Month: June 2018

If Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder, Is Faith in the Brain Chemistry of the Believer? #christiansanddepression

Some years ago, I came across the story of Dr. Michael Persinger (Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology of Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada) and his amazing “god helmet.”

Dr. Persinger invented a contraption that directs magnetic impulses to specific parts of the brain.  The doctor discovered that by targeting low-level impulses at the temporal lobe, he could induce mystical god-experiences (among other mental states) in his patients.  I recall an account (which I cannot find now) where a professed atheist, of all people, suddenly “experienced god” under the influence of Dr. Persinger’s magnetic helmet.

I was not the least bit surprised by Dr. Persinger’s experiments because I

An early version of the ‘god helmet’

read about them years after my own life-changing experiences with antidepressant medicine.  Antidepressants probably helped to save my life.

Accepting my need for such medication (taken in combination with counseling/talk-therapy) has been, as far as I can tell, the single most beneficial step that I have taken in securing a healthy, stable state of mind and a positive outlook on life; it has certainly made an extraordinary difference in my relationship with God.  (I am careful to say “I have taken” because I believe that the Holy Spirit was/is active in the entire process.  We can never isolate the physical from the spiritual. My Savior always gets the glory, even for the effects of antidepressant medicine).

Yet, I know how strange, even offensive, my claims may sound to many Christian people.  But it seems to me that this is one of the unavoidable complexities we are stuck with as material creatures created for spiritual relationship.

For whatever reason, our Creator decided to make human materiality and human spirituality inseparable.  If we want to blame someone for that messy, uncomfortable connection, then we must blame God for giving us bodies in the first place – bodies that would be mangled in the Fall by sin.

Please, do not blame the people whose flawed brain chemistry cripples their genuine desires to know and to love Jesus.

Because the LORD decided to make us embodied, physical creatures, our weak, sickly, degenerating bodies are an essential part of God’s equation for knowing Him, experiencing His presence, responding to the Holy Spirit and grasping the things He wants to say to us through Scripture.  So, brothers and sisters, I am open to whatever help medical science can offer me in keeping my body running the way it is supposed to in order that I may serve my Lord for as long as I can, just as I am supposed to.

I realize that skeptics offer a different explanation for this connection between magnetic waves, neurochemicals and spiritual experience.  Many have suggested that brain chemicals don’t just facilitate our experience of God.  They actually create the God-experience within our minds.  In other words, “God” or what-have-you is literally a figment of our neurochemically inspired imaginations.

Religious skeptics point to humanity’s long history with naturally occurring hallucinogenic drugs. Many ancient people turned to ritually induced hallucinogenic experiences that they believed bridged the gulf between this world and the next.  Amazonian Indians use a concoction called ayahuasca.  Some Native Americans use peyote in their quest for the spirit world.

What makes my experience with antidepressants any different?

Perhaps what I call an “improved relationship with Christ” is simply a chemically induced spiritual euphoria that I happen to label with Christian terms.  What about that possibility?

Here’s what I think:

First, as with all things religious, I openly confess that my preferred answers are intertwined with my Christian faith, just as the atheist’s preferred answers are a result of his/her faith in disbelief.

That I am experiencing the real God who actually exists independently of myself can neither be proven nor disproven by empirical evidence or logical argument alone. I choose to believe in God for a host of different reasons (both objective and subjective) that lie well beyond what we can address here in this discussion. (Maybe I will take up those matters in the future. Obviously, the issues of faith and unbelief long antedate the study of neurochemicals and brain chemistry).

Second, I came across a useful analogy offered by a neurobiologist some years ago.  He compared brain chemistry to the way cells work in the human eye. Our retinas are lined with two different types of cells: rods and cones.  Rods allow us to see black and white.  Cones perceive color.  Or do they?

Maybe cone cells only create the illusion of a brightly colored world splashed with red, blue, green, scarlet, aqua marine and the many additional hues we all know and love.

Do the cone cells create an illusion of color or do they facilitate the perception of colors that are really out there?

Answering that question does not require faith.  Just ask the person suffering from color-blindness because their retinas lack healthy cone cells.

So, I wonder, why can’t neurochemicals work for our brains in a way that is analogous to the way cone cells function in our eyes?  They help (or, perhaps, hinder) us in perceiving the presence of a God who is really there.

Obviously, much more could be said about these things.  Perhaps I will have more to say about my thoughts on and experiences with depression, medication and connection with God in the future.  But, for the moment, I think this is maybe enough.

I hope that my periodic discussions of depression I have provided some small measure of help and encouragement for those who needed it.

Following the Messiah-No-One-Expected and Very Few Want Today

Carlo Corretto

I have been busy enjoying a visit from some dear, long-time friends this past week, hence my brief vacation from blogging.  But I am back today with this excerpt from the book Why, O Lord? by Carlo Carretto.

The tremendous life-altering challenge of following the real, historical, Biblical Jesus rather than the convenient, sanitized, nationalized Jesus of American evangelicalism is a contemporary version of the New Testament call to discipleship that has confronted every generation (in its own, unique way) throughout church history.

It is no easier today than it was 2,000 years ago.

I have described what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah-no-one-expected (or much wanted) in my book, Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture.

My new book, I Pledge Allegiance, describes the life-or-death struggle facing the American church right now in this age of Trump .

Carlo Carretto eloquently makes the same point in his book, and I believe it is well worth sharing.  I do not know Mr. Carretto, but he writes like a man who knows the real Jesus:

“Goodness! How difficult it is to believe in the sort of Messiah that Jesus of Nazareth represents!

 To believe that we win by losing our very selves!

To believe that love is everything.

To believe that power is a great danger, wealth slavery, comfortable life a misfortune.

 It is not easy.

 This is why you hear [people] in the street say, ‘If there was a God there would not be all this suffering.’

 Two thousand years have gone, and there are still Christians whose doctrinal notions belong to those ancient days when the power and existence of God was revealed by displays of strength and the victory of armies. And especially by wealth and having more possessions.

 The real secret had not then been received.

Nor is it received very easily even today.

Hence the blasphemy in general circulation denying the kingdom’s visibility, given the ordeal of suffering and death.

 The old teaching that we, the Church, must be strong still feeds our determination to possess the land and dominate the world.

 We must make ourselves felt. We must keep our enemies down. We must scowl. We must win, and to win we need money, money, money. And to have money we need banks, we need the means and we need clever bankers. How can we do good without means, without money? Let’s have a big meeting, and then any opposition will be shamed into silence. Well, we must defend our rights, the rights of the Church. We must defeat our enemies.

 Enemies, always enemies on the Church’s horizon!

 Yet Jesus has told us in no uncertain terms that we no longer have any enemies, since they are the same people we are supposed to love, and love specially.

 Can it be that we have not understood?

 Don’t we read the Gospel in our churches?

 How long shall we wait before following the teaching of Jesus?”

Indeed…how long?

When Knowing Jesus Is Depressing #christianityanddepression

I know what it feels like to find Christianity oppressive and guilt-inducing.

It is true that certain people within the church often seem to think that the main goal of Christianity is to make others feel condemned.  But those who struggle with undiagnosed depression don’t need anyone else’s help to find themselves trapped inside guilt’s dank catacombs. We typically discover ourselves wandering throughout guilt’s labyrinth without any outside assistance.

The unhealthy tendencies of a fallen mind (and everyone’s mind is fallen since Genesis 3) can discover a variety of creative ways to turn the gospel of God’s grace into a script for endless self-accusation.

Here is another excerpt from a message on depression I gave to students at Calvin College years ago:

“For much of my life, knowing Jesus was not an experience of grace or forgiveness. Neither was it a confrontation with authentic guilt. Rather, it was predominately an experience of failure and accusation where nagging, anonymous guilt became a never-ending state of mind. 

Spiritual Torment

 “Being a Christian was like falling through the rabbit hole with Alice in wonderland.  I was chasing after something that was always just around the next bend in the tunnel.  For years of my life, from the moment my eyelids opened in the morning till they closed at night, I would be filled with the gnawing feeling that somehow or another I had let God down.  I didn’t know how; I just felt it. 

 “Each day unfolded beneath the thick, dark shadows of an anonymous cloud of accusation, never tied to anything specific but always there accusing me of unrelenting failure. 

 “I once told a friend that life was like a huge jig-saw puzzle, and somehow or another my part of the puzzle was missing a few pieces.  Try as I might, I could never seem to find those missing pieces.  God knew where they were. He was waiting for me to figure out what I was missing, but I could never find the answers.  And He would never give me any hints.

 “Have you ever heard the Christian chorus, “The Joy of the Lord Is My Strength”?  I always hated that song.  Whenever we sang that song at my childhood church or my high school youth group, my insides would tie themselves in knots because it never, never made any sense to me. 

 “As far as I could tell, the joy of the Lord was a hoax.  There was no such thing, at least not for me. 

The Torment of St. Anthony by Michaelangelo

 “Knowing the Lord brought duty, challenge and unbelievable expectations, but in all my life I couldn’t remember a single time when knowing Jesus had brought me joy or gladness.  It just didn’t happen for me; and try as I might, I couldn’t find the 10 easy steps that would change my experience on that score.  I knew all about the power of positive thinking but trying to believe in that power only added to my guilt because it was just one more thing I could not do.

 “That guilt drove me for much of my life.  It drove me to be the very best student I could be, because maybe then Jesus would be satisfied.  It drove me to be the best Inter-Varsity staff-worker I could be.  It drove me to become the best pastor that I could be.  It drove me to try to grow the biggest church that I could grow, because maybe then I could wake up in the morning – just once – with a sense of peace, feeling that Jesus was finally satisfied with me.  (Let me tell you, working to become the best at something does not make anyone the best at anything.  I know that too, as a staff-worker, graduate student and pastor).

 “Does any of this sound familiar?  I suspect that many people may recognize themselves….

 “I now know that my struggle with this particular breed of spiritual depression was hopelessly (in my case) intertwined with my psychological, clinical depression.  So, I want to emphasize two lessons I was able to learn anew once counselling and medication started helping me to see my life from God’s real perspective (not my warped, false perspective).

 “First, I slowly began to understand that Jesus was living through my depression with me. 

He was not condemning me. He was grieving with me. 

 “I could know this because the New Testament tells me that Jesus had experienced depression, too.  He had even lived through my anxiety attacks, first hand. (Have you ever had one of those? Not fun.) 

 “The gospels tell us that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, and “he was terror-stricken.”  (That’s what the language means).  He was “overwhelmed with fear and anxiety.”  In fact, he told his closest friends, “My soul is so overwhelmed with grief that I feel like I am being crushed to death” (Mk. 14:32-34).  That is a perfect description of depression with panic attacks.

 “When Jesus finally hangs on the cross, he feels himself to be wholly abandoned by his God, thrown aside like a rag-doll by his own heavenly Father. He groans in agony, “My God, my God, why…why have you turned your back on me now?”  Jesus experienced the unquenchable despair of a failing sinner’s groping for a God who is always somewhere else.  He knew my desperation and my anxiety.

 “Secondly, I began to see with new eyes why Jesus had died.  

 “I recognized that for years I had unwittingly read the gospels as if I was hearing the story of a Savior who loved me in spite of myself, in spite of my failures.  Now, with new eyes, I was beginning to see that Jesus had not died for me in spite of my sins.  No.  Jesus died for me because of my sins. 

 “Jesus didn’t look at me with all my struggles and say, “Oh, well, I guess I’ll love him anyway.”  NO!  He sees me in my struggles and says, “Oh, he needs my love and forgiveness!”  And Jesus really, really, really does love me (and you!) just exactly the way that I am.  I now know that I really, really, really am fully and completely accepted by Christ Jesus just exactly the way that I am.

 “And I’ll tell you something:  He really, really, really loves you just exactly the way that you are, too.  Jesus Christ did not die for you in spite of your sins, either.  Jesus gave his life for you on the cross because of your sins.  Remember this, for this is the gospel of grace.

 “For some of us, learning to reorient our thinking towards the acceptance of Christ’s unconditional love can become a significant step towards the healing of spiritual depression.  “But some of us can’t seem to shake our depression no matter how hard we try to adjust our attitudes or our thought patterns.  We need something more…”

 I will talk about what that “something more” was for me next time I write about Christian faith and depression.

The Holy Spirit is not the only force influencing a person’s relationship with Jesus Christ. There is a fraternity of mysterious, internal actors known as neurochemicals that exercise incredible force over everyone’s spiritual life, whether we know it or not.

God made us physical, material beings.  Our physical make-up actually appears to monitor our spirituality in ways that we are only beginning to understand. I will talk about the human body-Spirit connection and how dealing with my own depression led me into exploring this area in my next post on this subject.  In the meantime, ask yourself this:

Can the Holy Spirit be a neurochemical?

Munther Amira’s Statement after Prison Release #Palestinians #Israelioccupation

I am happy to say that my friend, Munther Amira, was released from an Israeli military prison about 1 1/2 weeks ago. Munther released a thank you statement on Facebook yesterday, and I want to share it with any of my readers who may have participated in the “free Munther” actions I posted here.

Recall that Munther was arrested for quietly, non-violently protesting Israel’s policy of imprisoning children in its military prisons. He was peacefully walking down the street in his own neighborhood holding up a picture of the Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who remains in prison for the “crime” of slapping one of the soldiers who shot her young cousin in the head.

Here is Munther’s letter:

JUN 17, 2018 — My dear friends,

I would like to start my message “post” by thanking each and every woman, man, organization, union, and group for your tremendous support and solidarity. My imprisonment is no more than one small event in the series of the long lasting occupation’s violations of human rights. Since the beginning of occupation 70 years ago, the violations of human rights never stopped. They just varied in shape from cold blood killing, to injuring or imprisoning. They included land confiscation, home demolitions, road blockage, siege, exile, individual and public punishments, all of which contribute to a system of ethnic cleansing. All of which destroy human lives, deprive freedom, erase dignity, end lives, kill hope, and steal childhoods.

My short, but tough and humiliating, six month imprisonment empowered me and strengthened my convictions. Since the beginning I knew that the nonviolence approach I adopted to defend Palestinians human rights, dignity, and freedom will be difficult. This is still true and was confirmed by the violence of the Israeli occupation’s response to my, and many other activists, nonviolent resistance. Your solidarity and support makes it easier for me and others like me to lead this every day fight.

This support will empower the nonviolence movement in Palestine in this long-term endeavor. I hope this support will continue and grow in scale and forms.
During my imprisonment I met with comrades, spending, 36, 30, 28 or 26 years in Israeli political prisons. A lifetime of prison is their fate on this earth. Each of them has their own heartbreaking and incredibly strong story. I listened to them tell me about their dreams, feelings, and hopes for freedom. I learned from their enthusiasm and was stunned by their positive, ongoing energy. They have an incredible discipline and are eager to learn and to teach each other. In prison, I attended lectures discussing global sustainable environments, social sciences, human rights, and international humanitarian laws. It was not – and is still not – easy for me to grasp the source of their hope, their energy, and their ability to think about things like economics and the environment, all while living in a 9 square meter cell.

I saw them touch the glass separating them and their mothers during the monthly visits, imagining they could actually feel them.
I admire their spirit, and hope that one day, sooner rather than later, they will wake up outside, next to their loved ones. As a human rights defender, activist, social worker, father, and most importantly as a human, I and many others in and outside of Palestine will continue our peaceful fight for justice, dignity, freedom and a brighter future.

Finally, I would to like to thank you all again, and to extend my gratitude to all your tremendous support during my time in Israel’s kangaroo courts, which fail to meet the basic standards of fair trial and due process.
These military courts are designed to criminalize Palestinian rejection of the occupation and punish Palestinians for demanding their basic human and national rights. They are a conveyor belt of convictions and injustice that prosecute between 500 and 700 Palestinian children every year, with a near 100 percent conviction rate.

I would like to thank all who demonstrated in the streets, and those who were punished for it. Thank you to the 15,000 people who signed the petition for my freedom. I wish I could thank them all one by one. Thank you to all human rights defenders, unions, human rights NGOs, grassroots NGOs, journalist, bloggers, individuals and groups.

Last but not least I would like to thank my family who has stood by me in this dangerous endeavor from the very first day.

Munther Amira
Aida Refugee Camp
Occupied Palestinian Territories

(Posted on Facebook on 17 June 2018)

Israel, the Great Western Narrative and the Kingdom of God #zionism #jonathancook

Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.  You can find his biography and CV, including his many books, here.

I read Mr. Cook’s blog regularly. I also check out any of his articles or books whenever I come across them.

Yesterday, The Greenville Post (another excellent website I read regularly) published a Cook article entitled “How the Corporate Media Enslave Us to a World of Illusions.” Cook describes the slow evolution of his own social, political and historical consciousness as his work in journalism taught him to recognize something he calls the “Great Western Narrative.”

I hope you will take the time to read Cook’s article.  He is extremely insightful.  I have posted an excerpt below with a link to the entire article.

Cook’s analysis can be particularly challenging for Christians. He not only diagnoses the ways in which western Christians succumb to establishment propaganda, just like everyone else — no, brothers and sisters, we are not immune to the dangers of brainwashing —

But Cook’s advice for breaking free of the “Great Western Narrative” and learning to understand and engage in this world from a more humane perspective, is very similar to the argument I tried to make for Christian readers in my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

Christian disciples can only perceive this world aright, that is, from a New Testament, heavenly perspective, when we learn to replace the Great Western Narrative with Jesus’ own Narrative of the Kingdom of God.

That should be a lifetime goal for every follower of Jesus.  Yet, it is so much easier to live as loyal Americans than it is to be faithful citizens of God’s kingdom on earth.

This, in a nutshell, is the goal of my blog. Everything I write at HumanityRenewed, is something (I hope) that will help us to peel off the worldly consciousness — the Great Western Narrative — that works overtime to hold us captive and cripple our ability to live out God’s Kingdom citizenship in the here and now.

Nowhere is the evangelical church’s idolatry of the Great Western Narrative, coupled with its abandonment of Jesus’ Narrative of the Kingdom of God, more evident than in its blind devotion to Christian Zionism and the state of Israel, whatever its crimes.

Here is the excerpt:

“Israel is enthusiastically embraced by the Great Western Narrative: it is supposedly a liberal democracy, many of its inhabitants dress and sound like us, its cities look rather like our cities, its TV shows are given a makeover and become hits on our TV screens. If you don’t stand too close, Israel could be Britain or the US.

“But there are clues galore, for those who bother to look a little beyond superficialities, that there is something profoundly amiss about Israel. A few miles from their homes, the sons of those western-looking families regularly train their gun sights on unarmed demonstrators, on children, on women, on journalists, on medics, and pull the trigger with barely any compunction.

“They do so not because they are monsters, but because they are exactly like us, exactly like our sons. That is the true horror of Israel. We have a chance to see ourselves in Israel – because it is not exactly us, because most of us have some physical and emotional distance from it, because it still looks a little strange despite the best efforts of the western media, and because its own local narrative – justifying its actions – is even more extreme, even more entitled, even more racist towards the Other than the Great Western Narrative.

“It is that shocking realisation – that we could be Israelis, that we could be those snipers – that both opens the door and prevents many from stepping through to see what is on the other side. Or, more troubling still, halting at the threshhold of the doorway, glimpsing a partial truth without understanding its full ramifications.”

You can read Cook’s entire article here.

A Review of Thomas Bergler’s The Juvenilization of American Christianity

Several months ago, I read a fine book by Thomas E. Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Eerdmans, 2012).  Bergler is associate professor of ministry and missions at Huntington University, Indiana.  He has written what amounts to a history of the creation, rise and evolution of youth ministry in the American church.

He simultaneously argues, convincingly in my view, that a movement which began as an element of church ministry has successfully expanded to consume the whole of (most) American church life.

Whether we like it or not, we are all teenagers now.  At least this seem to be the case if we look at the way congregational music, messages, teaching content, programming, expectations, goals and ambiance are orchestrated in the average, Protestant worship service today.

Bergler begins by defining juvenilization as “the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages” (4).

The result, whether intentional or not, is a condition he calls “adolescent Christianity,” which is “any way of understanding, experiencing, or practicing the Christian faith that conforms to the patterns of adolescence in American culture” (8).

Before we all get hot, bothered or defensive, Bergler is careful to argue that this juvenilization process has not been all bad.  It has generated a number of valuable benefits for the American church, such as a desire for emotional connection and contemporary relevance in our services. Whatever problems exist with juvenilization, however, are due to a lack of theological reflection, analysis and strategizing about the best ways to avoid and/or manage the unexpected, negative consequences.

However, Bergler’s focus in this particular book is on telling the story of how we got to where we are today, not on diagnosis or treatment for the creation of a healthier future.  He saves that discussion for his follow-up book, From Here to Maturity: Overcoming the Juvenilization of American Christianity (Eerdmans, 2014).  I am reading that book now and will review it in the near future.

Bergler begins Juvenilization with an overview describing the rise of a genuinely distinct teenage, “youth culture” in the 1930s and 40s.  He then discusses the various attempts made by different branches of American Christianity to engage this new youth culture effectively for Christ.

One of the more telling features of this nascent youth ministry movement was the eagerness with which the gospel of Jesus Christ was used as the centerpiece to an alternative gospel of anti-communism.  Though this is my observation more than Bergler’s, it illustrates something that became a characteristic strategy of ministries like Youth for Christ and Young Life. That is, an instrumental use of the good news; not teaching the gospel for its own sake but using it for a seemingly higher purpose.  In the 1930s and 40s that higher purpose was America’s fight against the “Red Menace” and equipping the next generation to win our fight against the Soviet Union.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Bergler provides a series of fascinating histories about the different strategies adopted by (1) mainline, liberal Protestantism, (2) the African-American church, (3) the Roman Catholic church and (4) American evangelicalism.  To a greater or lesser extent, everyone’s main goal was not only to hold on to their own young people, but to expand the church’s mission into the expansive field of America’s unsaved teenagers.

Bergler explains how and why the evangelical wing of the church proved most successful in these tasks. (Buy the book to see the details.  It’s worth the money).  Not only was there an explosion of new, church-centered youth groups, but there was a simultaneous development of youth-targeted, para-church organizations like Youth for Christ, Campus Life, and Young Life.

In order to capture the typical teenager’s attention, the leaders of these youth organizations mastered the craft of developing consumer-oriented, fast-paced, emotionally-charged, fun-loving, content-light meetings that appealed to modern adolescents. However, an unexpected, or sadly neglected consequence of this evangelical success was the eventual rise of church-going adults who insisted on taking the new youth-oriented methods along with them into every other aspect of adult church life.  Bergler hits the nail on the head when he concludes:

“…the leaders of parachurch youth ministries experimented freely with ways of being Christian that would create an ever more immature evangelical church. As time went on, more and more white evangelicals of all ages began to demand this new combination of old-time religion and adolescent spirituality.” (214)

In his final chapter, “The Triumph and Taming of Juvenilization,” Bergler briefly elaborates on this juvenilization phenomenon (pages 208-229).  On the positive side of the ledger, he concludes that:

  • “Juvenilization has kept American Christianity vibrant” (208)
  • “investment in youth ministry has led to greater retention of young people in evangelical churches” (215)
  • “Youth ministries helped to make the Christian life more emotionally satisfying…and socially relevant” (210)

On the negative side, he traces several evangelical weaknesses back to juvenilization:

  • “The desire to gather a crowd can easily push leaders to compromise the message of the gospel and downplay spiritual maturity” (211)
  • Understanding the gospel primarily in “therapeutic” terms, leading to what he calls a “moralistic, therapeutic deism” (219-20)
  • “simplified messages that emphasize an emotional relationship with Jesus over intellectual content” (220)
  • Emotional fulfilment becomes the gospel’s primary objective (219-20)
  • “the relentless attention to teenage tastes ends up communicating that God exists to make us feel good. Christianity operates as a lifestyle enhancement…” (220)
  • With the adoption of a consumer mentality for church life “youth ministries have formed generations of Americans who believe it is their privilege to pick and choose what to believe” (223)

Bergler hints at some of the remedial measures he believes necessary for outgrowing the hindrances of juvenilization.  For instance:

  • Leaders “need to teach what the Bible says about spiritual maturity, with special emphasis on those elements that are neglected by juvenilized Christians” (226) – (Hopefully, his next book will elaborate this point.)
  • Using worship music that does not focus exclusively on “fostering a self-centered, romantic spirituality” in which “falling in love with Jesus” is the center (227)
  • Asking every church member “to master a shared body of basic truths” and “training leaders to disciple others” one-on-one and in small groups (227)
  • Model, teach and provide opportunities for service to others (227)
  • Help leaders to understand that “cultural forms are not neutral. Every enculturation of Christianity highlights some elements of the faith and obscures others” (227).

Bergler has written an important history describing the infiltration of American youth culture within the Christian church.  Whether the reader judges that infiltration to be a blessing or a curse, a thoughtful judgment will need to be informed by Professor Bergler’s insights.

A Look at Romans 13:1-7, Must Christians ‘Obey’ the Government? Part 2 #christianityandpolitics

I am absolutely convinced that both Scripture and church history demonstrate the necessity of Christian civil disobedience whenever the ethics of God’s kingdom conflicts with the expectations of the state.

Romans 13:1-7 is the standard text cited by those who confuse faithful Christianity with obedience to state power. My book, I Pledge Allegiance,  focuses considerable attention on disentangling the many confusions behind this popular misunderstanding.  For, as the commentator J. C. O’Neill once wrote,

“These seven… verses have caused more unhappiness and misery… than any other seven verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants, and the support for tyrants the church has felt called on to offer.”

In and of itself, O’Neill’s observation does not necessarily prove or disprove anyone’s preferred way of reading Romans 13.  But I believe that the investigation offered here and in Part 1 of this study, will make the point clear.

This excerpt is from pages 59-62:

“Civil Disobedience”

“We are now at a point where we can recognize three components of Paul’s instructions that offer a solid foundation for the legitimacy of Christian civil disobedience.

“First, by explaining God’s role in ordering the place of government in human relations, Paul subordinates all civil authorities under God, and not just any god,

Roman Christians were thrown to the lions for refusing to obey the law

but Paul’s God, the Father of Jesus Christ. In effect, Paul has desacralized the Roman state and its emperor, both of which regularly received sacrifices from its citizens. Caesar is being told (were he ever to read the book of Romans) that he serves at the pleasure of the Christian God, a revolutionary claim. Rather than propping up the arrogant authoritarianism of Roman rule— or anyone else’s rule, for that matter—Paul is actually taking his theological ax to its woody trunk and chopping it down to proper size. It is difficult for us today to fully grasp the provocative and subversive nature of Paul’s words. He twice describes civil authorities, including the emperor, as “God’s servant” (Rom. 13:4), not because they predictably execute God’s desires as a good servant should, nor because God promises to back up their every decision, whatever it may be, but because they function in a capacity that was “ordered” for them by the God who brings world redemption through the Son, Jesus Christ. Paul is dramatically leveling the playing field between rulers and the ruled. More than that, he has switched the parameters of the Roman playing field for another one entirely. Roman officials thought they stood on political grounds that were established by the gods Mars and Jupiter. To that fantasy Paul’s says, “Not on your life!” Actually, though they do not know it, Roman officials stood on a playing field created and marked out by the Christian God. On that playing field everyone is equal, and all people, no matter their station in this life, will eventually be judged in the same way, by the same standard, by this same God.

“Second, there is a subtle turn to Paul’s teaching strategy that is quite pro- found. Overtly, he is instructing believers to remain cooperative, submissive members of society. Yet, even as he offers this highly conventional message, he is implicitly underscoring the church’s supreme allegiance to the King of Kings above and beyond all other authority figures. The force of this reminder is to enable every Christian citizen to ask a crucial question: Are government authorities behaving like God’s obedient servants in asking me to perform this action? And if I do what the government asks, will I be doing something that I believe is right and acceptable before God? Paul is implicitly reminding the church that obedience to Christ supersedes all other responsibilities. We obey the government when such obedience coincides with obedience to God; otherwise, we submit to governing authority by virtue of our disobedience, accepting the negative consequences, including suffering, of our higher obedience to the King of Kings. Standing alongside the apostle Peter as he defied a direct order from the Sanhedrin, Christians testify with their lives that they “must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29; also 4:19).

Christian pacifists held in an internment camp during World War 2

“Third, the thoughtful disciple is now left to deal with questions of personal conscience, a matter that Paul raises himself in verse 5: “It is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.” Paul’s argument is that government officials (ideally) ask citizens to do what is right and then (only) punish those who do what is wrong—not wrong as defined by an arbitrary authority, but wrong as defined by God and our God-given conscience. Paul obviously does not believe that paying taxes, even to unscrupulous tax collectors, is either disobedient to God or a violation of Christian conscience, so he emphatically concludes, “This is why you pay taxes” (v. 6). But that conclusion hardly constitutes a blank check for necessarily prioritizing every government policy over Christian conscience per se. “Because of conscience” is a crucial declaration in its own right, especially when we remember that the real world does not operate in the way Paul describes governing authorities throughout this passage. “Because of conscience” becomes the church’s inevitable explanation for its civil disobedience whenever the governing authorities come to believe their own mythology about extraordinary powers, providential selection, and divine right. The long and bloody history of Christian martyrs who died for their faith while defying local government should remind every disciple of the nonnegotiable priority of Paul’s warning—“because of conscience.”

“Several issues of conscience arise when we take chapters 12 and 13 together, as they should be. Paul, in Romans 12:14, 17, and 19, insists that believers must never retaliate, seek vengeance, or resort to violence, but must always leave judgment to God’s wrath. Paul then goes on (in Rom. 13:4) to grant the governing authorities responsibility for exercising the very functions that Christians are commanded to leave with God. Consequently, there are certain government activities that must forever remain alien to the followers of Jesus. Whatever “bearing the sword” may mean, whether it is the power of law enforcement, imposing capital punishment, or sending men to war, it involves some degree of violence and some acts of punishment, all of which must be foreign territory to the Christian.

“Early Christian leaders understood this to mean, at the very least, that Christians could not join the military (see chapter 10) or serve as judges. Aside from the fact that men in these positions were required to participate in any number of idolatrous Roman rituals, soldiers had to be ready to use force in law enforcement; more important, they could be ordered to kill at any time. Similarly, judges were responsible to punish, imprison, and impose the death penalty; but Christians were forbidden to involve themselves in any of these things. A typical discussion appears in On Idolatry (17.2–3) by Tertullian (AD 160–ca. 225). When answering the suggestion that Christians should seek positions of official authority—such as becoming a judge—in order to influence government positively, Tertullian points out that a man would have to find some way “to avoid the functions of his office . . . without passing judgment on a man’s life [i.e., imposing capital punishment] or honor . . . without condemning or forejudging, without putting anybody in chains or prison or torturing.”  In other words, a Christian could only take the job after first deciding never actually to do the job, an obviously impossible scenario.

“In a similar vein, one version of the Apostolic Constitutions 16.10 (ca. AD 375–380) makes an allusion to Romans 13:4 while insisting that “anyone who has the power of the sword, or who is a civil magistrate wearing the purple, either let him cease (i.e., resign his post in government) or be cast out (i.e., excommunicated from the church).” The only way a Christian could honestly serve in the Roman government (and a post-Constantine government, at that!) was by deliberately avoiding all of his major responsibilities. It is apparent that early Christian leaders were not interpreting Romans 13 in light of a two-kingdoms theology, in which a temporal realm and a spiritual realm make parallel claims on the Christian’s attention. Instead, the disciple was a citizen of only one kingdom, the kingdom of God, which is now invading a fallen world. John Howard Yoder explains that “these two aspects of God’s work are not distinguished by God’s having created two realms but by the actual rebelliousness of men.”

“Martin Luther’s two-kingdoms theology allowed him to recommend that Christians volunteer for the civic roles of hangman and executioner because “it is not man, but God, who hangs, tortures, beheads, kills and fights” when the state punishes criminals and goes to war. Unfortunately, Luther merely demonstrates how blind he was to both the role of conscience and the priority of God’s kingdom for every believer. God may well be the ultimate executioner standing behind a judge’s guilty verdict, but that does not change the fact that the Father forbids his children from having anything to do with a process that kills, demeans, tortures, or seeks vengeance against another human being. Government authority is God’s remedial measure to preserve some semblance of order among sinful human beings. Luther was correct to say that God is the one who punishes when a just, properly functioning judiciary renders a guilty verdict; but he was sorely mistaken in assuming that the divine Judge invites members of the church to share in his work of punishment.”

The Catastrophe in Yemen Continues to Worsen Because of US #yemen

The folks at Just Foreign Policy are sending a petition to Congress and attempting to rally popular support in order to end American support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

Yemeni children are dying of malnutrition and cholera.

Please take the time to read the excerpt posted below from their appeal.  Check out the embedded sources.  Reread my past blog posts about the tragedy unfolding in Yemen (here, here and here).

And remember…this is not a natural catastrophe.  It is an entirely man-made disaster.  

Recalling the Old Testament story of Nathan the prophet confronting King David:  The prophet today points his finger in the face of America and Saudi Arabia saying, “You are the nation.”  WE are the culprits condemning innocent Yemeni people to starvation and disease.

The guilt and responsibility is ours, America.  And we have the power to end it whenever we choose.  Here is the excerpt:

“The long-feared U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE assault on Hodeida, where four-fifths of Yemen’s food imports enter, has begun. ABC News reports: “Assault on Yemen’s largest port threatens to increase mass starvation.” Aid experts warned that an assault on the city could immediately threaten the lives of 250,000 people and put millions more at risk of starving to death. The U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE war against Yemen’s indigenous Houthi rebels has already created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, leaving 60% of the population – 17.8 million Yemenis – food insecure, and 8.4 million a step away from famine.
 
“ABC noted that the U.S. is providing “vital guidance and supplies” for the Saudi-UAE attack on Hodeida. The Wall Street Journal was more explicit: “The U.S. military is providing its Gulf allies with intelligence to fine-tune their list of airstrike targets in Yemen’s most important port, one sign of the Trump administration’s deepening role in a looming assault that the United Nations says could trigger a massive humanitarian crisis.”
 
“33 Representatives tried to stop the attack by threatening the Trump Administration with a vote invoking the War Powers Resolution to force an end to U.S. participation in the war. They were: Mark Pocan, Justin Amash, Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie, Barbara Lee, Walter Jones, Ted Lieu, James McGovern, Tulsi Gabbard, Yvette Clarke, Pramila Jayapal, Peter DeFazio, Debbie Dingell, Earl Blumenauer, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Gwen Moore, Adriano Espaillat, Judy Chu, Bobby Rush, Keith Ellison, Jan Schakowsky, Raúl Grijalva, Jamie Raskin, Donald Beyer, Karen Bass, Frank Pallone, Beto O’Rourke, Alan Lowenthal, Betty McCollum, Zoe Lofgren, Jared Huffman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and Hank Johnson.
 
“The Members wrote: “We urge you to use all available means to avert a catastrophic military assault on Yemen’s major port city of Hodeida by the Saudi-led coalition…We remind you that three years into the conflict, active U.S. participation in Saudi-led hostilities against Yemen’s Houthis has never been authorized by Congress, in violation of the Constitution…In light of a possibly disastrous offensive on Hodeida, we remind you that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare and authorize war, and the War Powers Resolution allows any individual member of Congress to force a debate and floor vote to remove U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities.”
 
“Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Trump Administration have ignored these warnings. They don’t believe that Members of Congress have the courage to follow through on their threat.

“Help us prove Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Trump Administration wrong. Press Members of Congress to invoke war powers to force a vote to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in the catastrophic Saudi-UAE assault on Hodeida by signing our petition.”

A Look at Romans 13:1-7, Must Christians ‘Obey’ the Government? Part 1 #christianityandpolitics

Vice-President Mike Pence’s speech at the Southern Baptist Convention, thankfully, sparked a debate over whether he should be welcomed or disinvited.  Pence’s defenders predictably quote Romans 13:1 as their argument for welcoming a political speech at the convention.

In Romans 13 the apostle Paul says:  “let everyone submit to the governing authorities.”  So, that means Pence needs to be given the time normally allotted for group prayer in order to deliver a partisan, political speech?

In light of this current debate, I thought I’d post a few serialized excerpts from my book, I Pledge Allegiance, that looks carefully at what Paul actually says in Romans 13:1-7.  The complete excerpt is from pages 56-62.  Here goes:

“Paul had specific concerns in mind as he wrote his letter to the Roman church and describing a comprehensive political theology of church-state relations was not one of them. Recalling the church’s precarious standing with the local government in a time of tax revolt is far more illuminating of Paul’s argument in this chapter. The early church lived within an authoritarian state. There was no expectation that the average person could exert any meaningful influence in bringing about broad-based, systemic social or political change. Neither Paul nor his readers had any conception of participatory democracy. Modern strategies for popular political and social transformation through civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance were inconceivable at the time. Naturally, this does not mean that Paul was devoid of political opinions or that he might not write something of universal political significance for the church, regardless of its particular location in time and space, but it does mean that properly understanding Romans 13:1–7 requires that we keep the actual historical situation foremost in our mind.

Observing God’s Order

“Several details in Romans 13 need elaboration for Paul’s ethical instruction to become clear for the modern reader. The chapter’s opening sentences twice affirm that government authority is put in place by God (v. 1). God has established a hierarchy of civil authority to regulate the otherwise strong tendency toward unruliness in human society. Anyone who rebels against this ordering of authority, therefore, is rebelling against God’s design (v. 2). Two details of Paul’s vocabulary clarify his point.

“First, Paul describes civil authority as part of the way God “orders” the world. This idea of God’s ordering, organizing, appointing or arranging is central to the passage, with several derivatives of the verbal root “to order” appearing five times in three verses (vv. 1 [twice], 2 [twice], 5 [once]). It is clearly Paul’s key concept. God “establishes/orders/institutes governing authorities” (v. 1) not by bringing any particular leader to power—though he may at times also do that—but by providentially creating structures of governing authority that exercise responsibilities delegated by God. When Paul says that “there is no authority except that which God has established” (v. 1), he is not claiming that divine providence places all rulers in their specific positions of power. He is saying that the various stations of authority that make up civil government are put in place by God’s providential ordering of human society.

“Understanding Paul’s use of “ordering” vocabulary helps to answer long- standing questions about Christian obedience to tyrannical rulers. The problematic logic, based on Romans 13, usually goes like this: If every governing authority is put in place by God, so that disobeying the authority is the equivalent of disobeying God, then even a man like Adolf Hitler must have been put in place by God, and disobeying even Hitler becomes the equivalent of disobeying God. This was, in fact, the logic used by many German Christians who swore allegiance to Hitler, the “divinely appointed” Führer.

“Though some additional arguments will be advanced below for addressing the question of obeying Hitler, Paul’s emphasis on ordering rather than personnel makes it clear that God establishes positions of authority, positions that are occupied at different times by different leaders of greater or lesser ability, wisdom, and moral fiber. Paul does not make God responsible for ordaining every leader who ever fills an office. Christians are obligated to respect the role of government per se in their lives, but that is a far cry from being obligated to obey, much less enthusiastically endorse, every wretched leader braying for national allegiance to his every foolish decision.

Subordination vs. Obedience

“A second—equally important—matter of vocabulary arises once we notice that Paul does not command believers always “to obey” the governing authorities (Rom.13:1). Translations that render Romans 13:1 along the lines of “obey the government” (Living Bible, Contemporary English Version, Good News Translation, Worldwide English) seriously misrepresent Paul’s words. Instead of commanding obedience, Paul tells the church “to be subject/to submit” to the way God has “ordered” governing authority. If Paul had intended for the church always to obey the government, he could have used the common word hupokouō (obey) to make his point. But he doesn’t do that; instead, Paul stays with the “order” word group and directs believers to be “subordinate (vv. 1, 5) to the authorities that “have been ordered” by God. In effect, he is reiterating the need for believers to cooperate with God’s design in ordering human society.

“Following the logic of verse 3 is crucial for understanding the full significance of Paul’s refusal to tell the church that they must always obey the government. Notice that Paul’s description of civil authority is utterly idealistic, in so far as he assumes that the church can always count on the government to faithfully enforce God’s expectations. “Rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong. If you don’t want to be afraid of the one in authority, do what is right and the authority will praise you” (my translation). Had Paul intended to deliver a lesson on Christian obedience, he missed a perfect opportunity to do so. Notice that he does not say, “Shed your fear of authority by doing what you are told; be obedient.” Instead, Paul counsels the church to free itself from any fear of authority by always “doing what is right.”

“At least two assumptions are at work in this statement. First, Paul’s argument assumes that government authorities will never be corrupt. Their judgments will always faithfully reflect God’s judgments concerning what is good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. But we all know better. The claim that “rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong” is not always true, and Paul knew it. The civil rights demonstrators who walked across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965 were excoriated by the state’s governor, condemned by the local sheriff, and beaten with clubs by the local police. It is no secret to us or to Paul that rulers can easily reward those who do wrong and become a terror to those who do what is right, but Paul is describing the ideal, the way things are supposed to be, for the sake of his argument.

“Paul’s second assumption is that when government functions as it should, citizens never need to be afraid about doing what is right because “the right” is always what governing authorities will want from their citizens. Those who do what is right can be confident in their Christian obedience because they are simultaneously being submissive to authority, as God requires. In an ideal world, a believer’s act of submission will be synonymous with obedience because the perfect, incorruptible government will never ask its citizens to disobey God.

“Unpacking these assumptions at the root of Paul’s idealization of earthly authority also exposes the prick hidden in his argument. Paul knows that the Roman government does not measure up to this ideal. He cannot possibly in- struct the Roman church always to obey a government that made public sacrifice

Roman Christians were thrown to the lions for refusing to obey the law

to the Roman pantheon a civic responsibility; but he can tell them always to do what is right. When Christians act on what they know is right and those actions coincide with the government’s expectations, Paul’s argument predicts the happy outcome—“do what is right and the authorities will praise you.” But when doing what is right puts the believer on a collision course with government expectations, Paul’s instructions take on even greater significance: “Still do what is right.”

“God’s own perfect government awaits the coming age, when Christ is seated on his earthly throne. As long as Jesus’s disciples live in this world, however, they must anticipate times when the governing authorities will not praise them for doing what they believe is right in the sight of God. So Paul diplomatically commends the Roman government as much as he is able to in his description of the ideal, but he also assiduously avoids giving the church advice that could eventually lead it to compromise with the ungodly designs of a government that is out of step with God’s vision of truth and justice.

“Christians are not commanded always to obey their government or its laws. The church is told to be submissive and always do what is right. Obedience is one way of showing submission to authority, but submission and obedience are not synonymous. In some circumstances the submission God requires will work itself out as disobedience to governing authority. When a government expects believers to do things that the latter believe are wrong, things that will compromise their relationship with Christ, things that will violate their kingdom citizenship, then godly adherence to what is right demands conscientious disobedience against the government. At that point, faithful disciples remain submissive to misguided governmental authority, not by compromising their Christian conscience, but by freely submitting themselves to whatever punishment the authorities threaten to impose for disobedience. Living out the values of the kingdom of God always comes first for the followers of Jesus.”

A Few Thoughts on the Vice-President’s Speech at Today’s Southern Baptist Convention

I watched most of Vice-President Pences’ speech at the Southern Baptist Convention today.  Yes, the SBC has a history of extending bi-partisan

(Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

invitations to its politician guest-speakers.

But in today’s political climate under the Trump presidency, with leading Southern Baptist pastors like Robert Jeffress serving as Trump’s so-called spiritual advisors, the image of a “non-partisan” event has worn a bit thin.

Here are a few of my thoughts as I listened to the Vice-President’s speech:

  1. Listening to the convention’s applause for a thoroughly partisan, political talk reminded me of the recent service where church elders walked out on my message for being too political. Would these same men and woman have walked out on the vice-president this morning?  I doubt that very, very much.
  2. I, too, hope that the recent agreement with North Korea will be a step towards greater peace in that part of the world. I stand with the crowd that wants to see the entire world denuclearized. However, as a simple practical matter, I cannot help but wonder why North Korea would denuclearize so quickly and easily almost immediately after achieving its long-term goal of creating its own nuclear arsenal?  Their nukes are brand new! Call me confused…
  3. In terms of world peace, our obsession with North Korean nuclear weapons is downright bizarre in light of Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Israel possesses an estimated 250+ nuclear weapons.

Israel has refused to sign the international Non-Proliferation Treaty or to allow independent inspectors to look at its nuclear facilities.

Much of the early technology for Israel’s nuclear weapons program was obtained by Israeli spies stealing US secrets.

Israel threatens and attacks almost all of its neighbors on a regular basis.

Yet, the US never says a thing about the threat posed to world peace by Israel’s behavior or its nuclear arsenal, while we scream and shout about the dangers North Korea and Iran.  I call this hypocrisy.

  1. Well, I could go on about Pence’s misleading claims about the Trump tax cuts, unemployment, the growing income/wealth gap in American and much more, but this is enough for now.

The main question I kept asking myself was this: what does any of Pence’s partisan chest-thumping have to do with the mission of the Christian church?  I do know that there are SB pastor’s raising the same questions and objections within their denomination.  To them I say, don’t stop objecting. Insist that all South Baptist leaders and their churches prioritize the righteousness of the kingdom of God rather than Republican (or Democratic) politics.

(P.S. Excuse me for some shameless self-promotion, but I think I have written a good book about prioritizing the kingdom of God over and above all partisanship.  It’s called I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America).