IrContent

OK, so it’s that time again - April Fool’s Day. I hope you get the chance to put one over on someone deserving of such. I wish to address another foolish prank - one that concerned but ill-informed Christians cannot seem to get out of their systems. Every so often I get the dreaded mass e-mail forwarded to me and a zillion others from some panicked Christian who thinks the atheists are about to remove Christianity from the airwaves, or stop Christmas, or something (not that atheists aren’t pugilistic enough to attempt such things). But this one is a hoax, a fraud, an urban legend. And what it does is ruin credibility by exposing gullibility. The e-mail will say something to the effect of:

Madalyn Murry O’Hair (or her “organization”) whose effort successfully eliminated the use of the Bible Reading and Prayer from public schools fifteen years ago has now been granted a Federal hearing in Washington, D.C. on the same subject by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Her petition, (fill in the blank), would ultimately pave the way to stop the reading of the Gospel on the air waves of America. . . blah blah blah.

Some variations include the “Touched by an Angel” series being removed from TV for saying “God,” or the outlawing of Christmas (yes, I’m serious). This will be followed by an impassioned plea to contact the FCC to stop this threat. Imagine how many people actually do this! Well, it’s simply not true. According to http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/fcc.asp (a site that should be in everybody’s Favorites folder):

“Madalyn Murray O’Hair never petitioned the FCC to ban religious programming nor was she ever granted a hearing by that regulatory body to discuss the matter. . . . there is no federal law or regulation that gives the FCC the authority to prohibit radio and television stations from presenting religious programs. . . . The real petition the FCC was asked to consider
was filed in December 1974 and defeated in August 1975.”

This false rumor has been debunked for over 30 years yet still continues to circulate! Wow people, it’s time to wake up!

I suggest that anyone getting one of these mass e-mail do a “Respond To All” and nip it in the bud as quickly as possible (don’t just reply to the sender - it’s their fault for not checking it out and the damge they could cause is not worth their pride).

Occasionally in conversation I hear (or overhear) someone longing for the “first century church” (whatever that is). This is usually in the context of correcting alleged problems in belief or practice with the church today. The solution, it is thought, is to get back to a more pure church - to a time before the waters got so muddied up. I think that in reality this might not be such a good idea.The New Testament has an unusual organization, and failure to recognize this can cause some problems. First, it is not chronological in either content or time of writing. The arrangement is sort of a hybrid of both with additional length considerations. So for example although Luke and Acts are basically a single book in two parts they are separated by the Gospel According to John which was written much later. This order is easy to understand - John is a Gospel and so it is grouped with the other gospels and the contents of Acts are historically later than that of the gospels. Paul’s letters (”epistles”) were mostly written during the time period covered by Acts but they are in canonical order apparently according to length.

ANYWAY . . . the point is that if we arrange the epistles in order of when they were written we see a better picture of this “pure, early church.”

Galatians is the only one with serious questions on dating because there are two possible recipients but most that I have read place it first. Oddly, this is the only Pauline epistle that has no praise in it whatsoever. Paul is mad in this letter. He is mad because the Galatians have bought into a false gospel. Paul basically says that anyone peddling a false gospel will be damned.

1 and 2 Thessalonians are next. These were praiseworthy churches but they were often confused regarding end time events and some became so obsessed with end time fever that refused to even do their jobs. Paul had to nip that problem in the bud.

Next we have 1 and 2 Corinthians. Sheesh, these guys proudly accepted sexual perversion in the church, they were a divisive personality cult, and their worship was suffering from many disorders.

You get the picture. The first 5 letters Paul wrote were to written to correct error. False gospels, end time obsession, sexual perversion, division, disorder . . . Maybe the real problem is that we’re too much like the early church.

There was an article recently criticizing the use of sexually titillating ads to get people into church. Although using sexual ads to get people into church is ridiculous of course, and suffers from the same problems as most seeker sensitive methods, I actually think this particular article went a bit over the top. I think that the Church in general has not followed “the world” in its attitude about sex so much as it has followed Roman Catholicism’s low view of sexuality. Instead of embracing sexuality as part of our humanity the Church seems to avoid the topic at all costs. But where there is a void of teaching it will be filled by something. This is one reason cults flourish in many areas where Christian missionaries who were not trained in worldview apologetics and philosophy have been. They simply preach the gospel, start a church, and leave the new believers with no direction as to how to deal with many issues. False ideas easily creep in. I think that for many Christians the world has filled the void of sexuality because it’s an off-limits topic in the Church. Song of Solomon is in the Bible along with the Ten Commandments, but it is rarely if ever preached (and never in the original Hebrew!). Thus, Christians - especially those saved later in life - do not have a chance to have their erroneous views corrected. They often get their views on sexuality from Hollywood instead of God.

The idea that children must be protected from knowledge of sexuality demonstrates this attitude. Perhaps if sexual education were not a considered taboo then children would not have to be “protected” from it. Why protect children from truth? That which is hidden or considered taboo is only more enticing. Christian education can remove some of the mystery and help children entering adolescence understand why sexuality needs to be saved for marriage.

Of course there are appropriate and inappropriate means for communicating these truths, but completely ignoring or hiding from sexual topics in a Christian home does not protect children. If anything it opens them up to deception later. They’re going to be exposed to sexuality if they live in this world one way or another, so why not educate them with the truth before the world gets a chance to fill them with lies? Explaining sexuality from a Christian perspective and using age-appropriate terms and methods can serve to short circuit what children will eventually hear on the playgrounds or see on TV or in movies.

Sex within a Christian marriage is ordained and commanded by God. It is not some dirty little secret that Christians should be embarassed about. In fact, shouldn’t Christians be the best at what God wants them to do? I don’t think it would be a bad thing to let the world know that Christian sexuality is the hottest thing going instead of letting them take the lead as we have in practically every other area of life (art, science, philosophy . . . ). What we don’t keep we give to the world - and we shouldn’t be surprised when what we give over to the world is sinfully twisted by them.

For some interesting info on the topic of Christianity and sexuality see www.xxxchurch.com.

Last weekend I spoke at the first annual Spiritual Counterfeits Conference (not to be confused with the Spiritual Counterfeits Project) on the topic of Seventh-day Adventism (SDA). My title was “SDA: Cultists or Christians?” I chose this specifically to generate interest in just what a cult is, because many of the other talks began with that conclusion and proceeded to answer the issues with their particular group. But I wanted to explore not only what SDA’s believe, but how those beliefs objectively affects their status as a religious group. What ended up happening in the course of my research was unexpected and really demonstrates what I think religious dialogue should be.

In my studies I noticed that many critics of SDA looked not to current statements of faith but to older quotes from founding or important members. Now, this seemed fair enough - but as I looked into more current writings it seemed that many of the problematic statements from the early days of Adventism had been corrected or explained in such a way that the problems largely disappeared. It seemed to me that the harsher critics did not really care what SDA’s claimed to believe, but rather the critic’s explanation of certain statements made by SDA’s were taken to be authoritative and then criticized.

This reminded me of one of my debates with a Muslim over morality. He believed that Christians had no moral ground for objecting to many evils because the Bible did not provide a foundation for them. His entire argument relied on a very narrow view of moral instruction and authority: that only a specifically detailed law can serve for moral instruction. In my opening statement I pointed out the multitude of sources for moral authority that the Christian had at his disposal (conscience, government, scriptural principles, etc.) and showed how they covered all possible ethical choices. Rather than attempt any kind of a counter, the Muslim simply ranted on and on about how Jesus never gave the proper length of a skirt and extrapolated from that the idea that Christians should support Girls Gone Wild.

OK, pretty stupid. But it illustrates a common problem for both Christians and non-Christians. The Muslim was reading into Christian morality the rules from Islamic morality. All he succeeded in doing was showing that the Bible did not contain the kind of moral instruction (on this issue at least) that a Muslim desired. He could not bear the thought of using principles for guidance instead of detailed instructions like he kept quoting (on this issue at least) from the Koran (the fact that he had no answer to a hypothetical homosexual marriage involving a sex-change operation shows how reliance on childlike rules often fails!). I have seen this in Christian circles as well, however. In my review on SoulDevice of a Christian video series on Rock-n-Roll I showed how the host would often read his own beliefs into a secularist’s statements and then criticize them for it. This is simply not fair.

So anyway, back to my SDA project. In order to clarify my findings I simply called a representative for the SDA and asked him what SDA’s thought of certain things. He was very gracious, we had a great talk, and he even ending up coming to my presentation. At the end we stood together at the front fielding questions from the audience. It was great! Not only did my credibility go up in the eyes of my audience, but I knew for myself that I had not simply bashed a bunch of strawmen while pretending to expose error. Further, we remained friendly even knowing full well that we did not agree on many issues.

My mentor Norman Geisler once said that we have not earned the right to critique opposing views until we can state them to our opponent’s satisfaction and have learned something from them. I wish both sides of many debates both within and without the Church would take those words to heart (especially on the internet where it is so easy to remain anonymous and not have to face personal accountability for one’s words).