches in London when Hitler came to power. Bonhoeffer refused to stay where it was relatively safe for a man of his convictions, instead returning to Germany to head an illegal seminary for the Christian congregations that refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the Nazis. An outspoken prophet, he opening critiqued both the government and that part of the church which was so spiritually dead as to cooperate with Hitler and turn a blind eye to the horrors of his regime.

Marx argued that if you believe in a life after this one you won’t be concerned about making this world a better place, but the opposite argument is also true: if this world is all there is then why sacrifice them for others? Bonhoeffer correctly saw that anyone who follows Christ must live like he lived. Living out that conviction eventually got him arrested and, shortly before the Allied liberation, he was hanged. Before his death, in one of his last letters from prison, Bonhoeffer wrote,

It is not a religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. [This is the meaning of repentance]: not in the first place thinking about one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ (Keller, 66).