The First Baptist Church of Granada Hills

The Christian faith is a complex thing with all sorts of remarkable components: theological doctrines like the Trinity and justification by faith, predictive claims like the resurrection of the dead, and ethical imperatives like turning the proverbial cheek are all part and parcel of the larger whole.  But even with all this complexity, and regardless of the direction from which one approaches it, eventually the person inquiring into Christianity will have to deal with Jesus.  Jesus stands at the center of the faith; indeed one could reasonably say that Christianity is Christ, that it is Jesus. 

Now from an evangelistic standpoint this is great.  People love Jesus; even people who hate Christianity often love Jesus!  His character, his ethic, his style—all these things are just so attractive.  I think it’s safe to say that Jesus is generally the first thing the non-Christian seeker finds appealing about the faith and the last thing that the Christian doubter finds repellant.  Even if one feels that the somewhat esoteric or supernatural elements of the faith are just so much pious superstition, that same person generally regards Jesus as a decidedly good and noble human being, as a teacher of wise and moral things. 

But there’s a trap here for such sympathetic unbelievers: the ethics of Jesus—along with his style and character and all that—seem to have utterly failed him in his own life on a non-Christian reading.  As the skeptical New Testament scholar, Dale C. Allison writes in Resurrecting Jesus:

“[T]here are reasons I should very much like to believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus and reckon it more than a symbol, more than just a way of saying that his cause continues or that he lives on in the memory of the church.

“My first reason is the conviction that the teaching of Jesus, which as a Christian I am committed to, may well hang in the air without a dramatic, postmortem endorsement… Unlike the wisdom sayings of Proverbs, Jesus’ sometimes otherworldly, sometimes ascetical, often eschatological, often counterintuitive teachings—‘Love your enemies,’ do not be ‘angry,’ do not divorce and remarry—are not self-validating.  On the contrary, they are at every turn debatable.  They further self-destruct if the humble, including Jesus himself, are never exalted.  So the crucifixion and Jesus’ cry of dereliction require a sequel.  If they do not receive one, most of Jesus’ speech loses much of its plausibility, and he becomes just another futile dreamer, a messianic pretender whose words may be dismissed as fantasy.  But if the resurrection is the sequel, then God has ‘transformed the fate of the lost Jesus by openly and finally acting out in the person of Jesus the image of God that Jesus espoused.’”

If the story of Jesus is really to be denuded of its supernatural elements (resurrection and all) then Jesus’ beautiful ethic of love and compassion is shown up as worse than useless before the harsh realities of the world as it actually is.  If Jesus’ story really does end on Good Friday, then our hope for a kindlier truth dies with him and Rome triumphs; once again Caesar prevails and the brutal logic of pragmatic violence prevails through him…  But if Christ really rose from the grave (as his disciples vigorously declared in the face of threats, beatings, and death itself) then that hope can live on.  And if Christ really did rise, then, it would seem, a great many more of Christianity’s historic claims are back on the table. 

Think about it.

            In Sunday’s sermon I drew attention to the scandalous results of a recent Pew study which indicates that Christians approve of torture in even greater numbers than do religiously unaffiliated people.  I said that this study reveals that however much people may claim to be worshipping the Jesus found in the Bible—that is, the Jesus of history, the real Jesus—many are merely worshipping a mental idol of their own creation that they’ve simply dubbed “Jesus”. After the sermon a man approached me and remarked “I’m afraid to ask you what you think about national defense.”  This article is intended as a response to that remark and the much more important matter of Jesus’ probable view of such things as national defense.  After all, one often hears well meaning people speak of Jesus as if the man were a strident pacifist.  Indeed, entire denominations are built on this premise.  But as we shall see, the idea that Jesus was opposed to all forms of physically force—even when employed by lawful authorities—is simply untenable in light of scripture.

            First one needs to understand that the ancient Jews, like all nations, had a military of a sort. It may not have been a professional army (at least not all of it) as we’re accustomed to but the Hebrews nonetheless had, in times of need, an assembly of armed men, organized along some pattern, which would fight other people to the death at the command of their national leaders.  This wasn’t some anomaly in a particular part of their history, it was a simple and essentially ubiquitous fact of their national character.  We might say that the legitimacy of a military (at least in principle) was just a given in the wider Hebrew psyche—especially considering the positive role the Hebrew military had in much of the nation’s scriptures.

            Secondly one needs to remember that Jesus was an ancient Jew.  He wasn’t a conservative 17th century British Evangelical, a nihilistic 19th century German rationalist, or a liberal 21st century American agnostic.  He was an ancient Jew and thus he ought to be understood against the backdrop of his own actual cultural milieu and not, anachronistically, against our own.  The practical upshot of this is that one ought to assume that Jesus likely supported, at least tacitly, those things which his larger culture supported unless we have actual evidence to the contrary. (Just as we would assume that a given 18th century white American southerner would probably support democracy, slavery, and Christianity unless we had actual evidence to the contrary.)

            Now with these two caveats in mind (ancient Judaism’s belief in the acceptability of at least some military force & Jesus’ identity as an ancient Jew) we can look at the actual specifics we find in the New Testament beginning with Jesus’ immediate context and then working our way to Jesus himself. 

            First we should look at the case of John the Baptist since every single canonical gospel presents this man as the long-prophesied forerunner of Jesus who in turn predicted the coming of Jesus. Additionally, when commenting on John the Baptist, Jesus said, “among those born of women there is no one greater than John” (Luke 7:28). 

            When John was baptizing people as a symbol of repentance he was asked for advice by a number of different groups…including soldiers. In Luke 3:14 we find this: “Then some soldiers asked him, ‘And what should we do?’ He replied, ‘Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.’”  Now this seems like it would have been a great opportunity for John to denounce military service.  He had been asked point-blank what repentance for active soldiers would look like and could very easily have said, “Get a different job!”  But he didn’t.  He didn’t say anything even vaguely disapproving of military service at all let alone advocate for thorough-going pacifism.  He merely condemned an abuse that sometimes accompanies occupations: extortion.

            Well now let’s look at the apostles Peter and Paul, something of Jesus’ successors. 

            Peter wrote (in 1 Peter 2:13-14) “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right” (emphasis added).  And Paul wrote (in Romans 13:1-6) “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing” (emphasis added).  Given these two passages it seems clear that, again, the legitimacy of force as exercised by the state is affirmed—at least in principle.

            So what we have established is that not only Jesus’ wider cultural context believed that a state could legitimately use physical force (expressed supremely through a military) but his immediate predecessor and (far more significantly) his immediate successors (who regarded him as utterly authoritative!) did so as well.  Given all this it is extraordinarily likely that Jesus felt much the same way—that is, unless we can produce definitive evidence to the contrary.

            But when we look to Jesus himself this evidence is rather lacking.  Yes, Jesus did say things that would seem (at least in themselves) to indicate a support of pacifism: “Do not resist the evil man, turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” (Matthew 26:52), and so on.  But at the very same time Jesus both heartily approved a man (the Centurion of Matthew 8:5-13) who’s whole job (at least ostensibly) was to “resist the evil man” and Jesus himself called Peter to arms (Luke 22:35-38).  So what’s going on here?  I confess that I’m not quite sure.  Perhaps these statements are further manifestations of Jesus’ well attested tendency to use hyperbole and they were merely meant as stern warnings against militarism and vengefulness on the one hand and quietism and fatalism on the other.  Or perhaps Jesus’ seemingly pacifistic words were directed at a specific issue at hand—like the seething nationalistic insurgency afoot in Israel in his day; I think N.T. Wright does a pretty good job arguing that perspective.

            In the end, then, what we have is a Jesus who was the inheritor of a culture which saw the value of state-directed force, who was forerun by a man who he himself approved who had no qualms with militaries in principle, who produced a movement that was radically committed to his person and teachings and likewise felt that the state had the right, as an instrument of God (in some sense), to utilize force at times, and who himself approved a soldier and called for swords.  Given all this, the idea that Jesus was a through-going Ghandi-esque pacifist is utterly implausible; it simply doesn’t align with the data.  Rather, the evidence in hand suggests that Jesus saw the value of police forces and militaries and approved of them within certain reasonable limits as outlined by his wider-ranging ethic of mercy and love.

            Of course one could claim that Jesus actually repudiated his culture’s mores, firmly (but silently) disapproved of John’s permissive response to the soldiers, didn’t actually mean what he said when it sounded “militant,” and was subsequently wildly misunderstood by his closest followers.  But such a maneuver is not the sign of a humble and receptive attempt to understand the Jesus of history through the records of his life that we actually possess.  Instead, such mental gymnastics belie a desire to force Jesus into a preexisting ideological mould—a process which, once again, leads us away from the real Jesus and towards an idol of our own construction.

            This November Californians will have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 8.  If passed, Proposition 8 would reassert California’s historic practice of recognizing that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, thus disestablishing so-called “gay marriage”.  

            In the run-up to this election, many opponents of Proposition 8 have framed the issue as a matter of rights.  Passing Prop 8, so the opponents say, would strip California residents of the right to organize their lives as they see fit,  impinge upon their pursuit of happiness, and bar them from many of the opportunities that heterosexual couples take for granted.  Now, while alarmist rhetoric like this may energize voters, it does little to educate them.  

            In truth, despite panicky and deceptive claims to the contrary, Proposition 8 has nothing whatsoever to do with rights.  In reality, all the rights that California associates with marriage have already been guaranteed to homosexual couples through numerous “domestic partnership” laws—laws that would be totally unaffected by Prop 8.  If Prop 8 passes, committed homosexual couples will still be able to visit one another in hospitals, obtain family insurance policies, avail themselves of simplified stepparent adoption rules with reference to the children of their partners, and on and on.

            If, then, Proposition 8 has nothing at all to do with specific legal rights, what is it all about? 

            The simple answer is “words”, or, more specifically, “definitions”.  Is the connection in marriage nothing more than a legal fiction, akin to other legal fictions like business contracts, which we can redefine as we see fit, or is it something else, something more… fundamental?  This question is, by its very nature, philosophical, even religious.  The way one understands the nature of marriage has implications for the way one understands the nature of humanity, which is simply to say, at least as far as we are concerned, with the nature of existence itself.  Are we then, as human beings, merely “making it all up as we go”, or are our most basic social institutions governed by concrete realities beyond our direct control? 

            For centuries now, our nation has recognized that the truth of the matter is closer to the second option, that human life is governed by Truths and Principles larger than ourselves.  While many quotations could be advanced to prove this claim, only one is needed.  The Declaration of Independence opens with these revealing words: “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”  This document, our nation’s first, affirms that human life and institutions derive their essence, not from legal fictions, but from fundamental Principles—specifically Nature and its God.

            With this in mind it seems entirely reasonable, indeed, entirely desirable, to seek to preserve the connection between our contemporary laws concerning marriage and the historical spiritual resources of our nation—those broadly Judeo-Christian values that have undergirded our country’s development to this day.  Given this, the Christian Christ’s affirmation in Mark 10 of the Jewish Torah’s traditional and inherently heterosexual view of marriage should be given due consideration, “At the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 

            Come election day, please, vote “Yes” on Proposition 8.

            Thirty-nine years ago, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin brought the Apollo 11 mission to its climax.  On July 20, 1969 two people, after traveling hundreds of thousands of miles, climbed out of a cramped multi-billion dollar box and walked on the moon.  The moon!  Roughly five hundred million people watched as this pair of Americans achieved one of the most significant propaganda victories of the Cold War, affirming the superiority of the free world over against its authoritarian enemies.

            But as amazing as the moon landing was in terms of its political value, its most enduring legacy is a more general one: Apollo 11 bears witness to the power of human ability. The achievement was so overwhelming, so mythical in scope, that it clearly indicated that mankind, given enough money, technology, and will, can do virtually anything.  As God is said to have remarked at Babel, “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

            This limitless horizon of possibility has filled many with a sense of optimism, and with cause.  Our march from the Stone Age to the modern day has been attended by meaningful advances in the human condition.  Each year it seems that new medicines are developed, new communication arrays are installed, and more efficient agricultural techniques are unveiled making disease, isolation, and starvation ever more distant realities.

            At the same time, though, the progress of human power has had a darker side as well.  The very same theoretical and technological advances that have given us more cures, communications and corn have also given us germ-warfare, online child pornography, and the Holocaust. Thus, while our advances may fill us with hope, our hopes must be tempered with realism.  

            T.S. Eliot once wrote that modern people occupy themselves “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”  Sadly, these dreams must forever remain exactly that—mere dreams.  For as history has shown, advances of all sorts are ambiguous things; great power can be used both for great good and for great evil; it’s up to the actor to decide which.  Thus goodness will always be a needful thing.

            This sobering truth—power’s inherent ambiguity—ought to cause us to examine our own lives then.  Is the world a better place because of us?  Are we using our ever-increasing wealth, talents, and influence to improve our communities?  Or are we just using our fellow men and women as so much “raw material” for the satisfaction of our own selfish and destructive desires?  Put simply, are we good? 

            A prophet once said, “the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)  Now, commitment to the Lord involves a number of things, but a commitment to righteousness, to goodness, is among them.  Thus, just as power needs righteousness so righteousness, it would seem, may lead to power.  Let’s then keep this relationship between goodness and greatness in mind—both when we advance personally in some fashion and, perhaps, when we want to.

          A little while back I decided that I ought to read more books that present views with which I disagree; it just seemed fair.  After all, I spend a lot of time encouraging non-believers to read Christian books and it seemed that I ought to return the favor.  With this in mind I picked up a copy of Sam Harris’ bestselling The End of Faith.
          In this book Harris outlines, in great clarity, some of the dangers that attend religious faith and does so primarily by highlighting the lowlights of the world’s most widely received “Western” religions: Christianity and Islam.  Of course, I’m no fan of Islam and I don’t really want to spend a great deal of time defending it; sufficed to say that the Koran does indeed advocate an often violent antagonism between Muslims and everyone else; whether we should simply exterminate sincere Muslims for the good of the world, as Harris advocates (page 53), is, I think, another matter. But when it comes to Christianity it seems that Harris makes a very obvious blunder, so much so that I wonder whether he is being intentionally misleading so as to advance his own argument. 
          Harris contends that when religious people do terrible things it’s because they are religious, not, that is, because they’re people.  As Harris notes, religious people tend to argue the latter: that people, even religious people, sometimes do terrible things because there is something dangerous and devious inherent in all humanity–Christianity calls it “sin”.  Of course, Harris dismisses this possibility as self-serving and evasive.  Indeed, to him all really evil things seem to be inherently motivated by religion.  But what of the great philosophically and functionally atheistic regimes of the 20th century?  Don’t these show that even irreligious people can do horrible things and that thus the fault, to quote Shakespeare’s Julius Ceaser, “is not with our stars but with our selves?”  Sorry, no dice.  These too are examples of religion.  The devotion of the Germans to Hitler? Religious! (page 100) The programs of Stalin and Mao? Religious! (page 79)  In fact, at one point Harris goes so far as to say that everyone is a product of religion, presumably making all atrocities, no matter how removed from explicitly creedal motivations, the fault of faith (page 108).  By this point it should be fairly obvious that Harris is playing a rather sloppy and dishonest shell game: people do terrible things, no person is really that far removed from religion, therefore religion is to blame for the world’s ills.  Hmm.
          Harris himself provides an excellent exception that seems to disprove his rule.  The Inquisition happened; it was bad.  But what led to it being as bad as it was?  For Harris the answer is obvious: religion, specifically the Christian religion.  If it wasn’t for Christianity the Inquisition never would have been instituted in the first place, never would have spiraled out of control, and never would have claimed the lives of so many.  But as Harris himself points out, there were massive disparities between the way that the Inquisition operated and the procedures outlined in the passages of the Hebrew Bible that were pressed into service to justify the proceedings.  Whereas Harris notes that the Inquisition accepted individual, uncorroborated accusations as evidence, confiscated the property of the accused and gave some to the accuser as a reward, and allowed the accuser to remain anonymous and uninvolved in the trial, every single one of these things was prohibited in the Old Testament.  The Old Testament is very clear that anyone accused of metaphysical “weirdness” can only be condemned on the testimony of at least two people (Deuteronomy 17:6), that the accused’s property must be totally destroyed (Deuteronomy 13:16-27), and that the ones making the accusations must themselves personally participate in the “wet work” of the execution (Deuteronomy 17:7).  Considering that Harris himself believes that people may justifiably be executed for holding the wrong religious beliefs (again, page 53) and that phenomena akin to witchcraft may indeed be real (see the article on AlterNet), the only charge that he can lay at the Inquisition’s feet without hypocrisy is that its methods were unsound and encouraged false convictions.  But as we’ve seen, its methods encouraged these false convictions precisely because they ignored the very verses they claimed to be applying.  Thus, in a very real way, it seems that the Inquisition became the monstrosity that it was precisely because the Inquisitors were inadequately religious, not excessively so.  Of course, one might think that Harris would at least mention Jesus’ preemptive prohibition of exactly this sort of thing in Matthew 13, but, rather unsurprisingly, he doesn’t.
          It’s clear that Harris is far from an unbiased observer of the misadventures of religion.  Indeed, he seems more like a zealous hater of monotheistic faith who earnestly desires to rip it up, root and branch, honesty and integrity be damned.

(The page numbers given in this article refer to the hardcover version of the book.)

          Every so often some group of researchers conducts a survey of the religious beliefs of Americans.  Generally speaking the results are predictable: most people identify with either Catholicism or one of the thirty-one flavors of Protestantism, a smaller percentage are Jewish, and a handful of people hold to other, generally Eastern, faiths.  But over the last generation or two a new demographic has arisen, a group which apparently warrants its own category: “spiritual but not religious”.

          Those who see themselves as “spiritual but not religious” generally feel that life is a wonderful and somewhat mysterious thing.  This sense of wonder and mystery is such that flat, mechanistic explanations of the world simply fail to convince. As such the minds of these individuals are open to the spiritual, that is, to phenomena and orientations which seem to participate in a larger reality than mere matter in motion. 

          At the same time, people of this sort often feel that there is something of an inherent antagonism between spirituality and religion.  Spirituality is free, it’s open-ended, it’s intensely personally, and largely private.  Religion, on the other hand, is seen as dogmatic, institutional, stale, and authoritarian.  To put it more simply: spirituality is positive while religion is largely negative.

          As a clergyman I confess that I find the above dichotomy rather misses the mark.  The difference between religion and spirituality is not one of kind but of degree.  As such the difference between the two is analogous to the difference between genuine mathematics and a vague appreciation of numbers: the former is simply a refinement, an integration, and even an advance of the latter.  Religion is merely what happens when people come together to discuss spirituality, to bring their experiences and thoughts into relationship with one another.  Religion is where the world-weary pessimism of Ecclesiastes is put into dialogue with the bright-eyed optimism of Proverbs; it’s where the cautiousness of St. James is brought into contact with the freedom of St. Paul; it’s where the fleeting glimpses of that “larger reality” are pieced together to produce a fuller and more reliable picture than any one person could hope to manage alone.

          Of course, there is still the matter of religion’s authoritarian flavor.  But given the above, is that really surprising?  Indeed, is it even necessarily undesirable?  If religion is the piecing together of a definite puzzle then certainly there are better and worse ways to assemble that puzzle.  Or, to continue the mathematics analogy, while all numbers may be equally valid, all equations are not: 2+2=4 certainly seems more reasonable than 2+2=5; would we really want to study under a teacher blind to the distinction?

          With all this said, I’d encourage the “spiritual but not religious” to reconsider institutional faith, to even give it a first-hand investigation.  Perhaps the chapels of your neighborhoods and the well-worn books they preach contain something of worth after all.  Perhaps you’ll find their ministers less overbearing than you assumed.  Who knows, perhaps you’ll even find a home.