I've been having dialogs in various places with various people who believe it is their job to correct me where I'm wrong in various places. I don't mind for the most part. I want to know if I'm wrong. I have been before. I might be now. I will be again. Of course, most of what I stand on today has been examined at great length from multiple perspectives with lots and lots of study, prayer, reason, and so forth, so getting me to shift at this point on some of those issues won't be easy. They'll have to undo all that study, prayer, reason and so forth. They're not. I'm always open to a good, biblically supported, carefully reasoned argument against my position. In fact, just the other day I decided that my original position that when God told Eve "Your desire shall be for your husband" (Gen 3:17) He was saying that she would desire to rule over him was likely incorrect. I've heard it before. I thought it was reasonable. I don't anymore. Change isn't all bad.
Still, in most of the dialogs in which I engage where people are trying to correct me I find a stunning consistency ... in a complete lack of consistency. Take, for instance, the constant complaint that Christians are intolerant and judgmental. Isn't that an intolerant and judgmental complaint? That's inconsistent. And that's common.
Some time ago I wrote about Jesus's command to "Sell all your possessions" and what I thought it meant. (I thought it meant that we ought to be stewards, not owners, that we ought to not be tied to our goods, that we ought to divest ourselves of all of that in the heart.) I've had more than one complain that I'm not taking it at face value, not taking it literally, and that we ought to. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure that all of those who complained owned computers (as an example). So ... what's up with that? Inconsistency.
Anyone who is on top of this stuff knows that one of the fundamental problems with atheism is that it removes grounds for transpersonal morality. You might be able to retain your own moral values, but to suggest that anyone else must have the same ones is without basis in an atheistic approach. And still atheists protest that Christians are immoral and that God is not good. Not good on what basis? Inconsistency.
There are voices on the left that like to raise the cry against wealth. The wealthy are immoral. Rich people are the problem. They need to be forced to help the poor. Some like to clothe it in "godliness". "The Bible says that the poor are blessed." Oddly enough, it appears as if these voices never take into account the fact that they are among the wealthiest people on the planet. Why aren't they surrendering their wealth? If the poor are blessed simply for being poor, why are they trying to take away that blessing? Inconsistency.
A large portion of the secular world agrees with Darwinian Evolution. The universe that we know happened by chance. No amount of logic can shake that. Everything came from nothing and only a fool would believe otherwise. The secular world (that part that is devoted to a materialistic view) will, on the other hand, protest the execution of murderers or the killing of Syrians by the government of Syria. "That's wrong!" they assure us. Why? If all we are is a skin-bag for a biological computer, on what is this protest based? And if we wanted to experiment on rabbits or humans to try to solve medical problems or make our hair color different, why would that be wrong? You don't hear complaints when you take a can of Raid to an anthill, do you? Why, when a Syrian government decides to stop an uprising by whatever means they want, is it a bad thing? Inconsistency.
I've offered a few examples. Consider, then, the other side. If a Christian believes that God is the Ultimate Authority and states, "God believes X is a sin", that will not likely be appreciated, but it is consistent. If a Christian understands that Jesus commanded us to judge rightly and attempts to judge rightly, that will obviously be labeled as "judgmental", but it is consistent. Being intolerant of sin and judgmental about evil is consistent with Christianity. A moral code that applies to all humans is consistent with a Christian worldview. Recognizing that it is better to give than to receive without forcing it from others is consistent with Christianity. Protecting people over tyrants or science is consistent with Christian values.
People complain a lot about Christians. I get it. Jesus promised it. We should expect it. I'm not complaining about it. I am just pointing out that when a Christian makes a declaration against sin or a call to repent or any of the various other demands that God makes on His creation, it is a function of consistency. In fact, if a Christian says "The Bible says X is right" and someone points out "But, you don't do X", we haven't lapsed into inconsistency unless that Christian tries to defend X for himself. Because, you see, the premise of Christianity is that we are sinners and recognizing that "X is sin" right along with "I suffer from X and need to change" is consistent. The opposition, far too often, opposes from the position of inconsistency. That's a problem. If you'd like to help correct my thinking, I'd recommend consistency. It works much better.
12 comments:
Stan,
It is true that for one to be consistent a requirement is holding to something without changing, and in your examples (atheism, intolerance, judging, sin) you showed how the position held changed and was therefore inconsistent.
The obvious follow up would be, which I believe would be quite instructive, is what is it for the Christian that is unchanging to which they can strive an in so doing be consistent?
Excellent commentary. I find it amusing often enough that I got to chuckling at the perfect descriptions of liberal inconsistency. Their ideology is such that the can never truly live it.
Hey Stan,
Just wondering: what are your new thoughts on Genesis 3:17?
Malcolm,
If you mean Genesis 3:16, from all appearances it seems that the curse is that rather than having desires fulfilled freely by her husband she will 1) have multiplied pain in childbirth, 2) still desire her husband, and 3) be frustrated in the fact that she is subject to her husband and cannot have her desires freely fulfilled as they were previously.
This is the best examination of the topic that I've seen: http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Busenitz-Gen3-GTJ.pdf
I'm sorry, Jeremy, but I honestly did not understand that question. The concept of consistency is that the things we do is in line with the things we say we believe. I can't say, "There's a bomb under my desk" without moving, or I don't actually believe there is a bomb under my desk. That's inconsistent. I can't say, "The poor are blessed" followed by "we need to eliminate poverty in America" because it makes it out that I'm hoping to eliminate blessings.
As for me, I try to locate the underlying principles of Scripture and live by those. I think there are some basic undergirdings from which other levels of principles arise from which other instructions arise ... well, you get the idea. If I start, for instance, with the basic premise, "God gets all the glory all the time", that informs a host of actions, choices, and beliefs that may not have been specifically addressed in the Bible but are clear in practice. But I'm not at all sure that any of this gets any closer to answering your questions.
Stan,
Sorry for being unclear. You answered it all the same. Atheists often claim that Christians are delusional, believe in something completely out of date and contradictory, believe in a being akin to a "flying spaghetti monster" and the like. So upon hearing about the obvious inconsistencies with atheism some might, having heard accusations like the ones above, might ask what is it about Christianity that is consistent.
You may not have understood the question, but you answered it well all the same.
Stan wrote, “Everything came from nothing and only a fool would believe otherwise.”
Scientific American touts a new book by Arizona State University’s Lawrence Krauss. The title is ‘A Universe from Nothing.’ I suspect Krauss may be jumping the gun by several centuries in the attempt to write anything very definitive on this grand topic, but I intend to look for his book at the bookstore later this year.
http://nobeliefs.com/Krauss.htm
Stan wrote, “f all we are is a skin-bag for a biological computer, on what is this protest based?”
The Yahoo home page happened to link to this brief article today:
http://news.yahoo.com/science-overturns-view-humans-naturally-nasty-230503650.html
Thanks, Anonymous. When science can, via physical scientific means, define "good" and "bad", or rather "moral" and "immoral", perhaps they can decide whether or not humans are basically "good" or "bad". Since they have not, they cannot.
And are you in favor of the idea that all this is came from absolutely nothing?
I am not particularly for or against the “nothing” origin. If anything, I kind of like the science-fictional idea that we (this visible universe) are what amounts to a test tube in some graduate student’s lab in a universe with drastically different properties. Of course that pushes the origins question another level deeper. But maybe in that other universe the mechanism of their own origin is obvious to the entities that occupy it.
My hope is that science will eventually lock it all down. My expectation is that science will NOT be able to do so convincingly in my lifetime in an ultra-detailed fashion, despite whatever I may find in Krauss’s book.
It is fun to speculate that your blog pages will survive thousands of years, and to wonder what people will make of the discussions here. Maybe they will say, “That Stan was a genius. As for Anonymous, he was an idiot.” So be it.
You will say it is obvious to you that the Universe sprang from the mind of the Holy Trinity. I will say it is not obvious to me that it happened that way.
You are certain in the Lord that evolution does not happen. You are unwilling to commit to Young Earthism or Old Earthism. But would you go so far as to say that it would please you if the Young Earthers are correct, since that would totally rule out the possibility that today’s organisms are the product of evolution?
Were you listening to Andrew Tallman’s radio show a few years back when he said that after considerable study he went from “NO” on Old Earth Evolution to “MAYBE” on it? Have you prayed that the Lord pushes him back to a firm “NO”?
"You will say it is obvious to you that the Universe sprang from the mind of the Holy Trinity."
No. I just think that even without religion it is manifestly obvious that "nothing produces nothing" and if, in the beginning, there was indeed nothing, then what would exist today is nothing.
And, oh, by the way, I do not claim that there is no evolution, and people I respect do hold to "Old Earth". I reject Darwinian Evolution (note two characteristics in that name: 1) "Evolution" is capitalized, as if to make it god-like, and 2) it references a specific version of evolution which includes in its definition "no god"). That is irrational.
I got to thinking about atheists and interpersonal morality, and I thought I might have come up with something rather clever. By what means can we say X is wrong and Y is right...Natural Order. On the surface it looks like it fits. If something isn't part of the natural order, then it is wrong. So things like murder are wrong because they disrupt the natural order. But then I began to think about it more. Then by that definition of morality, cannibalism would fall under "good". There are plenty of animals that kill and eat each other. Survival of the fittest and all that. And killing for territory would be "good" because though many animals just migrate when the space gets too small, many will kill each other. And the list just goes on. The more you follow the logical steps, the more you see that "Natural Order" just wouldn't work. I bet there are some atheists out there that would say Natural Order, but then they would cease to be consistent if they were opposed to war, or cannibalism, or wherever the Natural Order takes us.
Yeah, that has been tried. Some have suggested "what works". You know, what makes things livable, better, pleasant, that sort of thing. A few problems with that. First, it isn't called "morality" at this point. It's called "pragmatism". Second, who defines "livable, better, pleasant"? What if Person A finds it pleasant to help people and Person B finds it pleasant to kill people. Who is to say that one is good and the other is bad? Finally, on what basis do we declare "livable, better, pleasant" as morally good?
If the approach is "what we see in nature", that's a dangerous approach. I mean, nature is harsh. Tennyson described nature as "red in tooth and claw". Or a phrase we all know and understand: "It's a dog-eat-dog world." That's nature. Shall we accept that as "good"? Note, by the way, that "survival of the fittest" as an evolutionary axiom is routinely violated by humans who believe it is our job to ensure the survival of the less fit. What's up with that? :)
The only way to get "moral good" is to steal from religion, the source that they are attempting to eliminate.
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