Certain Uncertainty

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” — Benjamin Franklin

One of the most common complaints that I hear about Christianity is that Christians disagree amongst themselves on so many things. It does seem to make a sort of sense that if so many of us are at odds about things like man’s free will, how the earth was created, how the world will end, and what exactly the Eucharist means, that the Christian faith is far from precise.

One possibility put forward by skeptics is that that the Bible just isn’t a very good source. It’s extremely old, after all, and written in another language by people who were very different from us. If it was meant to be taken seriously, what’s with all the poetic language and vagaries of translation? We’re looking for a textbook on Christianity and instead we’re handed a mishmash of writings that could mean just about anything.

Another way to explain the disparity between good Christians is that people just aren’t very good at interpreting what’s written. Even well-intentioned, highly-educated, open-minded people come to wildly different conclusions on the meaning of a passage even when the writing isn’t that flowery. A few minutes spent looking at various commentaries on Romans is enough to make the average layperson despair that anybody really knows anything about the Bible at all.

If what I’ve written so far describes your plight, then take heart. It’s really not as bad as all that.

The fact is that Christians really do agree more than we disagree on things that really matter.  What are these things, you ask? Well it goes something like this:

I believe in one God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth,
And of all things visible and invisible:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,
Begotten of his Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of very God,
Begotten, not made,
Being of one substance with the Father,
By whom all things were made;
Who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,
And was made man,
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered and was buried,
And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures,
And ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.
And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead:
Whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost,
The Lord and giver of life,
Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
Who spake by the Prophets.
And I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church.
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
And I look for the Resurrection of the dead,
And the life of the world to come.
Amen.
[Nicean Creed, Book of Common Prayer version (1662)]

That’s the stuff that all orthodox Christians agree on.  I won’t address here how we came up with them as that is an entire study in itself.

So what about the other things that aren’t in that creed? What about Calvinism vs. Arminianism? What about modes of baptism? What about various and sundry standards of personal separation?

Well…what about them? We read the Scripture. We seek out the wisdom of others in the faith. We do our best to understand Scriptural principles and we build a structure of our understanding based on those things. And we do it all while acknowledging that even in good structures not everything makes sense 100% of the time.

It is a fallacy of fundamentalism to claim that every jot and tiddle of every possible doctrinal nuance is explicitly spelled out in the Bible. God is bigger than the Bible. He created a world of amazing complexity and didn’t include manuals for most of it in the Scripture. He works in space and time and physical reality but then does miracles to break His own rules and doesn’t bother telling us how most of that works either. The Bible comes from what John Calvin describes as a God who lisps to reveal himself to us. He speaks as an adult would to a small child to make Himself understood.

The never-ending arguments that plague Christianity about the interpretation of unclear Scriptural things are for the most part born of an inability to see the infinite picture of God through our finite minds. We are the blind men with the infinitely complex elephant before us yelling at each other that our bit of knowledge far exceeds everyone else’s.

I beg you, do not make the mistake of thinking because we admit to our own finite understanding that Christians disagree on everything or that they know nothing of reality. We do have clear revelation as to God’s purpose, our need, and His character. The places where our minds cease to comprehend as we reach out and touch the infinite should only serve to make us thankful for His grace and awed by his wisdom in creation.

It is a child who demands to know every detail and cannot tolerate ambiguity. The mature adult realizes that some things are and will remain a mystery and focuses instead on what he can actually see in front of him.  Of that, I’m absolutely certain.

Book Giveaway

Stephen E. Writes:

I’ll be giving away a copy of Wilson’s book [Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl] next week. The deadline for entering the drawing is Thursday night by midnight, December 10, 2009. To be entered in the drawing to win Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, you can do one or more of the following. For each method you use, you’ll receive one entry into the drawing (3 entries possible).

See his site for more details:

Down Memory Lane

Here are a few delicious things from my childhood that you’ve probably never heard of:

Sorrel

Mauby

Callaloo

Tannia

Roti

Would You Find This Acceptable?

Would you think that these proposals went far enough to end such a heinous practice as slavery?

Anti-slavery Americans should focus on restricting slavery at the state level

This is precisely where our best leverage is: in the state legislatures. Even though the Supreme Court imposed a right to slavery on the American people, we still have the ability, through the legislative process, to impose court-allowed regulations and restrictions on the practice. These measures leave a path open toward the reversal of slavery.

Research from University of Alabama professor Michael New reveals that local laws lead to a 13 to 19 percent decrease in the number of slaves in some states. Yet there are still 14 states that do not have such laws.

The slavery lobby recognizes the potency of these legislative achievements and is pushing back vigorously. Recently, the pro-freedom movement succeeded in getting off the legislative agenda the federal Freedom to Enslave Act, which would have eliminated all present and future regulations on slavery.

After this setback, the slavery lobby turned to the labor reform legislation to impose FEA by stealth. They are working to ensure that slavery will be defined as “guaranteed permanent employment” so that taxpayers will have to fund slavery as a component of ordinary, everyday “labor.”

During a recent congressional debate, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said, “slavery is a legal work practice. Why are we even having to talk about it? We’re not talking about whether you can or can’t get a job at McDonalds … .”

Imagine a world in which we cannot differentiate between a slave and a paid free employee. This is precisely the situation we now face. The slavery lobby wants to win by definition. If they succeed at defining slavery as part of normal labor, they will have shifted the entire debate.

The fight over workers rights is a watershed battle for the pro-freedom movement. Pro-freedom Americans need to ensure that the stealth agenda to impose FEA through the labor system is clearly exposed and defeated. Then they need to focus on passing pro-freedom laws in their state legislatures.

I don’t think so either. No matter which issue we’re talking about.

Banquet Fuge

Ah, the memories.

On Sacrifice

A family photo that shows a little girl beside her father and his fellow soldiers in uniform as they prepare to go to war has resonated well beyond the tight knit Bennethum clan.

Four-year-old Paige Bennethum really, really didn’t want her daddy to go to Iraq.

So much so, that when Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum lined up in formation at his deployment this July, she couldn’t let go.

No one had the heart to pull her away.

The commanding officer allowed Paige to say goodbye as her dad prepared to ship off from Fort Dix.

via nbcphiladelphia.com

God bless him and bring all of our men and women in uniform home safely to their loved ones. There just aren’t words.

Chambers on Sin As Our Disposition

The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of selfrealization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and upright, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of.the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition. — Oswald Chambers.

HT: JollyBlogger

Waffle House Christianity

I took my soon-to-be-2-year-old daughter to breakfast this morning at Waffle House. Since she didn’t have a whole lot to say, I had some time to sit and ponder in between sips of coffee and trying to keep her from throwing her hash browns on the floor.

I like Waffle House as a rule. It’s conveniently located, the food is good, and there’s no pretense of any kind.

It occurred to me as I sat there that there are some desirable traits about the place that we would do well to include in our Christian lives.

1. It’s transparent. There’s no mystery to the place at all. Your eggs and grits are being cooked right in front of you and everyone in the place can listen to your conversations and watch you make a mess with the little jelly containers.  There are huge windows all around so people walking by can see all the action too.  In my experience, Christianity isn’t often that kind of transparent. In the quest to appear holy to others we put up barriers and facades. If you’ll pardon a horrible turn of phrase, we don’t want anybody taking a peek into the kitchen of our lives to see how we really operate. We don’t want to get too close to anyone else lest they see that our table manners are really atrocious.

2. It’s always open. If you want bacon and eggs at 3:00 a.m. there’s always a place where you can get them 7 days a week. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that our spiritual lives should be “always on” as well.  Not that I’ve ever managed to do it.

3. It’s inclusive. In the South everybody goes to Waffle House. You can spot bikers, construction workers, guys in suits, nurses in scrubs who just got off a shift, black, white, Hispanic — everybody comes there and sits together to eat their fill. I’d love to see that kind of inclusiveness in who we choose to connect with as Christians. Unfortunately, the class, race and social lines are still very firmly drawn in the church.

I’m sure there are more things but that’s all I had time to think of before my coffee was empty and it was time to leave.  I’m sure one of my three readers will be able to come up with a few more.

On Rhetoric

From the Art of Manliness

Outliers

What makes a winner? Is it luck? Is it dedication? Or perhaps IQ points, a nurturing society, or lots of cash in family savings accounts? In Outliers, author Malcom Gladwell attemps to disabuse us of the notion that those who are very successful are really self-made people. In fact, in his view tricks of time, chance, parentage, and culture have every bit as much to do with a person’s ability to succeed as pure gumption and dedication.

Through the book Gladwell uses the stories of various successes and failures to paint a picture of what makes a person likely to be an “outlier” — someone who stands out as an extraordinary human being.

From Canadian hockey players we learn that some success is the trick of when a person is born. Kids born in January are 10 years and 11 months old when they compete for spots in the junior hockey leagues. Boys born in December are 10 years and 1 month old. That 10 month gap is enough at that age to guarantee that those who are born in January will perform better, enter better leagues, get better coaching, and get more time on the ice. No matter how skilled a child may be, simply biology dictates that his chances are very, very slim if he’s born in the wrong month.

This trick of dates also plays out in the year that a person is born. For example, all the Silicone Valley greats of the 1980’s were born in either 1955 or late 1954. They had to be exactly the right age to hit the cutting edge of computer technology. To early and they would have chosen other fields such as biology or engineering. To late and others would have passed them by in being the first to innovate in the field. Timing, it seems, is very important.

From Bill Gates and the Beatles we learn that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice in any discipline to become a master. Whether it is 10,000 hours of instrument practice, computer programming, language study, or chess playing once a threshold of basic skill is passed the number of hours put in is one of the largest differentiators between who goes on to greatness and who remains in mediocrity.

From two geniuses with amazing IQ points we learn that merely being smart doesn’t guarantee one a place in the history hall of fame. One super genius (J. Robert Oppenheimer) goes on to work on the Manhattan Project. The other (Chris Langan) becomes a bouncer in a bar. Gladwell opines that the skills each man learned from his parents and community about how to get along with people and how to bargain to reach a goal is what made the difference in the two stories. Children of the middle and upper classes are much more willing to negotiate with authority figures while those of lower classes may fume but will often not try to bargain. These soft skills of human interaction are also of great importance.

From the feuds of Kentucky and the crashes on Korean airlines we learn that the rules of culture can often determine how a person will handle the situations that dictate their success. In honor-based societies for example the unwillingness to challenge a higher-ranking member and the equal unwillingness to back down from an affront to one’s honor combine into deadly situations whether in shooting wars over slight offenses or airline crashes caused by a co-pilot hesitating to countermand his superior.

From the Jewish tailors of New York we learn that having a culture of meaningful work will result in the success of one’s progeny. The first generation of people were poor Jewish tailors. Many of their children were businessmen in the garment industry. Their children were doctors, lawyers, and statesmen.

From the rice fields of Asia, Gladwell draws the conclusion that Asian children are better in math because their culture teaches them patience, precision, and endurance. And on and on the story goes.

He ends with the illustration of his own mother, born into a poor family in Jamaica, being given an advantage because of her lighter skin color, educated parents, and ability to get loans to go to a college in the UK. In his view, her own hard work is only secondary to the fact that she was afforded opportunities that others could not have had.

In all of this, Gladwell’s conclusion is that no Outlier is really all that special in and of himself. Every person is the product of their time, place, culture, influences, and opportunities. If Bill Gates had not had access to a computer terminal at his high school in an era when most college professors didn’t have access to one, then he would never have become a software billionaire. On the other hand, if dozens of children had had access to the same opportunities afforded to some ‘geniuses’ we may have had a dozen Einsteins or a dozen Mozarts instead of just one.

In addition to his penchant for stating the obvious as it is something extraordinary, there are a few basic problems with Gladwell’s theory.

For one, success is often a zero sum game. No matter how talented two chess grandmasters may be, one of them is going to win a tournament and get his name in the record books and the other is going to lose. They may both have put in the magic 10,00 hours of practice, both gotten hugs from their mother and good advice from their father. It still only possible for one of them to win.

Furthermore, there are huge chunks of the anecdotal stories missing. Bill Gates did not spring from his 10,000 hours of programming right into being a billionaire. There were a few shenanigans that were slightly less than squeaky clean in meantime. Sometimes one person gets to be the outlier and the other doesn’t simply because one is willing to fight dirtier than the other. That thought doesn’t even seem to occur to Gladwell.

Also missing is any idea that some of these “right place, right time” happening may have a Divine fingerprint. Success is formulaic in Gladwell’s mind, not connected to anything greater scheme or higher meaning. In the end it appears that his haste to drag the outliers back under the bell curve robs him of the ability to see in the stories a greater Force at work.