For many eschatology-minded Christians, one of the "signs" that the end of the world (i.e. the return of Christ) is upon us will be a great "end times harvest" of souls... a great awakening across the globe in which the gospel spreads at a rate far greater than ever before, and all corners of the globe hear the name of Jesus. Based on verses like Matt. 24:14, many believe that Christ's return will only come when this "proclaimed throughout the whole world" thing happens.
I always wondered why it was called “Good Friday.” I mean, Jesus was brutally tortured and hung on a cross. There were dark skies and earthquakes and torn veils. Seems more like “Bad Friday,” doesn’t it? Really, has humanity ever had a worse day? The one time the God of the universe was actually walking around in human form on earth, and what do we do? We kill him. That’s pretty bad.
Trees are about life and death. They’re mostly about life, but there’s some death in there too. The thing I love about trees is that even when they look lost and hopeless and perhaps down for the count, there is so often a vitality brimming beneath the bark, or a bud about ready to pop. In the dead of winter, an ugly, dead-looking tree is still very much alive, ready to spring forth with greenery and oxygen when the weather turns. It’s a comfort, and I feel it keenly this Palm Sunday weekend: there’s always a hidden life behind dead-looking things. There's always the promise of newness and rebirth.
To the surprise of many, Time magazine recently listed “The New Calvinism” as the third most important idea changing the world “right now.” What?? 500 years after the birth of John Calvin, is his theological namesake really enjoying resurgence in 2009?
Things feel rather hopeless these days for a lot of people. The economy is horrific, many are out of work, the weight of existence bears down in customary fashion... And yet in this period of Lent--as Christians quietly prepare themselves for the remembrances that are Good Friday and Easter, hope seems to break through the bleak landscape. Christ is hope; Christianity is, if it is anything, a belief in hope. So often we Christians get sidetracked and come across as dour, judgmental, "get me out of this earth and take me to heaven" downers... which is why more and more people (especially young people) just tune it all out. Why believe in a religion that forsakes this world and looks forward to its demise and an otherworldly heaven? Is not this world worth anything? Why was it even created?
Many Christians consider this a settled question. Of course we have souls! … Right?
At the 2008 Oxbridge conference earlier this month, however, the question was very much open to debate. In fact, two of the plenary speakers gave talks that took polar opposite views on the matter.
The highly esteemed Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford, gave a rigorous argument for the existence of the soul as an entity of entirely difference substance than the body (substance dualism). Swinburne is about as dualist as you can get on the matter—even moreso than Descartes. I won’t go into Swinburne’s arguments (which were thorough and intriguing, if a little hard to follow), but it should be pointed out that outside of Christian philosophical circles, substance dualism is a rather marginalized position.
On the other end of the spectrum was Nancey Murphy, Christian philosopher at Fuller Theological Seminary. Murphy is a proponent of non-reductive physicalism, which is the notion that there is no separate mental realm or “soul,” apart from the physical, but that the mental cannot be reduced to merely physical properties. Murphy’s talk at Oxbridge was entitled “Why Christians Should be Nonreductive Physicalists.”
Essentially, Murphy’s main thesis is that humans are their bodies; there is no additional metaphysical element such as a mind or soul or spirit. She suggests that the perception that the bible teaches dualism is simply a result of bad translations. Whereas dualism is completely theoretical and has no scientific evidence, Murphy believes that there is ample evidence to prove that we are merely physical (rather than metaphysical) beings. In her book, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?, Murphy suggests that the cognitive neurosciences give us reason to think that the human capacities we attribute to the soul can be understood as "processes involving the brain, the rest of the nervous system and other bodily systems, all interacting with the socio-cultural world."
Of course, Murphy’s commitment to physical/material explanations of everything also means that she cannot accept the existence of angels or demons and is dubious about things like the “holy spirit” (in the metaphysical sense that Christians have conceived of it)… which maybe makes her a heretic. But apart from looking slightly goth, she doesn’t seem too heretical (she’s ordained in the Church of the Brethren)…
But does any of this abstract philosophizing make a difference on a practical, how-we-live-our-lives level? Perhaps. If Christians adopt physicalism (as Murphy hopes we do), we must put a greater emphasis on the significance of the body, and on the earthly reign of God, in which followers of Jesus participate by active love of neighbor and in struggle for justice and peace. If one adopts Swinburne’s hardcore dualism, our commitment to the body (which Swinburne is reluctant to say will even exist in heaven) is undercut and our motivation to redeem the physical all but made moot.
Alas, I will reserve judgment on the matter until I read books on both positions. I find the whole debate highly provocative and important to have… Though it does alarm me that Christians can be so utterly opposite on a matter so seemingly basic and vital to our faith. But in the spirit of healthy discourse, maybe the disparity should thrill me.
So I wrote this long draft of a blog post a few weekends ago entitled “Why I am a Calvinist” and it was full of some heavy duty theologizing (for me). I spent hours and hours writing it, talking about the doctrines of predestination, the atonement, justification, and so on… I was quoting John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, J.I. Packer, John Piper, and many others. It was epic. And then I lost it. All of it. Unsaved and (somehow) un-recovered on my computer.
Over the past couple weeks I’ve had the curious pleasure of hearing a couple of the world’s foremost “gurus”—Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins—give their respective accounts of human happiness to a classroom of wide-eyed college students. Chopra and Robbins are champions of “wellness” and mind-body-spirit synchronicity, preaching a new-agey self-help gospel not dissimilar from Rhonda Byrne’s Oprah-sanctioned The Secret. Central to each of their dogmas is a salvific belief in the power of positive thinking. For Chopra, this translates into things like “narrative medicine” and the assertion that beliefs can convert into actual molecules, that “our consciousness creates our biology.” Robbins articulates it in terms of pop-psychology, emphasizing the power of frames and syntax in the construction of our identities and personal stories, suggesting that “the way we think about our self changes the reality of who we are.” And of course this is all simplified rather nicely in The Secret, which similarly maintains that our thoughts can create our reality: “You become AND attract what you think.”
Now, my initial response to all of this is that it is complete and utter gobbledygook. Do we really think that we can change our biology, our personality, our material circumstance in life just by thinking about it a lot? Does our saying something bring it into being? Surely not…
But as a good postmodern (I use that designation loosely… in the postmodern sense, I suppose) who has studied Communication, Critical Theory, and Literary Theory in graduate school, I must admit there are lingering suspicions in my mind that there is something to this idea of reality as the construction of language, of declaration.
And speaking of declarations, perhaps we should turn to Jacques Derrida and his essay “Declarations of Independence” to understand these ideas. Derrida uses the Declaration of Independence to argue for the arbitrariness of all claims to power, specifically in the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights.” Derrida finds in this statement a profound contradiction: on one hand the signatories of the Declaration are invoking natural law/God and are thus stating a “constative” (to use Derrida’s term), while on the other hand they say that “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” which for Derrida is “performative”—it establishes the truth of the stated principles by means of the very act of stating them. If the truths are self-evident to all human beings, for example, why do we even need to point out that they are self-evident? The signatories must establish themselves as holding the truths to be self-evident. For Derrida, this is a performative declaration masquerading as a constative.
Indeed, isn’t it true that in our multicultural, heterogeneous, globalized world we have come to recognize that language (all communication, really) takes on an unavoidably performative dimension? That is: communication must be seen in cultural context—as a means of making meaning that is both “of” and “for” reality. What is “true” or taken as constative in one culture (e.g. “The sky is blue”) may be totally incomprehensible in another, where different words and expressions create different realities of what otherwise might be thought of as a “universal.” Different cultures emphasize different values and articulate different aspects of reality—and even those things that do seem universal (“love,” “sadness”) are articulated or understood in vastly different ways. Clearly, the way that we communicate the world to ourselves (in culturally and temporally specific contexts), determines what that world is, at least in terms of our perceptions of it (and what else do we have but our perceptions??).
And so, if we admit that to some extent our realities come into being through the various ways we communicate them to one another, is it that much of a stretch to believe Chopra, Robbins, and The Secret lady when they say that we can think our way to better lives??
Well, before we get too carried away, let’s think a bit more practically about all this. After all, aren’t there pretty obvious limits to “the power of declaration”? It’s not like we (unlike God) can simply say “Let there be light” if we are afraid of the dark. It’s not like we can declare “I want to fly” and then take off like Peter Pan… That is one belief, Deepak, that I don’t think can morph into molecular reality.
And of course, we still have the problems of first principles, of legitimacy and authority in the original instance. For rationalists/modernists like Jurgen Habermas, the untamed fluidity of performative declarations always begs the question, “in the name of what?” That is, if we have any recourse to dialogical reasonableness (i.e. the cognitive acceptance of another person’s statement as having some merit) we must appeal to some sort of transcendent norm or power. How could we ever converse across cultures? There must be some overarching power that allows us to accept logic and dismiss ridiculousness.
Hannah Arendt is perhaps the most articulate in highlighting the problem of circularity inherent in every foundational act or beginning. If it is true that the will of a person (to assert certain truths as self-evident, for example) is the source of all legitimacy, then from where do the people originally derive their authority? With respect to Derrida’s notion that the declaration “all men are created equal” is self-evident only because we posit it as such, Arendt responds that no, our experience shows us that men are not created equal, but become equal only through political order and constitutional assurances of equality.
The insinuation is that there are practical things that we must do, not just say, in order to bring things into being. And in this highly-mediated election season in which promises and soundbites and declarations are bandied about with gluttonous abandon, we would do well to recognize this fact: Words themselves can only do so much.
Yes, Rev. Wright, it is true that words can do quite a lot (Obama knows that better than anyone), but one can speak only so much truth to power. To those who feel slighted by the system or otherwise silenced, a word well spoken is a powerful thing, yes. But it is not all powerful. Language is an effective mediator, but it is not a creator.
One of the things that really bothers me about Christians these days is that we are so ill-equipped to answer the increasingly well-articulated arguments from atheists and otherwise anti-religious persons who point out the horrible track record of Christianity and the irrevocable damage that has been done across the world in the name of Christ. Christians today are liable to just sort of shrug and say “that’s not what I’m like,” or find some other way to distance themselves from Christian history (such as calling themselves “followers of Jesus” rather than Christians or a “gathering” instead of “church”).
I have had several conversations and encounters in recent months that have made me worried about the extent to which the world—including Christians—does not understand what Christianity really means. In June I attended a panel discussion on the film A Mighty Heart, which featured representatives from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim backgrounds. The major theme throughout the discussion was the increasingly popular sentiment of collective goodwill/hope: that all major religions—regardless of who is being worshipped—are chiefly about love and peace. We must stop viewing each other as different or wrong... just diverse paths to a similar end.
More recently (this weekend), I attended a screening of a new documentary produced by Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me). The film, entitled What Would Jesus Buy?, uses the forms and traditions of Christianity to mount an argument against out-of-control consumerism, though it never really offers Christianity or Christ as an alternative or solution. The film (which I will write about in more depth soon) follows “Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping”—a performance art/activist group that looks like a gospel choir but makes no claims of believing in the gospel. Following the screening of the film, I interviewed Spurlock and asked him about how Christianity fits into the message of the film. He said that the film's theme reflects the true meaning of Christmas—the arrival of a man who would revolutionize the world and shake things up through his radical message of peace, love, and equality.
But Christians, as I pointed out to Spurlock, would argue that Christmas represents more than peace and goodwill and love. It represents the Answer to our dissatisfaction in the arrival of a person who becomes a savior. True satisfaction, the Christian argues, comes not simply from the message of Jesus Christ (which if it is only peace/love/equality is not unique to him), but through his person. The sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus—and through that alone—provides our redemption and ultimate happiness. Spurlock (who was incredibly nice and easy to talk to) responded by saying that yes, happiness can be found in Jesus Christ, but also in Allah or Buddha or whoever it might be. All of us are essentially about the same business: which is to try to make a change in the world.
It seems that the Christianity being invoked in What Would Jesus Buy?—and which is cooperating ecumenically for social justice and political causes (a good thing)—is increasingly being stripped of its claims of exclusivity. It is pretty clear in the scriptures that Jesus Christ was not of the mind that his way was just “one of many.” Rather, he said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). C.S. Lewis articulates the vital importance of Christ’s claims of exclusivity also in his famous “Lord, liar, or lunatic” reasoning in Mere Christianity:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.
In other words, Jesus Christ cannot merely be a teacher, or prophet, or rhetorical genius (all of which he is). His message of love/peace/equality is great, yes, but part of his message is also that “my way is the only way.” Thus, to accept him as a peace advocate or political revolutionary but reject his claims of divinity is to undermine his whole legacy and legitimacy.
Christians today are struggling with the exclusive nature of our faith. It’s the hardest thing for people to get past, for sure. We don’t want to come across as condemnatory of every other religion. We hate having to tell others that our faith necessarily excludes other faiths as valid alternatives. We want to work together with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc without judgment or tension. And we can.
It is possible to live and work amongst other faiths, because we do have some common ground and shared concerns for peace and justice and a better world. But ultimately we cannot equate ourselves, because the final solution, in Christianity’s view, is none other than Jesus Christ himself. Not just the general, social reform causes he championed, but Jesus Christ the man: God incarnate. He offers himself to all—no matter where you were born or what you have done—and in that way he is the most inclusive.
I was recently introduced to John Piper’s term, “Christian Hedonism,” which I believe he coined in the 1986 classic, Desiring God, but which I came across in reading his recent mini-book, The Dangerous Duty of Delight. It’s a pretty radical concept… and yet it struck me as wonderfully, profoundly true.
Webster defines hedonism as “the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life.” We’ve always been taught the Christian life was exactly counter to this, right? So what is Christian hedonism?
According to Piper, Christian hedonism is the truth that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him." Therefore, if we are going to glorify God as we ought, the pursuit of joy is not optional—it is essential. We not only may, but ought to pursue our maximum pleasure—in God. The Westminster Shorter Catechism summarizes the "chief end of man" as "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Piper has suggested that this would be more correct as "to glorify God by enjoying Him forever."
Essentially the idea is that the Christian life is not joyful or happy or blessed as a result of our devotion and service and worship of God. Being joyful and happy and blessed is HOW we worship God. It’s not a byproduct of our faith. It is our faith.
Seeking happiness as a “reward” for being a Christian is not something we should be ashamed of—it is precisely the motivation we should be pursuing. Put off all notions of self-pity and self-sacrifice and guilt for feeling discontent or desiring more. Acknowledging the desires of our restless souls is vital to our pleasure in God.
Piper looks to Augustine and Jonathan Edwards as examples of “Christian hedonism,” but perhaps most often he turns to C.S. Lewis, who Piper thinks summarizes the radical (and radically true) concept best in The Weight of Glory:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and to earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I suggest that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Here are some of the controversial implications of being wholly devoted to a holy hedonistic lifestyle:
Anyway, I’m sure this is already a familiar concept to most of you, and it’s pretty common sense when you think about it. But it seems like Christianity has been branded as a religion of legalism and self-denial and, well, no fun. Even from the pulpit we get messages that seem to argue for a worship of God that is all about what we can give to Him, or do to make Him happy, etc… How much more radical, then, is Piper’s notion that the chief aim in life should be OUR happiness and OUR pleasure in God? It’s extreme. But if Christianity is, after all, the one and true answer among all others, it should be extreme, right?
