My son-in-law from Australia led the Bible Study at church. He is studying for his doctorate at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, and he wants to write a dissertation on kingship in the Old Testament and how that speaks of Christ. He is doing some work on 1&2 Chronicles, so our pastor asked him to teach us about those profound but little-known books of history.
One detail he mentioned struck me in particular. He said that when Jeroboam split the kingdom into Judah and Israel, in his rule of the latter he set up two temples or shrines at Bethel and Dan so that his people would not have to sacrifice in Jerusalem. These were built on the same three-part model as that of Solomon, but instead of having the one-of-a-kind Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, Jeroboam put GOLDEN CALVES.
Why did the apostate Hebrews have such a thing for golden calves? Well, my son-in-law explained, the closest similar deity, seemingly, to YHWH in the Canaanite pantheon, the king of the gods in that mythology, was EL. His image through which he was worshiped was a golden bull. The word “El” was his name, but it was also just the word for “god.” (As in our language: We can speak of “God” as a sort of name, but also as a generic noun.)
So apparently, some Hebrews conflated the God of Abraham with the “God” of their neighbors, assuming that all “El’s” were the same and setting up a version of the common idol associated with that term. After all, the Canaanite El was a mountain god, and an El gave the law on Mt. Sinai, etc. Of course, the Canaanite El had a consort, the fertility goddess Ashera, whose sexual rites would also be picked up by some of those pious Hebrews.
Those Hebrews, however, neglected the Word of God. And how the true God commanded that He be worshipped. And violated the commandment against idolatry. And forgot that “god” is not just a generic noun but that He has a name. That is, they broke every one of the laws of the first table, and so fell into sin and slavery, until YHWH sent them a redeemer.
See any parallels with today’s religious syncretism?
122 comments ↓
I gotta talk to Adam sometime about his research. Sounds fascinating! It struck me a coupla years ago that God tells his people that He is their king but that they will demand a human one.
So God gives them Saul, then David, and ultimately He becomes man so that they can have what they demand (but in a form they never expected): God their King is a Man.
pr Lehman. Deep stuff. and deliciously centered in Jesus. Lots to ponder in the short paragraph you wrote!
But then we got what we wanted, but not in the way we wanted it. so… crucify Him!
I suppose you could call it Israelite substance Canaanite style.
Matt L! Brilliant and devastating.
Does anyone else find it unsettling that God commands he be worshiped? Why does God need to be worshiped? Does he have low self-esteem? Is he a child? Didn’t he create us? Do any of you who are parents command your children to worship you? Would you be considered fit parents if you did? Isn’t he supposed to be greater, higher, better than us? Transcendent? Could somebody fill me in? Preferably without resorting to the old “nature of God and man being so, we worship God to fulfill our true selves” argument?
Michael (@5), interesting questions. “Do any of you who are parents command your children to worship you?” I’d guess the answer is no (though most parents want their children to respect them, imperfect as the parents may be). Perhaps a good corollary question would be: what differences are there between human parents and God? I can think of a few.
But I would also question your implicit assertion that God “needs” to be worshipped. God doesn’t need anything from us — it is we who need everything from God, including being told what to do.
So, to twist the question, why should we worship God? Well, for one thing, it puts us in the right frame of mind. Our tendency is to worship ourselves or things of this earth, which does us no good. Worshiping God helps us to see where our help comes from, helps us to understand how helpless we’d be without God. In fact, worshiping is nothing more than merely recognizing how things are. We are mired in sin, pathetic, and worthless — or we would be, except God stepped in. To worship God is to acknowledge that.
Sorry if this fits into the “old argument”, which I didn’t really understand.
tODD–
I think that fits into the old argument just fine. What you did was use the same self-referential rhetoric that has been employed forever, i.e. that we need God because we are sinful. We need to be told what to do? Why is that? (And I’m not trying to be incredulous.) Why did the God who made us leave us with such a deficit? Couldn’t God have made us sinless, perfect from the beginning?
But as you say, we are “mired in sin, pathetic, and worthless” without God. Why is that? Are you referring to the fundamentalist reading of only one of the creation stories in Genesis which attributes a human “sin nature” to our ancestors’ bite of an unnamed forbidden fruit? If so, I would like to do some preemptive debunking.
Once again, I’ll use the metaphor of the parent and child. Since you believe in sin, I’m sure you believe your parents have sinned in their lives. They were, in fact, prolific sinners way before you were ever born, since we are “imperfect” (whatever that means) from the moment we enter the world. Are you to blame for their sins? No. Of course not. Why, then, are we to blame for this free-floating “original sin,” the choice of an ancestor?
So, now that we’ve gotten rid of this idea, we can say that it seems God created us to sin. Why are we to blame for doing so any more than we’re to blame for breathing or procreating? If it is not that God created it, please point me to a reason that is not based on original sin, or on the choice of an ancestor. (Once again, not trying to be incredulous.)
Well, you may be saying, it could also be that each of us makes the choice individually to sin. We are not born in original sin, but we all eventually fall. I will also attempt to debunk this hypothetical. We can only make the choice to sin if that is a choice available to us, and any choice available to us in a universe entirely created by one God is of that God’s design. So it would seem that God put into us our sin nature, which would mean that when we obey the natural order by worshiping God–even in order to get into the right frame of mind–we are doing what God designed us to do. This begs the question, why would God design us to do these things if he didn’t have to? And it seems the answer is that God needs us to sin, or we don’t need God. Which would mean the serpent in the Garden (not Satan, the fabrication created by John Milton) had it right: God doesn’t want us to know that he created us to be pathetic and worthless simply so that he could step in and save the day.
I’d like you to show me where I’m wrong. Seriously. The only way to learn sometimes is to be proved wrong. I’d just like you to do it with some original thinking, rather than relying on the arguments others have used for longer than average people like you and me can remember.
A different metaphor might help. Consider a child who is born on a sinking ship. Through no fault of his/her own, the ship is sinking. You might say he “inherited” his need for salvation. Does the child not need to be saved because he didn’t cause the ship to sink? Absolutely not! The fact that the child is completely helpless and unable to save himself is exactly why this child needs to “be saved” by another. Hence, we are to receive the kingdom of God ‘like a little child’ or we will never enter it. Correct me theologian readers if I’m wrong, but I believe this is a correct explanation of original sin.
Michael,
Maybe the problem here lies in a fundamentally flawed understanding of what “worship” is. This is possibly due to the baggage that the very term itself carries. “Worship” is intrinsically something that *I* do to give something else worth. This is a pagan concept of man’s relationship with his pantheon of “gods.”
Standing directly opposed to this is the true Christian, Biblical understanding of “worship.” In fact Scripturally we don’t have that kind of language used. There are essentially 3 kinds of action that we recognize Scripturally as “worship.”
The first is God’s Service to us. This is the primary “worship” of a Christian. It is to be on the receiving end of the giving of gifts. First and foremost of these gifts is the forgiveness of sins. So for a Christian “worship” is tied to hearing “Your sins are forgiven;” it is tied to being Baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “for the forgiveness of sins; and it is tied to eating and drinking Christ’s Body and Blood “for the forgiveness of sins.”
The second concept of “worship” is that of bowing down, prostrating oneself. For those of us who are U.S. Americans, this is a completely foreign concept. We don’t take a knee as our king passes. Heck, about half of the country would raise a certain finger as the President walks by. So, admittedly our culture has skewed the reality of this relationship. Nonetheless, this prostration is an act of reverence given to one’s Lord. There is submission involved, and of course this act of submission is tied to the fact that we are being served.
Thirdly there is another kind of service. This is where we actually get the word for “Liturgy.” Etymology aside, this is the response of thanksgiving. Just like you teach kids to say “thank you” when they receive a gift, we too give thanks unto the Lord because his lovingkindness endures forever, He has heard our cry of distress and has come to save us.
Paul, I think his question is more along the lines of why do we inherit Adam’s sinfulness?
God made Adam perfect and sinless, but Adam and Eve chose to disobey. Why do we inherit that sinful nature? Why don’t we start off with a sinless nature and have the same choice Adam had - to not sin? For your metaphor - why are children born onto a sinking boat instead of into their own boat?
It’s a serious question, and I wish I had time to answer it, but I’m leaving for Thanksgiving in 15 minutes, and this isn’t a question that can be answered briefly AND completely.
I’m just tacking on a clarification (I think) to Michael’s question. There are a dozen people here who are far more qualified than I of answering Michael’s questions, anyway. Unfortunately, it’s Thanksgiving and lots of people are going to be gone until after the holiday.
Veith, would you be willing to discuss Michael’s question into a blog posting on Monday or Tuesday if no one answers here?
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!
God doesn’t need to be worshiped, and, in fact, He doesn’t want to be worshiped in the way Michael describes. That sort of worship is detestable to Him.
Matt’s got it right, and I’d like to expand a bit on the pagan element he alludes to. (I beg all y’alls forgiveness because I wrote my M.Div. thesis on the distinction between the liturgical practice of Israel and that of the Babylonians.)
In the Enuma Elish we are given a picture of a god (Marduk) who creates humanity as his slaves. They are to show him obeisance and offer him sacrifices because he needs it in some way.
The Enuma Elish was very likely written before Nahor and Abraham left Babylon. They probably carried the oral tradition with them. For this reason some have argued that the creation account in Genesis is dependent on the Enuma Elish. That would make sense if Moses didn’t give us a polemic against the theology of the Enuma Elish.
In the Enuma Elish the world is created from the dead body of the water monster Tiamat. The God of Genesis 1-2 creates the universe ex nihilo by the power of His Word.
In the Enuma Elish we are Marduk’s slaves and of no value to him. In Genesis, we are the crown of God’s creation to whom He gives dominion over the entire universe. He creates us so that He can give us His good gifts.
In the Enuma Elish we offer sacrifices to God to slavishly serve him. In the Old Testament (Leviticus 17:11), God offers the sacrifices to Himself to reestablish the relationship that we destroyed by our sin.
God’s creation is a hierarchy, not an equality, with Him at the top, and us (and everything else) at a lower level. I think acknowledgment of this truth in our hearts and in our behavior is at the heart of worship. It is not that God needs it, it’s that for us to be filling our proper role in His creation, we have an obligation to acknowledge the truth that God is greater and “better” than we are. This is difficult to do now because we do not see or understand things clearly. If John’s reaction in confronting the risen Christ in Revelation is any indication, when we see God as He really is (and we as we really are - or are not), the natural reaction will be to worship Him.
Michael the little boot:
“True worship is trust in Jesus Christ.”
For Lutheran Christians this is our short answer to your question. This answer should beg many more questions.
First:
It would be fine for you to not believe in any God that looks like you have described. You have my permission. He would not be worthy of your worship.
And you are right in thinking that a true God would not need our worship. If there is an intelligent being more vast than our universe, who created the universe, then it DOES follow logically that we would hold in our hands nothing that we could offer Him that he needs or even wants.
Secondly:
If there is such an enormous God. It would follow that there are things about the cosmos that would perhaps be beyond our ability to comprehend or capture with our reason. If you posit that man´s sentient self and ability to reason (”I think therefore I am” or “man is the measure of all things”) is the ultimate arbiter of what you could believe as true, then I would like you to identify that and we can proceed in a way where we do not talk past one another or in a way where you feel I am not finessing a logical argument by what I have proposed on this point. I want to be on the same page as you are on.
Thirdly (and most importantly!):
Most of us here are Lutheran Christians. What this means (even though only hinted at so far here unfortunately) is this:
When Lutherans think about God, they ALWAYS must look to Jesus, and the meaning of his birth, life, death and resurrection to understand Who God is, what His attitude is towards us men, and any and ALL other questions about God. Period. We filter everything we read in the Old Testament in fact, through Jesus. We believe that the entire old testament exists with the purpose of being a testimony to Him in fact.
This is why Christians are the ONLY religion ever to use the words “humble”, “unattractive”, “man of sorrow, acquainted with grief”, “homeless”, etc etc etc to describe the God we put our trust in. I consider this to be a very wierd view of God from any perspective. And it all seems to be rather different than the views that apparently have been presented to you of God so far.
I am sorry that so far, you seem to have encountered only christians who have tried to take the wierdness out of it by trying to make it all make sense and be logical for you.
There is alot of poetry in our faith that gets captured somewhat in epics like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. This was written in fact by a christian to describe, in an epic and romantic way, the christian understanding of the very things you muse about.
Poetry often lacks appeal to the rigorously logical. We Lutherans in fact are often guilty of this very shortcoming as well. I hope that you are open to poetic and epic considerations in your thinking.
We Lutheran christians tend to oddly see God ALL about serving His Creation. Our service then is not to Him but to serve the creation that He was passionate enough about to actually die for.
What this means exactly in the negative to reinforce this is:
that we do NOT look to the Old Testament for this information, nor do we consider God in the abstract using logical considerations. We know God only in contrast, through His only-begotten Son.
This is a very, very radical difference, THE difference in fact, between Lutherans and all other christian traditions. Our scope is interestingly much narrower than that of our bretheren, but paradoxically it ends up being more inviting of discussion over beer. It feels warm and human and not so coldly abstract.
“True Worship is trust in Jesus Christ.”
This is the complete and total (and formally public) description of worship for Lutherans. We have ornamented this worship over time with music and rituals etc, but there are no religious requirements to do so.
So to talk about your question, I would need to see if you are acquainted with the Jesus that I know from the scriptures and what your perceptions are of Him. From your question, it does not seem that you know christianity from this radical Lutheran perspective.
Since you want to try not to be incredulous, I would suggest as a first step, that you forget everything you think you know about God and about Jesus.
Let the God and Jesus you know die. They will need to die probably before you can begin to understand how we view God and worship of Him here as Lutheran christians.
Right, Frank. You’ve said it beautifully. I just today came across a quotation from Luther to the effect that we must not approach God from the top down (as is most common, as abstract contemplation as of an idea), but from the bottom up (beginning with the Babe in the Manger).
michael:
there is one more thing that might help here. There seem to me to be 3 ways of knowing things. Since this is sorta my own construct bear with my appropriation of terms…
Educational learning (yeah redundant..) : what you learn because yo mama told you, or you read in a book or learned in class and the, well, logic that flowed from that.
Experiential learning: what you learned in the school of hard knocks and the wisdom that flowed from that. If you have had your heart broken a few times, we will be able to communicate alot better here….
and finally…
Existential knowing. That would be the nexus of your educational and experiential learning and development, your logic and wisdom you have so far from all that, and that intangible third thing that comes from all that. The YOU that is in all that and maybe something more….
No one can tell you those things. You just know them, bones to balls.
Like knowing that you are in love.
Pretty much like the prophetess in “The Matrix” told Neo when he asked if he was “the one.”
This is where the poetry comes from in our life. The things that humble us as mystery. It is firmly teathered to the first two kinds of knowing, and in fact cannot exist in a healthy way without them, and yet it is something, like the definitive definition of love (another redundancy, i know), that defies complete capture by pen and ink.
Lutherans experience this third kind of knowing in their worship that they call the Divine Service. They also experience this in their daily lives. We can only kinda-sorta break this all down for you.
It helps me understand how God, in His revelation to us is also only able to kinda-sorta break it down for all of us. That makes sense to me now in a profoundly existence-ial way.
I am no more equipped to describe all of this for you here and logically than I would be able to explain, logically, my love for my beloved. Not that any of that is in any way divorced from the rest of all that i bring to my existence.
This in no way means that it is all ethereal. It includes ALL the hard logic and wisdom you can muster. Along with that of your ancestors and those who passed before you.
It completes those things. Sweetly so. I hope that someday you can know all of this for yourself.
Perhaps God’s command to us to worship Him is meant to be understood as opposed to worshipping power, money, fame - in short, oneself. Or a statue of a bull.
It’s almost as if He’s saying, “OK, I know you all are going to worship something, so here’s the deal.”
I guess I’ll be doing plenty of worshipping when I come face to face with The One Who spoke the universe into existence.
This is all very much in the spirit of keeping first things first.
Michael,
In your first comment you reveal much more than what you may imagine. You reveal your attitude toward the God of the Scriptures. You show a strong measure of resentment towards Him. You also show a defiant refusal to submit to Him in faith. You indicate that you want to be on equal terms with Him and to demand that He communicate with you according to the terms that you construct.
What kind of God would that be? What kind of God would say, “Oh, you don’t like my demands? How would you like me to modify them? You don’t agree with what I declare to be absolutely true? OK. Tell me how things really are.”
Actually, He did do this with a man named Job, and He used much stronger sarcasm with this man than what I am using. Job’s response was to confess that he was in no position to challenge God and repented and turned to Him in the faith that he had begun to doubt.
If you truly want to know the God who created all things, you will have to receive Him as He comes to you through the means that He has ordained. Frank and Matt do a good job of referencing this.
But I will also answer a couple of your questions more directly. You asked about God’s need to be worshiped. While the manner in which you asked this was not of humility, it is in fact valid question. You asked from a perspective of challenge, but the question is not challenging in itself.
In connection you asked whether parents command their children to worship them. The answer is the opposite of what you expected. The answer is a resounding YES.
Parents command and demand that their children worship them. From conception onward, the parents are the life givers and providers and protectors for their children. Their children depend upon their parents for their very lives. Without parents, children do not come into being and do not survive.
Therefore parents demand that their children look to them for everything in life: life itself, protection, nourishment, instruction, and love.
In return the parents demand only one thing: that the children obediently receive these from them according to the way in which they give them.
This relationship is the basis for life. If this relationship is broken, the parents cannot do for their children what is necessary, and the children cannot live.
The difference between parents and God is that there is no one who can step in for God and fulfill His place. Parents can be replaced or substituted or complemented. God cannot. Thus His commandments are absolute.
Anyone who is unwilling to accept this fact places himself in jeopardy. God is unwilling to stand by idly while people separate themselves from His love and care and thereby destroy themselves. Thus God deals with this in the strongest terms of condemnation. He speaks forcefully so as to leave no room for error. When His children ignore Him, He displays His wrath. His children have no right to undo the good that He has arranged for them. His children have no right to choose another way and to hurt themselves and others. This is what Adam did. His rebellious choice was not only for himself, but for all of the children that God had appointed to be born through him and the woman. For a smaller scale example we can look to the crack abusing mother who gives birth to a crack addicted infant.
There is no nice way to tell you that you are not listening. So I’ll just say it: You are not listening.
God has told you who He is. He has told you who you are. Are you ready to listen?
Through Moses God gives two accounts of the Genesis of the cosmos.
In the first God reveals the step by step, day by day process, in order. It matches perfectly with all the cosmological evidence. Even the highest of God’s creatures shows this in the developmental processes of gestation. Human beings begin at the simplest single cell and progress through the entire process that the evolutionists attempt to twist into a mockery of God’s masterful plan. Yet while their feeble explanations undergo ceaseless change, God’s plan as revealed in a single chapter remains constant and continues to leave the arrogance of man in a quandary.
The second account completely abandons the sequence of time and instead states that the history or generations of the heavens and the earth are founded in mankind. In the second account the mighty Creator of the heavens and the earth reveals Himself as the one who did all of this for one single purpose, to display His love for Man. The entire cosmos, every star and planet, every microbe and plant and animal is declared to have its existence on account of Man and God’s relationship with Man from eternity. Here the mighty Creator who created all else that exists by speaking it into existence, takes on flesh in order to fashion Man with His own hands in His own image. Yes, here the Word of God is revealed as creating Man and joining Himself to Man forever. This one revealed in the first account as Elohim (The plural form of God), now declares Himself as Yahweh Elohim, who not only takes on the form of Man to create Man in His own Image, but breathes life into Man with His own breath. Then this Yahweh Elohim makes Himself present with Mankind, walking and talking with Man and giving the Fatherly instruction for Life and Happiness in communion with Him. When Man disobeys and breaks this holy communion, Yahweh Elohim continues to come as a loving Father, seeking to restore that which was lost by Man’s rebellion, seeking to restore according to the plan that had already been established from eternity.
This is the God who came walking in the garden to call Man to repentance. This is the God who came in love to restore rather than to condemn. This is the God that Adam heard so as to be restored to faith, and then turned to his bride and gave her the new name of Heva or Life.
The real question for you is whether or not you also will hear Him, or whether you will argue with Him. Will you hear Him with the faith that restores or will you argue yourself out of the everlasting blessings that this bold and uncompromising God has decided to give to you even from eternity?
You see, God does need for you to hear Him and submit to Him in order that He may bestow upon you the love that you refuse to receive. You see, love does not come by force but through the gentle call of the Gospel. What comes by force is the condemnation of the Law, which shows us what we have chosen by not listening with the obedience of faith, the loving obedience of beloved children who know that they are beloved. The Lord continues to insist that we hear Him so as to be changed by Him for our good. Does He need this? He needs this in the same way that our earthly fathers need for us to submit to their earthly headship over us so as to give themselves for us.
If you can hear this, then you will know the God of love who sacrifices Himself for His family, crying out in agony from the cross, “I am here for you!” If you hear this, all your questions will be answered, and the answer to all your questions will be “Yes” and “Amen.”
First, I would like to say it felt nice to get a mention on the main page. Made me smile. Thanks, Professor Veith.
I think WebMonk gives good clarification. I am indeed asking why we have inherited this sin nature. Let me give it over to Paul, who put it nicely.
“Through no fault of his/her own, the ship is sinking. You might say he “inherited” his need for salvation.”
And again, as WebMonk stated I was asking before: why are we born into the sinking ship? If God–whom many of you have said actually transcends earthly parents–has borne us into said ship, is it not incumbent upon God to save us, and not the other way around as has been stated and restated in this posting?
This is the troubling view of parenting that leads people to think it is okay to raise their children to be Christians or Muslims or Jews or atheists before their children have the ability to decide for themselves. But if some earthly parents have been able to remove themselves from their own perceptions long enough to allow their child to grow and become his or her true self, wouldn’t this transcendent God be able to do likewise?
No, apparently. God, as Paul A. Siems writes:
“…is unwilling to stand by idly while people separate themselves from His love and care and thereby destroy themselves. Thus God deals with this in the strongest terms of condemnation. He speaks forcefully so as to leave no room for error. When His children ignore Him, He displays His wrath. His children have no right to undo the good that He has arranged for them. His children have no right to choose another way and to hurt themselves and others. This is what Adam did. His rebellious choice was not only for himself, but for all of the children that God had appointed to be born through him and the woman.”
(I’ll try to ignore the very condescending “the woman” remark, except in making this parenthetical comment.) Once again: why? Why are we to blame for something we never did, never were around for, a matter in which we never had a choice? And why must we supplicate ourselves to a God who treats us this way, when we are the innocent bystanders of this colossal pile-up? We are, “through no fault of [our] own,” inheritors of this sin nature, correct? And God created us in this state. Hmmm. Suspicious? Once again, apparently not.
Pr. Lehmann:
“In the Old Testament (Leviticus 17:11), God offers the sacrifices to Himself to reestablish the relationship that we destroyed by our sin.”
That’s just it: we didn’t destroy anything by our sin. Adam and Eve did that. We are simply their progeny, with a nasty birthright. We never got the benefit of the doubt that we might make a different choice than they made. Why is this? No one has yet answered me here. You’ve only restated what I called earlier the “old argument”: that we need God because we have a sin nature. Great. But why do we have it?
(An aside: what is meant by the statement that humanity is the “crown of God’s creation”? So far, nothing in nature shows this to be the case. Not that it isn’t the case. But it is a little suspicious that the only places you find any mention of humanity being the pinnacle of nature–let alone any evidence–is in the books we’ve written about ourselves. Hubris. The Bible even went so far as to place the earth at the center of the universe! Now that our planet has been replaced in its’ lowly position we have envisioned ourselves at the tip of the spear of his creation, which feels like just about the last grab at that straw.)
So, not only do we have a sin nature we can’t escape, but one for which we must also pay a price. And then, Manxman says
“God’s creation is a hierarchy, not an equality, with Him at the top, and us (and everything else) at a lower level. I think acknowledgment of this truth in our hearts and in our behavior is at the heart of worship. It is not that God needs it, it’s that for us to be filling our proper role in His creation, we have an obligation to acknowledge the truth that God is greater and ‘better’ than we are.”
Why? What did we do? If we did nothing, can we not acknowledge our debt to Gods’ having created us without supplication or prostration, without having to call ourselves pathetic and worthless? Doesn’t God love us unconditionally, which literally means “without conditions or limitations; absolute”? Or does God place conditions on this love? Which is it?
This actually sounds like Marduk, and the dude with the sinking ship again. I mean, I’m willing to pay any debt I incur honestly, but I was apparently born with a sin nature “through no fault of [my] own.” A debt I did nothing on my own to accrue; rather, one that was foisted upon me by my umpteenth-great-ancestor. Please, someone, tell me what any of the innumerable generations subsequent to Adam and Eve did to deserve this treatment. This is what I have asked, and the question has been sidestepped. I will try to slip it in a few more times before I finish.
allen elaborates: “It’s almost as if He’s saying, ‘OK, I know you all are going to worship something, so here’s the deal.’”
Once again, we worship things because, many years ago, without our involvement in any way, our ancestor decided to do something against the will of his creator, a choice we have not been given the chance to undo. We have, however, been offered the merciful secondary option of subjugating ourselves to the very God who gave our ancestor his curious and rebellious nature, placed a tree near him that was inviting and lush, then told him under penalty of death not to touch it–which is basically the equivalent of putting a fat kid in a room with broccoli and a chocolate cake and telling him not to eat the cake, then punishing him when he does the inevitable.
But this again begs the question: why didn’t God just create us without the ability to sin? Well, this does away with free will. Okay. Then why did God create a universe in which sin was a choice? This doesn’t hurt free will. God clearly cut us off from many choices. We can’t breathe underwater. We can’t see the future. We can’t fly. Men can’t give birth. Women rarely grow beards. We have limits. We also have choices we can make within those limits.
Of course, allen’s quote also begs the question “why is it necessarily true that everyone is going to worship something?” I don’t worship things. I am curious about almost everything. I am interested in being interested, and that usually entails a slow pace when looking things over. I regard things with quiet wonder. Yes, Frank, with mystery. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll get to mystery. The point here is I don’t put anything at the center of my life. I don’t worship any single thing. In fact, I’m a generalist by trade. I work in a library.
So somehow, “through no fault of [our] own,” we have incurred God’s wrath by being born onto Adam’s sinking boat and are now “pathetic and worthless” without God, who actually created us to be birthed onto our ancestors’ rickety old katamaran. And then this loving God created worship in order that he might sacrifice to himself and RE-create us in his image as he wanted us to be before we disappointed him so.
Earthly parents are not guilty of such heinous acts. These lowly humans do not “test” their children in such a blatantly base and capricious way as God does in Genesis. (Once again, I sight the fat kid and the broccoli example.) If they did, one hopes someone close to the family would call child protective services, or, better yet, do something about it themselves. And even a parent allows their child to grow up and make their own decisions. For that matter, even our government allows critique and dissension. Not God? Once again: does God have such low self-esteem that he can’t allow a few questions?
Now, I agree with Matt L. that worship as something one does to give something else worth is paganism. But he goes on to talk about the types of worship he considers to be essentially Christian:
“The first is God’s Service to us. This is the primary ‘worship’ of a Christian. It is to be on the receiving end of the giving of gifts. First and foremost of these gifts is the forgiveness of sins.”
Why do we need our sins forgiven if they are only what we do naturally as a result of our being on the genetic “receiving end” of Adam’s boat thing? You know, “through no fault of [our] own”?
Matt continues: “The second concept of ‘worship’ is that of bowing down, prostrating oneself. For those of us who are U.S. Americans, this is a completely foreign concept. We don’t take a knee as our king passes.”
He’s correct. We don’t. Because we don’t have a king, by choice. We are self-governed. We believe we are not creatures that deserve to be subservient to another creature. And I’ll take it further. We deserve to be under no one, not even our creator, unless the creator can show us what we ourselves have done to merit such treatment. I don’t think this attitude is pride. On the contrary, I think the attitude that is suspect is that of the creator who would act toward his creation in an extremely childish way.
(Of course, God could be totally arbitrary, treating us this way for pleasure. Which is kinda what I was getting at in my earlier post. But let’s leave that alone. I just wanted to point it out. We all knew it was there, like the proverbial elephant. Now that the tension’s broken, we can move on.)
Matt L: “Nonetheless, this prostration is an act of reverence given to one’s Lord. There is submission involved, and of course this act of submission is tied to the fact that we are being served.”
Right. Being served by being forgiven for our unfortunate lineage.
“Just like you teach kids to say ‘thank you’ when they receive a gift, we too give thanks unto the Lord because his lovingkindness endures forever, He has heard our cry of distress and has come to save us.”
Right. From the sinking ship we’ve been unlucky enough to have found ourselves on at the moment of our birth. Loving-kindness, indeed.
Now, I can get down with this “worship as trust” idea, as Frank says, although it is a radical redefinition of the term (which, of course, Frank does acknowledge). But in that case we could rightly say that we worship all of our close friends, relatives, perhaps some business associates. And I have to say I have no problem with it if you put it that way.
I do have a problem being browbeaten by Mr. Siems. I will only say a few things about his diatribe.
1. As stated previously, I do want to be treated on an equal level with my creator. Any creator that would not treat his/her creation in this way is childish, much like any parent that would treat their fully grown child as less than equal.
2. I do not harbor resentment toward this God. I do not believe in this interpretation of God.
3. I do think any reasonable being would be able to discuss his/her commands with those under authority without having to worry. Once again, God is weak at best if he has self-esteem issues.
4. Since parents bring children into the world, it is their responsibility to provide for the children. It is not the child’s responsibility to supplant his/her wishes or desires with a parents’ simply because the parent brought them into the world and fulfilled their parental responsibility in this matter by providing for the child’s basic needs until they could do so on their own. It is the parent’s duty to care for the child they brought into the world by their choice, which, once again, had nothing to do with asking the child whether they wanted to exist at all. Your argument is flawed in that it has those roles reversed. Parents should appreciate and guide their children, bringing them up to be successful in the world.
5. Crack babies are a myth. Seriously. Google it. “Crack baby myth.” You’ll get lots of hits.
6. God has told me who he is? Where? In nature? In the Bible? The Koran? The Upanishads? Where’s the evidence any one of those books contains who God is? Or even proves that God is real?
7. The first creation account “matches perfectly with all the cosmological evidence”? Seriously? This has all absolutely been disputed and shown to be in direct conflict with things that were not known at the time the Bible was written. Bold statement, sir. Bold and wrong.
8. Your interpretation of the Yahweh/Elohim connection is interesting. It’s a pretty liberal harmonization of what is commonly understood among scholars to be an amalgam of disparate texts edited together, including references to the old gods Yahweh and El (and a few others, such as Ba’al) as well as later references to the post-Israel “one God” of the Jews–which was itself an exercise in harmonization.
9. Nice one on the “If you can hear this” bit at the end. You set me up but good. Since it’s obvious I don’t agree with you, you’re free and clear to declare I am everything that is the opposite of your last paragraph. Such a trap door. And bit of a straw man. Still, kudos. I salute you, sir.
I enjoy much more Frank’s mystery. But I like to think I just leave it at that. Simple. Mystery. As in “anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown.” And I don’t need it to have an answer. Which is why I have no religion, and still have morals and can be courteous (unlike our mean Mr. Siems). Why is this view seen as prideful? I claim, actually, to know as close to nothing of the totality of possible knowledge as I can and still know a little. Isn’t this a fairly simple way to view things? I am moral because I am human. I do not sin, and have no need of that hypothesis. I am not perfect, of course, because there is no such thing, in my opinion. I can be horrible. And good. Just like life. And I like to leave it at that.
If there is a God “up there,” I think that God is fine with me living out the life I’ve been given as best I can using the brain with which that God blessed me. And I am absolutely willing to accept whatever consequences come with that radical view of life.
And I forgot to add, aping WebMonk again, Happy Thanksgiving!
Dear Michael:
I am seeing that you come back to some basic questions.
Or maybe even A basic question.
I note with interest two things:
(1) Interestingly, I think I agree with almost everything you have to say.
What you write says nothing about my God or what I believe. It feels like characature to me actually.
So you are arguing against someone else´s view of God.
Ok. So I mostly agree with you. So now your point is?
(2) I identify as a christian. I seem to have managed to talk right past you in describing my God and my faith. My God appears to be unfamiliar to you. I apologize for that.
Interesting.
From previous and side conversations with the other guys here, I KNOW that we are in remarkable agreement on most everything that has to do with our common faith (yes that include my dear brother Siems!). We see God the same way. Yet what you are being told here seems to reinforce what you suspect all christians think about God. I can see that.
Being a gay man, I should be on the outside looking in like you, but here we are. Again interesting.
My english professor in college TOLD me I would ever be a poor writer…. blogs are heaven for those of us with poor writing skills and nothing original to say….
Let me see if I can do better for you….
If Dr Veith can leave this thread open for a bit longer, I will copy what you wrote to MS Word and carefully parse what you have written to see if I can get down to your main points and address them directly.
Again, my apologies for lack of clarity on my part. Your questions are all good and worthy of a well considered response. I will attempt to respond again shortly.
In the meantime, it would be helpful to me to hear more from you on YOUR views, what you believe as opposed to what you don´t and maybe something about what religious influences you have had in your life thus far.
Thanks,
Frank
Dear Michael,
I prepared a longer response, but I think that it can really be summed up with a single question.
Do you find yourself equally motivated to challenge the faith of Muslims, Buddhists, and people of other religions and scriptures in the same way that you challenge those who profess to believe in Jesus, the God of the Bible?
Michael,
I didn’t mean to avoid any question. I only mean that “worshipping” seems to be ubiquitous in human history.
In Luke 4:8, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:13 to Satan regarding the idea of worshipping creation as opposed to the Creator. I suppose “worship only” could be understood in both senses, that is, with the emphasis on either word.
If you believed that there was such a thing as a Creator, wouldn’t you be interested in Him? Worship doesn’t have to mean fear as such, or ecstasy as such. In fact, I would have thought that in Lutheran circles, it involves more a calling of things by their right names (and though everybody says that, everybody can’t be right).
I reckon that if I were an agnostic or something like that, I would not wonder that various religions insist that the Creator, *rather than the creation,* be worshipped. It kinda makes sense.
As for the kneeling, the bowing of heads and so forth, this is adiaphora. Is this what you mean by worship?
It being Thanksgiving I’ve been in and out all day. As I’m on my way out again, I just wanted to say a couple things. The first is that I will respond tomorrow with a thorough post if this is still open. Didn’t want to let the time slip by without saying something, even if it’s just saying something about saying something.
The second, though, is a quick response to Mr. Siems. I find I have many problems with many different religions. I don’t find myself particularly challenging toward one more than another. However, I was raised in the church and was a Christian for almost twenty years, so I have the most detailed things to say about Christianity as opposed to other religions. My father is also Jewish, so I know a little about that, and I studied comparative religions in college, but my experience of anything other than Christianity is limited to say the least. And, so far as I know, there aren’t any Muslims, Buddhists, or otherwise who have spoken up on this post. Plus, it’s a blog by a Christian, so I figured that’s what we were talking about.
But I give equal opportunity to my challenges. If you look back, I even included atheists in the list of people who shouldn’t indoctrinate their children.
This discussion is great, though, isn’t it? I love it. Like waking up in the morning to the crisp air on Thanksgiving.
Dear Michael,
Thank you for your answer. It does provide what I was asking.
I’ll be signing off with one brief challenge to you in your processing of this matter. You said at the conclusion of your previous post:
“If there is a God “up there,” I think that God is fine with me living out the life I’ve been given as best I can using the brain with which that God blessed me. And I am absolutely willing to accept whatever consequences come with that radical view of life.”
You say that you reject the Bible as God’s revelation of Himself, so I can only use your own words and opinions and experiences, since you state in this paragraph that this is the basis of your belief system.
“If” does not provide anyone anything of substance. Neither does personal opinion such as “I think.” Using your own experience and observations, is there any king or judge who has ever accepted such challenges to his/her authority as “OK”?
You have read the Bible enough to take shots at it, but you have made it clear that you have not read it or heard it from the perspective from which the One who claims to have authored it speaks. It is for this reason that the JEDP theory, to which you hinted, and the more elaborate theories based upon it, collapsed and have been discredited even by their own proponents. These theories are nothing more than a hodgepodge of attacks upon presumed discrepancies, much like the so called Google debunks of babies born with addictions. There are many documented cases of babies being born with addictions to many drugs, and of their suffering the withdrawal symptoms. Some were so severe that they had to be taken off of the drug using methadone or other substitute.
When the Holy Scriptures (the Bible) are read according to the clearly stated context of their writing, the presumed discrepancies are observed as consistent with that context and not discrepancies at all. But this can only be observed by someone who approaches the Scriptures from the perspective in which they declare that they are written. St. Paul declares that perspective in absolute terms in 1 Corinthians 2:2. Moses records it directly from the mouth of God in Genesis 3:15. And yes, according to these Scriptures, the God of the Bible who walked with Adam and Woman (that is the translation of her actual name given to her by Adam in Gen. 2:23 until Genesis 3:20), this God has a mouth, and hands, and eyes and a body. This God/Man showed Himself throughout the Old Testament at various times, but ultimately appeared through the conception in Mary. Until the conception in Mary, He also appeared in other physical forms such as a Rock that gave water, Manna from heaven, a pillar of fire and cloud. But after the Seed was delivered into the world, He has continued as the Son of Man.
The point is that when this is observed as the theme of the Scriptures, even as they themselves declare, everything fits perfectly.
I realize that you will likely disagree with this. But for the sake of curiosity, you may at least want to give it a try. After all, what do you really have to lose except your big “IF”?
I share this with you, and with others, with deep conviction, not for the purpose of “brow beating,” but because I don’t want anyone to face the day of judgment without having been confronted with the promise that removes all IFs. If that is the definition of mean, then I may very well be the meanest man in the world.
I guess in a sense it is a relief to me that you judge me in the same way that you judge my God. At least it confirms that you know who I am really presenting.
In the name of the mean God who openly confronted sin and unbelief and gave Himself unto suffering and ridicule so that others would be spared,
Paul
Mike, if your experience with Christians was all like these people, I can’t say I’m surprised that you left church. I know I would never become a Christian if they were all I looked at.
People, Mike has some serious questions and all you guys can do is insult him! thank God not all Christians are like you people! I was referred here because a friend said Mike had asked a good question and there might be some well-said answers. Forget that. Go find some real Christians to ask your questions.
I talked with a friend and a pastor after Thanksgiving yesterday, and though they came at it from different angles, they essentially said that God made people perfect and capable of making their own decisions. The perfect happiness is to have no sinfulness and to be in communion with God. Adam and Eve’s sin ruined that for them. That sin nature is something that each soul inherits from his parents. (my friend has an idea that each person inherits DNA for his body, and soul from his parents soul, so we inherit the corrupted nature too, but that’s just shitting around talk after dinner) Another fun bit of BS we batted around was what sort of whacked out world it would be if some people were still sinless and others engaged in sin.
Anyway, you’ll need to look elsewhere for spiritual answers. Though I got invited to church by meeting someone over the inernte it wasn’t until I became friends with him and his pastor and started to seriously talk with them that I came to trust Christ. Short-and-long - go offline to ask questions. Even my stuff abover is just a REALY breif summary. I know there are lots of problems with it as I said it, but we talked about them yesterday, its just that it’ll take too long to type everything otu there. Gof ind someone to talk with.
Michael the little boot, I must admit that I find blog comments are not well suited for your questions, if only because they are long, with many subquestions. It’s not that I don’t think they’re good questions, but I have a hard time remembering the whole thread when it takes up so many screens (at this point) on my computer. Much preferred to discuss it over a beer, but unless you live in Portland, that won’t likely happen.
Your main question, to boil it down to a word, seems to be “why?” Fair enough. But, and this isn’t something I really relish saying, I don’t think “why?” is always the best question. For one thing, it seeks intent, but fails to address what is, intent or no. I could as well ask why it was I was born into a life of relative comfort and great blessings, but, whether or not I discover the reason behind it, I won’t change the fact that I was, indeed, born into such a life. Similarly, the question (for example) of “why we have inherited this sin nature” does not address if we inherit a sinful nature. That said, as I read your argument, you seemed to conflate the facts of the matter and the reason behind the facts: “Why is this so? I do not believe this should be so. Therefore, I do not believe this is so.” (Correct me if this is a wholly unfair characterization.) We may very well debate why the things of God are as they are, but first we should discuss if they are as they are. Failing to do so is like starting a class on quantum physics by asking, “Well, class, what do you think: does QED jive with your way of thinking? Do you like it?” Doesn’t really matter, does it?
Christians, by faith, determine what is and what isn’t (and occasionally WHy it is or isn’t) by reading the Bible. Thus, we can only answer why something is some way if God tells us. So if you ask me why we are forgiven by God, then I can tell you very clearly that it is because of God’s love for us, expressed through Jesus’ atoning death on the cross, and not because of anything we have done. Easy. But if you ask me why there is evil in the world (and I think you have), I can’t really give you a good answer. Maybe people much smarter than me who are really well-versed in their Bible can answer you, but not me. I don’t see a clear-cut answer in the Bible. God tells me there is evil in the world. He tells me I am sinful (thank goodness he also tells me the aforementioned part about complete forgiveness!) and contribute to the evil. He even tells us where evil doesn’t come from — that is, himself. But he doesn’t tell me everything about it. Perhaps he didn’t think it important for me to know. Perhaps he knew I wouldn’t understand if he told me.
This last bit is, of course, a very frustrating answer, particularly for people like me, who occasionally fancy themselves fairly clever. But then I think about a small child asking his father why the sky is blue. The father could tell the child about electromagnetic radiation, the visible spectrum, light scattering, absorption, wavelenghts, and all that, but it won’t matter a lick to the kid. So the kid will ultimately have to settle for “it just is” until he’s taken some physics courses.
But even asking such questions tells us about the answer — not necessarily the answer that “just is”, but the answer that we seek. By refusing to take “it just is” as an answer, we demonstrate that we believe the universe is 100% understandable to us, or will at some point be. And in so doing, we rule out anything transcendant from appearing in the answers that we find. By faith, Christians believe things they don’t understand, because by faith we believe in a God we can’t fully understand. And frankly, as a rather small component of the universe — I’m not its creator, but simply a product of its creation — I don’t expect to ever fully understand it.
Anyhow, maybe I’ve said something useful here, maybe it appears I’ve dodged everything interesting you asked. Hard to say, but I don’t have the attention span to reply point-by-point. Sorry. Maybe I’ll give it a go after I’m done with this reply. But a few short replies before I finish this over-long comment.
However, I would like to add that it’s rather silly to expect us to come up with original arguments, especially given that you’re just as guilty of recycling talking points. Nothing in this conversation is new, so it’s natural that we’re all going to resort to arguments much older than ourselves. We may stumble upon a less common way to phrase one of those arguments, but if any of usexpects to hit upon the truth, surely we will not be blazing new trails, unless you can say for certain that the truth is something no one yet knows.
As to Milton and the serpent, John wrote in his Revelation, “The great dragon was hurled down — that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” Why do you think John called Satan “that ancient serpent”?
Finally, I think a lot of your questions are discussed quite well in the first eight chapters of Romans. Maybe have another look at those, since I think Paul’s a better writer than I am.
Michael the little boot, suffice to say that your comments have provided for good discussion at my parents’ house this Thanksgiving weekend. I thank you, even if my wife may have wished I’d simply gone to bed.
But in rereading your many words, I was struck by the complete lack of any mention of Jesus. Why is that? What do you know about Jesus, and how does it play into your understanding of God? This is not a merely academic question, for the answer of who Jesus is lies at the very root of your questions.
In fact, I think you yourself demonstrated this when you asked, “If God … has borne us into said [sinking] ship, is it not incumbent upon God to save us, and not the other way around as has been stated and restated in this posting?” God did save us! Let me be clear: God saved you! Not because of how much you worshipped him, no no no. Not because you grovelled enough (not that that’s what worship is, though you seem to think so). But because of what Jesus did for us. It’s not our responsibility to save ourselves — it’s not even our ability! Let me be clear again: you don’t have to do anything to be saved from the beloved metaphor of this sinking ship. Jesus did it all.
That said, I take issue with your protestations of innocence. Michael, let me further extend my clarity by saying that you are sinful. You have made the same choice that Adam and Eve made, and you, too, sinned (that is, you have done wrong). Sin isn’t just something you inherited — you have been an active participant in it. Tell me if I’m wrong, if you’ve never done anything wrong, never lied, never lusted, never thought of yourself highly, never put yourself before others, always acted properly towards God, etc.
Fortunately, I am able to tell you quite happily that you are ever so wrong when you say that “we have a sin nature we can’t escape, but one for which we must also pay a price.” You see, Jesus paid that price for you already, in full. You don’t have to pay it.
If I had to summarize your view of God from your comments, it would have him saying, “You’re sinful! You owe me big! Now do these things or go to Hell!” If that were the God I worshipped, I too would be upset, I too would be asking a lot of questions. But that is not the God we Christians confess. My God does tell me I’m sinful, but more importantly he tells me what he did so that my sins are completely washed away, so I don’t have to go to Hell.
And now, again, a few more responses to less critical points. You asked, “Then why did God create a universe in which sin was a choice? This doesn’t hurt free will.” A curious assertion — what do you think free will is?
You also noted that “nothing in nature shows that humanity is the ‘crown of God’s creation,’” going on to note that “the only places you find any mention of humanity being the pinnacle of nature … is in the books we’ve written about ourselves.” Of course, the Bible is God’s word, not man’s (yes, I’m aware how naive this sounds if you don’t believe it, and I’m okay with that), and he tells us he made us to rule over the creatures of the earth. But fine, let’s ask nature. Which animal is currently exercising dominion over the rest of the animals and, in fact, the whole earth? The evidence, though rather sad, is that it is us. Ask a dodo bird. But even ignoring that, heck, what does evolution have to say about our position on the “tree”? Which animal is the most “intelligent” or most highly “evolved”?
You also noted, “The Bible even went so far as to place the earth at the center of the universe!” I’m not familiar with this verse. Can you point me to it?
Finally, I found your statement of “I don’t put anything at the center of my life. I don’t worship any single thing” curious. What is at the center of your life? Nobody said it had to be just one thing. If I’m honest with myself, here are some of the things I worship: myself, my money, my wife, my friends, my talents, my free time, my computer, and really good beer. Those are the things I all too often center my life around, the things for which I too easily tell God I don’t have time to talk to him because I love them more. Now, you might reasonably reply, “But that’s not worshipping those things — you just spend time with them because you enjoy those things, because they give you happiness!” If you did say that, then you’d probably understand what it is when I worship God.
So much to say. Want to keep it short. So rather than go by theme, I’ll try responding by person.
Frank, my context is, as I said, mostly Christian. Not for the last ten years, but all of the years I can remember before that. When I was three years old my parents became Christians. My being a part of the religion itself ended when I was twenty-one. Almost twenty years.
The God I’m talking about isn’t really a God at all. In fact, I’m just positing the God I feel is represented in the Christian idea of original sin and redemption.
You haven’t really talked past me, as I perceive it anyway. I just lived in the church for a long time and did see things from an inside perspective. I totally accepted it. Then I learned other things which made me shift my point of view. It continues to shift constantly, slowly, as I learn new things and have to revise what I think. As I said in an earlier post, I don’t know much. I’m constantly trying to learn so that I can give my mind more accurate info with which to make sense of the world. But none of the info I have is perfect, or even very good. Some of it is more well-researched, rigorous, and, (once again) in my view, honest than others.
To put it obviously: I don’t accept anything very easily, not out of hostility, but out of curiosity. I just want to explore as much of it as I can before I say what I think about it. And even then, it’s just what I think. Which means it’s probably wrong, by virtue of the fact that I’m that molecule on the speck of dust on the wing of a flea in the vast (possible) multiverse, or whatever they’re calling it these days. But I love to discuss and learn, so on I go.
I would equally love to hear your carefully parsed answer. I find your perspective interesting. And, since I’m new to these pages, I am curious as to WHY you are not outside like me.
(An aside: beside the fact that I am beginning to get an inkling that this post is going to be longer than I thought, I’d like to digress for a sec. My father, as I said, is Jewish. He and his family don’t talk about their personal beliefs when it comes to details about religion or God. Whether one changes beliefs or not, one is always welcome in the temple and the home. I found this to be different with the Christian religion. Once my views changed, I was out. The “family” I had known and loved for many years, my friends and mentors, completely stopped talking to me, stopped hanging out or even stopping by. All of the relationships, in fact, ended. Interesting.)
allen, the reason I said you avoided my question is that it has very little to do with worship or any definitions of worship. It has to do with why we have to do anything so that God will save us from something we didn’t cause ourselves to do. If Adam sinned, and we inherited our sin nature from him, then the very fact that we sin has nothing to do with our choice. And God supposedly gave us the choice to sin so that we could choose him. But if we can’t help our sinning, it is unfair to make us do anything to be released from it that makes no sense to us to do.
Of course, it makes sense to you, and to most everyone here. Everyone we’ve heard from, anyway. What I’m talking about is people like me. I am honestly seeking whatever there is to seek, and I’m doing it in the way that makes sense to me. God supposedly made me the way I am, and I’m doing what makes sense as that person. That is belittled by people like Siems who say I’m not listening. The only way to explain how a person like me can possibly be dishonest or obstinate is to say unqualified things like “you are not listening.” I believe that if God made me, God made me as I am, and if I take heart and strike out as I will God will be with me on my journey.
Worship, though, is ubiquitous throughout human history only if you count the last few thousand years of it. Science has uncovered many intriguing ideas that human history may extend very far into the distant past of this planet that might be 4 billion years old. But I’m guessing we disagree on this point as well. Perhaps not?
So please, if you’d like, answer this question, and I won’t accuse you of avoiding me: what did we do to deserve being saddled with a sin nature just because one of our ancestors made a horrible choice?
Oh, and I don’t think I ever said the creation should be worshiped. I just don’t think the creator should be worshiped. I don’t think anything should be, except in the sense of trusting others, which is my twisting of Frank’s words. But I understand why people do think the creator should be worshiped. I just disagree.
Mr. Siems, I hope you read this, even though you’ve signed off. I don’t think I said “if” gives anyone substance, nor that my opinion is absolute. My opinion is simply mine, as well-reasoned and researched as I can manage–and I do include experiential research as a part of that. And, as I stated before, I don’t need answers. If I don’t understand something, I research it. If I find nothing, or if I’m too stupid or unqualified to understand it finally, I accept that I don’t know. And I don’t invent or accept reasons to believe what I want to believe without evidence. I am finite and need not know more than I can. After all, learning’s just a hobby for me, mostly.
Now, as to the king or judge who would bow to an “if” or an ” I think,” I would never expect it. They are, of course, the purveyors of their laws and must rule as though these edicts trump personal opinion. This illustrates another of my points. If God is like these humans, God is not transcendent or just or even very good.
And this brings us back to “if,” which is a huge part of my life BECAUSE I am finite. Almost all of the entirety of knowledge that may be in this place that goes on for what seems like eternity is unknown to humanity, and a portion much like half a percent of a grain of sand to the sand on all the beaches in the world of human knowledge is known to me. So I accept “if,” and in fact, base my life on it. Uncertainty. I like how it works, because people don’t know how to take it when you say it. Rather than “I try to be humble” which is obviously improbable and disingenuous, I say “I try to be uncertain.” Which flies in the face of much of modern life.
And in the church we’re taught to be certain, right? I mean, you have answers for everything that I’ve said. Some of them have obviously been somewhat researched, but I question your conclusions, as you anticipated I would. My biggest problem is that you’ve attacked me rather than answer my question. You say it’s because you don’t want me to face judgment without the saving knowledge of Christ. But it just feels like Tough Love. Now, I definitely think love can be tough, but Tough Love is usually just a smokescreen for beating someone up. In my experience. And in the name of positivity, altruism and true religion, you lambaste my belief system, when all I’ve done is question yours.
I’ve spent my life reading the Bible from the time I COULD read. I don’t believe I’ve ever taken a pot-shot at it. I’ve never heard anything you say about the JEDP theory being discredited. Could you link me to that info, or let me know where it’s published so I could take a look at it? I’m sure I have some professors from college who’d like to know about it, as well.
(Could you provide links to the crack baby stuff, too? The only studies I know of that sound like what you’re talking about are the Reagan studies and the studies sited by the Just Say No campaign in the eighties, all of which have widely been discredited. I’ll see if I can find links to that for you.)
Now, the next part is the kicker. I have to quote it. Apologies for length, but context is king:
“When the Holy Scriptures (the Bible) are read according to the clearly stated context of their writing, the presumed discrepancies are observed as consistent with that context and not discrepancies at all. But this can only be observed by someone who approaches the Scriptures from the perspective in which they declare that they are written. St. Paul declares that perspective in absolute terms in 1 Corinthians 2:2. Moses records it directly from the mouth of God in Genesis 3:15. And yes, according to these Scriptures, the God of the Bible who walked with Adam and Woman (that is the translation of her actual name given to her by Adam in Gen. 2:23 until Genesis 3:20), this God has a mouth, and hands, and eyes and a body. This God/Man showed Himself throughout the Old Testament at various times, but ultimately appeared through the conception in Mary. Until the conception in Mary, He also appeared in other physical forms such as a Rock that gave water, Manna from heaven, a pillar of fire and cloud. But after the Seed was delivered into the world, He has continued as the Son of Man.
The point is that when this is observed as the theme of the Scriptures, even as they themselves declare, everything fits perfectly.”
Exactly. When one looks at this book and only this book–and only this book in THIS CERTAIN WAY–one can see what you’re talking about. The problem with this is that every argument afterward becomes self-referential. Your belief in Jesus Christ and his father is the same as my uncertain “if,” in that it provides substance only for the person looking to it for substance. Your beliefs in Christianity are your opinions. You say you base it on a greater authority by claiming God authored the Bible, but that is also your opinion. If it is not, if it has any real evidence to back it up, please don’t sign off. Please post it here. If you do, I guarantee it will only be days until this is the most widely read blog on the planet.
NewChristian, thank you so much. I think that, for the most part, this discussion has been positive. But I will choose to believe that what you said had mostly to do with one or two (or just one) person(s) who in my opinion has taken the conversation in an inappropriate direction. I won’t, however, be taking your advice. I’m the OldChristian. It’s my tradition, because you can’t escape it. I’m not allowed to participate in it as a nonbeliever. I miss that. Wish I could. But I don’t believe. Appreciate the thoughts, though.
tODD, alas, I live in California. So while a beer isn’t out of the question (and a good excuse to visit Portland), it probably won’t happen.
I don’t think my question misses what “is,” although I do agree that I don’t get at “if we have a sin nature.” I’m not trying to ask that question. I don’t believe it to be germane to the discussion. My question is, once again: if we have a sin nature we ourselves did nothing to inherit but to be born, how are we to blame for sinning? Why will I go to hell if I, in my sin nature, sin, and do not acknowledge Jesus’ death on the cross as my salvation? I mean, if he saved me, why do I need to acknowledge it in order for it to be a reality? It still sounds like I’m stroking the Divine Ego when I do that.
It’s like a man who has a great debt. He goes to the bank one day to try to talk to the manager about an extension on his delay of payment. But when he arrives, he finds the debt has been paid! He refuses to accept it. Every day for the rest of his life he walks to the bank to try and pay a little on the loan but is turned away. Does his refusal to accept this repayment on the part of his unknown benefactor change the circumstances? No. He is free of his debt.
Now, if this walking to the bank every day is hell, then God is just mean. Why not just tell this person–who is a grown adult, you know, rather than the child you said God treats us as–in no uncertain terms, that the debt is paid? Why hide it in a book written so long ago that it’s meaning and context has been lost to history, so as to make it nigh unintelligible, and then make finding that one thing the most important thing of all?
This is especially troubling in light of the fact that no majority in the world believes in one religion. So every religious person is running around thinking they are right and everyone else is wrong. And, even though it’s pompous to say the devil led them astray, that’s what people say. So now, not only do we inherit a sin nature through no fault of our own, but the devil tempts us, too? The deck is certainly stacked against a bunch of people who are basically just along for the ride. We carry a lot of responsibility in the matter–to which we were not privy–that is the defining business of our lives.
I’m not saying that 100% of the universe is knowable, but I’m not saying we should assume it is unknowable and forget it. I like exploration. It’s slow and interesting. It can be dangerous. But mostly it’s a curiosity, a question, and it becomes other curiosities and questions. Sometimes people come to hard and fast conclusions based on one static way of looking at things at one moment in a succession of them. I don’t think that’s necessary, or interesting, or a whole lot of fun. And it usually ends up being shown to have been at least a little, if not wildly, inaccurate, because it was only working with partial evidence. And that may be all we have, but it may not. I say let’s keep exploring and find out if we can.
I find it hard to understand why you believe a God who tells you that you add to the evil in the universe, that he is not evil, and that he can save you without asking for proof. Those are some major claims. I mean, first he has to prove what sin and evil even are, and then he has to prove how you are a part of them. But I don’t see where he’s done that for you. You only have partial understanding of these things he supposedly understand fully. He tells you he has your best interest at heart and you believe him, even though he is also telling you that all the instincts he gave you are wrong and that anything you can find out about the world on your own is untrue. He doesn’t sound trustworthy to me. And these are your words, not mine.
I don’t think it’s silly to expect some originality. Everything is recycled into something new. The stuff of our universe, so far as we know, everything of which it is composed, has existed as long as the universe has existed. These ideas are not new completely, but one can add to them. I don’t actually think you have heard everything I’ve said before exactly as I’ve said it. I think it has a bit of my spin. Not 100% original, but mine.
I’ve asked the question to others that I’ve asked here to you, and I’ve gotten the same answers. I’ve gotten the appeal to humanity’s sin nature. And the problem with that is it’s precisely what I’ve asked you not to do. Because it’s the snake that eats its’ tail. I’m asking what we did to deserve all of this. And I’m being told what Adam did. Okaaay. What did I do, again? I sinned? Hmmmm. But didn’t I do that because I inherited a sin nature from Adam? Which means I really had no say in acquiring it, and no ability to refuse compliance with the actions it implies. But it’s my fault? Uh…what? Oh, someone paid the price for it? So I don’t have to worry? Whew. That’s a relief. Oh, but I have to do what? Believe a bunch of things that in my opinion strain credulity? Wait. What did I do to deserve this again?
That’s how it sounds to me. Circular reasoning. So all I can hope for is that Frank is parsing away and coming up with something interesting. I’d just like to hear something new. That’s the thing: proponents of creationism or ID or whatever say that the human brain is so complex, only God could have designed it. Then they turn around and refuse to trust their own brains. Interesting.
(Aside: Yeah, Milton had biblical reasons for calling the serpent Satan, if you read the Bible as a first and second testament. But as a person of Jewish descent, I must protest. The Hebrews did not write about this. To them, it was a serpent. The creation story, read from a Jewish perspective, is very, very different. Same words, though.)
As far as what I know about Jesus, it is limited to the things written about him, since I don’t believe a personal relationship to be possible. So I don’t mention him in talking about God because, once again, I don’t think it’s appropriate. I’m asking a question specifically about God. If your answer includes Jesus, that’s fine. I’m not looking for anything specific, as long as I’ve never heard it before.
I do think you’ve characterized me unfairly. I think I would rephrase your series of questions: “Why is this so? I do not see evidence that this should be so. I will try to find it…After searching, I have not found evidence that this is so. Therefore, I do not believe this is so.” To me that series is entirely reasonable. I am not a scientist, but I enjoy trying to use the scientific method when I can. So I strive to constantly retest my own theories in an attempt to keep them as accurate as possible, to allow them to reflect what I have learned. Sometimes that means I must radically revise them all.
I haven’t made the same choice as Adam and Eve. I am not so stringent as you. I don’t believe in sin. As I said before, I am horrible at times. Yes, I make plenty of mistakes. I can be a jerk. I am all kinds of dark, nasty things, like most other people. I can also be kind, friendly. I don’t see any of these things as opposing any others, but areas along a continuum that is one.
It’s like hot and cold. Many people say that there is no such thing as cold, because cold is the absence of heat. Others say that’s ridiculous. Of course cold exists. It snows, right? Actually, neither are correct. What you actually have is a spectrum of movement. At one end, when things are moving in an extremely quick way, we call that hot. At the other, when they move not at all, we call that cold. But they are not things. They are things moving.
Or take color, for example. Black is saturated color, white is unsaturated. In between are all the other colors we know. But they are only separated by our minds. They are, in fact, different states of one thing. A spectrum.
And some quick responses to yours:
“You asked, ‘Then why did God create a universe in which sin was a choice? This doesn’t hurt free will.’ A curious assertion — what do you think free will is?”
You obviously missed my point, because you omitted my next statement, which would have made the answer to your question obvious. Free will is having the freedom to choose from those choices that are available to you. I am 5′5″. I cannot be taller than that in a natural way. I cannot choose to be taller unless I do something synthetic. Being naturally taller is not a choice available to me. If I love a person and they do not love me, I can still choose to love them, but I cannot choose for them to love me. The lack of these choices does not take away my free choice. It only limits it. But if you think we have unlimited free choice, well, my friend, it is not the first time we’ve disagreed.
Now to your sad misreading of evolution. We are not the most “highly evolved” species. This is an evolutionary misnomer. There is no such thing. Evolution is not deliberate. It is an ongoing process that is not heading in any direction. In fact, it is my opinion that your misreading of evolution is just as much to blame for humanity’s dominance and destruction of our planet as the view that we have been given dominion by God over this world. It is responsible for social Darwinism and the like. The Nazis and their ilk. But a true reading of Darwin shows that “endless forms most beautiful” can spring from the process of natural selection without one being better than the next. Funny that I, a person who finds Darwin’s idea interesting and compelling, should express this egalitarian view of what you would call God’s creation. You’d think that, since I have no religion to guide my morals, I’d be corrupt and try to become the fittest so that I could survive.
Here’s a passage in the Bible that puts the sun revolving around the earth, and the firmament (the ancient idea that the sky was a dome which held the sun and moon, then the dome of stars above that, then the dome of planets) above, placing the earth at the center of all the Israelites believed existed:
Psalm 19
1The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
3There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
4yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
5which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
6Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
and nothing is hidden from its heat.
Funny thing about this, is what comes next. I guess ironic is more like it:
7The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure,
making wise the simple;
8the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear,
enlightening the eyes;
Except that the Lord just said the sun comes up on one side of the heavens and goes down on the other. Which is clearly not the case. I mean, we still talk about the sun rising and setting, but who believes it actually does that? We are the third planet from a star which we orbit. It does not orbit us.
And I don’t put anything at the center of my life. Things do come and dance in the center from time to time, but they don’t stay. My center is formless. I try not to hold tightly to the things I think I know, because I am wrong about any number of things right now, let alone another moment.
And I don’t presume to know why you do what you do, tODD. I just try to do what I do.
Todd:
“But in rereading your many words, I was struck by the complete lack of any mention of Jesus. Why is that? What do you know about Jesus, and how does it play into your understanding of God? This is not a merely academic question, for the answer of who Jesus is lies at the very root of your questions.”
It is interesting to note how this Jesus is not pervasive nor even the main focus of anyone who responded to Little Michael. I believe that even I failed him here.
We Lutherans claim not only to be “christ-centered”, but rather ONLY and ALL about Jesus. His life , death and resurrection. As the Augustana orders things: “the Gospel and all it´s articles.”
In charity, I am sure that most, if not all commentators had the Gospel in the background of their thinking and comments. But that is not where Jesus belongs.
This was a great opportunity to have a discussion all about Our Lord. I am saddened that I did not rise better to the occasion!
Thanks for your comments Todd.
Michael: I hope you give thought to what Todd has written. I believe it has intellectual integrity.
wow michael:
I thought **I** was wordy! Lawwdy…..
But you have cool things to say. I am in Rio De Janeiro. The beer is better here. And we like it as cold as possible. You are welcome to visit any time.
That´s a serious invitation. and even if you remain a pagan you would be welcome. as long as you enjoy good food and beer and are not easily offended in a good argument about whatever. I am sure you would have fun.
First:
I understand your question as being this:
“IF we are sinful because we inherited original sin from our parents. Then why are we more culpable for this than we would be for say….. being left handed, or albino, or (in my case) gay, or transgender, or 5′5″? Why wouldn´t God just go with the flow. Why is redemption even necessary if God made or allowed the world to be so and allowed us to be born thusly?”
Let me know if I heard you write, and in my own words, managed to frame your simple question correctly and completely. If I DO understand you correctly I will answer as best as I can.
I DO feel though that I need to tip my hand more as to where I am coming from Michael. I DO believe that there are great Mysteries and Unknowns in the world. But I also believe that our existence and universe is not only what we see. I also believe that some of that that we do not see Has in fact been revealed and so to some extent is NO mystery, but is evident and no secret at all (as opposed to the mystery cults like the Masons and Gnostics of the 3rd century for who “hidden knowledge” is very important).
I will promise to work on what you have written once you get back here or email me offline.
now you have written more. good stuff. I would like to know what your christian tradition is. Christians vary widely in their views, and to know your tradition would allow me to answer those views more directly, even if you personally no longer hold to those views. I hope you can appreciate the usefulness of that.
I am Lutheran. My personal views are summarized in a public document called the Augsburg Confession (google it!), which was written in 1530. I actually quoted this document when i said that “True worship is trust in Jesus Christ.” So this is not a personally held view. But it reflects a very strange theology. that same view also says that Lutherans, in truth, only have ONE unitary “doctrine” to offer the world. that doctrine is the Life, death and resurrection of one Jesus of Nazareth. Every other “doctrine” has merely a supporting role …. this is what the Augustana means when it says “the Gospel and all it´s articles.” (aside: We Lutherans, unfortunately, due to our history, do best RESPONDING and counterpointing what others say. Too bad. But you got a flavor of that here…)
Now this document is written in response to the christian church as it existed then and later became the Roman Catholic Church. So it might not be a compelling read without some historical religious knowledge, but it is still a great read. I believe every word of it Michael as being a great understanding of what the bible is all about.
Every religion I know of makes room for Jesus. Usually as a great moral teacher, or many christians seem to feel his advent was to be an example (e.g.: WWJD, what would Jesus do.) . You will find Lutherans openly hostile, yes hostile, to this view of Jesus. We also take a very very dim view of those thoughts represented in “The Purpose Driven Life” and that “Jaebez” thing.
If you read the Gospel of Luke and John, we christians (including us Lutherans at times) have ALL done an excellent job of supporting these efforts to make Jesus palatable to the religious and so defang him and turn him into the “family values Jesus”, the republican-personal-responsibility-patriotic-whitebread-antihomo-Jesus”, the “rebel-champion-of-the-poor-bleeding-heart-liberal-jesus”, the “mystical-roll-your-own-new-age-jesus”, the “boy scout jesus”, the “great mohammed-budha-prophet-jesus” and even my favorite “the Jesus-is-satans-brother-and-is-having-sex-with-his-haram-of-wives-get-saved-by-getting-married mormon Jesus”.
He doesn´t fit any of these at all…so, there being many Jesuses floatin about, I am most curious to know Michael, exactly WHICH Jesus you were raised to believe in. Not what you think of him now (though I would like to know that too..) but the one you were raised with.
His parables are strange. They seem to lack fairness. People who toil all day get the same pay as ones who show up at the last minute. The son who wishes his father dead to get his cash gets celebrated and is given power of attorney over all his father has, while the faithful son becomes the prodigal one….
His exhortations to hate father and mother to have a share of his kingdom is anti dr dobson. (this is cool to me as a gay man actually…although I DO love my parents alot)
His jaded comment that “the poor you will have always” when someone decided to give him an expensive and wastefully extravagant gift seems to fit the very worst stereotype of any republican I know (so much for Jesus being for the poor and oppressed…) .
He had a reputation for being a “winebibber and glutton” (ie alcoholic and party animal). His first miracle was to make about 400 gallons of (excellent!) alcoholic beverage for a party where everyone (according to the text) was at the very least already well on their way to being drunk.
So what WOULD Jesus do? I am just not getting the Jesus-as-example-and-great-moral-teacher thang Michael.
He is described (and claims to be) THE God who created the universe, yet does not appear with angels and trumphets ready to whup some major demon ass like most penticostals would seem to like him to be… he is so ordinary looking that without exception, when he is sought out in a crowd, they need to ask which dude is Jesus, or pay someone to kiss him. Even his townsfolk who know him as a child find him utterly unremarkable. “isn´t this the carpenter´s son” they ask incredulously ( to use your term
)…
Yet Jesus claims to be perfect. How is it possible to be perfect in this world and no one would notice. I find that both odd and fascinating. It challenges my thinking of my own existence and my own categories of good and bad (in the religious AND practical sense) , right and wrong. Not even mother teresa notoriety…. damn.
He was homeless. he cried over death. he reduced a woman to identifying herself as a dog (not nice!)
He says (as a Jew, think about this now…) that if whoever does not eat His Flesh and drink His Blood can have no part of him. Say what???! What could he say that would be more offensive or wierd or well… fill in the blank as a Jew.
He claims that the entire Old Testament was written as a testimony to his person.
He claims to have existed before Abraham, and claimed to have the power to forgive sins of complete strangers. He claimed the name that was so sacred a Jew could not say it . the “I am” and they quite rightly tried to stone him a few times over that one….
Does this man have an ego or is the man SERIOUSLY dilusional, or what?!!!!
I can´t find it in your long post, but you said somewhere , I think , that Jesus is sort of besides the point in what you are talking about.
I realized that I can´t really address your questions about original sin and our own alleged shortcoming without taking Jesus into account.
My cards are now all on the table.
Apart from the strange dude named Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, I have nothing to present to you.
Most Jesus types like this one would be locked up or on Prozac or maybe something for bipolarism I would think… In fact I am sure you can find some in mental hospítals.
It gets stranger to me. He claimed that his whole life’s purpose was to come, live a life that embodied the entire cosmos bodily in his very person (don´t ask…) and then to passively allow that life to be taken. He was to be abandoned by God. But he claimed to be THE God (as opposed to a new age-like “we are all god or have god in us…”) So how is that even possible I ask?
He was to be abandoned by every single person at the end.
The witnesses of his most important acts were women (you can ponder this through the lense of a jew as well…) and his followers were cowering in locked rooms. and they did not believe anything that happened after his death as being true. after being with him for 3 years.
Christians believe that the moment of his death is the hinge of human history and existence. Not the fall into sin even. Christians believe that his DEATH was his moment of victory. complete and utter victory. Objective. Historical. True. as in….
What his death means and accomplished is true for you whether you believe it or not Michael! God doesn´t need your pathetic faith or your hollow repentance. He does, I believe, deserve your trust. But He really doesn´t even need that to make what Jesus did as true for you as it is for me. “God was in christ reconciling the WORLD” I think that phrase includes you. I am sure it includes me. independent of whatever you believe.
His death…. We christians are told to proclaim his death until he returns.
We are NOT told to get a Victorious christian life, or to battle to obtain a victory as christians. we believe the victory HAS been won at the moment of his death. God almighty took a chill pill.
Strange I think. There are still wars and good people doing very very bad things to each other. and yet i believe that God is at peace with all of that now. So call me strange Michael.
This has something to do with a good God having to also be a just God and somewhere, if there is a God, the problem of evil and the bad things that happen in the world have to be dealt with by God. as in “if there IS a God, then why would he allow…..” Like that….. But then this is another (yet closely related) conversation.
Michael: I trust in this strange Jesus that is not owned by any church, whose followers are mere object lessons on why He needed to come and be one of us.
IF you are interested, here is a link to a writing that might give you more insight into why, as a gay man, with a potentially terminal disease to boot, trust Him, and why my favorite mental image of Him, very strangely I think, is Him hanging Dead and executed.
lemme know.
http://blog.higherthings.org/wcwirla/article/2941.html
I don´t believe that THIS Jesus would ever turn anyone away. Including myself. And take note that I am fully accepted here as a brother.
Billy Graham tells folks at his revivals that “the decision you make today will determine your eternity!” I say to that “bullshit.” What has determined your eternity is what a Jew did 2000 years ago in time and history. Trust that Michael.
We Lutherans say that you “cannot by your own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to him.” Another strangeness.
So if you go with Billy Graham then, you are for sure eternally f–ked. (I can´t think of a more accurate word here that is more polite, sorry brothers and sisters!)
There might be something going on here that is not familiar to you, even though you were raised in a church and know the bible….
I would ask you to allow your ideas of God and Jesus to die. At least for discussion purposes.
“Which is clearly not the case. I mean, we still talk about the sun rising and setting, but who believes it actually does that? ”
I actually believe that. it is positional. the universe, including you, rotates around me, frank sonnek, so far as i know. My world is more poetic that way. hehehehehe.
You quote a poem. Since when is poetry taken to be literal? (except maybe by the spanish inquisition vs galeleo…).
hEY Michael:
This was in todays NY times. seems that when it comes to religion and science there will always be questions behind questions behind questions… what to do…. I had never thought of this one though in quite this way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html?th&emc=th
hEY Michael:
my direct email is fwsonnek@gmail.com i just realized there was no way to know this on the good Dr Vieth´s new blog.
This was in todays NY times. seems that when it comes to religion and science there will always be questions behind questions behind questions… what to do…. I had never thought of this one though in quite this way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html?th&emc=th
Thanks for the long, thoughtful response, Frank. As I said earlier, I was hoping your next post would be something interesting like this.
Rio De Janeiro. Wow. I’ve not even been to all of the states in this country! I’m not offended by any discussion, but I can get passionate and intense, which is off-putting. So as long as you are not offended by long-winded, loud, obnoxious and opinionated people, I may have to take you up on that invite.
The Jesus I was raised with depends on whom you ask. My dad does think of himself as stupid and not worthy of any consideration by any creature, let alone one “greater” than himself. (I obviously have trouble with the idea that there is a hierarchy of existent beings, as I also provided evidence of in my earlier posting when talking about evolution.) So he is grateful for what he believes was Jesus’ benevolence. It plays into what he feels about himself. He doesn’t have to worry about the hammer coming down on his head, even though he deserves it (in his mind), because of Jesus.
If you ask my mom, Jesus is the loving, caring nurturer she always wanted in a mother (though she’d be careful not to put it that way). He lifts her and protects her. He is always there for her. And she is lucky for that, because she’s really bad. She’s a horrible person in her own view. At the same time she’s smarter and better than everyone, which makes her an even more horrible person, in that she should have the power NOT to be horrible since she’s so much smarter and more gifted than everyone. And Jesus cares for that. He makes her feel better. She’s said she would kill herself were it not for him. He can even change her memories (physically, in the brain) when they become too much for her and she can’t cope. She is a practicing marriage/family/child therapist, and she believes her physical memories can be changed!
But you asked me. The Jesus I grew up with WAS the confusing Jesus about whom you spoke. All of those things in the scriptures that contradicted what the adults I knew said. All of that family values garbage, the Billy Graham stuff. The fire and brimstone. We went to a Baptist church when I was young, then we moved to a different city and started going to a Charismatic church, a Church of the Foursquare Gospel. (I was never really clear on what the Foursquare Gospel was, but every time someone said the phrase I was reminded of the game I played in elementary school.) And they focused on the minutiae: speaking in tongues, letting the holy spirit guide, etc. None of the meat.
But I had gotten enough meat from the baptist church in San Francisco we’d attended for eleven years. So I already “knew” the core stuff about Jesus. Problem is, no one had ever answered any of my questions as to why they said things about Jesus that didn’t seem to agree with the evidence of scripture. You know, all the nicey-nice Jesus stuff you talked about, as well as the fire and brimstone. I mean, that hell stuff isn’t even in the First testament to speak of, since that wasn’t a Jewish belief then. And the First testament is bloody. Then Jesus comes and says a lot of cryptic things (e.g., the camel through the eye of a needle bit, very interesting), all of the explanations for which I found to be uninteresting and unconvincing. But they were cloaked in the “believe this or you’ll go to hell” lingo, so I couldn’t consciously ask those questions or even literally ask them as often as they popped up in my brain. (I’d just recite the dogma and they’d go away for a while, forgotten. I probably forgot those questions over and over again, just to survive.)
I think currently my mother believes more along the lines that you talk about here, if I am reading you correctly. Are you saying that everyone actually IS saved, regardless of what they think of Jesus or what religion they profess? That by virtue of the fact of Jesus’ death, all are absolved of the guilt of original sin? And that, since this is a fact, it is good to believe this fact, because you are then giving gratitude to the one who saved you AND living the positive existence He wished for you to live? Because I would have loved to have had that view as a kid. It would’ve saved me a ton of staying up late thinking. I wouldn’t have tried to solve all of the logical inconsistencies of what I was being taught and what I was reading. That would have better served my artistic temperament.
But that didn’t happen. And I believe now what I believe now, which solves the problems I had then in a way that is much more intellectually and emotionally satisfying to me than what I had believed previously. Not that your poetic and rich interpretation isn’t miles beyond what I was raised to think. It just doesn’t fit in with what I think now.
I am with you, though. Jesus was not a “great moral teacher.” But I would still love to have a beer with the man. To me, he was a radical more than a great moral teacher, the Che Guevara of his day. But so much of him, in my opinion, is lost to history that I may just be reading my bias and nothing more. If I am correct, or close, I think he’s much more interesting than any of the hyphenated-types you discussed.
I’m just not inclined to believe that any human is any more or less divine–if anyone really is–than any other. Including Jesus. He was better than great or even perfect. He was interesting. So much so that writings about him have captivated western thought for much of the last two-thousand years, ideas about which have shaped modern human history.
But we come to my question again. Not “how are we saved from our sin?” or “do we sin?” or even “are we to going to hell if we don’t accept Jesus?” or any permutations of these. It remains “why do we NEED to be saved from sin, if we did nothing originally but partake in Adam’s lineage?” I’m on the way to satisfied that you don’t think people who believe differently than you do are going to hell. But I’m not satisfied with an answer to that question.
I believe that talking about God as being compassionate in sending Jesus to die for our sins, when we are not to blame (on the basis of the doctrine of original sin, yada yada) for them, IS like Siems’ metaphor of the crack baby, in a way. The baby born of a mother who did drugs at all during the pregnancy (varying greatly by frequency of use, type or types of drug, etc.) is born with some birth defects. (We even acknowledge that smoking and drinking caffeinated beverages can be detrimental to a fetus! Let alone heroine, oxy contin, or extreme alcohol abuse!) To me, this is a pretty good metaphor for the God of Original Sin, in that the parent is left with a living, breathing example of their mistake, and they must do what they can to help the child cope with the defects they have heaped upon him or her. God’s mistake was in not creating some possible avenue for Adam to escape sin, thereby shackling all of Adam’s descendants. Can we please have someone take a stab at explaining why we are to blame for this? Or have we gone past it now, since Frank’s mentioned that one does not have to do anything for Jesus’ sacrifice to be real?
I think that the crux has not been touched. If my crack baby metaphor holds up, the trouble I have is that a person in this situation must do what she can to make up for her mistake. I.e., God must make up for allowing sin by opening heaven to those of us afflicted with that particular disorder. Not to do so would be like the physician who creates a bioweapon, allows it to fall into the wrong hands and then denies care to those fall victim.
As for taking the poem literally, I don’t think I am. I’m just showing that it gives a context for what they thought of the earth then. Poets tend to give artistic voice to the views of the day. People write poems now about nature, poets who see the scientific view as a very valid metaphor. And that’s often how I see it as well: a very well-reasoned, well-researched, honest and articulate metaphor that continues to revise itself so that it can most accurately reflect the reality it symbolizes.
A nice marriage of heart and mind, in my view.
Michael,
I’m not really erudite, so bear with me. You asked why we have to do anything so that God will save us from something we didn’t cause ourselves to do.
God already saved you back when He was hanging on that cross when He said, “It is finished.” As God says in Isaiah 55:11, “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Jesus is the Word made flesh and He accomplished the Father’s purpose; that is, He saved you. I hope no one imagines he can “do” anything to be saved. God’s command to worship Him is like His other commands; have mercy, don’t steal, etc. That doesn’t really have anything to do with being saved.
You asked, “What did we do to deserve being saddled with a sin nature just because one of our ancestors made a horrible choice?”
The answer is, “Nothing.”
But what would you have? Would you rather be like Adam and Eve, having the choice, and still sinning anyway? There would still just be that one redemption. That’s what’s important.
allen,
Thank you for responding to the actual question!
If we did nothing to deserve our sin nature, but still must answer for it, this God is evil. He blames us for his mistakes. Which I thought I had made clear earlier. And, as tODD points out, in saying this I am only regurgitating what others have said for a long time.
I think it’s a general inferiority complex steeped within human culture that causes us to accept the “Adam sinned, and so would you if you had the choice!” party line. I don’t accept it. Where’s the evidence? Your’s is in the way you define sin. If you call what we naturally do “sin,” such as some of the people’s language here (which I know some find offensive), Frank’s being gay (not my view!), or any other natural behavior that someone says is actually evil, then, yes, we all sin. But this is entirely contextual. One can always define what aliens do as evil so as to justify feeling put-off by it (e.g., Dr. Veith’s characterization of the towers in Dubai as “creepy”).
Just because I make mistakes and am not always what some would define as good, does not make me a sinner. That’s an extreme reading of the oneness of positive and negative, like the hot and cold thing. That’s a fairly child-ish–rather than child-like–view, in my opinion. Of course I am capable of positive as well as negative acts along a spectrum. I am a part of the oneness of those things. (And the oneness theory is born out by quantum mechanics as well, which works for the metaphor!)
I don’t think God keeps score. I think God’s a realist. If God knows who I am, God knows what to expect. It’s just mean and counterproductive to expect someone to be something they are not–more so if you created them. I’m not saying we can’t grow and change, but we can’t change into a bird. We can, at the most, be THE MOST that we can be. Nothing more. But what potential we have in reaching our true selves! Why be unrealistic and try to be more? Cannot being all that one can be actually be enough?
And if we were never capable of not sinning, we don’t have free will, anyway. This God sounds like someone worthy of reverence, huh? No. The God that scoops you up out of the fire he created is just using his powers to right his own wrong. That is the bare minimum expected. Like parents providing food, shelter and clothing to their helpless infant. Parents who do that shouldn’t be commended, because that is Parenting 101. If they don’t do that, they essentially do nothing. It’s the parents that rise ABOVE their duties that are admirable. And I don’t see that in your explanation of God.
Hey Michael:
Thanks for the insight into your family background. It is interesting indeed.
“If we did nothing to deserve our sin nature, but still must answer for it, this God is evil. He blames us for his mistakes.”
There are a couple of assumptions here I agree with but I am not going to nit. I agree with you Michael. Fortunately the case you describe is not the truth.
I would recommend googling a dude name Robert Farrer Capon. He is Episcopalian and not Lutheran. I don´t agree with everything he says, but I think you might be challenged by what you read. I would especially recommend first his book “The astonished heart” and then his trilogy on the parables. I think it is called “sin grace and the kingdom ” or something like that. it was originally published in 3 books but now is in a single volume.
You can google him, but you will only get the real flavor by reading the astonished heart or his parable book from cover to cover. He is a good writer , so they are both fast reads. amazing considering the complexity he presents and how he deconstructs every religious idea you have ever had or borrowed in your life (I guarantee this.)
He has been accused of being a universalist (someone who believes everyone goes to heaven regardless) and also an anti-nomian (someone who believes that the law of God doesnt matter at all or is actually harmful).
I see his writing as actually being alot more complex than all of that. But we christians love to categorize people and we get itchy when they don´t seem to fit our normal categories. He is a challenging read.
he wrote a great cookbook also by the