1. Don’t panic. This is especially important for freshmen and seniors, because everyone around you is going to be panicking very soon, and it is horrifyingly easy to be sucked into running around like a chicken with your head cut off if everyone else is feelingly describing the bite of the axe. But don’t do it! Paul writes, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phillipians 4:6). The two halves of this verse are equally important. We are told not to be anxious about anything—after all, God who takes care of sparrows and wildflowers will surely take care of us—but then we are told how to not panic, which is easier said than done. We aren’t just left to put our concerns out of mind through strength of will; we are invited to bring our petitions to God, and to do so thankfully. Practically, I have found that thanking God for things really does help, even in my darkest moments. When it feels that everything is awful, try thanking God for what you do have; I think you’ll be surprised by how much it helps.
2. Take time this year to learn something new about Christian life from someone who knows more than you do. This can take many forms: regularly talking to an older Christian, reading a book about Biblical exegesis, being more serious about listening to sermons in church, and maybe asking questions after the service. If you’re stuck on where to begin, I highly recommend reading N.T. Wright’s Justification. For a while now I’ve been in a rut when reading the Epistles; I was just familiar enough with them that nothing really jumped out at me as being shocking, but not familiar enough with them that I could really explain what they meant for my life, other than giving a rather vague and general description of Christian belief. Justification changed all that; Wright goes through much of Galatians and Romans in detail, and touches on other parts of the Epistles, all the time insisting on keeping Paul’s context in mind and following his argument, rather than just scrutinizing disembodied verses and trying to make them be only about our burning questions. I’m excited to go back to Paul, now, because I think that I will have new eyes to see what he’s really doing.
3. Come to Ichthus pub nights. Really, if you don’t come, you’ll be sorry you missed them. The staff, writers, and friends of the Ichthus gather weekly to relax, have fun together, and talk about everything under the sun; really, where else can you go straight from discussing Lady Gaga to talking about the Fall in Genesis 3? If you haven’t had enough intellectual conversations in your life recently, this is the place for you; if you haven’t had enough laughter, you are similarly advised to come. If you have burning questions about Christianity, or want to be part of a wonderful Christian community, or just don’t have very much exciting to do on Saturday nights, pub nights are for you. Make a resolution to come at least once this semester; you won’t regret that you did.

Nonetheless, I want to exhort and encourage the Christians at Harvard–whatever campus fellowship you are a part of, whatever church you belong to, whatever organization or group you are recruiting for–to take this brief interval of time seriously, to be humbly aggressive and lovingly bold with the gospel, and to be intentional in stepping out in faith.  Take the initiative with the many freshmen who are currently unknown to us, whether they be Christians already or not.  For the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the gospel, and for the sake of our neighbors whom we are called to love with a realistic love.  I know we all have hectic lives and schedules of our own.  I know it’s profoundly inconvenient and not particularly fun (well, not for the introverts).  Almost nothing is natural here. 

I also know it’s easy for we enlightened intellectuals to mock any attempts at real evangelism that are done poorly and without nuance or sensitivity, and to scorn those who actually take Jesus and the gospel seriously if they dare to do it in a way that offends the delicate, self-centered cultural sensibilities of this present evil age.  That’s a spectacularly easy mindset to fall into.  And cheap.  And dishonest and cowardly, if Jesus actually rose from the dead.  But do not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Not here.  Flee from that perception of the matter, repent of it, do whatever needs to be done to disown it entirely in your soul.  Then strap back on the shoes of the gospel, which even today continue to make beautiful the feet of those who wear them, who bring its message of hope and deliverance from sin, death and hell.

But perhaps more tangible motivation is needed, so here’s a solid reality that ought to give rise to such an attitude toward the new freshmen, one that I find personally compelling and binding upon my soul.  C. S. Lewis, Paul and Penn–each in their own distinctive way–hold it up to the light for us to consider:

“In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised…St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (1 Cor. 8:3).  It is a strange promise.  Does not God know all things at all times?  But it is dreadfully re-echoed in another passage of the New Testament.  There [Matthew 7] we are warned that it may happen to anyone of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words, ‘I never knew you.  Depart from Me.’  In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all.  We can be left utterly and absolutely outside–repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.  On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged.  We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities…It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.  The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.  It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.  This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.  But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously.” (C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory“)

“We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.  Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others…For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.  For the love of Christ controls us…From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.1 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  Working together with him, then, we appeal to you: do not receive the grace of God in vain.” (II Corinthians 5:10-6:1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG-tkQ_Q2w&feature=related

This is a great small group exercise to prepare Christians for evangelism. When you’re sharing your faith with someone in the airport or someone on the bus, they ask, “Why do you believe in God?” or “Why would you believe the Bible?” Preparing these sorts of answers enables you to say confidently, “Let me tell you my top five reasons…”

So without further ado, I’d like to share my reasons for believing in God:

1. I do not think that matter can spontaneously come into existence. Although I believe in the Big Bang, nothing suggests to me that it could be self-caused. Interestingly enough, the Big Bang was actually once thought to prove God’s role in creation and was anathema to atheists who had previously believed in an eternal universe.

Although I believe in evolution, I don't buy abiogenesis. That is, I don't think life could have formed purely randomly in a steaming pond of primordial soup.

2. There are some things that evolution alone cannot explain, like how life came from non-life or what makes man different from the other animals. Even atheist evolutionary biologists recognize that they take some things on faith, I simply chose to put my faith into an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving Creator instead of in completely unguided naturalistic processes.

3. This is very philosophical, but I see no reason that reality should exist as it does. Science can only tells us how the universe works, not why it works that way. Why should the laws of physics be constant? Why should matter continue existing? Science has no answer, but Christianity does, in Colossians 1:16-17:

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

4. Another very philosophical reason is a variation on Anselm’s cosmological argument, something along the lines of what Joseph Porter wrote a couple years ago.

I also believe in inherent cuteness. The miracle of babies definitely contributed to my conversion. Seriously. How ridiculously adorable is this baby? (These are my maternal instincts kicking in.)

5. I believe in Love and Beauty and Goodness. In the atheist’s worldview, these are simply ideas that man has found evolutionary advantageous and are purely chemical processes in the brain. A total atheist worldview can only feature such ideals as shadows of what they truly are. But I believe there is something more inherent, more real to these qualities; when I say “I love you,” I mean a whole lot more than just “there are these hormones running through my body which signify physical attraction.”

So those are the primary reasons why I believe. What are some of your top five reasons? Share!

–Psalm 34:8

You know the feeling. The first bloom has died off. What you thought would last forever has withered away. Summer has gone on for quite a while now, and the sultry heat is starting to make you feel weary, rather than excited about yet another day of the beating sun. You feel lethargic, tired, testy, or dull. You’re not even really talking very much anymore. When you talk, you’re not that sure he’s listening. It isn’t as though you’ve gone through a big crisis or anything – in fact something like that would be quite galvanizing, exciting, even, though it might be difficult. Instead it’s more of a windless drift, like a tall ship marooned on a glassy sea. There’s a restlessness to it, and yet it would seem tetchy of you to complain, so you keep quiet. After all, there isn’t anything wrong, is there? It’s not like you can put your finger on it – there isn’t anything to complain about.

But God doesn’t quite seem to be as attentive to your prayers, or maybe you simply go through the motions because you’re sure he couldn’t possibly be interested in the dull, plodding little things you have to say. And a little worm of doubt starts wiggling in your mind – maybe he is distant, after all, more like the absentee watchmaker than the “personal Savior”. Maybe he’s not that interested. Maybe he doesn’t really care. Maybe you’re supposed to get on with your life without him.

I was talking with a friend last Sunday who was living in doubt. Like me, he felt that he had been called by God at some point for some thing – had received a distinct call, a moment of revelation. Like me, he was feeling a little bit lost. Both of us keep going back to that moment and wondering if it really happened. As in, really really happened – wasn’t some kind of self-induced delusion of grandeur, or the effects of the weather and digestion, or some kind of foolishness best abandoned rather than entertained.

We beat around a little, depressing track of what-ifs. What if we made it up? What if God doesn’t really work like that? (He kind of does, though, too often to be dismissed, as recorded in the Bible) What if God was sort of tricking us? What if he really wanted us to go through some really arduous roads, and if we did something wrong they’d just get longer and more treacherous? What kind of God is he, anyway, who one moment seems so close and the next so distant? Then my friend said, “But then, once you’ve tasted something, you never forget it. Somehow your palate just never lets you forget it.” And I thought, that’s right. You never do….

image credit by Bruce Tuten

It is a good analogy. As a foreign student from the culinary mecca that is Singapore – like many Singaporeans, I have a very patriotic stomach – I have experienced a craving for food I can’t get all too often while tiding out the grim winters of Boston. There’s times when nothing but laksa will do, when I really want some fish soup noodles with that wonderful milk and wine soup from that particular store near my mother’s workplace, and thinking about it is just maddening because I’m a couple continents away, and whatever I can come up with is just a pale substitute.

And then there is the unmistakable phenomenon where you go to a favourite restaurant, and order your favourite dish from there, only for it to come and something’s off – the standard has dropped, some ingredient has been replaced by another, or omitted to cut costs, and you resolve never to go there again, in honor of the lost culinary experience that now can never be had again. Yet that sensory experience – that barometer for what you expect – is retained by your taste buds, otherwise you couldn’t have made that judgment. Nothing else will make the cut, even if it’s been decades since you last ate it. And it is so sweet to be able to taste again something from your childhood, even if it was something you didn’t even particularly like at the time. It brings back a flood of memory – ah, yes – those were good times.

There was a point when I grew suspicious of so-called Christian “mountaintop experiences” – often induced by retreats or particular spiritual conversations: those concentrated periods of Christian fellowship that produce a kind of lovely glow in the consciousness, but which very predictably wanes after a couple weeks of the daily grind. I didn’t want to accept that the glow would fade, so I decided it’d be better to avoid the glow in the first place – a kind of emotional Keynesian economics, if you would – evening out the fluctuations so you don’t get as great a trough for a corresponding peak. However, the problem with this approach is what you end up with isn’t a nice little line in the middle – what you end up with is all trough.

Now I recognize I can’t have all peaks with no troughs – after all, that’s actually just the same thing. Either way, I’d never learn. God’s project, after all, isn’t to make us blissfully happy all the time. That would be faintly disturbing, if not downright creepy in a world of pain. Think of a community that is always bursting with happiness no matter what happens, and you get the Stepford Wives – a phony kind of thing that denies the brokenness of the world. He calls us to be joyful even in times of trial, not constantly vibrating with good feelings. And he promised to be faithful to us, even when we are faithless – for he cannot deny Himself.

Chasing the experiential is as dangerous as chasing the intellectual – if it becomes the ultimate barometer of God in our lives, that would be the opposite of Faith. Faith is, after all, being certain of the thing we do not see – or feel, or understand. Amassing a lot of spiritual highs, like amassing a lot of intellectual knowledge about God, can be the mirage that makes us swerve off the narrow path, rather than keep faithfully on it. After all, we were not given an intellectual idea of Jesus, or a Jesus happy pill that makes us immune to pain, but Jesus himself, fully human, fully God, who, on the cross, felt so far from God that he cried that He had forsaken him.

You see, being faithful is pretty much one of the hardest things we are called to be. God berates Israel for having an adulterous heart every time it turned away from Him – which was, by the sounds of it, at least once every fortnight. For myself, it’s probably several times every hour. I’m dismayed by how easily distracted I am on a daily basis. There are things I ought to do, and yet it’s the easiest thing to find something else that is more compelling for another five minutes. It’s the same way with my heart. Somehow it’s a herculean effort just to crack open the Bible once a day, or to read it with real attention, rather than go at it as though earning a lot of brownie points to be redeemed later.

This is why it’s so good to remember, and so helpful that Jesus instituted the holy sacrament – to be taken “in remembrance of me”. Take, eat – and remember when you took and ate. Savor it, when you are in that blessed place of grace. Remember the contours of His goodness: how His provision meant such bread, such wine. Remember the Lord your God, who delivered you out of Egypt, out of slavery. Remember when you were in the pit, and He rescued you. Remember when you almost toppled into the abyss, and He snatched you from the brink.

Remember when He loved you through your family, your friends, who were wonderfully there for you just when you needed them. Remember the kindness of strangers, who had no reason to help you, except His direct provision. Remember His goodness, and his tender mercies. Remember that the Lord your God is good, and he does not forsake the ones he calls by his name. Remember it’s His name on the contract, His blood that was the down payment, remember the very dear price He paid for you. Does He love you? Of course! I can taste it, and I trust it.

As is so often the case with biblical interpretation, the most important questions we can ask of these texts are also the most basic.  What does “sober” mean in these contexts, and why is it the preferred route of action in this world we find ourselves in?  The what is actually a bit tricky, because I fear we tend to associate “sobriety” mostly with moroseness and with somber, miserable killjoys, which is self-evidently not what the apostles were themselves, nor what they tried to produce in their fledgling churches.  Being “sober” in the New Testament sense of the word has little to do–directly–with the degree of joyfulness one possesses or lacks.  Instead, I think a good paraphrase would be to render it something like this: “Live in accordance with reality, as it has been made known in Jesus, in every moment and every situation of your existence.  Bring all of your thinking and feeling and doing in line with the perspective of the gospel, and do not ever descend back into the make-believe fantasy realm you once inhabited, where in your dark spiritual stupor the Lord was horribly marginalized and you were fast becoming less genuinely human.  Now that you have been redeemed from such nightmares, stay awake constantly.” 

Whatever else we are as sinful human beings, we each “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” in our own unique and creative ways (Romans 1:18-32).  That is, for the most part we each recognize the way things actually are in the universe that God has created–lack of knowledge or intelligence is not the main problem for anyone, hence we are “without excuse”.  Yet given our profound distaste for this God-centered construal of the drama of existence, we choose to ignore it and live in fantasies of our own choosing, fantasies much more in keeping with our vanity and selfishness.  In this sense, fallen sinners are ethically intoxicated, morally drunk, and therefore in need of a total realignment.  Like the child who prevents an inflatable ball from rising to the surface of the water (as it naturally tends to on its own) in the backyard swimming pool, we have an inbuilt propensity to hold down  the actual contours of reality under the layers of our seared consciousness when we find them to be uncomfortable or ill-suited to our desires.  What else do you think is really going on in every relationship where both parties are consistently convinced after every argument that they alone are right and justified and the other person is solely at fault?  It takes a heavy dose of unreality to be that daft.   Being “sober” means, above all else, rejecting this entire anti-God state of affairs that we have created and continue daily to maintain with unbelievable committment.  It means engaging with reality, ruthlessly and unapologetically, in the light of all that God has shown us in Christ about ourselves and our world and Him.

This still leaves the why question, though.  Why ought we always and in every situation to strive for this kind of spiritual sobriety?  To be frank, isn’t this kind of moral earnestness a bit overdone, not to mention impossible?  Can’t Christians just coast on auto pilot during some days or even seasons of life?   Where is the harm in that, as long as we are mostly serious about our faith the rest of the time? 

I am sure that there must be dozens of important and legitimate reasons for habitual moral alertness that could be persuasively made, but I find C. S. Lewis’ rationale in the quotes below to be cause enough for me to sober up and live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh:

“Does it not make a great difference whether I am, so to speak, the landlord of my own mind and body, or only a tenant, responsible to the real landlord?  If somebody else made me, for his own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself.  Again, Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live forever, and this must be either true or false.  Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever.  Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse–so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable.  But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 74)
 
“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’  I do not think that is the best way of looking at it.  I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.  To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power.  To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness.  Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.  That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another.  They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven.  But I have come to see that they are right.  What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure–or enjoy–forever.  One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at.  But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both.  Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it.  Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not.  The bigness of smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 92-93)

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest.  That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.  The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.  An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridghead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 132)

“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”” (I Peter 1:13-16)

• Lunge with weighed bar t to first cone. Hold the weight overhead and walk balk to start.
• Lunge with weighted bar to second cone. Overhead walk back.
• Lunge with weighted bar to the third cone at the end of the street. Overhead walk back.                    (Women: 45-65lbs. Men: 65-95lbs)

I go to Get Lifted Gym, and every day- like all Crossfit gyms- we have a WOD written out on the board. It is a series of tasks that has to be completed as quickly as possible. Last Saturday’s WODs was so deceiving. It looked easy, but it was one of the hardest I have done- it was the first time I didn’t think I could finish, and pretty much everyone else  felt the same way.

I was pouring sweat, and I had to take it one lunge step at a time. It felt like someone was playing a cruel trick on us and moving the cones further and further back, leaving us to endlessly lunge. I was out there FOREVER! I had 65 lbs on my back and I had to put it down and rest after every 10 steps. It got me thinking- it’s funny how we train ourselves to cope with physical pain, but in life, when trials come we so often abandon our walk of faith.

Have you ever wondered how Jesus felt when he was carrying his cross? The complete cross weighed about 325 pounds. The crossbeam that Jesus carried on his outstretched arms weighed about 125 pounds. He carried this after being beaten with a whip embedded with shards of metal, bone, and pottery. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain that he endured. Yet, it is in the most gruesome of stories that God wrote His love letter to us. It was a cross that only Jesus could bear, and it was only by carrying his cross that God’s will could be done. We no longer have to spend eternity in hell because Jesus was willing to carry his cross.

As followers of Christ we have been commanded to take up our crosses (Mark 8:34). The weight on my shoulders felt heavy, but the cross I bear daily is even heavier. The WOD was almost a physical manifestation of our spiritual walk in life. There were people of all shapes and sizes working out, and everyone was carrying a different weight according to what they could handle. Some people had to be scaled down to a 30 lb bar, while others scaled up and carried over 100 lbs. Regardless of the weight each person was carrying, it was difficult for everyone: every person felt pain, every person felt discouraged. It’s the same in life: every person has a different burden they must bear according to their capabilities. Just like the trainer will not give anyone more weight than they can handle, God will never give you a cross that you cannot carry- He will only give you what will make you stronger.

Every time I put the weight down, everything in my body screamed to leave it there and call it quits. I felt like the cone was mocking me, like I could never really reach it. I had to remind myself of the end goal- I had to remind myself that the trainer would not have given me something I couldn’t do- I had to remind myself that finishing would make the pain all worth it. Everyone goes through trials that drive them to the point of despair. Along the way, it is so tempting to drop our cross and just leave it there. But we have to look be able to see God’s promise at the end of our struggle. We have to remember the God of all creation is on our side. Sometimes we have to stop, but then we remember God’s promise; we remember that He has only given us what we can handle; and we remember that our blessing will be greater than our storm. We remember and we pick our cross back up and press forward. We press forward when it looks as if there is no hope, when those little orange cones are nowhere in sight. We press forward knowing that where we are going will be better than where we came from. We press forward knowing that we are part of a larger plan. We must remember and press forward or we will break under the weight of our cross.

Pick up your cross and remember the source of your strength.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day.” (2 Timothy 4: 7-8)

“We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.”

The Golden Rule

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in the 19th century, as a way to promote fairness in British legislation. Utilitarianism promotes the notion that the most ethical act is that which promotes the greatest good. The hope of utilitarianism is to bring a scientific method to decision making. In making a decision, one calculates the expected utility of different paths, and chooses the one with the highest net utility. In the spirit of utilitarianism, economics depends on a notion of “maximizing utility” to decide which course of action would best promote the greatest good.

After shaping my thinking along these lines for some time, I began to feel some qualms about the seemingly cut-and-dried mode of decision-making that utilitarianism promoted. As a Christian, I took to heart the commandments espoused in the Bible. However, the nature of the commandment of “love the Lord with all of your heart, mind, and soul” and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-40) seemed to be opposed to the calculating ethos that utilitarianism promoted. The former bespoke of a devotion at all costs, while the latter promoted the notion that one would only follow God if such a belief were to promote a greater good for humanity. I started to believe that the firm logic of utilitarianism was the antithesis of a passionate love for God. Jesus’ life seemed to employ no tools of utilitarian considerations in relationships and calling. Utilitarianism still held a slight sliver of its former glory, however, for the lives I most admired seemed to follow utilitarian principles in conducting their actions and lives. Nonetheless, I felt conflicted between my intellectual attachment to utilitarianism and my spiritual devotion to God.

However, I began to realize the missing link in my thinking. If God is perfectly wise and good, and desires our happiness, can we not examine the will of God in more detail by using the tools of ethics? When God has given us only general indications, and does not send us a physical manual detailing His will for our lives, are we not to also rely upon our observations and inclinations in this world? If God gave us reason to calculate and compare, to weigh and measure, then should we not use those powers of mind? I do not believe that we ought to adhere to our initial impressions of cherished creeds when their deeper meaning becomes apparent. To realize that utilitarianism can be a tool by which to do God’s will has been immensely freeing.

My conflict between utilitarianism and Christianity was also a product of my incomplete knowledge of utilitarianism. Recently I read that in Utilitarianism, Mills wrote that Jesus’ statement of the greatest commandment, the Golden Rule to love your neighbor as yourself, expresses “the complete spirit of the ethics of utility” (288).  He states that good estimates of the pleasure consequences of actions require the inclusion of both “Stoic as well as Christian elements” (279). Utility is not measured merely by that which is physically visible or mercenary capital. Utility, to represent a fuller picture of what is meaningful in our lives, must also include the Christian notions of justice, virtue, love, and faith.

Utility requires the consideration of the good of humanity, just as Jesus spoke in parables to model godly living and ethical actions to serve our neighbor and God. I believe that as creatures with free will, we are at liberty to use the tools of reason God has granted us to decide which actions would best characterize our love for God. Thus, I have realized that the tools of utilitarianism and the teachings of Christianity can live harmoniously. Both are guides to our fulfilling the spirit of the Golden Rule, which Jesus himself espoused as the greatest Commandment.

But before Christians complain about its construction, we have to ask ourselves:

Are we loving our enemies?

Are we doing good to those who hate us?

Are we blessing those who curse us?

Are we praying for those who abuse us? (Luke 6:27-28)

Jesus didn’t say, “Love your enemies except when they are doing something offensive” or “pray for those who abuse you except when they hurt your feelings.”*

This sort of attitude is not helpful, constructive, or loving. A better analogy might be this: should Christians build a church in Hanoi? We bombed and killed many Vietnamese in the name of fighting communism (and atheism). Yet I doubt that these protestors would be as upset about that idea. It is easy to be more charitable to those who share your faith.

It is fine to say that the Muslim Cultural Center shouldn’t be there, or to say that it’s too offensive, or too soon, or too painful. So long as we say those things while expressing the love that Christ demands of us first! I haven’t seen a lot of love in the conversations on the subject. Sometimes loving just means listening to the other side! If people actually opened their ears to listen to those who are trying to found the cultural center, I think the discussion could be much different.

Daisy Khan, the executive director of the American Society of Muslim Advancement, said in 2009 on the O’Reilly Factor: “The closeness of the center to Ground Zero, first and foremost, is a blow to the extremists. And you know we Muslims are really fed up… of having to be defined by the actions of the extremists. You know, we are law abiding citizens, we are faithful people, we are very good Americans, and we need to project a different message of Islam – one of tolerance, love, and the kinds of commonalities we have with other faith communities. The center will be dedicated to promoting what it means to be Muslim, but also, what it means to be American.”

Many Muslims who support the center do so out of a desire to demonstrate that not all Muslims are responsible for 9/11 (just as all Christians were not responsible for the Crusades). While we can argue whether or not this is wise, discussing how it will affect the families of the men and women lost in the attack or the firefighters who died trying to save them, we shouldn’t take offense when we see the spirit behind the building the center. We can discuss rationally and reasonable if it’s a good idea; we can try to figure out a course of action that is charitable and loving and kind to all those involved. Even if they do build the center, Christians must remember Matthew 5: 39 – “But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

I think the best (or at least the most entertaining) piece I’ve read on the subject was from a blog I stumbled across a few of days ago. Courtesy of James Brett, a mother’s take on the situation:

“THAT’S IT!  I. have. had. E…NOUGH!  I’m sick and tired of you two arguing all the time.  You boys are entirely too old to be acting like this.

Islam, you’re 1400 years old and should know better than to wittingly aggravate your brother like this; and your “This is not actually Ground Zero — I’m not touching, I’m not touching” routine is not going to cut it this time, mister.

And you, Christianity, I can’t believe I’m listening to a 2000 year old whine and cry about where someone else wants to play with his toys.  This is a shared house, and what do you think gives YOU the right to control where everybody else goes and what they do there?!”

*Note that I don’t think that those who are starting the Center are our enemies or that they hate us. How much easier should it be then, for us to pray for them and love them and bless them?

Recently I’ve been plodding through 1 Corinthians in my Greek New Testament.  Two passages in particular have stuck out to me by virtue of the stark variance that exists between what Paul actually writes, and how almost every English translation changes it.  In 5:1, Paul rebukes the apathetic tolerance of sexual misbehavior in the community by pointing out that this particular display is so revolting, it is actually of a sort that not even “pagans” would be willing to put up with.  At least, so go the standard translations.  But the word rendered “pagans” is actually “Gentiles.”  Wait, but aren’t the Corinthians all Gentiles?  Yes.  But it gets even more interesting.

In 12:2, Paul contrasts the past idolatry and present (genuine) spiritual experience of these Christians by reminding them of their futility back ”when you were pagans.”  Yep, you guessed it.  Again, the word is “Gentiles”–and always translated as such in other similar contexts in the NT documents–not “pagans.”  Perhaps driven by the legitimate recognition that the church in Corinth consisted entirely of ethnic Gentiles, the English translations mute the embarassment by spiritualizing Paul’s vocabulary.  Yet by doing so, I think we lose something significant. 

A few years earlier, I had noticed this strange pattern elsewhere in the Pauline letters–namely, that when addressing Gentile Christians, Paul seems inconsistent in his use of the term.  On the one hand, there are countless occurrences of “Gentiles” (ethnoi) in his writings that refer to the cultural/racial heritage of these early Christians (Galatians 1:16, 3:8, 14, Romans 1:16, 3:9, 3:29, Ephesians 2:11, 3:1, etc.).  On the other hand, there are other passages where this usage appears to be contradicted, or at least retracted.  Consider the following:

I Corinthians 5:1–”It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among the Gentiles, for a man has his father’s wife.”

I Corinthians 10:1–”For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea.” [of course, the actual term Gentiles does not appear here, but we cannot miss the shocking implications of Paul referring to the Jewish people of the Exodus generation not as "my" fathers in a letter addressed to a bunch of unclean Gentiles, but rather "our" fathers.  In all branches of Judaism, this idiom was reserved for ethnic Jews alone]

I Corinthians 12:2–”You know that when you were Gentiles you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.”

Ephesians 4:17–”Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.” (cf. 2:11, 3:1, 3:6, 3:8)

I Thessalonians 4:3-5–”For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”

I Peter 4:3–”The time that is past is sufficient for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” [While there are some scholars who believe I Peter was written exclusively to Jewish Christians, I agree with the majority position that the audience was primarily Gentile Christians]

The evidence, so far, is a mixed bag.  Confusing, even.  Imagine a local pastor here in the U.S. exhorting his congregation passionately: “Do not live like the Americans!”  It would strike us as a peculiar way of talking, to say the least.  So it would appear that in at least some sense, Gentile Christians remain very much Gentiles when they enter the people of God.  In another sense, however, they are no longer Gentiles.  Then what are they, really?  Are they Jews?   That idea surfaced early on in the church’s history, of course, and attracted more than one fierce ”anathema” from Paul’s pen for its blatant stupidity.  No, everything in the NT militates against that interpretation, even though I do think it is quite appropriate to say that Gentile Christians are “grafted” into Israel, the true people of God.  But that is hardly an ethnic or cultural claim.  What, then?  Here I find a third category of texts helpful in finally piecing together the puzzle:

Galatians 3:28–”There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 9:24–”Even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.”

I Corinthians 1:22-24–”Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 

I Corinthians 10:31-32–”So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.  Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God.”

This last passage is especially instructive, as it makes more explicit what is clearly assumed in the others: namely, that Christians–whether Jew or Gentile, black or white, male or female, slave or free–are given a new identity in Christ that transcends their old cultural allegiances, while at the same time preserving their cultural locations.  There is a new distance that the gospel creates, and yet a real belonging still remains.  I am still an American, and still white, yet as a Christian I find myself having far more in common with an African brother or an Argentinian sister than I do with those of my own family or culture or racial makeup or country who do not embrace the gospel and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord of all. 

By the grace of God, I now ascribe ultimate significance to Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, and all else that once dominated my thoughts and my affections, my values and my priorities, takes second place.  In this sense, I am very un-American and very un-white, just as that brother is very un-African and that sister very un-Argentinian compared to the social dynamics in play all around them.  For the one thing that every culture and every race outside of Christ shares in common is idolatry (Romans 1:18-32).  But Christians are no longer idolaters, even though most of us are still Gentiles.  Thus, we are no longer Gentiles (or Americans, or whatever) in the most important sense, while at the same time we continue to socially inhabit our God-given racial and cultural identities.  Indeed, we unabashedly embrace them in every way possible that avoids the stain of idolatry.

It was his insightful recognition of this dynamic that led the early Christian writer Aristides (2nd century) to claim, in his Apology, that Christians were not actually Jewish or Gentile, but rather constituted a new third race: the people of God.  Many have quite understandably criticized Aristides for his unqualified use of this category, but as long as the disclaimers I have offered here are acknowledged, I think Aristides is on the side of the angels. 

More than any other theologian, however, I have been particularly spurred on by the writings of Miroslav Volf to grasp the momentous implications of these realities born of the gospel:

“The courage to break his cultural and familial ties and abandon the gods of his ancestors (Joshua 24:2) out of allegiance to a God of all families and all cultures was the original Abrahamic revolution.  Departure from his native soil, no less than the trust that God will give him an heir, made Abraham the ancestor of us all (see Hebrews 11:8)…the ultimate allegiance of those whose father is Abraham can be only to the God of ‘all families of the earth,’ not to any particular country, culture, or family with their local deities.  The oneness of God implies God’s universality, and universality entails transcendence with respect to any given culture… Christians can never be first of all Asians or Americans, Croatians, Russians, or Tutsis, and then Christians.  At the very core of Christian identity lies an all encompassing change of loyalty, from a given culture with its gods to the God of all cultures.  A response to a call from that God entails rearrangement of a whole network of allegiances…Departure is part and parcel of Christian identity.” (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, pp. 39-40)

“Each culture can retain its own cultural specificity; Christians need not ‘lose their cultural identity as Jew or Gentile and become one new humanity which is neither.’  At the same time, no culture can retain its own tribal deities; religion must be de-ethnicized so that ethnicity can be de-sacralized.  Paul deprived each culture of ultimacy in order to give them all legitimacy in the wider family of cultures.  Through faith one must ‘depart’ from one’s culture because the ultimate allegiance is given to God and God’s Messiah who transcend every culture.  And yet precisely because of the ultimate allegiance to the God of all cultures and to Christ who offers his ‘body’ as a home for all people, Christian children of Abraham can ‘depart’ from their culture without having to leave it (in contrast to Abraham himself who had to leave his ‘country’ and ‘kindred’).  Departure is no longer a spatial category; it can take place within the cultural space one inhabits…The proper distance from a culture does not take Christians out of that culture.  Christians are not the insiders who have taken flight to a new ‘Christian culture’ and become outsiders to their own culture; rather when they have responded to the call of the Gospel they have stepped, as it were, with one foot outside their own culture while with the other remaining firmly planted in it.  They are distant, and yet they belong.  Their difference is internal to the culture.” (p. 49)

“Both distance and belonging are essential.  Belonging without distance destroys: I affirm my exclusive identity as Croatian and want either to shape everyone in my own image or eliminate them from my world.  But distance without belonging isolates: I deny my identity as a Croatian and draw back from my own culture…There is a reality that is more important than the culture to which we belong.  It is God and the new world that God is creating, a world in which people from every nation and every tribe, with their cultural goods, will gather around the triune God, a world in which every tear will be wiped away and ‘pain will be no more’ (Revelation 21:3).  Christians take distance from their own culture because they give the ultimate allegiance to God and God’s promised future.” (pp. 50-51)

Indeed, the followers of Jesus, whatever their ethnic and cultural identities might be, nonetheless possess the status of ”a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”  [I Peter 2:9-10; cf. Exodus 19:4-6]

How, then, should we live?  Peter does not leave the matter in doubt: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.  Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable.” (2:11-12)