So What is YOUR View of God?

Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.  Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow.

This is what A.W. Tozer wrote in his book The Knowledge of the Holy some years ago, and I think he’s completely correct.   Our conception of God informs our view of religion which in turn governs our thoughts and actions.  If we view God as a cosmic tyrant who actively seeks out our every wrong so that he can punish us, then we are likely to have a very legalistic view of religion, and a very rigid, rule and fear oriented life.  On the other hand, if God is viewed as an overly compassionate cosmic giver who exists only to meet our every need, then we will likely have a religion with little to no focus on our moral condition, and a great emphasis on manipulating God to get what we want.

So just what is the typical churchgoer’s view of God?  Hard for me to say really. I think, first of all, of the health and wealth preachers who paint a picture of God that looks more like a cosmic genie than anything else.  They promise us the world so long as we can enter the magic throne room and rub the magic throne with enough faith to move mountains.  Then there is the God of the emergent church movement who is so vague that he is of no use.  He somehow transcends categories of language and becomes a God who is so unrestrained and indefinable that he floats away on a cloud of nothingness without anyone ever caughting a glimpse of who he really is.  Then, there’s the mainstream view of God by the average churchgoer.  He’s a God who has enough compassion and warm and fuzzies to give everyone seven helpings.  The downside, though, is that he has no power or say in everyday dealings and practical affairs, thus no relevance outside the church building.  He’s only there to make you feel good for the couple of hours you spend at church on Sundays, but once church is over it’s time to leave the feel-good-fest and return to the real world which is no place for the soft delicate God who waits anxiously in the church building for your next visit.

I don’t say any of this to make fun of anyone, Lord knows I’ve had my fair share of misunderstandings concerning God (and no doubt I still do).  It’s just that with so much misinformation out there, it is all the more important that we understand who God is.  Undoubtedly all of us will have incorrect conceptions of God, but the only way to work with the problem is to study who God is, and this should be our life long pursuit.  God ought to be the most important object in our lives.  

 

Deeper, Spiritual Significance to a Horror Flick?

In R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God he makes an interesting point about what it “feels” like to have an encounter with the holy God:

Otto spoke of the tremendum (awe-fulness) because of the fear the holy provokes in us. The holy fills us with a kind of dread. We use expressions like “My blood ran icy cold” or “My flesh crept”

We think of the Negro spiritual: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The refrain of the song says, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble…tremble…tremble.”

Ok, so maybe having an encounter with the holy God is not exactly like peering at Jason through the small space between your fingers as you frantically use your hands to cover your eyes in an effort to hide from the gruesome scene unfolding on the screen before you. But still, you’ve got to admit there is some similarity between the feelings you get when your heart races from watching a horror flick, and when you fall to your knees in utter awe and fear at the bigness and holiness of God.

Historic Event

Proud new moment for our country:

Whatever your views, do not forget to pray for our new President.

Happy MLK Day!

Though far from perfect, he is truly a hero of the civil rights movement, and for the rights of the oppressed.  He was a man who sought to destroy social injustice.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.

(King – “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”)

Indeed.  Let us not forget his legacy, or the general call of all Christians to advance the gospel, and to have a heart for the oppressed.

Confronted by God

When confronted with The Law, Josiah’s response is what our response ought to be when confronted by God:

The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the LORD all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. He did away with the pagan priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the LORD and where women…

2 Kings 23

…and it continues on for the majority of the chapter. Because of Josiah’s response, v. 25 says, “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.”

Shouldn’t Josiah’s response be our own? When confronted by God shouldn’t we want to clean up our own lives? I know there is the current tendency toward “touchy feely” and “seeker sensitive” Christianity so that we don’t offend anyone, BUT once someone truly has an encounter with the Holy God his response should be utter awe, conviction, and fear. Just as Isaiah when he cried “Woe to me!..I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:5)

Format Problems

I’m noticing that Firefox displays text differently and some of my posts are unreadable (on my computer anyway). Just to let you guys know, I am trying to figure this problem out.

Abortion (Part 3): So Human Life Begins When?

So far we have a pro-choice argument in which the permissibility of abortion is grounded in two conditions:

1. The non-human status of a fetus

2. Relevant circumstances which have been met

There are a couple of ways of responding to this. We could show that either (1) or (2) is false, or we could show that even if true, (1) and (2) taken together do not constitute sufficient grounds for the permissibility of abortion. I’m going to focus my efforts on showing that (1) is false. I will return to (2) at a later point in the series.

The question of when human life begins is an important issue in the abortion debate. So just when does human life begin? Perhaps a better way of putting it is this: At what point does a new human being come into existence? Ultimately I think we have to understand that this is a scientific question. It is not a question that can be answered by theologians, philosophers, lawyers, etc., so in discussing this question we must look at what the scientific literature says. When we do, I think we find that there is a strong scientific consensus that fertilization brings about a new human being. In his article “A Distinct Human Organism” Robert P. George, Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, writes:

…the answer is to be found in the works of modern human embryology and developmental biology. In these texts, we find little or nothing in the way of scientific uncertainty: ‘…human development begins at fertilization…’ write embryologists Keith Moore and T.V. N. Persaud in The Developing Human (7th edition, 2003), the most widely used textbook on human embryology. [1]

Quotes like the one above are pretty much what I find whenever I look into the issue. Randy Alcorn, for example, on page 52 of his book ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments has a collection of quotes found in medical textbooks and scientific reference works regarding the issue of when life begins (emphasis are in original):

Dr. Bradley M. Patten’s textbook, Human Embryology, states, “It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and the resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of the life of a new individual”

Dr Keith L. Moore’s text on embryology, referring to the single-cell zygote, says, “The Cell results from Fertilization of an oocyte by a sperm and is the beginning of a human being.” (emphasis his)

Doctors J.P. Greenhill and E.A. Friedman, in their work on biology and obstetrics, state, “The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life.”

Dr. Louis Fridhandler, in the medical textbook Biology of Gestation, refers to fertilization as “that wondrous moment that marks the beginning of life for a new unique individual”

Doctors E. L. Potter and J.M. Craig write in Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant, “Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition.”[2]

Princeton University’s website has another collection of textbook quotes which can found at:

http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html

http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes.html)

Dianne N. Irving in her article “When do human beings begin? “Scientific” myths and Scientific facts” writes:

“…a human being is the immediate product of fertilization. As such he/she is a single-cell embryonic zygote, an organism with 46 chromosomes, the number required of a member of the human species. This human being immediately produces specifically human proteins and enzymes, directs his/her own further growth and development as human, and is a new, genetically unique, newly existing, live human individual.” [3] (emphasis her’s)

Now I am certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me that essentially what is taught and understood within the scientific community is that fertilization brings about a new human individual, aka “human life.”

Also, life is understood as a continuum. It starts at conception and continues till death. We give labels to the different stages of development (zygote, fetus, infant, child, teen, adult, etc.), but a human being is present at every point in the continuum. A zygote may not look how we presently look, but he/she looks just as we did when we were at that same stage of development.  George writes:

The adult that is you is the same human being who, at an earlier stage of your life, was an adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus and an embryo. Even in the embryonic stage, you were a whole, living member of the species Homo sapiens. You were then, as you are now, a distinct and complete — though, of course, immature — human organism.[4]

In any case, I think we can make a strong case for (1) being false. Human life begins at conception. However, is there some way for the pro-choice argument to proceed from here? Is there some sort of response that can be given? Yes. And it is at this point that we get into the real “meat” of the pro-choice position. But more on that next post.

Further reading

When Does Human Life Begin? A Scientific Perspective – White Paper

WHEN DO HUMAN BEINGS BEGIN? “SCIENTIFIC” MYTHS AND SCIENTIFIC by Dianne N. Irving

Notes

[1] George, R. P. (2005, November 22). A Distinct Human Organism. Retrieved January 2009, from NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4857703

[2] Alcorn, R. (2000). ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments. Multnomah Books.

[3] Irving, D. N. (1999, February ). WHEN DO HUMAN BEINGS BEGIN? “SCIENTIFIC” MYTHS AND SCIENTIFIC FACTS. Retrieved January 2009, from Princeton University: http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/wdhbb.html

[4] George, R. P. (2005, November 22). A Distinct Human Organism. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4857703

Rationalism to the Extreme?

I’m always amazed when I find someone who holds logic and reason above everything else. Coming from someone like me, this may sound like quite a shock since I’m an incredibly logically minded person. However, I do realize the importance of personal feelings and emotions even if I’m not always so adept at showing them. In fact, I would place emotions on the same level of important as logic and reasoning; it’s just that I think the two serve different purposes.

In any case, I’m fascinated by people who hold logic and “rationality” on a pedestal far above anything else. Feelings are of no value to them, and personal perspectives don’t matter either; the only thing that matters is the cold, hard facts. These people trust their rational intuition more than anything else, thus they subject everything to logical scrutiny. If something doesn’t make sense to them logically then it’s not worth believing. We can call these people “rationalists.”

Perhaps one of the best known examples of a consistent rationalist is a man by the name of Parmenides who lived about 2,500 years ago. Parmenides was a rationalist to the extreme. He believed that the world was one eternal, unchanging whole. He didn’t believe there was any sort of change whatsoever. He thought change was illusory.

One has to wonder how in the world he could come to such a conclusion? We see change everywhere! The seasons change, the sun sets and the stars rotate around the night sky, children grow older, water rushes about in rivers, etc. In fact, your body will have undergone numerous changes by the time you finish reading this post. The world is full of change! So, how could Parmenides have come to such a ridiculous conclusion? Contrary to what his odd view of the world may suggest, he was actually extremely bright, and he drew his conclusions from a rather logical and impressive string of arguments:

1. Anything we can think or speak about either exists or doesn’t exist

2. Anything that doesn’t exist is nothing

3. We cannot think or speak about nothing

4. Hence, we cannot think or speak about what doesn’t exist

5. Therefore anything we can think or speak about exists. [1]

In other words, to think or speak about nothing is to not think or speak at all. So the object of thought and speech must be something. Parmenides identified this “something” with what he called “Being” and then he drew out several conclusions regarding Being. For example, he wondered if Being began to exist at some point. If Being did begin to exist then it must have come either from something or from nothing. If from nothing, then it would not have come into existence since no thing can come from nothing. But on the other hand, it could not have come from something either, since something can only be what it is and nothing else—it cannot become something that it is not already. Hence being never began to exist; being is eternal. Furthermore, being cannot change, for that would mean that it has become something else, but that has been proven to be impossible. Thus for Parmenides, being is eternally what is, and it can neither be nor become anything else. There is no change whatsoever …Chew on that for a bit!

Anyway, the next time one of those rationally minded people has you frustrated by their unyielding adherence to logical reasoning, just take a deep breath and remember it could be worst…they could be Parmenides 🙂

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Notes

[1] Lawhead, W. (2006). Voyage of Discovery: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. Wadsworth Publishing.

Abortion (part 2): Pro-choice Arguments, Circumstances, and Permissibility

So just what “grounds” the moral permissibility of abortion then? The argument I introduced last post can be summed up as: if x is non-human life, then it is morally permissible to kill x. But as I pointed out last post, there are tons of things that would fit the bill — cats, birds, whales, tigers, spiders, puppies, etc., all of which we wouldn’t consider killing just because of their non-human status. So there’s got to be something more to the abortion case.

 

Pro-choicers will routinely claim that abortion is only permissible under certain circumstances. So, for example, they may say that when the mother’s pregnancy is the result of rape, abortion is permissible. Also they may say that when the mother is unfit for child rearing abortion is permissible. A poor, pregnant teenaged single parent living in the inner city with two other children she cannot adequately care for, should not be forced to carry a third baby to term. Or, say a child’s future environment is deemed unsuitable. Perhaps the child will likely grow up in an abusive environment or in an environment that will likely lead to a short life of gangs and prison time. In the inner-city where the pregnancy rate among young teens is high, many babies grow up to be gang members, enter prison, or end up at home with fours kids, pregnant and on welfare. Sure adoption is an option, but the pro-choicers’ point is that the mother shouldn’t be forced to carry the baby to term. Especially when doing so will likely cause even more hardships to the woman. And this is true not only of inner-city young women, but also of those from suburban areas. They may not have to worry so much about their kids ending up in gangs and in prison, nevertheless, they do have their fair share of hardships to endure.

The point to glean from all this is that in addition to the fetus’ non-human status, there are also circumstances necessary for grounding the permissibility of abortion. Granted, pro-choicers will disagree on just what circumstances will suffice, nevertheless, circumstances along with the fetus’ non-human status is what is needed to ground the permissibility of abortion. So in answer to the question “What grounds the permissibility of abortion?” we have the following answer:

 

1. The fetus’ non-human status.

2. Relevant circumstances which have been met.

 

What can be said in response to this? I’ll examine that next post.

Abortion (Part 1): A Naive Pro-choice Argument

This series of posts will be dedicated to examining various pro-choice arguments. I’m gonna start from what I view to be the weakest arguments then move on to stronger ones. While I’m certainly no expert on the subject I hope you will be edified by my efforts. Enjoy!

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The typical “street-level” pro-choice argument goes something like this:

–1. Fetuses are not human life at conception or in the weeks following.

–2. Therefore it is morally permissible to kill a fetus

The first part of the argument (1) claims that a fetus isn’t human life–it’s more like a ‘clump of cells,’ ‘material,’ ‘a blood clot,’ ‘a part of the woman’s body,’ etc. In any case, whatever “it” is that is developing inside the mother’s body, it ain’t human life according to (1). Probably the biggest benefit of (1) is that it helps ease any emotional guilt associated with killing a fetus. After all, if the doctor is only “killing” a clump of cells then there is no reason to feel guilty– it is not as though the doctor is terminating a REAL human life. And this, I think, leads us naturally to (2): It is morally permissible for us to kill a fetus since it isn’t human life in the first place. Ultimately what we want to know is what “grounds” the moral permissibility of abortion, and according to (2) the reason why it is morally permissible to kill a fetus is just because a fetus isn’t human life.

Now, I think this argument “naïve” for two reasons: Firstly, I think it misses the fact that there is a biological consensus that human life begins at conception [1] but I’ll save much of this discussion for a later post. Needless to say, I don’t think there is any reason for us to wrestle over whether a fetus is human life or not. Secondly—and this is the point I’ll elaborate on—it is clearly a bad argument that has consequences which are very hard to swallow. Suppose, for example, that I get a new puppy and that armed with the naïve pro-choice argument presented above, I decide to make the following argument:

–1. Dogs are not human life at conception, or at any point following conception

–2. Since my puppy is a dog, and since dogs are not human life, it is morally permissible for me to kill her right now.

Clearly there would be something wrong. What right would I have to kill my new found companion? Well, according to the naïve pro-choice argument, the right to kill a fetus comes merely from the (presumed) fact that fetuses are not human life. But by that logic, we have a license to kill ANYTHING that happens to be non-human life—including my new puppy.

But surely something’s amiss here. Our society doesn’t take lightly to people who think they have the right to kill any non-human life. And with good reason too. Most of us intuitively know there is something wrong with the idea of it being permissible to terminate a life just because isn’t human life. Those who don’t share this common intuition are fined, or have their movement restricted to a 10X10 cell. [2] In any case, there is something wrong with the naïve pro-choice argument.

…up next: the pro-choice response, and how we can make the pro-choice argument stronger.

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Notes

[1] It is important to recognize that a biological consensus is not equivalent to a moral consensus. Even if a fetus is considered human life it doesn’t necessarily entail that abortion is morally wrong. This is clear from Judith Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” which takes for granted that a fetus is human life, Mary Anne Warren’s “On The Moral And Legal Status Of Abotion” where she argues that even if fetuses are human life in a genetic sense, they aren’t human in a moral sense, or from the simple fact that even most pro-lifers think abortion is permissible when the mothers life is in danger.

[2] I do realize that it could be the case that it is permissible to kill non-humans simply because they are non-human life, but I don’t think that is a conclusion that most pro-choicers would accept, and since we are trying to ascertain the pro-choice position, I will simply ignore this as an option.