The Culture of Martyrdom

It feels like every few weeks that American Christians find something new to get angry over. Some examples from this year: the false allegations against Planned Parenthood that it sells aborted fetal tissue for profit, Kim Davis, the Obergefell vs. Hodges ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, the recent absurdity over Starbucks changing their cup design to not include generic symbols of winter, the more general perception of a "war on Christmas", and the perennial controversies over states/cities/schools not supporting public prayer or public endorsements of Christianity (as distinct from cracking down on the private practice of religion).

Why is this Christian outrage so common? Some degree of pharisaic self-righteousness, of wanting to be (or feel) vindicated over against the sinful "world" probably has something to do with it. It is always far easier to identify and deplore error than it is to repair it, to proclaim the truth and embody the love with which we have been loved. There is also (as I pointed out in the context of the allegations against Planned Parenthood) a failure to love those one considers one's enemies, and an eagerness to believe the worst about them—and then get outraged over it. The capability of modern media, news and social, to spread a source of outrage like an epidemic well beyond its original scope to infect people who have nothing to do with it also has something to do with it. (Conversely, the media's role in amplifying and making visible the resulting outrage should not be underestimated) But I'm going to focus on and try to correct a reason for Christian outrage that arises from being aligned with the world, instead of overly hostile or self-righteous towards it.

I'm referring to what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (author of The Righteous Mind and co-author of the influential article The Coddling of the American Mind) calls the "moral culture of victimhood". That post on Haidt's blog is his summary of a paper by sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, which posits the culture of victimhood as a new "moral culture" that influences how conflicts are handled, after the cultures of honor and dignity well-known to sociologists. In a culture of victimhood, individuals or groups respond to relatively minor slights not on their own but by calling for the intervention of an influential third party (in America, collegiate or governmental authorities). This requires the collecting of evidence or campaigning to convince the third party that they are being oppressed, denied equality, "victimized", or socially marginalized, and that this party's help is needed to end the injustice. This culture carries with it an elevation of victimhood as something desirable and virtuous; the authors wrote, "Thus we might call this moral culture a culture of victimhood because the moral status of the victim, at its nadir in honor cultures, has risen to new heights."

This culture, as Campbell and Manning write, is most entrenched in college campuses where it encourages people belonging to groups seen as underprivileged to be hypersensitive to "microaggressions" directed against them, but a version of it has become influential in American Christianity. It is often referred to (by non-Christians) as the "persecution complex". As they point out in a response to comments on Haidt's blog:

But we certainly see manifestations of [victimhood culture] elsewhere, and many of our readers have, in person or online, pointed to various examples of conservatives, evangelical Christians, or others complaining about minor slights, portraying themselves as oppressed, or in some other way claiming victim status. This is something we point out in our article – that if victimhood confers status, then all sorts of people will want to claim it.

In a Christian context, then, victimhood culture means calling out a perceived slight, injustice, or instance of oppression for one's faith as "religious persecution" or a step away from it and campaigning (the louder the better) for a powerful third party (often the government, or maybe sometimes the general public?) to step in and protect one's civil liberties. Feeding into this is a narrative of Christians as a socially marginalized and disadvantaged group in America, reinforced by all the ways in which our society is "rejecting God": acceptance of abortion and gay marriage, declining church attendance and increasing nonbelief, the secularization and pluralization of culture, and incidents like the ones I listed above. Every instance of "persecution" strengthens this narrative, and with it the influence of victimhood (or perhaps martyrdom) culture in American Christianity.

As you may have guessed, I do not think victimhood culture is compatible with the Christian faith. Most of the time the persecution being experienced and causing the outrage is totally imaginary, as non-Christians can usually see pretty clearly. This wolf-crying has cost Christianity a lot of credibility in the outside world's eyes. America may not be a "Christian nation", but Christianity has long been woven deeply into its moral framework, and still occupies a relatively privileged cultural position. Considering Christians a persecuted minority because of a loss of cultural clout is doubly wrong and shows callous ignorance of what real religious persecution is (as any older Russian Orthodox could remind you). But even if the persecution is real, buying into the culture of victimhood is not an authentically Christian way to respond to it.

The elevation of "victimhood" as a desirable (and yet negative) status strikes me as an inverted parody of the Lord's teaching: "But many who are first will be last, and the last first." (Matthew 19:30) In a moral culture of victimhood people compete to be seen as "last" or "least"—last in the social pecking order, least privileged, most defenseless and victimized—because "last" is the new "first". It is exactly the same worldly, self-seeking logic, only turned on its head. There is the same kind of competition, striving against one another to get yours (in this case, the power of being seen as a victim), because as Campbell and Manning explain, "while everyone can have dignity, not everyone can be a victim", just as not everyone can be the most powerful, the most influential, the richest. But this is not at all what Jesus meant. Victimhood culture encourages a show of false humility painted over deeper anger, fear, and self-centeredness, but the Lord commands true humility. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves" (Philippians 2:3), not in order that you might be vindicated against them through the exercise of this-worldly justice, but to love and serve them.

St. Paul more fully defines this love in his famous chapter in 1 Corinthians: "Love suffers long [and] is kind; ... is not provoked, ... does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (13:4-7) The contrasts with the pattern of fear, outrage, and offendedness we see in victimhood culture are obvious. Being thick-skinned is a Christian virtue, not at all meaning insensitivity or callousness, but patience and resistance to being angered, able to overlook offenses except for how they harm the offender, just as God is always willing to do for our sins. Elsewhere he puts it in the form of two baffling questions: "Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?" (1 Corinthians 6:7) The Lord teaches us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), to be as patient and compassionate toward their wrongs as we are towards those of our friends and loved ones. I know from abundant experience that it is a virtue and a sign of Christlikeness not to be offended easily, and that this virtue is not developed without a godly, uphill struggle. Let us reject every human philosophy that tries to dissuade us from fighting to become more like Christ.

St. Peter writes words that speak very relevantly to Christian outrage at modern-day "persecution".

Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed [are you], for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people's matters. Yet if [anyone suffers] as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.(1 Peter 4:12-16)

The caption reads "Martyrdom of the holy hieromartyr
Polycarp of Smyrna"

Remember that the pre-Constantine Church faced persecution far worse than anything faced by most American Christians even on our worst days. Yet Peter counsels the churches not to be surprised or shocked at this persecution when it comes but to "rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings". We are to rejoice when we are persecuted. Could anything be more counterintuitive? Yet it is just what we see in the early Church, for example in The Martyrdom of Polycarp. This echoes what Jesus himself taught in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed [are] those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake." (Assuming it is said falsely, and for Jesus' sake!) "Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great [is] your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:10-12) St. Paul describes the Christian's response to his persecutors, namely to return love for hatred: "Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat." (1 Corinthians 4:12-13)

The modern elevation of the status of "victim" (in desirability, and yet not necessarily positivity) does seem similar to how the early Church held its martyrs in high honor and even desired to imitate them. How are they different? For one thing, the early Christians honored their martyrs without expecting or demanding that the world (or any institution within it) also do so. Why would it? The way of Christ was clearly seen as contrary, diametrically different from and opposed to the way of the world. Martyrdom does not convey "dignity", prestige, or a privileged status in some objective, universal sense that we can appeal to and expect the world to recognize, but the crown of life in the kingdom of God (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:25, James 1:12, Revelation 2:10), which is foolishness to the world. (1 Corinthians 3:19) Martyrs look for justice not from civil authorities here and now, but from God, the true judge who is above every created power. Martyrdom is not the key to justifying your selfish demands for protection and status, but the ultimate renunciation of self as a witness to Christ. Christians buying into victimhood culture in response to real or perceived persecution are not witnessing to Christ, but to their own worldliness.

When persecution comes (and the fact that most "persecution" in America is in the eye of the beholder does not make real persecution impossible), let us face it as martyrs, not "victims".

Postscript. Fr. Stephen Freeman, who has a seriously uncanny knack for writing eloquently and insightfully on whatever I am trying to think on at the moment, has recently written two posts related to this subject. Do You Care Too Much? critiques our tendency to get pointlessly outraged via the media over situations that don't touch on us at all, for the sake of "caring". Such "caring", or having sufficiently strong sentiments about various "issues" (as a normative sentiment, apart from actually doing anything) is, he argues, one of the "passions" that try to master us and keep us from properly ordering our feelings in the Christian life. Living in the Real World focuses on the power of media to distract us from the real, particular world at hand, in which we actually engage and interact, in favor of "things in general": a passive response to vague sentiments over things that have nothing to do with us and which we can't do anything about. Both are far more worth reading than anything I could write (which is why I waited until the end to direct you to them).

War and Peace

The following is the final(!) paper for my master's program, on the ethics of war and peace. (Not the book)

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War is one of the oldest ethical questions that have faced Christians. Teaching on war has existed between two poles since the early days of the Church. The early Latin father Tertullian, speaking about the possibility of Christians serving in the military, unambiguously states that "there is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be due to two masters—God and Caesar."¹ Conversely, two hundred years later Augustine wrote, "it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars."² The traditions they represent, Christian pacifism and just war theory, have coexisted in the Church, sometimes uneasily, ever since.

Christian pacifism was a significant, though not dominant presence in the early church, as represented by fathers like Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Lactantius, and has remained so ever since.³ The pacifist tradition they helped originate was continued in the Middle Ages by the Waldensians and after the Reformation by Protestant denominations like the Mennonites, Swiss Brethren, and Quakers. In the modern era, reforming figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. have powerfully demonstrated the redemptive power of nonviolence to effect social change and publicly model the love of Christ. Christian pacifism "is more than simply approving of peace, which everyone in some sense would do, it is the conviction that the commitment to peace stands higher than any other commitment"⁴—even the commitment to seek justice.⁵

The biblical basis for Christian pacifism is centered on Jesus as "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15 RSV); he reveals the Father to us (Mat 11:27); he is God in the flesh, the final and greatest revelation of the divine (Heb 1:1-2). "He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power." (Heb 1:3) What is true of Jesus is true of God, and it is through the Incarnation that God has revealed to us both who he is and what it means to be truly human. And what kind of God does Jesus reveal to us? A God who responds to evil with mercy (Luk 15:11-32), who "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Mat 5:45), who submitted to a horrific, unjust death on the cross, the ultimate demonstration of nonviolent love in the face of evil and an example for Christians to follow (1 Pet 2:21). The Incarnation is the "normative revelation of God" for Christians,⁶ and a major implication of it is that God is nonviolent.

Further support can be drawn from the teachings of Jesus. The first and most greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, and inseparable from this is the command to love your neighbor as yourself. (Mat 22:34-40) But Jesus expands this command to include not just those we identify and get along with, but our enemies (Mat 5:43-45, Luk 6:35-36). We are to respond to evil, persecution, and violence not in kind, not with violent resistance (Mat 5:39) but with love and mercy. In doing so we are simply following the example of God, who loved us and showed us mercy (especially through Christ) when we were sinners and his enemies (5:8,10). These sharpened teachings are not simply unreachable ideals or general attitudes we are supposed to have; Jesus fully intended for us to obey them just as much as he intended for us to obey his command to love one another.

Commenting on and expanding Christ's teachings, Paul writes, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom 13:10) According to him, we are called to engage not in physical violence, but in spiritual warfare.⁷ (2 Cor 10:3-6) We must "Repay no one evil for evil...but overcome evil with good" (Rom 12:17,21). Violence, Christian pacifists argue, is not redemptive; it only leads to more evil, more violence, and so it can never positively advance the causes of justice or mercy. "The only ultimately redemptive response to sin and how it profoundly distorts human social life is, as Paul asserted, to seek to overcome evil with good (Romans 12). The only way successfully to resist violence without simply adding to violence in the world is overtly non-violent resistance."⁸ (Emphasis the author's)

While I support nearly all of the points made by Christian pacifism and believe that its Christ-centered message of peace needs to be heard more widely, I cannot follow its case to the absolute conclusion that war and violence are never permissible. In this it confuses private duties, in which a Christian is responsible foremost for his own soul, with public duties, in which a Christian, especially a parent or civil authority, is responsible for the protection of those in his care.⁹ One need look no further than the present situation in Iraq and Syria for an example of a situation in which an exclusive prescription of nonviolence would be impossibly idealistic (i.e. placing moral ideals before people), and for that reason heartless towards the vulnerable facing the real danger of violent persecution or death. For the sake of peace as the most important commitment and to avoid dirtying one's own hands, Christian pacifism is willing to allow death, suffering, and injustice to befall innocents. For the sake of loving one’s enemies, it is willing to compromise on loving neighbors, innocents, and those one may be charged to protect. Christ's teachings of pacifism and nonresistance are a high and vital calling for his followers, but to refuse to fight in the defense of others is to impose those teachings on those who, by and large, are not able to obey them to the utmost. It is to force martyrdom on them. To deny that such difficult choices ever have to be made is simply to deny the pervasive reality of sin in our world.

Christian pacifism also runs into some exegetical difficulties. It ignores Jesus' propensity to use hyperbole to accentuate his moral teachings; for example, I know of no one who has ever applied Matthew 5:29-30 literally and mutilated themselves to avoid sinning. Likewise his command to hate one's father and mother (Luk 14:26) is qualified by (among other things) his act of compassion on Mary from the cross in John 19:26-27, as well as Paul's command to provide for one's family (1 Tim 5:8). Its flat definition of Jesus as the "normative revelation of God" wanders dangerously close to Marcionism when it allows this reality to invalidate the depictions of God as blessing warfare in the Old Testament, reiterated in Heb 11:32-34. In context, its use of Romans 12 and 13 is also somewhat ambiguous: the justification for Christians not avenging themselves is not God's unwavering mercy but his self-declared monopoly on vengeance (Rom 12:19), and in Romans 13:1-7 Paul describes governing authorities as instituted by God, bearing the sword to execute his wrath (as a proxy) on the wrongdoer.

Thus even in the biblical support for Christian pacifism are found the seeds for just war theory, which holds that while war is evil, it may be permissible in certain circumstances. Augustine was the first to articulate the rationale that since the state is God's servant, appointed to bear the sword against wrongdoers (Rom 13:4), there are cases in which war (and capital punishment) can be just, in congruence with the examples of the Old Testament.¹⁰ Nonetheless war remains at best a lamentable necessity, an evil made permissible only by the presence of worse evils.¹¹ The Scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas built on the teachings of Augustine, going into more detail on the specific criteria that make a war “just” and reiterating that the aim of war is the restoration of peace and justice to the social order.¹² The early reformers (except the aforementioned proponents of pacifism) continued to uphold the just-war tradition.

Just war theory distinguishes between at least two sets of criteria. Jus ad bellum criteria evaluate whether or not a given war is justifiable and include things like declaration by a competent authority, a just cause, proportionality of the means of war, exhaustion of peaceful means of resolution, and probability of success. Jus in bello criteria, including proportionality of force and discrimination of targets, are intended to minimize the evils of a war already in progress and avoid dehumanization of the enemy.¹³ Unlike Christian pacifism, just war theory does not hold that war always necessarily creates a worse evil than it overthrows, or that violence against a military opponent necessarily leads to hatred. It is possible to love one's enemies while using force to stop them from harming others, remaining ready (even eager) to lay down one's arms when peace is declared. God himself faces the same challenge of honoring and loving us (as his sacred image-bearers) even as we persist in destroying each other.

Just war theory enjoys plenty of biblical precedent, especially throughout the Old Testament, which presupposes that warfare can be legitimate. Abraham gets into a skirmish to rescue his nephew Lot (Gen 14:13-16), and is presented as an example of faith in the New Testament (Rom 4:11-12, Heb 11:8-30). The same can be said of Joshua (cf. Heb 11:30), the judges, and David (Heb 11:32-34), who are praised for their faith, including their willingness to fight in the name of God. In the New Testament, John the Baptist (Luk 3:14), Jesus (Luk 7:2-9), and Peter (Acts 10:1,24-48) have encounters with soldiers, in which we receive no hint that their profession is inherently sinful. As previously mentioned, in Romans 13:1-4 Paul states that governing authorities are servants instituted by God, appointed to bear the sword against wrongdoers. In John's apocalyptic vision Christ is depicted as one who "it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war." (Rev 19:11) "While the warfare in question is spiritual, nevertheless the suitability of the war metaphor implies that the activity itself is not a violation of the purposes of God. By way of contrast, God is never described as a 'harlot' or in terms of other occupations that are by their very nature immoral."¹⁴

Yet the logic of just war theory must not be taken too far. If overapplied, especially as a set of criteria for evaluating whether a given war is a "just" war, it risks becoming a moral "free pass" for war and killing, declaring them to be "good" when (as the destruction of God's image) they remain anything but. Just war theory can even end up sanctioning an implicit "end justifies the means" philosophy: if the end is considered to be "just", the horrors of war are declared "righteous". The Latin word iustus that is translated to "just" here should probably be taken to mean more "lawful", "legal", or "legitimate" in this case than positively "righteous", as is the connotation of the Greek dikaios. The point of Christian pacifism that violence is never redemptive is somewhat true; besides its destruction of the image of God, all war can do is prevent a greater evil or injustice by way of a (hopefully) lesser; this must not be confused with the actual creation of goodness or justice.

Both just war theory and Christian pacifism, when applied alone, have parallels with the kind of theodicy David Bentley Hart calls out for trying to make evil and suffering morally intelligible.¹⁵ The latter has echoes of a "greater good" theodicy: we are right to allow evil and injustice to occur in the short term for the sake of a longer-term good that cannot come about any other way. The suffering of innocents at the hands of the unjust is perversely necessary for the sake of the justice which, it is thought, can only come about through nonviolence. Conversely, just war theory can paint killing as "right" if it prevents a worse evil from occurring, which is dangerously relativistic. How can the Christian equally, consistently condemn and fight against all violence and injustice—both that within himself and that committed by others?

This tension is real, a consequence of the fallen world in which we live, and it is tempting to resolve it by simply adopting either a total pacifism that denounces all war as evil or a doctrine of "holy war" that makes (just) war into a positive norm. But the tension is an integral part of a truly biblical approach to war. Just (or perhaps "justifiable", or "permissible") war theory is good when it acknowledges that war is an evil and seeks to make it less so, and that any doctrine of war can only ever be a concession to human sinfulness. Yet war may be a necessary evil.¹⁶By pretending that we are already entirely free from war, we may unwittingly become culpable in even worse evils: Fr. David Alexander, an Orthodox chaplain in the U.S. Navy, says that "To fail to defend the innocent is paradoxically consenting to their elimination and extermination."¹⁷

Yet still more, the Christian pacifist tradition is needed as a voice of compassion and restraint even on our cautious dealings with war, a reminder of the potential of human sin and weakness to twist even the best intentions into dehumanizing atrocities. If just war theory is a concession to the reality of sin and human weakness, the voice of pacifism rings from a coming age without sin in which war will truly be obsolete—an age in which we within the Church already dwell, and into which we beckon all who will come in the name of the Lord (cf. Rev 22:17). Unlike just war theory, pacifism truly represents God's loving design for how we are ultimately made to live; any participation in war, even with the best intentions, falls short of this vision. In this evil age, sometimes it is necessary to fight; but as Christians, let us fight as those who have renounced violence (cf. 1 Cor 7:29-30), as ready and waiting to lay down our arms at the first chance of peace, as those looking forward to the final banquet where we will enjoy communion not only with our God and our neighbors, but with our enemies.

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1. Tertullian, On Idolatry, XIX, < http://newadvent.org/fathers/0302.htm> (11 April 2015).
2. Augustine¸ The City of God, XIX.7, < http://newadvent.org/fathers/1201.htm> (11 April 2015).
3. John Jefferson Davis, Evangelical Ethics (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2004), 242.
4. Ted Grimsrud and Christian Early, "Christian Pacifism in Brief," Peace Theology, < http://peacetheology.net/pacifism/christian-pacifism-in-brief/> (14 April 2015).
5. Davis, Evangelical Ethics, 243.
6. Grimsrud and Early, "Christian Pacifism in Brief."
7. Davis, Evangelical Ethics, 243.
8. Grimsrud and Early, "Christian Pacifism in Brief."
9. Davis, Evangelical Ethics, 246.
10. Augustine, The City of God, I.21.
11. Augustine, The City of God, XIX.7.
12. Davis, Evangelical Ethics, 247.
13. Kevin Allen, "Orthodoxy and War," Ancient Faith Radio, 11 August 2013, < http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/aftoday/orthodoxy_and_war> (7 April 2015) and Davis, Evangelical Ethics, 248.
14. Davis, Evangelical Ethics, 250.
15. David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 44,61.
16. Fr. Stanley Harakas, “No Just War in the Fathers,” In Communion, 2 August 2005, < http://www.incommunion.org/2005/08/02/no-just-war-in-the-fathers/> (15 April 2015).
17. Allen, "Orthodoxy and War."

Sy Garte on Scientism and Morality

This recent post on the website of BioLogos (an organization of Christian evolutionists) is an interesting analysis and rebuttal of atheists (notably Sam Harris) who claim to be able to derive morality scientifically. Sy Garte approaches the intersection of biology and morality much better than I, with my very limited knowledge of biology, have been able to.

The Glory of God

As a newly-minted working stiff, I don't have quite as much time to ramble as I used to. Continuing in the vein of Things God Has Been Teaching Me Lately, I'm going to talk about 1 Corinthians 10:31.

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

Yeah! The glory of God! This is how we Christians should strive to live! Sounds great, right? Well, unfortunately, I have come to realize that this verse is totally, completely wrong.

Just kidding--but now you're listening, right? I realized I never really understood this verse before today. Maybe I still don't. But here it goes.

"Do it all for the glory of God." The ESV (Extra-Spiritual Version) renders it as "Do all to the glory of God." For so long I thought this meant something along the lines of going through your day consciously directing your thoughts and intentions to Heaven. That if I'm coding, I should be thinking, "Here I am coding, God; it's all for You; help me to work well." If I'm in a conversation, I should be praying (without ceasing), "God, help me to love this person as You love them, for Your glory." And so on. My focus had to be on God in everything I did.

Here's a secret you may not have heard: people can only think about one thing at a time. (Well, unless the hemispheres of your brain have been separated or something) If you're constantly thinking about God, you're not thinking about what you're doing. If I'm using all my mental energy trying to "program to the glory of God", I likely won't get much quality programming done. But it's to the glory of God, right? No, it's just a poor day's work.

Since our relationship with God is often compared with marriage, consider the case of an actual marriage. A husband's every waking thought isn't occupied by his wife--that would be obsession, not loving marriage, and he is to be pitied. But though he isn't always thinking of her, a good deal of his actions are "for" her in some way--working to provide for the family, buying food to feed them, doing housework. And how much more with God, who demands our whole lives!

You see, we don't devote our daily lives to God by willing them to be His. If we have made God our Lord, then we are His because He says so and for no other reason. So we had better live like it! (This is a joy for the Christian, not a burdensome command) What does this look like? Let's reason the verse again in context.

23 “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. 24 Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.
25 Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience,26 for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”
27 If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. 28 But if anyone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience’ sake — 29 the other man’s conscience, I mean, not yours. For why should my freedom be judged by another’s conscience? 30 If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?
31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.32 Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—33 even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.

The context here is the early church in Greece, a nation with a strongly paganistic background. As a result, it was not impossible for a Christian eating with non-Christians to be served, say, meat that had been sacrificed to Zeus. Paul's argument in this chapter and earlier is basically that even though Zeus isn't real, not everyone knows this. In particular, non-believers and new believers still breaking free from their old superstitions might gain a very twisted picture of Christianity if they see a faithful Christian eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol! They might have questions like "You mean I can worship God and Zeus?" or "Could God and Zeus be the same deity?" or "I don't think Christians should eat food that's been sacrificed to idols, but if Paul is doing it..."

This is the context that verse 31 is in. The verses before it are two questions that I don't think are rhetorical, because they seem to threaten Paul's argument. He wants us to answer them--we should follow his example and lay down our freedom if it removes obstacles to people believing the gospel! this is also the moral he lays out in the verses right after 31. 31 itself seems to offer an alternative to "causing anyone to stumble". It is the opposite: live in such a way as to make God "look good" to those around you and invite people closer to salvation. As I said in my post on work, this means being committed to excellence in what you do. This means that if I'm programming, I'm trying to write the best, clearest, most maintainable, and bug-free code that I can. This means that if I'm (say) a bus driver, my eyes and mind are fixated on the road ahead of me. I would go on, but I must go and bake some cookies to the glory of God.

Morality

Listening to sermons at work at around 15 times the rate I normally hear them has given me a good sense of some of the recurring themes at Hope. (Also just how repetitive Pastor Steve's jokes are, and how amazing it is that they're still funny) One of the biggest things I've noticed is just how much they dislike "religion", or as he sometimes refers to it, "churchianity". (Which I've already blogged about) One of Steve's sayings is "If you hate organized religion, you'll love Hope Community Church!" During a bike ride today I thought about how both dangerous extremes for Christians, legalism (or "religion", as some call it now) and license, have important deviations in their view of morality (that is, a system of "oughts" and "ought-nots" that govern your actions). Legalism effectively equates morality with God, and turns Christianity into a pattern of good behavior--confusing an effect of faith with the whole thing. License takes the forgiveness of Christ and runs away with it, leaving behind morality altogether and basically saying "Jesus took away my sins, now I can do whatever I want."

Then I started wondering about how peoples' natural consciences could agree on the morality of some things (that murder is wrong) but not others (like homosexuality).

Note: 12-day writing break here...


Hm, okay, let's try and salvage this train wreck. Now that I've thought about it more, I'm starting to wonder if the idea of a "conscience" is really just culturally trained and imprinted values, which vary widely across time and space. Of course the values acquired by a southern Conservative Christian and a Seattle hipster will be different. And I think it was in a C.S. Lewis book that I read that a newly converted Anglo-Saxon, hailing from a culture that valued duty and honor, would have easily accepted the Biblical teachings on sin and justice and struggled with the concept of grace, while in today's culture it's just the opposite. Behind cultural values is our innate drive for self-preservation, which when universalized leads to most of the values that nearly everyone shares today. I'm not trying to "explain away" or undermine our morals, just offer a theory on where many of them some from.

Christian morality, of course, comes not from culture or within us, but from the Word of God and the example of Christ. But I don't think it's as clear-cut and rigid as fundamentalists like to paint it. Yes, the Bible has plenty of teaching on what a renewed life in Christ should look like (not how we gain this life--effects, not causes)--the commandments of Jesus and fruits of the Spirit are good places to start. But they hardly provide a comprehensive picture of how Christians should act at all times; this would make us little more than automata, and why would God give us free will if we had as much freedom as a single-threaded computer program? (I notice pastors never use computer analogies in sermons) Paul commands us to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling"--clearly he doesn't mean that we have some part in earning our actual salvation; he makes that clear in Ephesians 2. Rather I think he means that it's our responsibility to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to manifest in ourselves the new life God purchased for us. How this new life shines through will look different for everyone in the particulars--it's up to us and our relationship with God, not clear-cut rules. I've been listening through Hope Community Church's series on 1 Corinthians, which contained a whole section on our freedom and how we should seek to use or even sacrifice it for the glory of God. Ultimately, it's up to us.

And, of course, trying to get non-Christians to uphold Christian morals, even universal ones in the Bible, is not only futile, but counterproductive. It's basically forcing them to be legalists. We are transformed from the inside out, not the outside in, and trying to go it backwards can interfere with God's process of sanctification. If you have a non-Christian friend who does something, you know is wrong, they don't need you to tell them they're sinning, or to cut it out, or read such and such book. They need Jesus. You can't transform anyone. He can.

This train of thought has also helped me in thinking about some political issues. I used to stick with the popular saying, "You can't legislate morality." But this is false, as every law upholds some kind of morality, imposes some kind of "ought-ness" on the people living under it. My stance on turning Biblical commands into legislation should be clear enough from the previous paragraph. I wish more Christian politicians would realize this and help associate the name of Christ instead with integrity, compassion, and leadership.

Plans

Today I was feeling rather aimless (I only have one final tomorrow) and at one point found myself consciously thinking, "What can I do for God today?" Normally I'd have been pleased with how I was thinking about God more and more frequently, but I realized that I was thinking about Him out of habit, not unlike the way a business owner would think of a partnership: in terms of what I could being to the table, and (perhaps subconsciously) what I could get in return. I realized that we should be so close in our relationship to God that we spontaneously do things for His glory out of love, not because we systematically set out to from the beginning. I've been re-reading Desiring God recently and I think the inspiration came from that. As Piper writes, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Our goal as Christians is to maximize God's glory by maximizing the joy and fulfillment we find in Him, not in anything He gives. In our other relationships, we aren't nice to the other person out of any sense of "ought"-ness; it's (hopefully) because we care about them and want what's best for them.

After further reflection, I realized that I've still largely been letting my own plans set the direction of my life; part of my plans is carrying out God's plans. This might have shaken me not long ago, but I'm getting used to finding hiccups in my relationship with God like this; it would be more cause for worry if I didn't have these realizations a few times a year! Bringing it out in the open shows how ridiculous it is; God says "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9) We shouldn't simply incorporate God's plans into ours, or deny our plans for God's "higher calling"; we should be be so close to God that there is no difference between our plans and His! Jesus described how close He was to His Father: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." (John 5:19) I picture a kid playing "follow the leader" behind his dad, imitating whatever he does. The fan just blew my Bible to Ephesians 5:1, where Paul tells us to be "imitators of God". When you say you're a "follower of Christ", just how literally did you mean it? Because the answer is apparently "not enough".

If I'm sounding preachy, know that 99% of my preaching is directed at myself, because I need it the most. I just hope it gets you thinking about what it means to be a Christian.

The Law

This post relates to my previous one in addressing the modern state of 'religion', specifically its perceived legalism. But I'm coming from a more dangerous perspective: one I have never had, that of the non-Christian, the outsider to the church. I'm talking about people who think being a 'good' Christian means you have to follow all of the (at times crazy) laws in the Old Testament. (Let's call them legalists) This is a common method of making fun of Christianity; I'm sure you're familiar with satirical websites on whom to stone or what kind of animals to sacrifice to God and such. More innocuously, maybe you've heard of the guy who attempted to follow all the Old Testament laws with rather humorous results.

The basic line of reasoning behind these occurrences, I think, goes something like this: the Bible is supposedly the inspired, always-true word of God, and it has all these incredibly specific instructions and laws in the first five books, so of course we have to follow all these rules if we claim to be Christians who hold the Bible in such high esteem.

Well lucky me, the previously-cited chapter, Ephesians 5, happens to be all about Christians who think they have to follow Old Testament law! Some context: in chapter 1, Paul says the Galatian church is "deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and [is] turning to a different gospel--which is really no gospel at all." As my pastor told it, what happened was that after Paul planted the Galatian church, some Pharisees came along and told them they had to follow Jewish law (i.e. Leviticus and Deuteronomy) to be Christians. Specifically, they told the church they had to be circumcised, an outward symbol of God's old covenant with the Jews. (v. 2-6) In the beginning of chapter 3 Paul contrasts their efforts to observe the [Jewish] law with simply believing.

Indeed, the main point of the whole letter is to address the Galatians' reliance on following the law to be saved instead of simply believing. And he is at his harshest in reprimanding them; he had nice things to say to greet even the Corinthians, who were a seriously messed-up church (taking each other to court over disputes, cheering on a guy who sleeps with his stepmom, obsessing over the gift of tongues), but not here. Paul is pretty clear that the Galatians (and, by logical extension, believers in general) are not expected to follow the laws of the Jews; just read 5:2-6. (Or just about anywhere in the book except chapter 2)

Back to the modern misconception that Christians are supposed to follow all those rules just as the Galatians thought they had to. How do we answer that train of logic? Paul does it for us in chapter 3, verses 15-25, where he discusses the purpose of the law. Specifically, he says it was given "because of transgressions until the Seed [Christ] referred had come." The law was only a temporary measure given to keep the Jews from completely turning from God until Jesus came.

But that doesn't seem to be the main purpose of the law. In v. 23, Paul says "we [the Jews] were held prisoners of the law"--apparently he found it just as constraining as we do. Part of this is because no one can fully observe the law--"Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin." (v. 22) What's the point of a law that no one can follow? To direct people to the alternative to the law, the real way to be declared righteous and saved from the penalty of sin: faith in Jesus. (v. 24) Attempting to completely follow the law is not God's intended response to it; instead, we should see how impossibly high God's standard of holiness is (for all we know, it might even be above and beyond the Old Testament law) and that we have no chance at all of meeting it on our own; we need to be saved by faith in Jesus. Finally, in verse 25, Paul pretty much summarizes the whole book: "Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law."

And that's a fine take-home, if you remember nothing else. By sending His son to take the penalty of our sins for us, God gave us an alternative to the futility of trying to be righteous by following the law. To use an extremely bad modern analogy, a Christian striving to be 'good' and obey the law is like a Monopoly player trying to roll his way out of jail instead of using the get-out-of-jail-free card he already has. Through Jesus, God gave us all a free ticket out of the penalty of our sins; who would turn down such a deal?

If I ended my post after that last paragraph, I might leave readers with the notion that since Jesus forgave our sins, we can just do whatever we want; after all, His grace is unlimited, right? Paul addresses this opposite idea to legalism in a different letter, Romans. "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" (6:1-2) Going back to my Monopoly analogy, this would be like immediately returning to jail after getting out for free. You don't want to go back to jail.

Another example more applicable to my peers: say you've made it through college but have racked up enough debt to keep you busy for several lifetimes, when suddenly your parents step in and pay it all off. (Maybe they used their RV fund or something) You have a clean slate, a fresh start to life, financially speaking. There are two extreme ways to respond to this stupendous act of generosity:

1. "Sweet, my parents will bail me out! Let's buy that Lamborghini I always wanted and hit the casino! PARTY TIME!!!"
2. "Wow, I can't believe they paid it all. I'm going to be careful with my money and try to avoid getting into debt from now on!"

Which way do you think makes more sense? Hopefully #2. And so it is with the much greater gift of salvation. Responding by simply taking license and doing whatever you want with the assurance that you will be forgiven makes no sense; it shows that you don't appreciate the gift at all, only freedom from the penalty of sin. Instead, Paul says, we should consider ourselves "dead to sin" and live consistently. Not in order to be saved, but because we already are.

The Believer's Freedom vs. A Stumbling Block: Should Christians Play D&D?

This post is in response to a fundamentalist article posted by a high school friend of mine. I was just going to comment on it, but God kept expanding my answer and so I decided to share it with everyone.

The basic point of the article seems to be that whatever cultural things the world is buying into, Christians should avoid simply to avoid the appearance of being worldly. I would say that if you need to abstain from these things to set yourself apart from the world for God, you aren't living His abundant life! The mark of a Christian isn't legalistically avoiding behavior that could be perceived as "worldly" or "unsavory", it's a dynamic, life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. That should be the overarching thing others see in you, and as long as you have it at the core of who you are and what you do, I would abstain from defining too many universal standards of how Christians should dress, act, or live (besides the standard of Christ).

If Christians actively shun "worldly" behavior and lifestyles, how far do you take it in the name of avoiding any association with the world? No secular music? No watching sitcoms? What the author suggests would basically make the application of Christian morality a slave to what the world does, or rather does not do, whereas I believe it should come from a relationship with Christ. Indeed, it sounds like the opposite of what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 9:

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I become like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I become like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law). To those not having the law I become like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I become weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.

If by becoming more like the world we can win the world to Christ, good! The last thing we as Christians want is to retreat into a cultural bubble that's impermeable to nonbelievers by virtue of removedness--I don't think this is what Paul meant by being "set apart" for the gospel. Bryan, one of my summer project friends who was living the kind of life that would make a fundamentalist cry until accepting Christ less than a year ago, said that this Christian rejection of all things worldly was alienating. "I definitely thought it was alienating because that kind of culture seems incredibly boring. It made me think that religion has its place in society but that those people take it too seriously. Christians of that culture were a major part of the intellectual wall I was putting against submitting my life to Christ." Paul's challenge is not to remove ourselves as far from worldly culture as possible, but to see it as a bridge, a way of reaching people for Christ rather than walling ourselves off.

But, though secondary to living out our relationship with God, avoiding being a stumbling block should be a concern. On the very next page after 1 Corinthians 9 in chapter 10, he tells us to give up our freedom as believers for the sake of other peoples' consciences. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial. I certainly understand where the author is coming from about the power of symbols, having listened to a most thorough speaker on the subject in a discussion group at the U. And avoiding symbolic association with evil should still be a concern.

How do we reconcile this with "becoming like one not having the law so as to win those not having the law"? Once again I think Paul hits the nail right on the head in the same chapter: "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it to the glory of God." The difference is one of intent; in everything we do, the goal should be showing off the glory of God, not simply satisfying ourselves or showcasing our individuality and beliefs or whatever as the world would have us do. I think this is the key difference that should "set us apart" for the gospel--not so much our specific behavior as the heart behind it. One other thing to note is that Paul emphasizes having what you do be to the glory of God--not what you do not do. Bryan added that in instructing each other how to live we should avoid being too negative. "I started to come around when I saw the things Jon and Tom [my neighbors who prayed with me to accept Christ] did, not the things they didn't do. I think that fundamentalists will often focus on what they shouldn't do rather than what they should do. The more important thing for non believers is seeing how much joy you have from serving Jesus."

Of course, how we reveal the glory of God in whatever we do is a lifelong struggle best left to trusting in God's wisdom. If you are glorifying yourself more than God in something, if you can't seem to give it up to Him, then perhaps it really would be best to abstain. But someone more mature in the faith might be able to bring God glory in ways that you can't, so what is not permissible for you might be for him/her. And some things can never be glorifying to God; anything the Bible commands against, for instance. For other things, remember that Christianity is a relationship with God, and like in any other relationship you want to avoid doing things that hurt the other person. For example, as you may know I enjoy listening to heavy metal music quite a bit, but I try to avoid making "metal horns" with my hands because of their Satanic connotations--both in public to avoid making others stumble, and alone simply because I feel like it's hurtful to God.

So, I should wrap this up. I believe that the "abundant life" is lived from the inside out, not the outside in. The focus should be on what's in the heart that only God sees, though this should certainly affect the outside that others see. We're called to be missional and reach out to the world, overcoming evil more by the love of Christ in our hearts than by avoiding behaviors that can be perceived as worldly (though for us the Christian life might include this). I'd like to call back to a recent post of mine citing The Screwtape Letters in describing dancing, music, and so many other elements of modern culture as spiritual "raw material". If they are currently being used by the world as strongholds aginst the gospel, should we simply let the world have them or should we fight to reclaim them and use them as venues to win those inside them to Christ? How knowing God changes your outward life is different for everyone, but it should always be unmistakeable.