One-Year Anniversary

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This week marks the end of the first year of ifaqtheology. This blog is dedicated to “thoughtfulness in religion.” My hope at the beginning of August 2013 was that there were some people out there who would appreciate a more thoughtful approach to religious and theological questions than is generally available. I have tried to avoid oversimplifications, appeal to emotion, dramatic titles and controversy. Instead, I have taken an analytic approach designed to clarify and get to the foundational issues that must be decided. I hope that these essays have been helpful to those who read them.

I am in the process of compiling and editing the past year’s essays. 53 in all! And I am adding “questions for discussion” to each essay. In the near future I will make an announcement about how I will make these available.

The Coming Year

I plan to dedicate the coming year to the question, “Is Christianity True.” As I look back on the past year, it is apparent that the question, “Is Christianity Good” dominated my thoughts. This year I want to shift to the issue of truth. The two questions are related, because how could something false be good or something good be untrue? But I am convinced that our culture lacks the conceptual tools even to understand the question, “Is Christianity True.” Hence I believe I have to begin by talking about the concepts of reason, truth, reality, knowledge, faith, opinion, fancy, ideology, fact, and others. I also believe we live in an age that has lost the conceptual categories to conceive of anything as real that is not physical. I want to consider the question of God’s existence, the questions of different religions and theism, pantheism, deism, and other forms of belief. I will address the issue of place of the Bible in faith and the authenticity and truth of New Testament Christianity, that is, the original faith. Toward the end we must address the questions of alternative forms of Christianity and how Christians should view non Christian religions. We may even have occasion to reflect on how Christianity should be embodied in the world today.

I hope to write a weekly installment in this series. However, I may not be able to do this because I am also writing one book and editing another…as well as teaching three classes in my role of Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University. Thank you for your faithfulness and patience. As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback.

 

Give Me a Sign! Or Discerning the Will of God in a Complex World

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It’s a question serious Christian young people often ask. And perhaps older people ought to ask it more than they do: how can I discover what God wants me to do and where God wants me to go? Asking this question is a good indicator that you are on the right track. Many people never think to ask whether they are living their lives according to God’s will. They have no comprehension of what this means or why they should seek the divine will. They follow the crowd in seeking pleasure, fame and wealth without any awareness of an alternative. They sleepwalk through life. They are possessed by the demon-spirit of the group.

But not you! You are awake. Desiring to know and do God’s will shows that you are aware that we were created for a purpose and that we have work to do. You are aware that only by doing God’s will can we accomplish anything lasting. And that is good, very good.

But sometimes we become anxious because we don’t receive clear sign of what to do next and where to go. We fear that we might fail to discern God’s will and make a serious mistake. We might major in the wrong subject, take the wrong job, move to the wrong state, buy the wrong car or marry the wrong person.

Anxiety about the consequences of our decisions is understandable; it plagues everyone. But for those who want to do God’s will there is no real reason to be anxious. For God is able to lead us to where he wants us to be and use our lives to accomplish great and lasting things even when we have no clear sign from God. God can do this even when we are anxious and confused. What matters is that God does his will in our lives, not that we know exactly how God is doing this. Perhaps, then, our anxiety about knowing the will of God is more about desire for psychological tranquility than passion for God’s will. So, keep this truth clearly in mind: we may fail but God will not. And even in our failure God accomplishes his will.

Does this mean that I stop seeking God’s will? No. Not at all! It means that we should seek it in complete confidence that God’s working his will does not depend on my finding it. How then may I seek God’s will in this new way of confidence? (1) Get clear that you really want God to guide your life according to his will. Pray that God will purify your heart from all double-mindness and hypocrisy. Make sure that it is God’s will you want and not merely relief from the anxiety of life’s decisions.

(2) Determine to do good and right in whatever situation you find yourself. Don’t allow dreams of future great deeds blind you to the opportunities of the present. We know that God wills us to love our neighbors. Do what is clear now and allow God to take care of what is obscure. (3) God created you and has been preparing you for his work since before you were born. You have God-given abilities and interests that will fit the tasks God has assigned you. If you are not good in math, it is not likely that God wants you to become an engineer. (4) God also works through reason and common sense, which are also his gifts. Use them.

Next week will conclude the first year of ifaqtheology! I’ve posted 57 essays for a total of 48,700 words. I will celebrate that milestone by reviewing the past year and announcing the theme for year number 2.

On Fame and Friendship Or Why Do I Need the Crowd’s Approval?

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This post is the second in a two-part series dealing with a struggle I feel between my ideal of living for truth, goodness and righteousness and my desire to be loved, admired, approved and accepted by other people. In the following essay I explore the relationship between fame and friendship and try to get at why we need the approval of others, hoping that by being thoughtful about our need for approval we can get free it to some extent:

When we think of fame and the desire to become famous, we tend to think of a little vice characteristic of a small group of people. Perhaps everyone has the potential to become obsessed with becoming famous and maintaining fame, but very few of are placed so that fame is a real possibility. So we don’t think we need to arm ourselves against it. What is the desire for fame? Or what does one desire in wanting fame? Fame is the condition of being known and admired by people whom you do not know. Fame can be measured quantitatively, but the exact line between obscurity and fame is difficult to mark. In desiring fame, then, one wants to be known and admired by many people, many more than one can engage with as friends, even more than one can ever meet.

Fame is related to friendship. Friends know us and think well of us. But friendship must be mutual and among equals. Fame is neither. But some of what we want in friendship we look for also in fame. Friends are insurance against want in times of need, and a band of friends is stronger that an individual. Fame also brings economic benefits and other types of power. Our friends’ acceptance enables us to think well of ourselves. Perhaps, then, the desire for fame is a variant (on a lower ethical level) of the desire that drives us to seek friends. Its lower ethical level is obvious. The lack of mutuality and equality is clearly less noble. But the desire for fame has another imperfection: fame is only loosely based on truth. Friendship is a bond between persons who relate in truth. The relationship between the fan and the celebrity is based on a fantasy in the fan’s mind that has been created or occasioned by the celebrity. (Or do fans create celebrities?) So fame possesses a certain superficial resemblance to friendship, but the substance is missing. The fans mistake their fantasy for a real person and famous people mistake the adulation of their fans for love and admiration. Fame floats on a cloud of fantasy while friendship walks on the rock of truth.

But desire for fame and friendship are instances of more basic impulses that are exemplified in other ways. Let’s speak first of the psychic level of being. We want to be heard, seen, and noticed by other human beings. We want to be objects of their consciousness, to be included in their psychic field. First of all, we must take into account that interaction with others can be negative as well as positive. Overwhelmingly, we want others to experience us positively, as admirable, worthy and attractive. We want them to smile, to speak to us, to touch us. When this field of psychic interaction is positive, we feel similarly about the other person; and we feel good about ourselves. When the other person frowns, growls, curses or acts aggressively we feel angry or ashamed or afraid; and we feel the urge to defend our dignity to ourselves. The other person says in effect, “You are rejected, not worthy of the friendship of others, an outcast.” We can tell ourselves this is not true; but we can be only partly successful in convincing ourselves. Why is this? Because the very definition of being an outcast is that one is cast out! And in this case one has been cast out. Our only defense is to remember the acceptance others have given us in the past or to get away from the enemy and find one’s friends to experience again their acceptance. Merely telling yourself that this person is wrong and thinking of your positive qualities can have only limited success in removing the impact of rejection. Doubt remains and this doubt disturbs our sense of well being.

Why are we so dependent on others’ opinions of us? The simple version may go something like this: I exist and my identity is constituted by my relationships to others. If those relationships are broken or threatened, my existence and identity are threatened. But I know that I evaluate things and make judgments about them in view of their effect on my health and joy. I want to experience good and beautiful things because I need them to maintain myself. We intuitively believe others think the same way. They too evaluate everything in their field of experience as good or bad, pleasing or unpleasant in relation to themselves and act accordingly. In my reflexive relationship to myself, I want myself to be pleasing to others because, if I am not pleasing to them, they will reject me. And if they reject me, my existence and ability to enjoy life will be greatly diminished; and this calls the value of my existence into question.

We tend then to base our judgments about ourselves on how we believe other people see us. We don’t have any other obvious vantage point from which to judge ourselves, for our judgment concerns whether or not we possess qualities that please others. If we don’t think we please others, then what other judgment can we make than that we don’t possess pleasing qualities! And if we believe we do not possess pleasing qualities, we cannot believe others will accept us. We then see ourselves as rejected and deprived of the possibility of a sense of well-being. But if life presents no possibilities for joy, why live?

But we are not merely passive. Since we are uncertain about whether or not we possess pleasing qualities, we become proactive and attempt to make ourselves pleasing to others by acquiring or pretending to possess qualities we think they would like. They of course are doing the same thing! In this way fashion and prejudice become incarnate in a crowd and no one has a basis in truth on which to live. Fame is a particular form of this phenomenon. In seeking fame I seek redundant confirmation that I possess pleasing qualities. Some people may simply fall into fame—though those who attain fame accidentally soon become addicted to it—but many seek it. And they seek it by becoming, acting and dressing in ways designed for no purpose other than to attain and maintain fame.

But none of these strategies work to give us real dignity or identity. Human judgments about the value and dignity of other people are usually superficial and prejudiced. Human beings cannot assess all the qualities of other human beings and all their relationships. Many qualities are hidden within and hence inaccessible to us. We can judge only the present, and knowing the place of a person in the total matrix of the world would require omniscience and eternity; only from such a vantage point could definitive judgments be made. And as I pointed out above, we cannot judge our own dignity or the status of our qualities from within. We need an external criterion.

Only God can judge our dignity, our usefulness and fitness for life. Our desire to be approvingly known, so that we can accept ourselves, will be frustrated unless we direct that desire toward God. God knows us as we truly are and as we shall be. But God’s knowledge of us is not based on mere observation. God knows us because in his love for us he takes account of us. God knows our sins and weaknesses—we don’t have to hide and pretend to be something we are not—but has other plans for us. God plans to make us beautiful, significant and worthy. If we seek to be known by God, to know God and to know ourselves as God knows us (not as the crowd knows us), our desire will be directed to the only place where it can be fulfilled. We can never be satisfied until we know we are known and loved by one who knows all things and cannot be mistaken. Not until we know who we are and why we exist will the restless desire for attention and admiration find its end.

Now we live in faith and hope. However, if we believe we are known and accepted by God, we can begin to experience freedom from slavery to the judgments of others. We can minimize the number and intensity and futility of the things we do for no reason other than to please others so we can think well of ourselves. If rather we love ourselves because we believe God loves us, we won’t seek fame, and even if it comes anyway we will be less likely to be deceived by it. Our energies can be directed toward real things, good and truly beautiful things; we can live for things that matter, things that last rather than the ephemeral fantasies of the crowd.

Asleep in a Sleepwalking Society

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In the next two posts I want to address a struggle I have. I don’t think I ‘m alone in wanting to be known, liked, approved and even praised by others. I struggle with this because it seems to me that I ought to live for what is truly good and right regardless of what other people think. I ought to seek truth and never be satisfied by mere appearances. But the desire to be appreciated by others wants to dominate. I ought to want to please God more than I want to please other human beings. But how do I do this? I cannot guarantee that I am pleasing to God simply by becoming obnoxious and rude to human beings and acting as if I don’t care what others think. How can you associate with others and care about them without becoming addicted to their judgments about you? Perhaps, I ought to be overwhelming aware of God’s presence at every moment. That would certainly help. But how can you maintain awareness of God when other things are so close and so loud? In these posts I give you some thoughts I’ve had as I’ve tried to work this out:

On a recent hike I had the experience of realizing that I had been walking for some time completely absorbed in the movements of my body and the passing scenery. I had been totally unaware that it was I who had been having these experiences. What a strange feeling! It’s as if you had vacated your body and mind and become dispersed in the flow of things outside but now you’re back and you can’t remember what happened while you were gone. I’ve experienced this more than once, and I don’t think it’s rare in others. You suddenly realize that you exist here and now in relation to this particular environment and you have to take responsibility for what you are doing. You have a vague memory of having been absorbed in thought or in remembering the past or anticipating the future.

Have you ever caught yourself staring at an object that at first appeared to be something meaningful but soon became simply a meaningless focal point that holds you in a “blank stare”? After a while something will draw us out of our trance and force us to distinguish ourselves from the flow of sensation. Why is the feeling of coming back to oneself, of realizing that we are here now, so strange?

When we become so absorbed in an object or thought that we lose consciousness of ourselves, we lose a sense of time, of our relatedness to the object and of the relatedness of the object to other objects. We are so lost in the present moment that we have no sense of the present moment’s being present. The present moment feels present only because of its relationship to the past and future. Hence the experience of breaking the hold of the object over our minds is the experience of the present becoming really present in vivid distinction from the past and of becoming aware of our existence as our existence in clear distinction from the existence of other objects. I like to call this experience “waking up” because of its similarity to awaking from sleep, in which dreams seem real and time is distorted.

Perhaps the experience of waking up feels so strange because we are so seldom awake. In those strange moments of awakening we become aware of a reality that had escaped our minds previously. It is strange to discover that you had forgotten you exist! We now feel our finitude and temporality because we have disengaged with mere ideas and the flow of feeling, which have a feel of timelessness about them. In daydreams we can do anything and never die but in waking up we realize what sleep obscures. So waking up is a shock.

In observing others and myself, I’ve concluded that most people live much of their lives asleep. Our senses are taken over by what goes on around us and our consciousness is absorbed into the flow of events external to us. Our feelings and emotions are driven by events without. And waking up is a shock.

We live in a society of sleepwalkers. We play roles, live out narratives and read scripts others write for us. We desire what we are told to desire and we hate what we are told to hate. The need for approval and admiration from others is too strong. Hence, the desire to please others, to seek admiration, to be in other people’s minds approvingly can easily become the dominating force in our lives. Our consciousness becomes totally focused on the attempt to place the right thoughts of ourselves into the minds of others, and our thoughts of ourselves become totally determined by what we think other people think about us. A conscious life absorbed in striving to create an image of ourselves in other people’s minds and attempting to discern what other people think of us differs little from sleep. We live only in our imagination of the image we want others to see in us and in the dreadful doubt of what the crowd really thinks.

What would it mean to wake up from this dream? We would suddenly become aware of what we had been doing: wishing to be someone worthy of love and working so hard to discover what the crowd loves, to be what others like and to convince the crowd that we are that person. To wake up involves becoming aware that we were wishing so intently to be someone else that we forgot who we actually are and failed life’s simplest task, that is, to be ourselves, to take responsibility for our own existence. And the crowd consists of individuals doing exactly what we are doing, living to please others, so that by imagining that they really are pleasing to others they can think well of themselves. It is a house of cards, illusions supported by other illusions with no basis in truth.

But what can wake us from such a mutually interlocking set of illusions? An overwhelming experience of beauty? A brush with death? An unexpected kindness? We need something to make us aware of our God-relation—something outside the flow of sense, a word beyond the predictable script society hands us. Even a little word, such as “Wake up! You have been asleep too long!” might prepare us for that huge Word: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5:14).

Divine Forgiveness—Is it Possible? Is it Just? Forgiveness And The Christian Life (#3)

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We receive power to forgive those who injure and insult us from our confidence that God will restore our dignity, dry our tears and heal our wounds. And by exercising this power, we invite God to work through us to begin the work of restoring, comforting and healing the world even in this life. But what gives us confidence that God can and will forgive and make all things right?

There are two distinct issues in this question: how do we know God will make all things right? And how can God do this without neglecting justice? The first issue is a bit easier to address. In the Old Testament, God’s people were given means by which to restore themselves to God’s favor after they sinned. Through sacrifice, repentance and prayer, the people were able to find forgiveness and renewed confidence in God’s favor. The assumption underlying these means of grace and forgiveness is that God is willing and able to forgive, though not condone, sin. God’s forgiveness serves his ultimate purpose of creating a faithful people. God is willing to forgive in view of a future where sin is overcome completely.

In the New Testament, God’s willingness to forgive takes surprising and dramatic form. God sends his eternal Son to live as a human being should live and die as a sinner. In the tradition of Old Testament sacrifice, Jesus Christ bore the sin of the world in his death. Jesus takes the injury and insult of sin into himself and overcomes it. And God raised him from the dead. The gospel is the good news that God has unambiguously demonstrated his willingness to forgive and his desire to free us from the power of sin and death. As the Apostles Creed emphasizes, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” God’s revelation in the life and work of Jesus Christ is blessed assurance that God will make all things right.

The second issue is concerns how God can forgive without condoning sin and injustice. And this is not an easy thing to understand. With reference to the injustice human beings do to each other, perhaps we can gain some insight. Unlike us, God possesses the power and the know how to work things out in his providence in history and in the future resurrection of the dead so that injustice is overturned and made to serve the good. Paul says this clearly, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:18-37). Injury and insult will be eclipsed by glory. And we will be more than conquerors, that is, the victory will be so triumphant that it makes the enemy look insignificant and battle effortless. Hence God can forgive injustice in the present in view of his plan to overcome it in the future. [And, in case you are wondering about it, Paul tells us that plan is “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (Eph 1:10)]

But what about the insult and injury that injustice directs toward God? How can God forgive that? Where else could we turn for an answer to this question other than to Jesus Christ! How did Jesus deal with the insult and injury toward himself? He endured it and neutralized it. Since Jesus reveals the heart of God toward sinners we must conclude that God forgives sin by enduring it, suffering it and overcoming it through love. Jesus’ sacrifice is the historical event of God’s eternal love toward sinners. Jesus revealed and made effective in human life God’s eternal willingness to endure the hostility of sinners in view of his future plans for their salvation.

And when we forgive our enemies we also participate in a historical event of God’s eternal love toward sinners in hope for their ultimate repentance and salvation.

The Power of Forgiveness: Forgiveness And The Christian Life (#2)

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Last week we discovered that forgiveness is the act of renouncing revenge for insult or injury suffered. In forgiving those who hurt us we rely on God to do what we cannot, that is, to overcome injustice, restore our dignity and heal all wounds. Forgiveness is an act of faith.

In today’s post I want to consider the positive side of forgiveness. In forgiving, we refuse to take revenge. We don’t act. But in not acting in a destructive way, we do an act of love. The first step in loving your enemy is not returning injury for injury and insult for insult. The loving dimension in forgiveness is the space it gives for repentance. In forgiving wrongs we demonstrate the possibility of freedom from the cycle of “eye for an eye” justice. Forgiving our enemies expresses confidence in God’s power to change enemy. It is an act of loving faith, a faith that believes in the power of God’s love to do for others what it has done for us. In forgiving, we suffer by endure insult and injury for the enemy’s sake. And in suffering for our enemy we become instruments through which the suffering love of Jesus touches the enemy. This activity of suffering love brings us to the joyful side of forgiveness.

Think about the unhappiness we bring on ourselves when we keep a record of every insult and injury done to us! There is no limit and no end to the wrongs we encounter even in one day. The unforgiving, like emotional bloodhounds, can detect insult in the slightest gesture and threat of injury the least movement. The list of negative emotions associated with our sensitivity to injustice is long: fear, anger, hatred, envy, resentment, bitterness, sadness, nostalgia, regret, despair, guilt. Fear anticipates injury, and anger defends against insult. Anger becomes hatred when it is nourished with memories of ancient wrongs. Envy sees injustice in others getting what we would like to have, and resentment turns to bitterness when we feel we’ve been passed over for honors we deserve. Nostalgia unhappily remembers long passed happiness, and sadness settles in when hope of better days fades into expectation of endless disappointment. And these feelings are compounded by the dim awareness that we are responsible for our unhappiness.

But what a difference forgiveness makes! Faith in God’s power at work for us and his love toward us frees us from the power of insult and injury. In place of fear, anger, hatred, envy, resentment, bitterness, sadness, nostalgia, regret, despair and guilt, we find love, joy, peace and hope. The causes of negative emotions have been exposed as impotent. Insults are empty nothings, lies with no basis in reality. Nothing and no one can diminish our worth and dignity because it is grounded in the unchangeable love of God for us. And injury cannot touch our true lives, which are “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 2:3). Hence we can forgive all wrongs. Our experience of insult and injury, instead of occasioning unhappy emotions, becomes an occasion to experience the love of Christ acting through us, healing, saving and repairing the world.

Next week we address the question, “How can God forgive?” We can love because God love us, and we can forgive because God can forgive…but what empowers God forgive?

To be continued…

 

Making Sense of Forgiveness: Forgiveness And The Christian Life (#1)

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I am often asked about Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness: “Do we have to forgive everyone, no matter what they’ve done to us?” “Can we forgive someone who has not asked for forgiveness?” “What do we do when we cannot forgive someone?” Like many concerns that arise from trying to live the Christian life, these questions take some things for granted that we need to get on the table if we are to find satisfactory answers. For instance, what does it mean to forgive? And, is it always right to forgive? In this post I’d like to consider into some of these fundamental questions.

When someone injures or insults you, you get angry. Your first impulse is to injure and insult them in return in an act of revenge. To forgive means to renounce the act of revenge and let go the emotion of anger. I don’t want to place too much weight on this, but you can see a hint of the meaning of forgiveness even in the English word “forgive.” Instead of “giving it to them” you forgo that pleasure. And the Greek word aphesis begins with an “a” (alpha), which often negates the idea of the root word. So, forgiveness is a negative idea. It’s about not doing something that feels so natural, that is, taking revenge and harboring anger.

But what about justice? We always feel that injustice has been done when someone injures or insults us. The desire for revenge is the impulse to put things back into balance. But what happens when we forgive? Aren’t we allowing injustice to stand? Or worse, are we even justifying injustice by not punishing it? Forgiveness does not seem to address this problem. It does not put things right again. And we can’t convince ourselves that the injustice done does not matter. Something ought to be done about it! Because of Jesus’ teaching, we feel we ought to forgive, but it doesn’t seem quite right. Perhaps, these problems are part reason we find it so difficult to forgive.

I think it has now become apparent that forgiveness makes sense only if we believe that God can and will make things right. We can “let go” injustice done to us because God never lets it go. Our power to forgive derives from our faith that God’s love refutes every insult and God’s power will heal every injury. In forgiveness, we deny the power of the enemy to lessen our dignity with insult or do us lasting harm with injury. We trust God to punish injustice or atone for it or overrule it and make it work for our good. Either way, God can do what we cannot. Forgiveness, then, is not an act of injustice but an act of faith.

To be continued…

Consenting Adults: Body, Soul and Sex (#4)

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As I have documented in previous posts in this series, the dominant culture in western societies acknowledges no public validity to natural law, human nature, divine law, or traditional wisdom. It recognizes no natural obligations individuals have to one another. The good and the right are defined subjectively, the good being understood as what pleases you and the right as “what is right for you.” Hence modern people feel reluctant to impose moral restrictions on others or to condemn their behavior; and they feel anger toward those who do so.

Nevertheless, there is one moral principle the dominant culture can feel good about imposing on others. It is called the “harm principle”, and was most famously stated by John Stuart Mill (Liberty). We’ve all heard people say, “Do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else.” It can be stated in various ways. But the principle is this: one must give an individual liberty of action up to the point where it begins to restrict the liberty of others. Hence the only condition under which our contemporaries feel justified in condemning a behavior is when one person coerces another person, that is, when one does something to another that the other does not want done to them. Whatever one does with and to oneself concerns only oneself and indeed falls completely outside the ethical sphere.

My goal today is to subject the “harm principle” to analysis, to show what it presupposes and where it leads. Clearly, the primary goal of the “harm principle” is to set limits on behavior that make sense within a fundamentally libertarian framework. (Without limits of some kind liberty becomes anarchy.) The harm principle defines the self in terms of will and the associated concepts of freedom, self-expression, authenticity, preferences, and a subjective view of the good (as the good-for-me according to my assessment). It is noteworthy that the self is not defined as God’s creature made in God’s image and responsible to God. The self is a will that does one thing: it acts to realize its desires. And it is limited only by the existence of other selves that also act to realize their desires, not in view of divine law, natural law or an objective understanding of the good passed down in tradition.

The fundamental instinct of the modern self is that it should be able to do whatever it wills. But most people stop short of advocating complete anarchy, realizing that this condition is war of each against all. Hence attempting to stay as close to the fundamental instinct as possible, they argue that liberty should be limited only by liberty itself and will by will. This move avoids appealing to human dignity, divine creation or other principles to limit liberty. In fact, the harm principle is not so much a principle as a pragmatic accommodation to the contradiction within the idea of liberty itself. There is no principle within the idea of my liberty that demands that I respect your liberty. Since modern culture refuses to acknowledge a law above human liberty, it resolves the inherent contradiction in the idea of individual liberty by turning to an even bigger will incarnated in the state. The state decides the scope and limits of individual liberty by deciding what individual or group activities cause harm to others. In a supreme irony liberty sells itself into slavery to escape its internal contradictions. Henceforth legality replaces morality.

Now let’s relate the well-worn phrase “consenting adults” to the harm principle. Our contemporaries have nothing to say about how human beings should act within, for and on themselves because they assume that when we do something with our own bodies we do so freely. The only moral question the dominant culture poses about the activities that two or more adults perform on each other concerns consent or lack thereof. There can be no rules for what two consenting adults do with each other derived from the harm principle; for harm is measured in terms of consent and coercion, not in terms of right and wrong or good and bad. To object to the activities of consenting adults one would need to appeal to other principles—human dignity, divine law, natural law—something modern culture adamantly refuses to do.

Here is the logical trajectory and emotional engine that drives the incessant change in sexual morality in contemporary culture. The dominant culture acknowledges no principle that can limit what individuals do with their solitude or what consenting adults to with and to each other. The harm principle cannot override the principle of mutual consent because “harm” is defined as coercion or lack of consent; and you cannot coerce a consenting party. As one after another formerly forbidden behavior is permitted, it is always accompanied with the judgment that no harm is being done; and if harm is defined as coercion, this judgment is self-evidently true. The human imagination is prolific in devising ways to excite pleasure or relieve pain. (Is it too much to say that it is unlimited?) And unless a third party is harmed (i.e. coerced) the modern person can make no moral objection to anything consenting adults wish to do. All claimed moral objections to behaviors that have been declared healthy by the culture will be interpreted as arising from a desire to dominate others or from sheer bigotry. And oppression and bigotry are deemed harmful to society. Since the state has been given the power to prevent harm, moral objections to approved behaviors will be subject to state coercion.

The Point of the Series

What am I trying to say in this series? (1) To those who reject divine law, natural law and traditional wisdom about what is good for human beings and celebrate maximum liberty as their sole value, I issue a warning: you are standing on the edge of the abyss of moral nihilism. Liberty is a purely negative concept. It means the absence of limits, and the absence of limits means the absence of distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong; and that is the essence of moral nihilism. If liberty to pursue your desires is your sole principle, there can be no principle by which to set limits to liberty. Such limits to liberty as the harm principle are in fact unprincipled and arbitrary impositions on liberty. It’s just a matter of time until some people transgress those limits into violence and murder in the name of liberty. If there is no God, there is no moral law; if there is no moral law, “all things are permitted.”

(2) To those who wish to remain serious Christians, I say: do not be fooled by the culture’s superficial appeals to tolerance, compassion and respect for other people’s autonomy and search for happiness. Underneath this beautiful veneer lies the rot of moral nihilism. Moral nihilism cannot affirm the good and right; it can only destroy. The dominant culture’s appeals to tolerance and compassion serve only one purpose: to undermine the idea that there is an objective good and right. Do not allow the false charge of intolerance to intimidate you into giving up or minimizing the importance of our faith that God is our Creator, that human beings are made in God’s image and are responsible to him for everything we do, and that there is a divine law and a natural law and that the Scriptures embody divine wisdom about what is good and right. Do not be deceived by the idea that desire and consent alone make an activity good or right.

End of series

Christ or Aphrodite? Body, Soul and Sex (#3)

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In the previous post I placed before us an ideal for the meaning and use of our bodies. It’s a lofty ideal, I know. But it’s not too lofty given the greatness of human destiny. We don’t sink into a life devoted to sensual pleasure because we think too well of ourselves; we do not think well enough. Our noble task is to bring our bodies under the control of reason guided by divine light. In this way we participate in God’s eternal plan to unite all things to himself in Christ (Eph 1:10). By spiritualizing our bodies we make them instruments useful for bringing glory to God and communicating love to others.

By the transforming power of the Spirit of Christ unruly bodily urges can be made to serve the most beautiful harmony, as we see in Paul’s teaching about marriage in Ephesians 5:21-33. In submission to Christ, the union of husband and wife becomes a mystery participating in the Mystery of Christ’s union with the church. The union of body and soul in marriage signifies the larger uniting that is taking place in Christ. By their submission to Christ in the power of the Spirit the chaotic urges of the male and female bodies and souls are ordered, united and directed toward the higher end of the unity of all things in Christ.

As we all know, however, few people live up to this ideal. Indeed, most have never imagined it. Every society has rules about who can have sex with whom because without such rules even the most primitive civilization would not be possible. These rules and the punishments for breaking them vary from society to society and from age to age. I am not an anthropologist, but I know this: whatever the rules and punishments governing sexual behavior plenty of people will break them. And I think the explanation for this is very simple. For many, the urge for immediate sensual pleasure or acceptance is stronger than the threat of distant punishment or respect for order. To pursue this phenomenon further I would need to enter into psychology, a subject in which I have little competence, or the theology of the fall and original sin, which would lead us down a side trail. Instead, I want to deal with a cultural phenomenon that raises a very important moral question.

There is a growing trend in mainstream western culture to reject all moral and legal restraints on the use of one’s own body, especially in any area that has to do with sex. This trend involves more than the demand for tolerance. It demands approval and even celebration of whatever an individual does in this area. This cultural wave is full of ironies and contradictions, which I will point out in future posts. But for now let’s focus on the moral/philosophical perspective that underlies this cultural change and energizes it.

First, let’s consider the logic of individual autonomy or liberty, which finds its deepest roots in the seventeenth-century Enlightenment. For 350 years a significant number of western political and moral thinkers have been arguing for increasing the control individuals have over their lives and, correspondingly, lessening the sphere governed by state, society and associations. Thinkers have proposed a variety of justifications for such liberation: (1) nature has endowed individuals with reason; hence, they should be given space to use it to make their own decisions; or (2) nature has given individuals the desire for pleasure and happiness; hence, they should be given space to pursue it as they see fit. How many times have you heard the maxim that “individuals should be able to do whatever they want as long as it does not harm others”? This rule was most famously articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book, On Liberty (1859).

A second moral/philosophical perspective was articulated by thinkers of the Romantic Movement. Rather than basing their appeal on the power of reason common to all people, these thinkers emphasized the unique feelings and sensitivities of each individual. No two individuals are alike; hence, there is no single way of life good for everyone, no one path to happiness. Moral rules are by definition general and apply to everyone alike. But if each individual must follow a different path to find happiness, depending on their unique combination of feelings, desires and needs, conforming to a one-size-fits-all moral code will produce unhappiness and alienation in individuals. According to this perspective, to force, insist or pressure an individual into moral conformity is to condemn that person to an unhappy life.

These two moral perspectives have been at work in our culture for 300 years, in art and architecture, in literature, the performing arts, in movies and television, in education and law. In light of these two ways of evaluating human behavior, think about how the dominant culture approaches the body and sexuality. At least until it affects them negatively, the average person in our society thinks that each individual owns their own body and possesses the right to use it as they see fit. As long as an individual is not hurting anyone else, the average modern person would be unable to think of a good reason to limit that individual’s freedom to do as they wish. Any such restriction would be considered unreasonable, attributable only to bigotry, exploitation or oppression; and in our world these attitudes are considered especially detestable. Ironically, then, the demand for adherence to a universal moral code will be judged immoral by the dominant culture.

Our culture has also internalized the romantic notion that every individual is unique and must pursue a unique path to happiness. The average person can make no reasonable response to a protest of the following type: “Do you want to condemn me to a life of unhappiness? You are following your path! Let me follow mine! Do you think you deserve happiness but that I do not?” There is no answer to this complaint within the romantic view of morality. Add to the romantic view of the individual the near deification of sexual experience that dominates our culture and suppression of the individual search for happiness becomes blasphemy. (Or “hate speech” in contemporary terms.) Sexual ecstasy is portrayed as if it were the meaning of life and the only way to ultimate truth and eternal happiness. In the popular mind, to miss out on sex is to miss heaven, to be less than a full human being. And to disapprove or deny individuals whatever form of sexual fulfillment they desire is to condemn them to a living hell. No modern person could feel good about themselves for doing that, nor approve of anyone who did.

One thing is missing in all this: God. The modern culture of autonomy, self-ownership, unique individuality, sensuality, and deified sex takes no note of God, creation or the moral law. Everything is evaluated from within the human framework. But once you acknowledge God, the whole thing falls to the ground. We have to seek again for the truly good and right. And we raise our minds again to that lofty ideal and catch a vision of our true greatness: we are priests of creation and images of God whose destiny is Spirit-bonded union with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I for one will not settle for less.

To be continued…

The Spiritual Dimension of Sex: Body, Soul and Sex (#2)

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God created our world. Nothing in it is evil in its sheer existence apart from its use. Rivers, oceans, mountains, sun, moon and stars! From galaxies to fireflies, everything is good. Plants and animals are good. Human beings as God’s creatures are good, body and soul. As Genesis says, human beings are made in the “image and likeness of God.” The image of God refers not simply to the mind or soul alone, nor to the body alone. It refers to the whole human being. Because human beings possess intelligence they can “see” God’s character, perceive his will, and know his truth. And because they possess the ruling power of reason, they can do his will even against resistance.

But because they possess bodies they can make these divine qualities visible and active in the world of creatures. Human beings are meant to be the rulers and caretakers of the created world. As body, we share in the nature of all other creatures, but as soul we are open to the Creator of all things. As the union of body and soul, our God-given task is to reorient the time-bound, circular order of nature to the spiritual order, to integrate it and elevate it into this higher order. Everything praises God by its sheer existence and beauty. But in us creation becomes conscious of itself and God and finds itself praising its Creator. We are called to be the priesthood and choir of creation. What an amazing calling!

In our role as priests of creation, our bodies acquire a sacred meaning. The human body is the first sphere of created nature to be spiritualized and reorient to God. The body, like the rest of creation, is time-bound and circular in its ordinary order. Our task is to break open that futile order and make our bodies holy temples that ring with praise to the Creator and shine with divine light. We serve as priests for the rest of universe by making our own bodies the first fruits of a spiritualized creation, examples in miniature of the destiny of the whole creation. In spiritualizing our bodies—and through our bodies the whole creation—we do not destroy the created order of nature; rather, we direct the natural order to its supernatural destiny.

But what about sex? If God calls us to become priests of creation and to make our bodies into holy temples that anticipate the eternal destiny of the creation, how does sex fit into it?  We have many urges. Some urges move us toward things and some repel us away from things. We want to live, breath, eat and drink, and experience sexual union. We fear pain and death. We usually think of these urges as located primarily in the body because of their instinctual and unthinking nature and because we share them with other animals. Other desires and fears are associated with the soul, for example, desire for approval and fear of rejection.

But the strict division of body and soul is artificial, and this becomes obvious when we consider sex. The desire for sexual union is multidimensional. The obvious natural end of sexual union is reproduction. Though physical pleasure accompanies sexual union, it is clearly not its natural end. It is a means and motive. Higher animals usually take care of their offspring and nurture them until they can fin for themselves, but animal parents cannot understand that their offspring come from sexual union. They cannot consciously decide to mate in order to have offspring. Hence the physical urge for sexual union in animals is purely instinctual and irresistible. The end achieved by nature was not sought by the animals themselves.

Human beings, too, possess the physical urge for sexual union. But the rational and spiritual dimensions of human beings dramatically transform the urge for sexual union by placing it into a radically different context. For human beings, too, the natural end of sexual union is a child, and this end should never be forgotten or rejected. But human beings, in contrast to animals, know about this natural end and, hence, can consciously adopt it as their own personal end. Physical desire precedes union, but for human beings sexual desire is not purely instinctual, and it is not irresistible.

Physical pleasure accompanies sexual union, but the pleasure is not purely physical. Human beings can receive joy from giving pleasure to each other and hence raise physical pleasure, which is limited to each individual’s body, to a spiritual act of love and union. But sexual union in its spiritual dimension cannot be isolated from the whole relationship between the two. In sexual union one enters that most intimate and tender area of human soul where dwell our deepest needs for approval and presence and our equally deep fears of rejection and abandonment. Great care must be taken. For human beings, sexual union is a soul-damaging lie unless it is also a symbol of a life of self-giving.

The idea of reserving sexual union to a man and woman committed to life-long, loving marriage is not an ideological construct of a by-gone era. It is the life form love must take to realize itself fully in this relationship. It’s part of our task of spiritualizing and reorienting creation to its supernatural end. And it is the only way to elevate sexual union to a level worthy of human beings who are made in the image of God, body and soul. Only eternal self-giving love can make sexual union a means of transforming our bodies into temples of the Holy Spirit. Only by treating our bodies and the bodies of others as sacred objects can we fulfill our vocation as priests of creation.

To be continued…