Church Voices

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed; And ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free. - John 8:31-32 (KJV)

Reading the King James Version of the Bible is akin to reading/hearing pirate speech.  Fun and humorous at times, but doesn’t help communicate so well anymore.

Why do we insist on making people learn a new language to know Christ?  Now, I’m fine with learning a new language because we know Christ, such as the desire to learn Greek and Hebrew, or simply the process of learning how to speak in a way that glorifies God, but otherwise we are putting up an unnecessary barrier.  I don’t care what you use for your own devotions (although there will be plenty of words in the KJV that will mislead you if you don’t know better), but to insist that everybody uses that version because it’s the one God ordained is rediculous.

Nothing, apparently.

It’s about time Dawkins had a good exchange with an able defender of Christianity. Claiming a desire “not to further their cause” as his reason for refusing public debate with Christians, Dawkins has remained at a comfortable distance from anyone who could challenge him on equal grounds. He’d much rather verbally harass anyone who doesn’t conform to his own worldview from the podium, a friendly interview, or any other public forum that doesn’t allow attendees to gain any sort of solid ground upon which to make and defend a case. Of course you also have Dawkins being open to the option of confronting Christians who are obviously not prepared to engage him, such as when he randomly showed up at New Life Church and interrogated Ted Haggard.

I am reminded of a video of Dawkins lecturing at RMWC in Lynchburg, VA, during which he was met with several questions from attending theists from Liberty University in the Q&A session. One by one, he made them look like ignorant fools from the stage—not necessarily because their questions weren’t good (some of them weren’t), but because, quite simply, the audience as a whole wasn’t competent enough to identify his shallow responses as such. Rather, they cheered triumphantly during and after each one of his replies. As I watched the video, I was literally convinced that the crowd would have cheered anything Dawkins said, even if it were something like “I’m glad you listeners have no training in formal and informal fallacies.”

It should be no surprise, then, that Dawkins got his foot put in his mouth on Irish radio during his exchange with David Quinn, columnist (and also, as it seems, a fine Christian apologist) at the Irish Independent. The infamous “man of evidence” was reduced to saying “well, I simply deny that” in response to Quinn’s charges. Wow, great response. Without the noise of an audience following his remarks, it’s clear not much noise is coming from Dawkins at all (indeed, the gaps in his arguments are so big that it takes just that to fill them—the mindless ovation of an entire audience). I’m not saying Quinn butchered Dawkins, but had the show lasted any longer than 15 minutes (indeed, it was just getting good) I could very easily see it going that route. You can listen to the recording of the radio talk show featuring Dawkins and Quinn here.

Dawkins is like Britney Spears in the university setting: when you strip him of all the fancy surround sound and digital equipment and backup dancers and voice synthesizers, you have nothing left but a mind-numbing nasal howl. Of course it remains the case that the Dawkins-following atheists play the role of the teeny-bopper drones who actually buy into that studio-produced crap when its Styrofoam infrastructure isn’t exposed, whereas the Christians correctly identified it as crap to begin with.

And before someone tries to charge my thoughts about Dawkins unreasonably biased in lieu of being a Christian theist, consider the testimony of the eminent atheist philosopher Michael Ruse. After reading Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion, Ruse comments, “The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.” The media may be eating Dawkins up right now, but I think they’ll spit him back out soon enough (along with Sam Harris).

As the title suggests, I want to briefly explore the idea of whether or not one can still be a Christian and at the same time reject the Bible. I would answer that question in the positive. But to go any further, I’ll have to unpack what I mean by “reject.”

Reject the Bible as what? Obviously, if one rejects the Bible’s central assumptions as true, such as the existence of God or the deity of Christ, one cannot be a Christian in the Orthodox sense. So I do not think it possible to remain Christian while simultaneously denying such things (despite what the Jesus Seminar, Crossan in particular, will have you believe). I mean to ask whether it is still possible to be a Christian and hold that the Bible isn’t a reliable set of documents or is in some way historically unreliable or untrustworthy.

The question of whether the Bible is historically reliable has been a subject of much research and debate. Here I use the term “historically reliable” to refer to a document which by historical reason can be shown to host information of events that most probably happened at some point in that past. But how much does it really even matter if the Bible is historically reliable on these grounds? It seems to me not much at all, for the central truths of Christianity aren’t contingent on the reliability of scripture. This is why I think one can still be a Christian and reject the Bible as historically reliable—for even if the information in the New Testament, for instance, isn’t or can’t be shown historically reliable, it doesn’t follow that the information therein is not true.

Of course I believe the Bible is and can be shown historically reliable in this sense, but the point is this: the Bible itself is not what warrants Christian belief—rather, the source which warrants Christian belief is the Holy Spirit, who conveys the necessary truths of Christian belief to the subject (the existence of God, the gospel message, the inspiration or even the reliability of the Bible). That’s why I’m not impressed by people like Ken Ham, the die-hard King James users, or anyone else who seemingly condition Christian belief on the basis of one’s particular views on the Bible, who aren’t so much worried about concept as they are construct. That’s also why I find arguing against the reliability of scripture as evidence against Christianity to be moot.

How many times have you heard someone cast skepticism on the Bible as reason not be a Christian? This, if nothing else, would be one way to show how that excuse rings hollow.

Its been proposed, from a blog I enjoy very much, that it can be useful when looking at a thorny issue or situation to ask the question “if I spent three years with Jesus what would I think about this”?

Can this question ever bring clarity? I suppose if someone is acting in a way they know is contrary to the teachings of Christ it could be useful. However, if there is truly a dilemma this question will only re-inforce whatever view was held before. It would only be by going back and re-examining the life of Christ, which in turn would involve turning to scripture (which is what this question was meant to bring clarity to in the first place), that any shift in perception would occur.

How many of you wore the bracelet? You know what I�m talking about. Almost ten years ago you could go anywhere in the country and see anyone from Billy Graham to Dennis Rodman wearing one. Yes, I�m referring to the infamous �What Would Jesus Do� bracelet. I�ll admit, I owned two myself: a green one and a black one. The green one was given to me, but I bought the black one to enhance my rebel without a cause, bad-boy image [you know, �Screw you, Satan, I�m on the other team�].

Derived from the fictional book In His Steps by Charles Sheldon, the entire evangelical nation began asking itself how it would react to certain situations based upon the actions of our Lord and Savior. Now that�s interesting in itself because Jesus was the incarnation of God Almighty and he had this mission to save the world from eternal damnation that had a bit of an effect to his actions. We could debate the theological correctness of even asking WWJD but that�s a swamp that I have no interest in swimin� in. Maybe someone else can do it later.

Anyway, getting to what I really wanted to ask: how true does the American Christian community apply WWJD today?
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Attacks on language…
Without a doubt Christianity depends on revelation. A central belief of Christianity is that God has communicated to mankind. H.G. Wood said, �God would not be God if He could be fully known to us, and God would not be God if He could not be known at all.�

God has to reveal himself to us because…
(1) His transcendance demands it. Because God is transcendent (different from creatures) and thus beyond our knowledge, any knowledge we have of him must depend upon His initiative and disclosure.
(2) Our finitude and sinfulness requires it. Genesis 3:8 tells us that man in his sin tries to hide from God. Therefore revelation from God is crucial to keep the lines of communication open. It is also important to provide truth now that man has a sinful tendency to prefer falsehood (Romans 3:8).

Scripture teaches us that God reveals himself in two ways to mankind. One way is through general revelation, which by nature is limited because its ambigous and non-verbal.

The other way is through special revelation (I prefer specific revelation). Special revelation from God comes in many forms such as historical events, miracles, theophanies, the incarnation. Protestant Christianity has especially favored one type of special revelation over these others: Word revelation.
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A hypothetical question for the 5 people who have discovered this little corner of the interweb. If the denomination you currently worship in were to disappear where would you go and why?

I’m currently in the Restoration movement. And I think I would move to the Eastern Orthodox (EO) church. Not because they’re close in doctrine, they aren’t, nor because I like incense, I don’t. But because they have something that a great many churches have lost in an attempt to be authentic: vast amounts of reverance. The EOs have a reverance for God that many churches lack. They seem to understand that they’re dealing with a being that is both perfect, and that demands perfection. And they act accordingly. I find that trait to be very appealing. None of this “Jesus is my homeboy” crap, or the ever so flippant “WWJD”, nor have I have ever seen an idiotic sign on the front of an EO church that says something like “Got Jesus?” There’s something very appealing about a denomination that takes God seriously.

I just wanted to invite everyone to use the comments to answer this question. I think it might be fairly amusing to see what traits of what denominations people find to be appealing.