Sermon Video: Grace is Greater than Law - Mark 2:23-3:6

 Having been accused by Pharisees of violating the letter of the law regarding the Sabbath, Jesus reminds them of the way in which David violated the letter of the law in order to meet an extraordinary need.  This sets up a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees about whether or not it is proper to heal on the Sabbath.  Jesus does so, elevating Grace above Law, the doing of Good above questions of how, when, or where.  As Christians, we can be in danger of becoming like the Pharisees, of elevating the form of religion over the heart, or of defending morality (God, Law, ethics, Truth) in ways that are inconsistent with the character of God (the Fruit of the Spirit).  This is not acceptable, to further the Kingdom of God, we need to act in Christ-like ways, no matter what cause we're championing.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

A Moral Hierarchy: A refutation of William Barr's, "Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history."

Speaking at Hillsdale College on September 16th, Attorney General Willaim Barr responded to a question about religious freedom and COVID-19 restrictions with the following, "Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history." {Barr under fire over comparison of virus lock-in to slavery - by Eric Tucker, AP}  I will not evaluate the legal aspects of that statement, which would require examining the COVID-19 restrictions put in place by 50 governors, hundreds of mayors, and thousands of municipalities, each operating under 50 separate state constitutions.  The vast majority of challenges to the restrictions have been denied in court, so let the lawyers argue that point. {In 5-4 Split, US Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to California's COVID-19 Restrictions on Religious Services - by Cheryl Miller of Law.com}  I will also not examine the restrictions from a medical standpoint, preferring to take my medical advice from the likes of Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Birx and the collective wisdom of the medical profession, rather than that of a lawyer like William Barr.  Instead, I will examine William Barr's statement from a moral perspective.

The Christian moral hierarchy is reflected in Jesus' response to the question of which of the commandments in the Law of Moses (the rabbis counted 613 of them) was the greatest? 

Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV)  36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Christianity is not alone in considering the question of moral hierarchy, virtually every philosophy and religion contains inherent within it (stated in a variety of ways) a moral hierarchy.  How we define Good and Evil, and how we view relative grades of both, is a question of utmost importance.  For the United States, our national moral hierarchy is reflected in the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The order of the unalienable Rights in the Declaration is no accident, Life comes before Liberty, which comes before the pursuit of Happiness.  The reason is simple: Life is more valuable than Liberty which is more valuable than Happiness (a catch all for things such as property rights, workers' rights, etc).  As such, if a government were to deprive its citizens (or anyone within its power) of Life, that would by necessity be a more egregious violation than if that same government were to deprive those same people of Liberty (for example through imprisonment), which would in turn be more egregious than if that same government were to deprive those same people of the pursuit of Happiness.  It would thus follow that in order for a government to be acting in a morally acceptable way, it would need a more compelling reason to take a life than it would to take liberty than it would to take property.  This basic understanding of morality is enshrined in American jurisprudence and is reflected in our laws at every level.

Thus we see a government could be morally at fault on three ascending levels.  It is on this basis that the actions of a government should be evaluated when comparing one (potential) violation against another (and also when weighing the cost vs. benefits of laws and policies).

The COVID-19 restrictions were designed to protect Life (a highest order) at the expense of Liberty (home 'confinement') and Happiness (loss of business, loss of work, loss of entertainment).  On the surface, this is what we want from our government, protecting Life above other concerns.  But let us for a moment concede {although I certainly do not} that William Barr is correct and that the COVID-19 restrictions (he didn't specify which ones from which governors, cities, etc) were unconstitutional and an 'intrusion on civil liberties'.  Even if we concede William Barr's assertion, from a historical perspective, there have been many examples, other than slavery, of the American government (federal, state, or local) violating rights that would be more morally significant than the pandemic response.

The following are offered as examples, it is sadly far from an exhaustive list:

The Trail of Tears

The Sand Creek Massacre

The Wounded Knee Massacre

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Japanese-American internment during WWII

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

4,743 Lynchings between 1882 and 1968

100 Years of Jim Crow Laws

The denial of GI Bill benefits to a million Black WWII veterans

Decades of deliberate federal housing racial discrimination

Police Brutality during the Civil Rights Movement

The exoneration of 172 former death-row inmates since 1973

For a more comprehensive list of massacres in American History: Massacres in US History

It would not do each of the examples I've listed justice if I tried to summarize them in a few sentences.  The links provide the horrific details of each of them, all of which were morally far more significant than any restrictions that have been put in place in response to COVID-19.  In case you're wondering, similar restrictions were put in place during the Spanish Flu pandemic, these also were not mentioned by William Barr.

I don't know why William Barr ignored these far more significant examples of 'intrusion on civil liberties', only allowing that Slavery was more significant than the COVID-19 restrictions, but in doing so he made an assertion that is demonstrably morally false.

When we elevate deprivations of property above purposeful and deliberate massacres we not only weaken our moral compass, but denigrate those who lost their lives. (Scale matters to an extent, taking property from a million people weighed against taking liberty from a thousand, versus taking life from one, for example.)  This same principle holds true with Holocaust Denial, the refusal to call the killings of Armenians during WWI a genocide, or the downplaying of the horror of South African Apartheid, to highlight a few examples.  The way in which we morally evaluate history impacts the way in which we act in the present.  No matter how unnecessary or unconstitutional a person may view the restrictions put in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic {again, conceding a point that has not been proven}, there is no morally justifiable way to view these as more significant than a long list of times when the government of the United States deprived large numbers of people of life, nor of the times that it deprived a large number of people of liberty, nor indeed even above many other instances of the government depriving people of property.  William Bar is wrong.

Christian Worldview self-destruction: A culture without Facts is a culture without Truth

 The trend away from general acceptance of the idea of universal Truth, with a capital "T", has been centuries in the making.  It was helped along by the individualism of the Enlightenment, even inadvertently by the stand against collective authority taken by Martin Luther.  While Truth was losing ground in the realms of ethics, philosophy, and religion, Fact (again with the capital letter) was gaining ground in a host of scientific endeavors through the Industrial, Agricultural, and Modern Medicine revolutions.  We, as humanity, knew with certainty more facts about the universe we inhabited than our ancestors could have imagined possible.  Their senses were limited to their own eyes, we could examine the world through both microscopes and telescopes.  Even if we were losing firm ground in the spiritual realm with the breakup of Christendom into competing Catholic and Protestant camps, and the splintering of Protestantism into still further groups, we were gaining a common understanding of objective reality that led, not without bumps along the way, away from Thomas Hobbes' description of life outside of society's embrace as 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.'  Life expectancy was on the rise, starvation and childhood death rates were plummeting, work was less back breaking, leisure was invented.  In short, aside from the rude wake-up calls of war and genocide, optimism was a warranted conclusion.

In this world of increasing scientific fact, there was an opportunity for religion, Christianity in particular, to trumpet God's proclamation that lying is beyond his nature.  In other words, Christianity should have embraced scientific discovery as a further revelation of God's nature.  The relation between science and religion, which could have been harmonious, was instead rocky.

Hebrews 6:17-18 (NIV) 17 Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.

The Church made the mistake of viewing Scripture as a scientific journal rather than simply observational reporting.  The prime example is the way in which the heavens are described, the 'firmament' of Genesis 1, as it was observed by the ancients.  This was not a scientific description of what lay beyond earth's atmosphere, but only how it looked from where they stood.  Without telescopes, what more could they have known, and why would God have explained it to them in ways they could not have understood?  Thus when Copernicus and Galileo revealed through observation that the earth revolves around the sun, the Church should have welcomed this new insight, but instead insisted that Scripture declared that the geocentric model was correct.  Thus began a long and fruitless fight against scientific discovery that later encompassed numerous fields beyond astronomy, all fought misguidedly in the effort to defend things that holy scripture had not asserted.

Fast forward to 21st century American Evangelicalism (and to a lesser extent American Christianity in general).  The cause of objective spiritual Truth is seemingly at a nadir, long held moral beliefs are challenged forcefully by the culture at large, and what is the response of the Church?  A seemingly all-out assault on Fact.  Rather than defend Truth, American Evangelicalism has largely embraced a no-holds barred war against science.  It began, in earnest in 1925 with the Scopes Trial pitting an interpretation of the Creation account in Genesis against the theories of biology, but quickly expanding to hold that interpretation also against discoveries in archaeology, astronomy, geology, physics, and more as the defense of an earth that could be no more than 6,000 years old was seen as the Rubicon of scriptural inerrancy.  If Science is allowed to explain the origin of the universe and of life on earth, the war would be lost and religion would be discarded, so we have been warned with increasing fervor.

With what end result?  A significant portion of evangelicals now believe that the scientific community is engaged in a massive demonic conspiracy to discredit the Bible.  It is now common belief among many that your average paleontologist or astronomer is an atheist that hates God.   On the flip side, many of the West's most educated people have grown cynical about spiritual things in general, and Christianity in particular, in part because of this anti-science stance.  What we are left with is never ending trench warfare with evangelicals touting attempts to refute science through organizations like Answers in Genesis, a process that has inevitably become more and more political, less and less theological.

In recent decades this war over the Facts of Creation has expanded to touch upon other scientific discoveries.  Because millions of evangelicals look at science with disdain once reserved for Voodoo witch doctors, there is little wonder that an anti-vaccine movement has developed, that Climate Change is one of the most divisive political issues in America today, or that we now live in an era when a phrase like 'alternative facts' can be uttered with a straight face.

Is Science, if something so nebulous can be taken as a whole, blameless in all this?  Certainly not, one need not be a fan of Michael Crichton (I am) to recognize that human genetic engineering requires significant safeguard and raises massive ethical questions, nor to agree that recreating carnivorous dinosaurs would be a bad idea, if it were possible.  In virtually every field Science has ethical questions to answer.  As Crichton's character Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park, “Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.”  Here's the irony in all this, Science can't answer questions about what whether or not they should do something.  Those questions are ethical questions, and ethics lies in the realm of philosophy and religion.  Science NEEDS the spiritual realm to answers questions that go beyond the test tube, that are not answered by a peer reviewed study, but rather than act as a counselor and guide, much of American Christianity has treated Science as the enemy.

No matter what you believe about HOW God Created the World, the war on Science has already begun to boomerang. 

I know that many Christians are firmly convinced that only a literal 6 Day Creation occurring approximately 6,000 years ago can possibly do justice to Genesis.  {I've written about this issue previously: Faith, Science, and Creation, is there a way forward?}  If this is the only option, we are at an impasse, for scientific discoveries have not invalidated previously put forth theories about the age of the universe.  To continue in this stalemate is a lose-lose situation.  The more Facts are eroded by religion, and especially by the politics of the religious, the less and less trust will be placed upon Truth by the culture at large.  Facts and Truth are inextricably linked, you can't have one without the other.  Faith and Science NEED each other, whether either side is willing to admit it or not.

If there are no objective Facts that can be agreed upon, there is no Truth either.  On what basis will you build the case that the Bible is True while at the same time you preach that human beings cannot trust their own senses?  Radical empirical-ism, that each of us can only trust what we sense and no objective reality lies beyond our senses, is a death knell not only for any hope of a democratic republic, but of organized religion as well.  But that radical individualism is the foreseeable end result of a constant dismissal of Facts.  If Facts and Truth do not exist independent of us, but are rather subject to our will to believe or disbelieve them, they cease to have any useful meaning.

2020 has shown us the acceleration of this process.  Recently highly influential evangelical pastor John MacArthur has declared against a mountain of scientific evidence, "there is no pandemic", a statement that was met with thunderous applause by the 3,000 non mask wearing people in the sanctuary of his church.  Here's the problem, the virus doesn't care if you believe in it or not.  Science denial is now a political badge of courage, but this is not surprising, it was the next step in the ongoing assault on Fact by many Christians.

{John MacArthur fails to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary risk, plus End Times anti-government speculation}

{John MacArthur jumps the shark with COVID-19 response}

It doesn't have to be this way, we don't need to sow the seeds of our own destruction.  We can't have Truth without Facts.  When you assault one, you attack them both.  If Christians want to be people of Truth, they need to be people of Facts too.

For more on the topic of Truth and its relationship with Fact: 

The apparent blasphemy of My Pillow founder Michael Lindell regarding a COVID-19 'cure'.

2020 has taken the measure of the Church, and found us wanting

Why is the Truth treated like a second rate commodity? Life lessons from an ESPN article: Happy 59th! Or is it 58th? Cracking the mystery of Don Mattingly's birthday - by Sam Miller

Faith is not anti-fact, at least it's not supposed to be.

The ungodly growth of Holocaust Denial

Those are just the last two years, when you minor in philosophy the idea of Truth is never far from your mind. List of 37 posts on my blog about Truth

God and Politics: Greater than, less than, or equal to?

 I often speak and write about the danger of a too cozy relationship between the Church and political power, but this warning also begs a further question: What is the proper relationship between God and Politics?  The various answers will fall on a continuum from one end of the spectrum that places the Church above earthly power feuds all the way to the other extreme which subjugates the Church to the dominion of temporal power structures.  Some will respond to the 80's sitcom question, "Who's the Boss?" by emphasizing God's sovereignty (an idealist and/or Rationalist position) and others by accepting the limitations of life as we know it (a pragmatic and/or Empiricist position).  Truth be told, when studying philosophy, I always preferred the logic based approach of Descartes or Kant to the observational style of Hume or Locke.  I will focus upon three primary points on this continuum, feel free to carve out a place for others in between or at the ends of the spectrum, the goal is to spur discussion and contemplation, not to squelch it.

1. God < Politics  = Principles are expendable 

One option would be to merge Christian belief and practice INTO the current political goals of a party or system.  This option would be much worse if the system were itself overtly evil, like the German Lutheran Church's acquiescence to Nazi rule, but it still contains pitfalls even if the political philosophy one merges into is not outwardly immoral.  Why is that?  If one's commitment to political goals/methods is greater than one's commitment to God, it will only be a matter of time until that political system goes astray from the principles of faith and requires one to abandon them.  An example that might illuminate this type of arrangement is the 'deal' that Lando makes with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back.  Lando believes he has no choice, that a harsh reality requires him to compromise 'for the greater good', but soon realizes that his 'deal' can be altered at any point because he is subservient.  If you prefer a more classical example, the deal that Dr. Faustus makes with the Devil is a parallel, it too trades temporary benefits for long-term destruction.  While we might typically think of this choice as relevant to Christians living under oppressive regimes that try to force obedience upon them, for examples the Early Church when facing Rome, or Christians in China today, the real danger comes not from an aggressive and antagonistic power structure, but a welcoming one.  The promise of wealth and power are far more dangerous to the Church than the threat of oppression.  If power is more important than principle, where is the basis for criticism of the power structure?  What is the role of the prophet when the Church has handed over authority to political masters?

2. God = Politics = Principles are negotiable 

Option #1 only happens most clearly when dealing with a corrupt political leadership as when Henry VIII removed the Church of England from its relationship with Rome in order to allow himself to obtain a divorce.  An arrangement more likely to occur in 'ordinary' times would be one in which the Church considers Politics to be a partnership, simply a means to an end that can be managed (after all, how often are we really dealing with a Vader?).  In this case, Christian belief and practices are not merged INTO the system, but rather emphasized or minimized in accordance with the current political goals of the party (or a particular leader) that one chooses to partner with.  Criticism isn't excluded, as in #1, but simply muted for the sake of Realpolitik.  Principles and morality are not expendable, but they are negotiable, becoming a part of the game that must be played.  The time will come when the Word of God is weighed against a bargain that must be made (to get legislation passed, or to win an election), and tossed aside.  This arrangement it typified by the actions of Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, whose study of the power of Sauron convinces him that the best course of action is not to oppose him (for he sees no hope in victory), but to work with him.  Gandalf, realizing that Saruman has traded morality for power, continues to fight on, even against hopeless odds.  If the Church allows its principles to be dictated to it by popularity (for what is politics but a popularity contest?  Even dictatorships require popularity among the ruling clique), it will forever shift with the needs of the moment.  Most of Church History reflects this middle of the road, pragmatic, view.  There will be times when this partnership seems to be beneficial to the Church, when it yields results, and may even advance worthy causes, but these victories will inevitably give way to setbacks and compromises.

3. God > Politics = Principles are foundational

But what if the Church chose to proclaim Christian belief and practice APART FROM the current political goals of any party?  Such a Church would be beholden to none, would compromise its beliefs for no promise of power.  The Church could then criticize whatever policies and proposals it saw as unjust or immoral, it could support those that align with biblical principles, supporting ideas that it judged to be moral, not politicians or parties.  It could cooperate when politicians chose to align with the Church's goals, engage on its own terms, and do so for God's purpose.  Is such a stance naive?  Impossible in the 'real world'?  Or have too many of the Church's leaders lacked the courage to stand their ground?  The example that comes to mind here is the decision of Steve Rogers, Captain America, to refuse to sign the Sakovia Accords in Captain America: Civil War because he believed that giving up the ability to decide for himself the difference between right and wrong was a dangerous path.  (Yeah, I'm Team Cap when watching that movie.)  There are actually numerous biblical precedents for this stance: When the Prophet Nathan saw that King David had chosen an immoral path, he opposed that path and called the king to question.  When the Prophet Elijah saw that King Ahab and Queen Jezebel had embraced the idolatry of Baal worship, he took it upon himself to oppose the prophets of Baal, earning himself a death sentence from the king and queen in the process.  Likewise, John the Baptist did not consider Herod's role as king to make him exempt from the Law of God and rebuked him for his unlawful marriage (this opposition cost him his life).  Fast forward to the situation described in option #1, that of the German Lutheran Church succumbing to Nazi control, and you see in opposition to this betrayal the faithful work of the Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who also lost his life because of this stand).  The Church fulfills its relationship with earthly power most faithfully when it maintains its prophetic ministry of speaking Truth to the powerful, of opposing immorality wherever it originates.  

Are there other options?  The Amish have decided that they'd rather not be involved at all, withdrawing from society, as have the Jehovah's Witnesses (somewhat less dramatically).  While this removal from the questions of power and politics removes the temptation to compromise, it also abdicates the responsibility given to the Church to stand for justice and protect the oppressed.

Isaiah 1:17    New International Version

Learn to do right; seek justice.  Defend the oppressed.  Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.

Leviticus 19:15    New International Version

“‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

Psalm 82:3    New International Version

Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.

While it is true that the Church is not Israel, and we do not live (nor should we seek to) in a theocracy, the Church still has a role to play in upholding and advocating for morality in the societies and power structures that it finds itself a part of.  What the Church has at times forgotten, especially when offered earthly power, is that God does not accept that the pathway to good can be paved with evil. (Romans 12:21 (NIV)  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.)  

When I was eighteen I strongly considered majoring in political science and seeking to serve my country in the realm of politics.  In the end, I rejected that path for two primary reasons: (1) I hated the idea of constantly asking for money, (2) I knew that I would be forced to choose between proclaiming what was True and Right and thus ending my career at some point when those things were opposed by the needs of the party, or muzzling my beliefs (or worse yet changing them) in order to move ahead.  I don't doubt that thousands of Christian politicians from the local to the federal level struggle with what their faith demands of them, with the demand to compromise principles for the sake of politics.  What if the Church supported them by not playing the political game?  What if the Church offered these politicians an example of moral fortitude that might inspire them to stand for justice even when it wasn't convenient?  

We've never truly seen what the Church could become if it took all of Jesus' teachings to heart.  What would our world look like if Christ's followers really 'turned the other cheek' and 'repaid evil with good'?  We fall short, we repent, we lean upon the Spirit and seek to imitate Christ-likeness better the next time.  Imagine also if the Church truly believed the words of Paul, Philippians 3:20 (NIV) But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God is already sovereign, what if the Church started acting like it knew that to be true?

Philippians 4:8  New International Version

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

  

Sermon Video: Fasting: Jesus' disciples and the New Covenant - Mark 2:18-22

 In response to a question about why his disciples were not observing the Jewish custom of fasting, Jesus explains that his time with them is akin to a wedding celebration, a festive occasion for which fasting would be inappropriate.  What is fasting?  Abstaining from food, and sometimes also drink, for a period of time.  The Law of Moses required it for the Day of Atonement, other uses in the Hebrew Scriptures include as part of a person's repentance, in response to a calamity, or in preparation to communing with God (think Moses at Sinai).  These uses remain valid for Christians today, although some denominations emphasis fasting much more than others.  In addition, Jesus explains that what he is doing is both connected to the Covenant of Abraham, AND new enough that it won't fit into that definition without 'tearing' or 'bursting'.  The New Covenant will include Gentiles, have a new revelation of scripture, and the advent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

To watch the video, click on the link below: