Holes in Secularism?

An atheist says atheism has holes religion can fill

Alain de Botton:Atheism 2 (A TED presentation)

This video was sent to me by a good friend who asked me to comment on it. Here is what I replied to her.

The talk was very interesting (and entertaining). The Roman orator Cicero noticed that every nation has its gods. He took the consent of all peoples to be a fact or truth of nature: that some deity must exist. Romans 1:18-23; 2:12-16 indicates that the human heart has a knowledge of God and His law--a knowledge that men may suppress, distort and deny. So if secularism is admitted to be full of holes, and if religion provides material to plug those holes, what does that suggest? Here's a word picture for what I think is happening. Secularism has tried to put a hard brass dome over our heads, a dome that is designed to keep anything immaterial or supernatural out of our lives and thinking. However, the dome has holes and something from outside keeps poking through. Not only that, but the thing that keeps poking through turns out to be just what we need to be fully human. Why, therefore, should one assume that secularism presents a complete picture of reality and of human life? Is it not reasonable to ask if there is something more; something outside the brass dome of matter and energy; something that not only can, but must break through that dome? (I have used "secularism" instead of "atheism" because many secular people are practical atheists, even if they would not describe themselves that way.) 

The Value of Human Life (part 4)

(For the first 6 sections of this essay read the three previous posts, beginning in December 2011.)

7.      Two Final, Unrelated questions

Two questions were raised as a result of the preceding study. Here are brief responses.

A.          Euthanasia

If we owe respect and kindness to every human being, wouldn’t it be respectful and kind to administer a fatal drug to someone who is enduring intense suffering from a terminal illness? Why should I treat my suffering dog with more compassion than I treat a suffering human being?

The answer is simple. God has given us the right to take an animal’s life for food (Genesis 9:3). Therefore, while animals are important to God (Proverbs 12:10), their lives are not sacred.

However, God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the length of our days.

Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man (Genesis 9:5-6)

See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand (Deuteronomy 32:39).

Since his days are determined, the number of his months is with You; and his limits You have set so that he cannot pass (Job 14:5).

Therefore, the issue is greater than our opinion of the most compassionate way of helping a suffering person. We are obligated to obey God and to leave in His hands the lives of His image bearers. God has not chosen to end our lives before we suffer, and while this may seem unkind or cruel to us, we trust His goodness and His wisdom. The obvious exception to leaving death in God’s hands is when the state executes a murderer in obedience to God’s command. (See also Romans 12:17-13:4.)

B.      How can we be images of God if God forbids images of Himself?

This question would not occur to people in most churches today because the meaning of the second commandment has been largely forgotten.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me (Exodus 20:4-5 ESV).

Many people mistakenly think that the commandment only refers to images of false gods. Moses clarifies this misconception in a sermon to the Israelites as they were about to enter the Promised Land.

So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female (Deuteronomy 4:15-16).

The golden calf Israel made in the wilderness was not an image of a false God. It was an image of Yahweh because the calf was an image of the God who brought them out of Egypt, and when it was set up, the people celebrated a feast to Yahweh (Exodus 32:4-5). When Moses came down Mount Sinai and saw what they had done, he was so furious that he shattered the two tablets of the law that God had cut out of stone and engraved with His own hand.

Some argue that after God took on a human body and soul in the incarnation, it became legitimate to make images of Christ. However, the New Testament knows nothing of this, and the apostle Paul specifically condemned images made in the form of man (Romans 1:22-23). Why didn’t he write, “Put some clothes on that naked image of your god and call it Jesus”?

So if God is hostile to images of Himself, why did He make us in His own image and likeness? I don’t have an inclination to go into the all reasons for God’s rejection of images, but here is one that helps to answer the current question.

But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see; They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell;⁷ They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk; They cannot make a sound with their throat (Psalm 115:3-7).

God cannot be represented by anything that is dead. He is so full of life and power that any non-living image makes a mockery of Him. When God made human beings in His image, He guarded against false worship by making all of us in His image. He did not set up one particularly fine specimen of humanity and say, “This one is in My likeness.” A poor, illiterate farmer in rags is no less a bearer of God’s image and no less worthy of honor than a wealthy, well-educated corporate executive. (Perhaps those of us who are tempted to worship our favorite movie stars, athletes or musicians ought to repent and kiss the feet of a few beggars.)

The Value of Human Life (part 3)

[For sections 1-5 in this essay, read the previous two posts in December 2011.]

6.      Does the body have value when nobody’s home?

From the foregoing considerations, the answer obviously is yes. The bodies of those who have died should be treated with respect and even a kind of reverence because at the shout of Christ (John 5:25-29) they shall be raised either to incorruptible glory or to inconceivable horror.

We see the importance of the body in God’s condemnation of the pagan nation Moab “Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime” (Amos 2:1). This is not a blanket condemnation of cremation. Enemy soldiers disinterred the king’s bones and burned them to lime, which could then be used for plaster. Their offense was desecrating the body of the dead king.

Greek and Roman philosophy tended to disregard the body as the prison house of the soul, and cremation was common, especially among the Roman nobility. In this context, the church insisted on the burial of the dead as a testimony to the importance of the body and its future resurrection. However, the Bible does not forbid cremation, and the disintegration of the body by fire or by natural decomposition is no hindrance to the resurrection. The body is like a seed which must die in order to grow into a mature plant (1 Corinthians 15:35-43). If cremation is viewed as a means of disposing of an unwanted corpse, it may be an act of desecration (except perhaps during a plague or when large numbers of decomposing bodies threaten public health). Normally, however, people treat the cremated remains of their relatives with loving care. In such cases there is no Scriptural objection to cremation.

If a dead body is to be treated with respect, certainly the body of a comatose patient should receive considerate care. In my view, that care should continue as long as life endures, but the life of the body need not be maintained indefinitely when the brain functions necessary for consciousness have ceased and cannot be restored.   

When Does Human Life Have Value to God (2)

(For part 1 of this essay, go to the blog below this one. I have a couple of odds and ends to add to the subject--perhaps this next week.)

3.      When do human beings bear the image of God?

Our two previous questions naturally focused on the origin of our individual souls and our personhood. I think it is helpful to view the image of God from a Christ-centered perspective because Christ is the original image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15). Human beings are images of God only in a secondary sense (1 Corinthians 11:7). More frequently, human beings are said to be in the image of God or according to the image of God. So, perhaps it is best to call us God’s image bearers rather than God’s images. At any rate, we bear the image of God as we are “conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). We are images of the Image. When is that true of us?

A.     God’s children will bear God’s image fully and finally at the resurrection.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul wraps up his lengthy discussion of Christ’s resurrection and ours by saying,

The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. ⁴⁹ And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly (vv. 47-49).

Similarly, the apostle John says,

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is (1 John 3:2).

This full and final imaging is what God was aiming at when He created Adam and Eve.

B.     Adam and Eve bore God’s image partially, yet truly at creation.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:26-27).

When God made our first parents, He pronounced them, along with the rest of creation very good (v. 31). They were very good, but not finished because they did not bear the image of God as completely as redeemed men and women will.

C.      Human beings now bear God’s image brokenly and progressively.

After the flood, God said to Noah, “Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6). This would make no sense if the image of God had been completely lost at the fall.

The likeness to God, which was damaged at the fall, is being progressively renewed in those who have become God’s children through faith in Jesus Christ.

Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, ¹⁰ and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him (Colossians 3:9-10).

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).

So all human beings bear God’s image in some measure; the image is being renewed (perhaps think of polishing a silver or brass metal mirror) by the work of the Holy Spirit in God’s born-again children.

4.      What aspects of our humanity does the image of God encompass?

If we had confined our meditation on the image of God to creation and to our progressive renewal by the Spirit, we might have concluded that our likeness to God only included the spiritual aspect of our humanity. After all, the invisible God does not have a body. Starting with Christ and the resurrection, however, leads us to a different conclusion. Not only our souls, but also our bodies will conformed to the image of Christ.

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; ²¹ who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself (Philippians 3:20-21).

On the one hand, Scripture teaches that the Son of God took on flesh and blood so that He could die for people who have bodies (Hebrews 2:14-16). On the other hand, it is equally true that God made human beings with the kind of bodies we have because the Son of God was going to take on that kind of body. The bodies God gave us are the right sort of thing to be transformed and glorified. These bodies, not some other kind, are fit to reflect the image of God, who is Jesus Christ.

You may still ask, “Well, what is the image of God?” The answer is…. I don’t know. But being image bearers enables us to know and love God, to know and love people, to create new things, to rule over the animal kingdom and ultimately to reflect the glory of God.

Being in the image of God does not mean that we do all of those things all the time or even that we do them very well. It means that we have the capacity to develop those characteristics, but their development is always imperfect and defective in this life. I have written that we have the capacity to develop these characteristics, but it would be truer to say that God is developing them. We are His workmanship.

From the womb to the tomb, God is at work fashioning His people into unique image bearers. The infant who dies before it breathes will gleam in glory with a different hue than the aged martyr or the forty-five year old retarded believer who stumbles and falls beneath the wheels of a truck. Yet all will shine. Since His children are God’s work, it is God’s prerogative to say when the earthly part of His fashioning is complete.

From this perspective, an elect Down’s syndrome infant and a believing, end-stage Alzheimer’s patient are moving toward conformity to Christ; a strong, attractive, intelligent hater of God is not.

5.      When does human life have value to God?

God values the lives of His children, from conception to the grave and beyond into glory because He is looking forward to completing glorious images of His eternal Image. If we ask when the individual human being has a soul, and only grant value when that is the case, we are left without adequate moral guidance. At the beginning and at the end of life there are situations when we are not sure. If instead we look at God’s goal for human life and recognize that God is working toward that end, then every stage of life has value to God.

God also values the lives of those who reject Him because by their creation in His image they still reflect something of His power, wisdom and love. Therefore, they also must be objects of our compassion and care, just as they are for God (Matthew 5:43-48).

When the lost are raised for the final judgment, their bodies will, no doubt reflect what their souls have become. The God whom they have rejected will strip away all remaining vestiges of His image from their bodies and souls. Only then, will they be utterly cast off and thrown into the garbage pit of the universe, “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Luke 9:48).

When Does Human Life Have Value to God?

I have been teaching an adult Sunday School class on ethics, so I have been reading and reflecting on the question: When does human life have value to God? I think I have something fresh to add, but bowing to FaceBook pressure, I’ll split the essay into 2 or 3 parts. I hope you can stand the suspense.

There are, of course, some passages of Scripture that bear directly on the subject. We see God’s care for the unborn child in Job 10:8-13 and Psalm 139:13-16. Exodus 21 prescribes penalties for men who are fighting and incidentally strike a pregnant woman “so that her children come out” (v. 22). Whether this phrase describes a premature birth or a miscarriage, in either case there is a penalty. Not all instances of killing (fatal accidents, for example) received the death penalty in the Old Testament. Even the death of a slave a few days after a harsh beating was not punished because the slave was the master’s property (vv. 20-21), but the generally humane treatment required for slaves shows that God cared for them (vv. 26-27). Neither slaves nor the unborn child was regarded as sub-human.

However, abortion and end-of-life decisions are sometimes unhelpfully discussed in terms of two unanswerable questions: (1) When do we have souls? (2) When are we persons? Fortunately, there is a third question that sounds similar, but is actually quite different: When do human beings bear the image of God. This question has a clear scriptural answer, and it enables us to understand our true worth in God’s eyes.

1.      When do we have souls? There are three principle ways in which God may give us souls.

A.      Some suggest that God creates each soul directly since He is the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9) who gives us our spirits (Ecclesiastes 12:7). In this case, we still have the unanswered question of when God inserts our souls into our bodies. Also, the direct creation of souls leaves us wondering why our temperaments often resemble our parents so much.

B.      However, God is often does things by using intermediate agents or processes. (For example, He feeds the animals, but the carnivores still have to hunt Psalm 104:21, 27). So perhaps our souls are passed on from our parents, as Hebrews 7:9-10 may suggest. If that is the case, it seems possible that we inherit our souls at the time of conception. However, many fertilized eggs are expelled without ever being implanted in the uterus. If these all have souls and if they all go to heaven, they may constitute the majority of saved people. This is certainly possible, but it seems exceedingly strange.

C.      A third suggestion is that our souls may emerge from the physical development of our brains. At death, the soul could continue to exist apart from the body where it arose. Job says to God, “Your hands fashioned and made me,” and then he notes that he is clay or dust (Job 10:8-13; 33:4-6). Job does not say, “You made my body,” but “You made me,” apparently including the soul along with the body. If this is true, we still do not know when the developing baby has a soul.

The most we can say for certain (regardless of how God gives us souls) is that by the sixth month of pregnancy, the baby has a soul because by that time John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:15, 41-44). We have even less revelation on when the soul leaves the body. Is the soul still present during the end stages of senile dementia or when an automobile accident leaves a twenty-year-old in a persistent vegetative state?

2.      When are we persons? This question may be answered in three ways, but none of them seems particularly helpful.

A.      We are persons when we have souls, but Scripture does not clearly indicate when we have souls.

B.      Perhaps we are persons when we have developed certain mental, emotional and volitional capacities. On this reckoning, the family dog has more claim to being a person than a newborn human being does.

C.      Perhaps we are persons when we have a unique, human genetic identity (in other words, at conception). If we accept this answer, then clearly we are valuable to God from that moment onward. However, to call a fertilized egg a person stretches the normal understanding of person almost beyond recognition. Another problem with this view is that genes were unknown in biblical days. Therefore, it is unlikely that the church needed to wait for modern genetics in order to comprehend our value to God. (It is helpful, however, in a modern context to insist that the developing fetus is not a blob of a woman’s tissue. He or she is a genetically unique individual.)

I have discussed souls and personhood mainly in order to show that Scripture does not give us enough information on these subjects to help us answer the question: When does human life have value to God? In my next post in a day or two, I’ll weigh in on a more fruitful approach: When do human beings bear the image of God? So stay tuned for the next exciting installment. J

I Like to Think of God As...

“I like to think of God as….” I cringe whenever I hear those words. Who cares how you like to think about God? The real question is whether your understanding of Him is true.

Unless your conception of God is determined by what God says about Himself, you have about as much chance of being right as frog would of understanding a man. In Scripture, God mocks fools who imagine that their religious observances will hide their wickedness: “You thought that I was just like you” He says (Psalm 50:21).

God’s forgiveness also goes beyond human comprehension. He urges us to turn from our sins, promises His pardon, and then adds, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

When God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, He first identified Himself as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Next Moses asked His name, and “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am’; and He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, “I am has sent me to you”’” (Exodus 3:14).

“I AM” signifies that God is eternal and unchangeable. He is who He is, not what we imagine Him to be. And what He is, is more strange and complex than our distorted ideas of Him.

The gods that people have made up for themselves are generally simple. There are gods of love and gods of war; gods of fertility and gods who protect travelers. Each god knows his job, and he sticks to it. There is a god who is defined by absolute unity and sovereignty; another god includes in his being all that is; a third loves America and approves of its crusade for democracy.

The God who has revealed Himself in the Bible is none of these. His complexity is overwhelming. He is high above us, yet all of Him is present in every place. He is as ferocious as a lion and as gentle as a lamb. He sends rebels into eternal torment, but sacrifices Himself to save sinners. He is both one and three (though His oneness and His three-ness refer to different aspects of who He is). Though He is complex, yet He is also simple because He cannot be divided into parts. He is beyond our comprehension, but since He has made us in His image, we can know Him. He is beyond the power of language to describe, but His descriptions of Himself are true, and they may be understood by ordinary people.

I began this essay with the way you think about God. Far more important is the way God thinks about Himself and how He has revealed Himself to us. Almost equally important is what God thinks about you and me.

Again the answer is rather complex. On the one hand, we are hated and abhorred because of our sins (Psalm 5:5-6). On the other, “The Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation” (Psalm 149:4).

Though we are ugly in ourselves, we become beautiful when God saves us. Though we are hateful in our sin, God takes pleasure in us when He makes us beautiful. Our beauty, however, is not truly ours, for it is the beauty of Christ who covers our ugliness with the glorious robes of His righteousness. This comes about only through personal faith in Christ (Philippians 3:9).

Do you know this God? Does He know you? “The firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, ‘The Lord knows those who are His’” (2 Timothy 2:19).

(Published in the Allentown Morning Call, November 12, 2011)

The Place of Creeds

These paragraphs are part of my contribution to a FaceBook conversation on the importance of the great Trinitarian creeds of the early church.

How we think about the ancient creeds and other doctrinal formulations makes a great difference in how we value them. The creeds are not human improvements on Scripture as though God didn't know what He was doing when He inspired the Bible. God gave us Scripture as a progressive and historical revelation precisely because our salvation is rooted in history, not in abstract ideas. Neither should we think of the creeds as additional revelations from God supplementing the Bible.

I think the best way to view them is to say that the Holy Spirit has been at work in the Church as a whole to enable the Church to understand Scripture and to defend the truths of Scripture from error. This is one way in which the church is "the pillar and support of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). Spirit-guided meditation on Scripture by a host of godly teachers throughout the centuries has gradually increased our understanding of this precious treasure, the word of God. After all, the Spirit gives some the gift of teaching (Ephesians 4:11), and we learn not just from current teachers, but from those in the past as well.

I regard the Trinitarian formulations of Nicaea and Chalcedon as Spirit-guided gifts to the Church enabling the Church to stay true to the most important teachings in Scripture--the teachings about Christ and the gospel. The creeds are not infallible, as Scripture is, but neither can we safely make light of them. History shows us that whenever churches neglect or muddle the doctrine of the Trinity, they soon lose Christ.

I see a tendency among modern evangelicals to become impatient with clear thinking on these issues. Doctrine is no substitute for a warm, vital relationship with Christ, but a warm, vital relationship with Christ usually only lasts a generation or so after the loss of clear doctrinal teaching.

Nicene Creed (AD 381)

Creed of Chalcedon (451)