Seaford Baptist Church Blog

There have been times when I have made a flight, spent the night in the hotel, and while getting ready for the first morning’s meeting, asked myself, “What if I got the schedule wrong? What if it was supposed to be next week?” I’ve never actually made that mistake, but after I came home from last night’s Bible study I found out I made a similar kind of error last week and last night. Sara was looking at the bulletin, and she said, “It says here you were going to be speaking on whether Christians are racist, sexist, and homophobic.”

Oops.

A week or more ago, when I was double-checking the topic list for these studies, I read it wrong, so I prepared and gave the one that was scheduled for May instead of the one we had listed for last night.

My apologies for the confusion, and thanks to all of you for giving me grace in spite of the error.

At the end of last night’s study I mentioned an especially entertaining talk on the historicity of the New Testament. I guarantee you’ve never heard anything like this before:

This Holy Week is a great time to reflect on whether we can really know our faith is based in truth. It might even be a time to answer others’ questions about our confidence in Christianity. My talk and notes on this from last Sunday evening are now available online here. Thank God for the reality of Jesus death and resurrection on our behalf.

Here’s a link to audio and resources from my talk last night on Christianity, science, what happens when science gets married illegitimately with atheism—and how we as believers need to remember God is in charge of the world, not the other way around.

If Christianity were my religion, I wouldn’t thank God for the Cross. But it’s not my religion, and on Thanksgiving Day tomorrow, I will be giving God all the thanks I can give him for the Cross of Jesus Christ.

I know I need to explain that, and I will. I wasn’t just trying to get your attention with that provocative opening; there’s a crucial truth in it, too. I think you’ll see what I mean after I clarify the idea of “my religion.”

Choosing Our Religions
We live in a world of religious pluralism. A recent Gallup poll says that 70% of North Americans believe that many religious could lead you to God. The Pew Forum surveyed Americans who belong to various religions in 2008. They found that 57% of Americans who attend Bible-believing churches (evangelical or black churches, in their study) believe that many religions can lead to God.

If Seaford Baptist Church is typical, then more than half of us believe there are plenty of good ways to get to God. Although that group has decided that “Christian” or “Baptist” is their religion, they believe they could have chosen something else instead.

Those 57% of evangelical Americans generally believe their choice of Christianity is an expression of their personal preference. Maybe it has to do with their culture, upbringing, friends in church, or what they’re comfortable with. As far as spiritual life goes, though, they think they have a choice, and the choice they’ve made is evangelical Christianity. They picked it out, and it’s their religion.

For my part, I follow Jesus Christ and his teachings, to the best of my capacity in Christ. I am a Christian. I do not, however, consider Christianity my chosen religion. I didn’t choose it off some religious clothes rack; I didn’t say, “I don’t really feel like a Buddhist or a Muslim for this life; I’m a traditional American, so the Christian thing just seems to fit me better.”

No, I didn’t buy it and I’m not trying to make it my own. Christianity is too big, too grand, too filled with God for that. I am a Christian because the one God has called me to relate to him in that unique way.

So as you see, my opening statement hinges on what i mean by “my religion.” If Christianity were my choice from a list of options, if it were my religion in that sense, I wouldn’t thank God for the cross.

History’s Most Despicable Act of Injustice?
How could I? Remember how at Gethsemane Jesus prayed that this cup could pass from him? He was asking the Father (though he knew the answer already), “Couldn’t there be some other way?!” He was arrested in humiliation and betrayal. Couldn’t that have been avoided? He was humiliated in trials before the Jewish court, Pilate, and Herod. Did he really have to go through that? He was mocked, beaten, tortured. Was that really necessary? He was hung on the Cross until he screamed the agony of forsakenness; and he died. Why, God? WHY?

Why? Because he loved us and wanted to bring us to God, and because there was no other way.

What if there had been another way? What if these 57% believe correctly that Christianity is one of many true ways to God? Then it should never have happened. The cup should have passed from the hand of the Son of God. There would have been no need for his brutal passion experience. Far from being something to thank God for, the Cross would have to been the worst of all needless atrocities in history.

Do not, I repeat, do not say, “All religions lead to God, but since I’ve grown up a Christian, I’ll follow that path for myself.” Do not make Christianity your religion that way. If you do, it is as if you are glorifying history’s most despicable act of cosmic cruelty. If you think there are multiple paths to God, then for Christ’s sake (I mean that reverently and literally), don’t choose Christianity! Don’t choose the religion that includes his torture and execution!

Or History’s Most Astonishing Declaration of Love and Justice
The question hinges on whether Jesus really did die on the cross for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. If he did, then we can be sure he did it because it was the only way to God. He said so himself in John 14:6. I am convinced that he did; that the God who created us entered human history in the form of a child who grew to be a man; who taught, healed, and demonstrated a life given wholly to God; and who died on the Cross, was raised from the dead, and was glorified into heaven.

I am convinced he did it because it was the only way we could come to God. He did it for love; for the joy set before him, knowing the life it bring to us whom he loves. He was willing to endure it because it was necessary in order to reconcile humans to God. The Cross was good, but it was only good because it was the only good way to bring us to God.

I do not follow Christ because Christianity is my religion of choice. I have chosen to follow Christ, yes; but that doesn’t make Christianity my religion. It’s God’s. It’s his initiative, it’s his action, it’s his grace, it’s his revelation, it’s his plan; and I’m thankful he has given me grace to enter into the relationship he has called me to.

For that reason, tomorrow on Thanksgiving, as an every other day, I will humbly and heartily thank God for the Cross of Christ, where I was rescued from death. I thank God, too, that the story did not end in death, but in resurrection, glory, and a mission for us to pursue until Christ returns.

Finally: If like me you are thanking God for the Cross, but at the same time you’re trying to hold on to the impossible belief that other religions can lead to God, it’s time to make your choice.

Also at Thinking Christian

I wish I’d had this Scientific American article on hand before last Wednesday’s talk on science and Christianity “Pssst! Don’t tell the creationists, but scientists don’t have a clue how life began.”

It’s all good except for a seriously prejudiced and uninformed swipe he takes at the end. I should tell you, in case you didn’t know, that Scientific American is very seriously opposed to belief in God’s working in nature. The author John Horgan, says of creationists,

Creationists are no doubt thrilled that origin-of-life research has reached such an impasse (see for example the screed “Darwinism Refuted,” which cites my 1991 article), but they shouldn’t be. Their explanations suffer from the same flaw: What created the divine Creator? And at least scientists are making an honest effort to solve life’s mystery instead of blaming it all on God.

There are at least three things wrong with that:

1. It’s not the same flaw. Where the first life came from is in the category of things that need explanation. Where God came from is not. This is because the first life, everyone agrees, came from somewhere or something. It isn’t self-created or self-existent, and it has not existed since all eternity. But Christians understand and know that God didn’t “come from” somewhere or something else. He is eternal. He didn’t become, he simply is. If there is a cause of God’s existence it is God himself eternally.
        
2. Some people might think that’s a cheater’s way out of it. Why does God get to be his own cause of his own existence?

   Here’s why. Let’s take it a step at a time, based on this very issue of the first life. Suppose science discovered where the first life came from. To solve that riddle would require that scientists discover something that preceded the first life and was its cause. Whatever that “something” was, it would have to have come from somewhere, too. Thus for science to do its job right, it would have to explain where that “something” came from. Then if science solved the riddle of what brought that “something” about, then it would have to explain whatever that was; and on and on forever. This is the beginning of what philosophers call “infinite regress,” which just means that if you insist that everything requires a cause, you could keep going back in time infinitely and never reach to the starting point where it all begins. You could never get back to the first thing that caused everything else after it to happen.

   Now, if that makes your brain hurt, don’t give up now—that’s a good sign! An infinite regress is not supposed to make sense, because it is impossible. There has to be something that’s the first cause. If there’s nothing to get the causal ball rolling, the ball never rolls. If there’s not some first thing to start things happening, then nothing happens—ever. So it is absolutely, unavoidably, necessary that there be some first cause that has no cause before it. And because it’s the first cause, logically there can be nothing before it to explain it. There’s no cause for it; there is literally no explanation for it. And it has to be that way: there must be some first cause that has no other explanation.

   Now let me encourage you again, if that has your head spinning, that’s a good sign. Don’t try to make this infinite regress thing work in your mind, because it can’t.

   Even the pagan philosophers figured out this much: Plato and Aristotle knew there had to be some “Uncaused Cause” or “Unmoved Mover;’” otherwise nothing would have ever happened anywhere ever; nothing would have moved anywhere ever. Period. They didn’t have all the information we have in the Bible, so they didn’t know it was God. But we do. Christian theology says that God is that first cause. There is nothing in the least bit embarrassing about that. John Horgan says this is a great flaw, but he just doesn’t know enough. He should: a writer in his position ought not to make an error like that. (He ought to be embarrassed.) Before he complains about Christianity’s inability to explain God, he ought to know that’s not a problem, it’s the solution to a problem, one that matters for science as much as it does for everything else: what was the first cause of all causes?

3. Christianity never suggested that scientists shouldn’t make an “honest effort to solve life’s mystery.” It says that the more we know about nature, the more we’ll see God in it. Consider the things we’ve learned about life: the complexity of ecology, the incredible machinery inside the cell, and everything else: it doesn’t steal from God’s glory, it adds to it. If you were at church last Wednesday evening you probably heard me say that God was never just some theory cooked up to explain mysteries like the first life. We know of God through his clear revelation to us, through Scripture and also through nature (Psalm 19, Romans 1:18ff). So the more we learn about nature, the more we know about God. What’s the problem with that?

The creationists and Intelligent Design proponents are way ahead of Scientific American on this. Science has no explanation for the first life. Sounds to me like a good place (among many!) to conclude that God has been at work.

Stephen Hawking, who has been called the world’s most famous scientist, just came out with a new book that’s been all over the news, claiming to show that the universe created itself out of nothing. It sounds ridiculous; but when someone of his stature says it, could it be true anyway? Does he know something we don’t know?

Regarding physics, yes. Regarding all this, no, not really. The physical theory he’s relying on is not well established, he’s careless with what he means by “nothing,” and even if there were some theory showing the universe could have created itself, it doesn’t mean that it did. More here.