The First Baptist Church of Granada Hills

          In America, the third Sunday of June is set aside as a day to honor fathers.  Father’s Day, despite its relatively recent origin, has nonetheless come to be one of the great affirmations of life.  On this day millions of sons and daughters will take their fathers to lunch, give sentimental cards, and even little gifts to remind their dads that they’re appreciated.

          While some may balk at all this, the big to-do is wholly appropriate considering that fatherhood stands as one of the twin pillars of that most fundamental of all human institutions: the family.  Each successive generation of fathers thus bears the impressive and intimidating responsibility to work alongside its wives to raise up the next generation of mankind.  With this in mind it seems that, if anything, the fuss people make over Father’s Day, being only one day out of the year, is rather more inadequate than over-blown.

          But fathers can take heart; the blessings and difficulties of fatherhood are not something that God leads us into unaided.  Instead, the Lord equips each man called to this high estate with at least three points of reference to guide him: the example of his own father, the potentially much surer example of God Himself, and the teachings of the Bible.  As Jesus said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required.”  Or, to invert the statement, “To everyone from whom much will be required, much has been given.”

          In the example of our own fathers we see that ordinary men, men with strengths and also weaknesses, virtues and also vices, can, if they work at it, do a fairly good job of raising children; that is to say, fatherhood doesn’t require perfection, only commitment.  At the same time, the example furnished to us by God, the Father Almighty, in His dealings with both Israel and the early Church shows us that fatherhood requires love, but also discipline; high expectations, but also a willingness to forgive.  And in Scripture we see how these two examples can be related to our own attempts at fatherhood, both in how to treat one’s children and (of equal importance) how to treat their mothers–specifically in the Book of Proverbs, St. Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, and St. Peter’s first letter.

          So this Father’s Day, thank dear ol’ dad for everything that he’s done, but also take a moment to consider Who else might be entitled to a bit of your time and a few words of gratitude.

          As Father’s Day approaches we are all reminded of the part our dads played in our upbringing.  But as this day turns our thoughts to our biological fathers, it also directs our thoughts higher since, for Christians, the word “father” can refer beyond one’s mortal sire to God Himself.  As the opening line of the Apostles Creed declares, “I believe in God the Father Almighty.”

          Recently, though, some well-meaning individuals have questioned the appropriateness of this phrase.  Honestly, isn’t it just the slightest bit sexist to call God “Father”?  Why not simply call Him “Parent”; or switch it up: call God “Father” half the time and “Mother” the other half.  After all, considering that God is a spiritual being not subject to the physicalities of sexual dimorphism, it’s unlikely that He possesses any gender at all.  What’s more, while God is sometimes described with masculine imagery in Scripture (”your God carried you, as a father carries his son,” Deut. 1:31) there are times when the Bible strikes a feminine cord as well (”For this is what the LORD says ‘As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you,’” Isaiah 66:12-13).  Given this ambiguity, why exactly do the historical documents of Christianity retain a distinctly patriarchal flavor?

          It would seem that, as is so often the case, Christianity’s practice here is influenced by the example of Jesus.  Despite the sexlessness of God, Jesus routinely referred to Him as “Father” both as His own Father in a special sense, but also as the Father of all people generally.  As Christ said, “you have one Father, and he is in heaven.” (Matt. 23:9)  And later, at a rather more poignant moment, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)

          Jesus’ preference for this particular designation may have been influenced by His awareness of the robustness of God’s love.  On the one hand, Christ was very clear that God was kind and compassionate, concerned for His creations and willing to assist them, much like a parent watching over His children.  At the same time though, Jesus was equally clear that God’s love is a muscular thing, something that can cause Him to discipline His children, severely even, if they decide to flirt overmuch with self-destructive sin; in our modern context we often refer to this as “tough love” and it seems somewhat masculine by nature.  These two things then, the parental and masculine qualities of God’s love, imply a fatherliness–a fatherliness that Jesus, the Apostles, and the Church every since have recognized and affirmed in the simple declaration that God is Father, the Father.

          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.)

Last Sunday was a two-sided holiday being both Pentecost and Mother’s Day.  Between the English and the Spanish services, the pastors of First Baptist Church were able to cover the appropriate bases.

English Service- “The Dawning of a New Age” (Acts 2:1-21)
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Spanish Service- “Ser Madre” (Habacuc 3)
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          Within the annals of Christian history there are a number of events and developments so significant that they form a framework into which other events can be placed.  A short list of these major milestones would include such things as the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, the split between the Eastern and the Western Church in the eleventh century, Luther’s publication of his ninety-five theses, and so on.

          Among these watershed events, though, one must mention the development of the Nicene Creed–both its conception at the First Council of Nicea in AD 325 and its subsequent expansion at the First Council of Constantinople in AD 381.  The Nicene Creed would come to be the most widely used statement of faith in all the Christian Church throughout time.  And its popularity can still be seen today as it is recited or otherwise affirmed in the midst of worship by Roman Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and on and on. 

          But while the Nicene Creed is embraced by millions of Christians of virtually every denominational tradition, some feel a bit uncomfortable with its wording.  Some Christians, particularly of a Baptist or otherwise Evangelical stripe, while wholeheartedly supporting the creed’s declaration of the Trinity, flinch at one of the final lines of the text which reads: “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”  To some these words just seem… well… off.  Isn’t it our faith that justifies us?  Doesn’t the heart-felt repentance and commitment we make to the Lord in prayer get the job done?  Isn’t baptism supposed to be merely an outward expression of an inward and preexistent reality? 

          Those who feel this way often point to passages in the Bible that support what may be called a direct and immediate view of salvation, that is, a view which implies that justification can be had independent of any outward ritual.  As the Apostle Paul declares, “with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Romans 10:10)  And as the Apostle Peter proclaims, we are now living in an age in which, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved!” (Acts 2:21)  With these passages in mind Evangelicals generally and Baptists specifically sometimes just can’t bring themselves to embrace the creed– after all, the Bible is the prime authority in our lives and creeds (whether they be ancient or modern) are merely human documents liable to error.

          But this kind of unease is simply unnecessary.  While the Bible does indeed affirm that salvation comes through faith and repentance, it also affirms that baptism is the normal and God-ordained arena in which these sentiments find their appropriate expression.  In the book of Acts whenever a man comes to faith in the Lord he is baptized immediately.  One might say that his conversion and his baptism are thus so closely linked that they form a single, indistinguishable event.  Therefore, while faith and repentance can be expressed simply through prayer, in the New Testament at least, they are always expressed through baptism as an acted prayer.

          This understanding can be supported with verses of its own.  For while Peter does declare that all who call on the Lord shall be saved, in that very same sermon, when specifically asked how one obtains this salvation, Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” (Acts 2:38)  And later this same man tells us that “baptism now saves you–not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience.” (1 Peter 3:21)  Paul too seems to have a somewhat nuanced view of baptism when he writes, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)  In all this we see that while the Apostles understood that salvation was something communicated to the individual through faith and repentance, those feelings were at least normally expressed to others (God included) through the act of baptism.  That is to say, baptism served as the vehicle of repentance.

          Of course, in many modern contexts, baptism is often separated from conversion by a lengthy stretch of time–sometimes even a span of years.  And thus to the extent that modern Christians distance themselves from the Apostolic practice of baptism they are correct to also distance themselves from the Apostolic interpretation of baptism.  A baptism that takes place immediately after one’s conversion can, in a sense, in a Petrine and Pauline sense, be said to save; a baptism that lingers until a decade after the fact cannot.  But then again, the inverse is true as well: insofar as we administer baptism as the Apostles did, so too can we speak of it as the Apostles spoke.

          Here’s the rub: given all this it would seem that Baptists, more so than any other group, ought to be able to recite the Nicene Creed with a straight face.  Among Baptists baptism has retained its position as an act of conversion and dedication which every baptizand ought to approach with both personal faith in and repentance before their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Thus, at least ideally, Baptists may legitimately describe their baptisms, as the Apostles did, as baptisms for the forgiveness of sins.  Other groups, specifically those that baptize infants who by virtue of their age are psychologically incapable of repentance and informed faith, cannot.  It is these Christians who separate baptism from repentance as a matter of policy who ought to stutter at the last lines of the creed; for to characterize the baptism of an infant as something done “for the forgiveness of sins” is, given the diversity of paedobaptist baptismal theologies, at best, wildly proleptic, or, at worst, flatly erroneous.

English Service- “Not Too Soon, Not Too Late” (Luke 24:44-53) 

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Spanish Service- “Tiempo de Salir de la Barca” (San Matteo 14:22-34)

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As part of an on-going effort to make FBCGH’s online presence as streamlined and user-friendly as possible, our podcast has been merged with the blog.  As such the Sunday sermons will now appear here on a fairly regular basis.

Sermons from April 27, 2008

English Service- “Peace” (John 14:15-27)

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Spanish Service- “La Soberan­a de Dios” (Habacuc 3)

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          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.

          March has past us by and, this year, that means that Easter has come and gone as well.  But while Easter Sunday may be just a memory brought to mind by the now drastically discounted chocolate bunnies and swiftly disappearing Cadbury Crème Eggs, the reality at which that day hinted still lingers.  Thus, for centuries, the Church has recognized Easter not just as a single day which points back to a singular historical event (the first Easter) but as the beginning of a new season that mirrors the new era into which the first Easter ushered our world. 

          The Easter season, also called Eastertide by those with an antiquarian bent, is a time in which Christians focus on those painfully few weeks between the resurrection of Jesus and His subsequent ascension into heaven.  For the first disciples this was no doubt a time of joy mixed with confusion: What exactly does the empty tomb imply?  What are we to make of the fact that Jesus, a man we saw die, has appeared to us, even eaten with us?  How does this change things—our faith, the way we see the world, our very lives?  We might imagine that all of these questions buzzed through the minds of the Apostles between their fleeting encounters with the risen Jesus.  And as such the Easter season is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves the very same questions:  essentially, what does Easter mean for us?

           For starters it means hope, confident hope.  The Hebrew scriptures contain a number of brief and oblique references to some kind of life after death, even some kind of resurrection.  But in the experiences of Jesus these glimmering sparks were fanned into full flame; the abstract and plausibly deniable promises of the prophets and others were represented and enacted in a physical example.  And thus our hopes, as people living in the great Eastertide of history, that the grave need not conquer and that death need not be the end are nourished and strengthened.

           Further, this season means clarity of purpose.  Just as Jesus’ empty tomb confirms that life extends beyond death, indeed triumphs over death through Him, so that triumph stands arrayed like an invincible army against the despair and nihilistic dissolution that characterizes so many modern lives. Far from a trivial and absurd respite before “the inevitable”, life takes on a vastly more significant character.  For if death is merely a temporary imposition prior to the beginning of a far fuller and longer-lasting existence then those elements of our life that insinuate their importance to our spirits—our relationships with God, our families, our duties, and so on—acquire a significance they would not otherwise have.

            Easter comes early this year.  It’s only March and already I’m considering the themes of the Easter sunrise sermon.  In a few short weeks Christians around the world will gather together in their cathedrals and churches, on hilltops, and in local parks to celebrate Jesus’ glorious victory over death and hell.  Preachers will lift up the memory of Christ and His first disciples; they will proclaim the miracle and invite their hearers to live in the glorious light of this all-informing event.  God will be honored, believers will be uplifted, and sinners will be saved.

            But in addition to the overtly religious elements of Easter, many of us will also participate in other events which are less inherently spiritual: the giving of baskets filled with candy and stuffed bunnies, feverish hunts for colorful eggs (both real and plastic) hidden among bushes and lawn chairs, and so on.  And in the midst of this pastel-hued fun the overwhelming majority of revelers will sally forth completely lost in the moment, both unconcerned and unaware of the history of the less Christocentric elements of the holiday.  But for a number of families the bliss of ignorance will be impossible.  For these informed and unfortunate few (think Ecclesiastes 1:18) the dubious realities of the past will intrude in on the merriment and cast an uncomfortable shadow over the day.

            Just as we inherit of our ancestors’ genes, so too have we inherited elements of our ancestors’ culture and this unavoidable principle can be seen quite clearly in Easter. The very word “Easter” comes from “Eostre”, a pagan fertility goddess worshipped by the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons.  What’s more, eggs and rabbits (symbols of fertility for obvious reasons) were associated with the goddess in ancient times.  It is precisely this history which makes some Christians uncomfortable with the marginalia of Easter Sunday.

            Here at First Baptist, we’re currently working through a study on the Book of Judges and we recently focused on a passage which seems apropos here.  In the story of Gideon one finds that the Lord called His servant to a particularly provocative task: “Take your father’s bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it; and build an altar to the LORD your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take a second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down” (Judges 6:25-26).  God essentially told Gideon to utterly destroy the sacred site of Baalism in his community and then to use the rubble to facilitate the worship the one true God.  Think of that, Gideon, at God’s command, used stones and wood once consecrated to spiritual error in the construction of an altar dedicated to the Lord.  The wood and the stones were not contaminated by their former use, they weren’t made somehow “unclean”; they were simply raw material, raw material which was recycled and used to glorify God.

            Now if God can be glorified with rocks and wood once associated with a false god, why not eggs and rabbits?  For while Eostre may have had a lock on these things in the first few centuries of the Christian era in the English speaking world, the same simply cannot be said today.  When Westerners see the Cadbury Bunny on TV hocking its delicious cream-filled chocolate eggs we think of Easter, and when we think of Easter we think of Jesus’ triumphant rise from the grave.  And thus, these potent symbols of fertility and life have come, in a sense, to be symbols of the resurrection and the new life that we can receive through that event.  For however much a sham goddess may have represented vitality to the ancient English, her claims were as nothing compared against the Savior that St. Augustine and his companions preached—that One who came that we may have life, and have it abundantly.