Why Doesn't God Just Make Everyone Love Him? (video)

One of the objections to the Christian message of salvation is that those who don't follow the Christian God are condemned to eternal torment. But, if God is all powerful, couldn't he just have created people who would automatically love him? in this short clip, Lenny answers that objection by demonstrating that any compulsion to love created by God wouldn't really be love at all.

Image courtesy sleepyrobot13 [by-nc-nd/3.0/]

To Draw Close to God You'll Need Theology (video)

Ever heard anyone say, "I don't need all that book-learning. Just give me Jesus and that's enough for me"? It's become common in the church to base our understanding of God on our feeling of him instead of our knowledge of him. In this short clip, Lenny  demonstrates from C.S. Lewis and from the Bible why the study of theology is crucial for the Christian to grow closer to the God we love.

Image courtesy Paul O'Rear and licensed via Creative Commons. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Why God is the Foundation of American Liberty

In the United States, the Pledge of Allegiance has been a part of American life since 1942 when congress passed the Flag Code into law, describing the proper ways to display and treat the nation's flag. 1 At that time, the pledge did not contain the words "under God" in it. It also originally stipulated that citizens should say the pledge with their right hands outstretched toward the flag. However, given that salute's eerie similarity to the Nazi salute, the wartime congress quickly amended the law to have citizens place their right hands over their hearts. 2

It wasn't until 1953, when Democratic Congressman Louis Rabaut and Republican Senator Homer Ferguson introduced a bill to congress to amend the Pledge to include the words "under God" that the national debate was brought center stage. During this time, many different voices contributed to the debate. While a lot of media today explain away the addition as simply a knee-jerk response to those "Godless communists" in the Soviet Union, I think there is much more to the addition than that. Several civic groups, most noticeably the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus had decided to include the phrase in their recitation of the Pledge a few years prior, modeling it after Abraham Lincoln's use of the term in his Gettysburg address.3 Other groups began to do likewise.

God and the Constitution

In general, the question of how God relates to American government was swirling at the time. In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court had just decided a case (Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306) stating school children should be excused from attending public school for reasons of religious education or religious observance. Justice William O. Douglas, in writing for the majority said:

The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rather, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concern or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the State and religion would be aliens to each other—hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly…

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for as wide a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deem necessary. We sponsor an attitude on the part of government that shows no partiality to any one group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma. When the state [343 U.S. 306, 314] encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions.4

Liberty Relies on the Natural Rights that God Bestows

As one can see, it was widely recognized that the United States was a nation founded upon certain principles, and those principles had at their root the belief that God exists and he is the source of those natural rights that this country holds so dear.

Such a concept shouldn't be shocking to anyone who has read the Declaration of independence. Even though Thomas Jefferson was a deist, he recognized that God alone grounds our rights. In writing about the revolution, he said "The god who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."5 Jefferson in another letter goes on to reinforce this view. When speaking on the issue of slavery, one that had begun to divide the nation, he said:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever. 6

Because the liberties of Americans depend on God and the foundational recognition that all governments must be held to this standard, which is a standard above themselves, the pressure increased to add the words "under God" to the pledge.

A New Birth of Freedom

On Feb 7, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower attended a service at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church where he heard Rev. George Docherty deliver a sermon entitled "A New Birth of Freedom," highlighting this distinction and drawing on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. While Docherty did say "I could hear little Muscovites repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag in Moscow with equal solemnity," to assume that was the focus of his reasoning would be to do him and President Eisenhower a disservice. You may real Docherty's entire sermon here, but for conciseness, here is the relevant portion:

There is no religious examination on entering the United States of America- no persecution because a man's faith differs even from the Christian religion. So, it must be 'under God' to include the great Jewish Community, and the people of the Moslem faith, and the myriad of denominations of Christians in the land.

What then of the honest atheist?

Philosophically speaking, an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms. Now don't misunderstand me. This age has thrown up a new type of man-we call him a secular; he does not believe in God; not because he is a wicked man, but because he is dialectically honest, and would rather walk with the unbelievers than sit hypocritically with people of the faith. These men, and many have I known, are fine in character; and in their obligations as citizens and good neighbors, quite excellent.

But they really are spiritual parasites. And I mean no term of abuse in this. I'm simply classifying them. A parasite is an organism that lives upon the life force of another organism without contributing to the life of the other. These excellent ethical seculars are living upon the accumulated spiritual capital of Judeo-Christian civilization, and at the same time, deny the God who revealed the divine principles upon which the ethics of this country grow. The dilemma of the secular is quite simple.

He cannot deny the Christian revelation and logically live by the Christian ethic.

And if he denies the Christian ethic, he falls short of the American ideal of life.

In Jefferson's phrase, if we deny the existence of the god who gave us life how can we live by the liberty he gave us at the same time? This is a God-fearing nation. On our coins, bearing the imprint of Lincoln and Jefferson are the words "In God we trust." Congress is opened with prayer. It is upon the Holy Bible the President takes his oath of office. Naturalized citizens, when they take their oath of allegiance, conclude solemnly, with the words "so help me God."

This is the issue we face today: A freedom that respects the rights of the minorities, but is defined by a fundamental belief in God. A way of life that sees man, not as the ultimate outcome of a mysterious concatenation of evolutionary process, but a sentient being created by God and seeking to know His will, and "Whose soul is restless till he rest in God."

In this land, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, for we are one nation indivisible under God, and humbly as God has given us the light we seek liberty and justice for all. This quest is not only within these United States, but to the four corners of the glove wherever man will lift up his head toward the vision of his true and divine manhood.7

After that sermon, President Eisenhower went to congress and asked them to reintroduce the amendment to the Flag Code, which he signed into law on May 28, 1954.

References

1. Streufert, Duane. "United States Code." USFlag.org. Duane Streufert, 8 July 1995. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. http://www.usflag.org/uscode36.html.
2. "Historical Timeline - Under God in the Pledge." ProCon.org. ProCon.org, 2015. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. http://undergod.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000029.
3. "Historical Timeline", 2015.
4. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952). United States Supreme Court. 28 Apr. 1952. Web. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=343&invol=306
5. Looney, J. Jefferson, ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. Princeton: Princeton University http://www.monticello.org/Press, 2004. Web.
6. Looney, 2004.
7. Docherty, George. "A New Birth of Freedom." Virtue, Liberty, and Independence. City-On-A-Hill, 7 Feb. 1954. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. http://liberty-virtue-independence.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-birth-of-freedom-rev-george.html.

Want to Love God More Fully? Then Engage Your Mind!

I believe that learning to defend your faith is like a grand adventure; it truly is treasure hunting for nuggets that will make God more real to you. I demonstrated this a couple of days ago when we discovered that reason and faith are not opposites. You can take the idea of God's truth seriously and apply it to a very common objection. If someone were to offer you this same objection that faith stands opposed to reason, you could answer them with the truth that faith is built on reasons and exploring faith claims is a very reasonable thing to do. Not only does this answer their objection, but it opens the door to more discussion on the truth-claims of Christianity! Do you see how exciting such an approach is?

I do want to caution you, however, that just because you may have an answer to an objection that is sound, thoughtful, and well-articulated, it doesn't mean people will always listen to you. In fact, you may get a lot of resistance. But it does let you feel more confident that the critic wasn't shutting you down. In fact, as I mentioned, it is the critic who's now being irrational since they don't want to support their claim nor listen to a thoughtful appeal to reason together. Which brings us to another point in why we need to pursue God intellectually: because it helps us love God more fully.

Part of Loving God Means Loving Him with Our Minds

In the Proverbs passage I discussed yesterday, it states that we are to apply our minds to God's knowledge "so that your trust may be in the LORD." This coincides with what Jesus taught when he was asked by an expert in the Jewish Bible about which commandment was the greatest. He replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment" (Matt 22:37-38). You can see how Jesus elevates the idea of loving God intellectually by including the phrase "with all your mind." That's absolutely right. In order to fully love God, we need to love Him with all we have — including our intellect.
Just prior to Jesus' statement to the lawyer, He was confronted with a question on the validity of the resurrection by the religious liberals of His day, the Sadducees. Christian apologist J.P. Moreland notes that by intelligently defending the faith, Jesus was practicing the concept of loving God with His mind. J.P writes:

It's interesting that Jesus did something His followers should emulate; He intelligently answered the Sadducees' question! … First, Jesus reveals His intellectual skills in debate by (1) showing His familiarity with His opponents' point of view; (2) appealing to common ground (a text all disputants accepted) instead of expressing a biblical text He accepted but they rejected (Daniel 12:2); and (3) deftly using the laws of logic to dissect His opponents' argument and refute it powerfully. Second, because it forms the immediately preceding context for Matthew 22:37-39, this incident may inform at least part of what it means to love God intellectually: be prepared to stand up to truth and honor when they are challenged, and do so with careful, thought-out answers. 1

References

1. Moreland, J.P. Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997. 50-51

Would Rape Be Moral If God Commanded It?

Last week, I recounted a time speaking with an atheist woman on the campus at UC Berkeley who said that rape would be OK if the person doing so truly believed he was right. It showed the folly of those who held to moral relativism. The post spurred a comment by Mark, who asked, "If the man had been commanded by God to perform the rape, would it then be a moral act?"

While Mark's question seems to offer a twist on the concept of grounding morality in God, the objection itself is not a new one. In fact, we know it's been around for at least 2,300 years because the Greek philosopher Plato set it forth in one of his dialogues, where the protagonist Socrates asks Euthyphro basically "Is God good because he follows some intrinsic goodness independent of Him, or is good whatever God declares to be good?"

Euthyphro's dilemma is famous because both options have disastrous consequences. If there's some independent concept of goodness, then even God is obligated to be good. But what or how does one then discover that concept? What grounds it? And how can God be God if He must obey laws like the rest of us? Doesn't this make God a little less omnipotent? But if we take the other option, that good is simply whatever God says is good, it makes good and bad pretty arbitrary. God could conceivably do what Mark asks (command that rape is now a good thing) and sins become virtues while virtues turn to sins. What kind of morality is that?

Splitting the Horns of Euthyphro's Dilemma

Christians have not been unaware of Euthyphro's dilemma. God's relationship with morality has been written about extensively by the likes of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and others. However, the solution to this dilemma is not as hard as one may think. The answer lies in the fact that there are more than the two choices that Plato laid out in his original dialogue. Christian theology teaches that God has certain intrinsic properties within Himself, such as love. Love cannot exist without a person to express it and when the Bible says "God is love" it communicates that it is a fundamental part of God's nature to love. Similarly, goodness is something that flows from the nature of God Himself. When we talk about doing what is right or wrong, we are comparing our actions to those that God would naturally approve or disapprove of us performing.

For an example of actions flow from nature, we can look to ourselves. Human beings are naturally linguistic creatures; we think in terms of language. If I asked you to plan your evening in your mind right now, you would invariably use words as you thought about your options. We don't think in only pictures but we use words and sentences, even if we aren't communicating our thoughts to someone else. Language is part of human nature and it simply flows from us. To try and violate this nature is pretty much impossible, because there is no other way to think about abstract ideas like morality.

As language flows from human nature, so goodness flows from God's nature, and it would be impossible for Him to violate His nature. Because of this, we see the question Mark asked becomes nonsensical. To ask if rape would be a moral act if God commanded it makes as much sense as to ask whether God could make a rock so big that He couldn't lift it. God simply would never command rape to be moral. We can therefore split the horns of Euthyphro's dilemma and provide a third option.

By grounding moral attributes in God's nature, we achieve two things: 1) moral attributes are objective, they don't change because God' nature doesn't change and 2) God isn't somehow obligated to follow an independent law, but He follows the law within Himself. Thus, objective moral values make sense and we can know that the good is just that.

Photo courtesy Emmanuel Huybrechts via the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.

The One Question Mormons Hope You Don't Ask

Talking with Mormon missionaries can feel daunting. They seem to know their scriptures and have all the answers. Do the LDS really worship the same God we do? Are they Christians? Here is a very special four part podcast series where I offer a key question that Mormons cannot answer. Listen to all four parts here:

• The One Question Mormons Hope You Don't Ask - Part 1
• The One Question Mormons Hope You Don't Ask - Part 2
• The One Question Mormons Hope You Don't Ask - Part 3
• The One Question Mormons Hope You Don't Ask - Part 4

Photo courtesy Saaby and licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License.

God and Our Technology

Does God care about our technology? Of course He does!  When God first created man, Genesis 2:15 tells us "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." Of this Keil writes, "Man was placed there to lead a life of repose, not indeed of inactivity, but in fulfillment of the course that was assigned to him."1 The idea of human beings tending and bringing out the best of God's creation has always been a part of God's plan, even before the fall.

Tending and keeping also includes learning about the creation so we can produce better and better results for everyone. That's really what our modern day technology does, when used rightly. We can marvel at the complexity and consistency of God's created order and harness that knowledge for the betterment of people and the world as a whole. Technology, when used rightly, should always bring glory to God.

However, many times we corrupt technology and use it to glorify ourselves or to serve our selfish desires. Below is a clip from Dr. Walt Russell that perfectly illustrates the point. During a recent theology class at Harvest Christian Fellowship, Dr. Russell gave a great object lesson on how instead of thanking God for the technological advances he allows us to discover, we turn technology into an idol. For the full series of talks, visit http://deepfaith.harvest.org/.

References

1. Keil, C.F and F. Delitezsch.Commentary on Old Testament. (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans Pub., 1991. 84.

Authority Matters

One of my favorite John Mayer songs is his breakout hit "No Such Thing." However, its lyrics are indicative of an increasingly acute problem in our culture: the elevation of self above any authority structure. Mayer sings "They love to tell you stay inside the lines, but something's better on the other side." Is that true?

If you think about it, everyone looks to find a source of authority for the actions and decisions of his or her life. Authority is the natural starting point when seeking to understand how anything works. When we drive, we should obey the traffic signs because they are placed by an authority that has the power to control traffic for the public's safety. The authority has the knowledge to know how fast you can corner a turn before your tires lose their grip. An authority can also offer us safety: if one ignores the authority of a stop sign, the intersection may not hold something better of the other side, but disaster!

So, one can say appropriate authorities offer each of us at least two important elements in life: instruction and safety. I use the word "appropriate" because while there may be a lot of claims to authority, there should be some basic things that qualify a source as an appropriate authority. An authority should have some degree of expertise in whatever sphere he claims to have authority over. If we are also talking about authority as a governing institution, then the authority should be vested with the power to do things such as make laws or post traffic signs.

Don Thorsen writes, "Authority pertains to the right and power to command and be obeyed."[1] This is a good definition. If I went outside my house and posted my hand-painted speed limit sign, people would most likely ignore it because I have neither the right nor the power to override the city laws.

This idea of authority becomes even more important when we look at moral laws. In matters such as life and how one should live, the ultimate authority resides in God. God has the right to command us by virtue of His being the Creator of the universe generally and the creator of mankind specifically. In Romans 1:18-22, Paul argues that through His creation God has given us a witness to Himself as creator and because of that all men are obligated to worship and obey Him. Paul also pointed to God as creator of all mankind when he addressed the Athenians (Acts 17:24) and said that they should "seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us."

If God is the Creator, then he would have the definitive knowledge of how the world works and He would have the proper right to set down guidelines for how his creation should behave. God would have the right of authority. Of course, if God is the creator, he also demonstrates his power to control his creation. As the author of life (Gen. 2:7, Ecc. 12:7), God has the power to give life and take it, and can do so with impunity.

Many times when I talk about things of God with people, they will say things like "I cannot believe in a God who would do thus and so." But such statements are akin to posting your own speed limit sign on your street. Just because you want to drive faster doesn't mean that you should ignore the sign or that it isn't there for reasons to make everyone safer. There is a real world out there, and dismissing it can lead to painful consequences.

References

[1] Thorsen, Don. An Exploration of Christian Theology. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub. 2008).27.