Does Your Church Want the Bible?
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A few Sundays ago at church, my Bible study class was about to begin when a woman came to the door and asked, “What class is this?” I told her I was teaching about the Bible. Her immediate response was, “Oh, no, I don’t want that.” She instantly realized that the words had not come out as she intended, as this was not the class she was trying to fine, and it made for a somewhat amusing moment.
While amusing, it is somewhat of a metaphor for a deeper problem in the church. While this woman’s comments were misstatement, for far too many Christians this is their attitude. Not directly for sure, and if you ask them they would probably say that the Bible is important. But however important they may think it is, their knowledge of it is limited to what they have picked up from the pastor’s sermons.
Some pastors inadvertently encourage these Bible-optional Christians by constantly changing the versions they cite passages from. In fact I have seen some pastors who quote from several different versions each sermon. Whatever the benefit, the effect is that it makes it virtually impossible to follow the pastors sermon in your own Bible. The trend towards topical sermons, in which the Bible becomes little more than a smorgasbord of proof texts does not help either. And after all the verses will be on the power point slides on in the bulletin.
The bottom line is that fewer and fewer people see any need to bring a Bible to church. Bible study itself is likewise down played either intentionally or unintentionally. At a church I attended a while back the only time the pastor ever mentioned any Bible class was to mention his own. Except for children and teens for many churches bible study is just not all that important.
As Josh McDowell pointed out in his book The Last Christian Generation, even with teens active in Youth Groups, Church is often seen more as a place for fun activities than learning about God. Thus many of our children are like the seeds sown on stony ground “They sprouted at once because the soil wasn’t deep. But when the sun came up, they were scorched. Since they did not have any roots, they dried up. ” (Mt 13:5-6) As children and teens they spout quickly in church, but when they leave home and enter the hot sun of the world they dry up quickly. To see this one only has to consider the stat cited by Thom Rainer of Lifeway that “70% of 18 to 22 year olds drop out of the church. Many of them are crying for deeper biblical teaching and preaching.”
One of the most frustrating aspects about this is that it is so unnecessary. It is not that we need massive changes to address the problem. Rather what is needed a series of small changes aimed at emphasizing the importance of the word of God, the need to read it, and the need to study it.
This changes can be as simple as asking people who brought their bibles to open them to that passage for the sermon. It does not mean that you have to make people who did not bring a Bible feed out of place our unwelcome, but there is nothing wrong with encouraging people to bring a Bible to Church.
Churches should also make it clear that that the study of God’s word is an important priority, whether this is done on Sunday morning in traditional Sunday school, at other times at the church, in small groups at people’s homes, or preferably all three, people should find it easy to find and join a class. For far too many adult Bible study is an afterthought. Something done mainly out of tradition than any real commitment. Simply clearly listing the classes the subjects or age groups, and where they meet on a board should be a minimum. But including them in the bulletin at regular intervals is a nice reminder and particularly helpful for those new to the church, and for classes that do not meet on Sunday morning.
These are hardly revolutionary or difficult changes. There are of course many other things that could be done. But sadly much of the church is not even doing this. And it shows.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Contrasting Change
As the market continues it falls back to levels not seen since the late 1990s, an often overlooked fact is that markets are forward looking indicators. They are not so much an indicator of how bad things have been, or even how bad things are. Markets are an indicator of what traders as a collective whole think the future will bring.
For example, by the time Clinton took office in 1993, the recession following the first gulf war was over and the economy was growing at a healthy 4% through all of 1992, which might strike some as odd, for Clinton campaigned at the time on how this was the worst economy in 50 years. The markets were positive during Clinton’s first year continuing a moderate growth that had started in Feb 1991 in the 2900s rising to the 3900s by the end of 1993
By then the effects of the Clinton tax increases and his “Stimulus package” were becoming clear, at least to those that read the economic tea leaves. The market spent 1994 up and down, but mostly down. In Late November it was down below 3700. By the end of the year it was clear that the economy was slowing and in fact the first two quarters of 1995 show the growth in GDP dropped to 1.1% and 0.7% respectively. Yet despite this the stock market started to grow. Not only did it grow, it started growing much faster than it has from 1991-1993. Markets were beginning to see the economic expansion that marked the late 1990s and they wanted in.
What changed in late 1994 that markets were reacting to? In November 1994 Republicans won control of Congress for the first time in over 40 years . Between the Contract with America and the promise of tax cuts, the markets were betting on strong growth in the economy, a bet that paid off.
Today we face serious economic problems. The markets topped out at over 14000 in October 2007. A year later the market had slipped to under 11,000 when the financial crisis broke and the markets plunged to below 8500, recovering to 9500 by election day. Unlike what happened in late 1994 and early 1995 as the Republicans laid out there programs, as Obama has laid out his economic plans, and passed his stimulus package, the markets have had a vastly different reaction.
Whereas following the election of the Republican Congress the markets began to price in future profits, as Obama is rolling out his economic program, the markets are pricing in future losses. Obama promised us change we could count on. We may be able to count on it, but the markets don’t seem to want to bet on it.
A Review of Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great – Summary
The following is an outline of my review of Christopher Hitchens’, “God is not Great”
Part I – Chapter One
The definition of Atheism. Do “the faithful” commit more crimes? Are atheist dogmatic?
Part II – Chapter One
the “four irreducible objections to religious faith.” Religion and sex
Part III – Chapter One.
Do believers claim to know everything? “essential knowledge”
Part IV – Chapter One
Are we evil, or just partly rational? What is ‘reason.’ Worldviews. Reason and the existence of God.
Part V – Chapter One
The core weaknesses of atheism: rational evil. Eugenics and Social Darwinism.
Part VI – Chapter One
the “Secular injunction” in Philippians 4:8 Truth, Justice, Lovely, Pure, and Virtue.
Part VII– Chapter Two
Why aren’t believers happy? Christians who interfere in the lives of others? Charitable giving.
Part VIII – Chapter Two.
Hitchens and Dennis Prager. Northern Ireland.
Part IX – Chapter Three.
Jews, Muslim and Pork. Do prohibitions grow out of repressed desire? Being Holy.
Part X – Chapter Four.
Religion and Health. Conspiracy theories. the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc or false cause.
Part XI – Chapter Four.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez de Trujillo and condoms, and the politicization of science.
Part XII – Chapter Four.
Religion and Medicine, The fallacy of Hasty Generalization, the Black death. The germ theory of disease.
Part XIII – Chapter Five
The Metaphysical claims of Religion. Atheist’s demand for proof. Religion vs. the behavioral sciences.
Part XIV – Chapter Five
The secularization of society. The fallacies of appeal to the people and appeal to misplaced authority. Ockham’s razor. Do we need God to explain the universe? probable arguments. deductive logic and inductive logic.
Part XV – Chapter Six
Hitchens distorted view of religion. Religion and Superstition. Miracles, evil, and the problem of evil.
Part XVI – Chapter Six
Arguments from design. Paley. Hitchens argument concerning death and the universe. Design and purpose.
Part XVII – Chapter Six
Specific arguments for Design. Myths used to support evolution. evolution is unfalsifiable.
Part XVIII – Chapter Seven
The Old Testament. Hitchens view of revelation. The Ten Commandments. Slavery. stoning of children for disobedience
Part XIX – Chapter Eight
The New Testament. “if English was good enough for Jesus…” The flat earth. Biblical scholarship. Dating the New Testament.
Part XX – Chapter Eight
Reliability of the Gospels, Liberal Scholarship. Two major Errors of Hitchens. The “other gospels.” Virgin birth. Bart Ehrman.
Note: I skipped chapter Nine as it dealt with the Koran.
Part XXI – Chapter Ten
Miracles. Hume. The resurrection. The nature of miracles. Freewill. Proof and evidence.
Part XXII – Chapter Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen
Chapter 10: The lost of belief.
Chapter 11: The origin of religion. The Melanesian “cargo cult” Marjoe Gortner. Mormonism. Chapter 12: The end of religion
Chapter 13: Does religion make people better? Martin Luther King. Abolition.
Part XXIII – Chapter Thirteen
Who is a Christian. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Hitchens refutes the majority of his own book.
Part XXIV – Chapter Thirteen
Are atheist immoral? The foundations of morality. Marriage.
Note: I skipped Chapter Fourteen as it deals with eastern religions.
Part XXV – Chapter Fifteen
Is Religion Immoral? Presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and the credulous. doctrine of blood sacrifice. Atonement. Anti-Semitism. Corporate Guilt.
Part XXVI – Chapter Fifteen
Atonement. religious laws that are impossible to obey.
Part XXVII – Chapter Sixteen
Is religion child abuse. Abortion. Evolution myths. Eugenics. Circumcision.
Part XXVIII – Chapter Seventeen
Atheists and the evils of the 20th century. The definition of religion. “the totalitarian mind-set.”
Part XXIX – Chapter Seventeen
Hitchens attempts to link 20th century evils to religion. Christians who risked their lives to save others. Fascism and Christianity.
Part XXX – Chapter Seventeen
The problem with focusing on the evil in others.
Part XXXI – Chapter Eighteen
The Resistance of the Rational. Galileo. Socrates. Gibbon. The Fall of Rome.
Part XXXII – Chapter Nineteen
A New Enlightenment. Lessing. Faith and Reason. Worldviews.
Hitchens – God Is Not Great XXXII
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In my extended review of Christopher Hitchens book “God Is Not Great,” I have finally reached the last chapter, “In Conclusion: The Need for a New Enlightenment.” Hitchens opens the chapter with a discussion of a quote by Lessing, where he says that given the opportunity to know all truth, he would reject the offer in favor of pursuing the truth, even knowing he would remain thereby in error. Of course this raises the question of why pursue something if obtaining it is not the goal.
But for Hitchens this is not a question of a choice between “All truth” and the pursuit of truth. Hitchens equates knowing “all truth” with faith, and for him the question becomes a choice between faith and reason, faith and modernity, faith and technology, and even a choice between faith and civilization itself.
Of course this is a false choice. I am religious and I certainly do not claim to know all truth. Far from it and I spend much of my time pursuing it. But this error goes to the heart of the atheist’s argument, and so in an odd sort of way it is fitting that Hitchens end his book with this error.
In reality it is not that those who are religious claim to know the truth, are dogmatic, blindly accepting certain truths, lack skepticism, or do not have a passion for inquiry. There are certainly some who are religious who would fit this description, just as there are some who don’t believe in god for whom this would also be an accurate description. Frankly some of the most closed minded and dogmatic people I have run into have been militant atheists. Not all to be sure, but the simple fact is that these traits can be found amongst all groups, atheist and theist alike.
Those who believe in God can seek the truth and can learn and grow just like atheists. As many have pointed out, including a few atheists, science had its roots in the Judeo-Christian worldview and many of the earlier greats minds of science, like Kepler, Newton, and even Galileo were Christians. The real problem is not that we don’t search for truth or look at the evidence, but rather that theists reach different conclusions and consider other possibilities, possibilities that are prohibited in the atheist’s materialistic worldview.
And that is the real problem. Christians make no bones about it, we have a worldview, a framework in which we evaluate the evidence and apply reason as we strive to learn the truth. Atheists claim that this shapes how we look at things and the conclusions that we reach; which is quite true, for that is exactly what frameworks do.
Where the atheists go wrong is that they also have a framework, a framework in which the only thing that exists is the material universe governed by natural law. The atheist worldview shapes how they look at things and the conclusions they reach, just as much as the Christian worldview does for Christians. Frankly, it probably affects them more. While most Christians realize that they have a worldview, most atheists not only don’t, they frequently deny it. For them, they don’t have a worldview that shapes their thinking, they just have reality, and see everything else as wrong, all the while claiming confidently not to be dogmatic, but open minded.
For the atheist, the existence of God, the supernatural, that we have a soul, etc., does not fit into their worldview and so for them, these things not only do not exist, they cannot exist. While they are adept at pointing out problems in the theist worldview, any problem, lack of evidence, or evidence to the contrary for the atheist worldview, is simply ignored with the claim that “we will figure it out someday.” When it is demonstrated that the odds against the things they believe must have happened are unimaginably large, they just cling tightly to the minuscule possibility at they happened, however small. Their worldview permits nothing else. In fact they sometimes reply, as some have with the origin of life, that however small the odds, it must have happened because we are here.
While they are quick to attack religions for their irrational beliefs, often going to the point of casting this as a battle between faith and reason, their attacks are often themselves irrational, which I have repeated pointed out, is the case with Hitchens. The real problem in seeing this as a battle between faith and reason, is that atheists have a distorted definition of faith, which is in reality for them, simply a belief in something that is false. But that is not faith. Faith is trusting something to the point of acting on it. In the Christian worldview, you have faith in God by following his teachings, the first step being accepting Jesus as your savior.
Atheists have faith in their worldview just as much as Christians do in theirs. Which worldview is right? Well I have written two books, Christianity and Secularism and Evidence for the Bible laying out my view of the evidence. On the other hand, as I have show many times here, Hitchens arguments are based on sloppy thinking, errors and irrationalities, and thus hardly provide a firm foundation for his claims.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Dishonest – But it does not Matter
President Obama signed the stimulus bill today. The bill is essentially a huge lie passed with a number of already broken promises. It will not stimulate the economy. How could it? Most of the money will not be spent for years. But it will vastly expand the federal government, and as I explain in my forthcoming book Preserving Democracy, as government grows, liberty by definition must decrease. It will also place a huge and quite possibly impossible burden on our children and grand children.
While the bill weighs in at $787 billion, even that is deceptive. There will of course be the interest on this that also has to be paid. But then there are a whole range of hidden costs. To give just one example, Senate Majority Leader Reid got his pet project of a high speed train to run between Disneyland and Las Vegas. Obama told us that the bill would be “timely, targeted and temporary.” Ok, the train is certainly targeted to please Senator Reid.
As for timely and temporary, the train will need to cross some of the most environmentally sensitive land in the nation and thus it going to have to go through years of environmental studies and lawsuits before the “shove ready” project could even start. Given the state of environmental laws, it is very possible that the process could take decades before it could start, if it ever can. But perhaps Obama is thinking ahead, and this is actually a stimulus plan not for the current recession, but for two or three recessions from now.
Then there is the actual cost. Given the government’s track record, is there anyone who seriously believes that in the end the train, even if it is built, will only cost $8 billion? Given the government’s track record at estimating costs and the environmental hurdles the project must get over, the cost is likely to be several times that.
The train is just one of the numerous items in this bill, which is so large, written so quickly, and changed so frequently that people are still going through it trying to find out what it actually says. Even when they read it, there is so much money spent so quickly that often, it is not at all clear what it is being spent for. Example: “BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS OPERATION OF INDIAN PROGRAMS For an additional amount for ‘Operation of Indian Programs’, for workforce training programs and the housing improvement program, $40,000,000.” Twenty-seven words and $40 million is spent.
For the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, $20 million is given away with: “For an additional amount for ‘Office of Inspector General’, $20,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2012.” Now just how is giving $20 million to the EPA’s Inspector General’s office supposed to stimulate the economy, particularly if, like most government agencies they tend to horde the money until close to the time it expires, which will be over 3 ½ years from now.
There are over a thousand pages of such giveaways. Obama said that there were no earmarks in the bill, but if that is even technically true, in reality the bill is nothing but earmarks. It is basically a huge list of every pet project, pork, and bit of spending that democratic senators and congressmen have been wanting. Most will have little simulative effect other than to stimulate government and to the select few whom the democrats wished to reward.
The bill is not timely, targeted, nor temporary. It is not free from earmarks. Lobbyists were not excluded from the process, and in fact received the bill before congressional staff. It was not posted on line for 48 hours so people could review it, but was rushed to a vote. And it is not a stimulus bill.
But, at least in the short term, none of this matters. It’s Obama, and that is all that really matters. And after all it is not as if this is real money. This is government money, the money that just magically appears whenever it is needed, so that politicians can give it away.
There is, however, a real sense of irony here. For most of Bush’s term and especially in the last year or so as the surge worked and Iraq ceased to be a major issue, the democrats have complained about how Bush increased the debt, and spent too much money. I agreed with them, though admittedly for different reasons. Yet now, in the euphoria of their victory, (after all, as both Obama and Pelosi have reminded us they won), they are going on a spending spree the likes of which we have never seen.
Unfortunately, they are not spending magic money, but real dollars – dollars that must come from somewhere, either in higher taxes, or in increased inflation, or a mixture of the two. The sobering fact is that the party will end, and the bill will come due. Somebody is going to have to pay it. And as bad as things are now, when that happens, things are likely to get a lot worse.
