Hate Religion but Love Jesus? Think Again!

The video 'Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus' recently went viral, with a number of my friends even falling for this anti-religion propaganda.

I was one of those who was not so quick to jump onto the 'Love Jesus but Hate Religion' bandwagon, and in an article I recently published with the Colson Center I explain why. Here is one of the points I made:

In this popular video a young man trumps out all the same worn-out arguments against the Christian religion that God-haters have been bringing forward ever since the French Enlightenment (i.e., that religion creates wars, produces hypocrites, brings bondage, etc.) The video climaxes in the claim that Jesus came to abolish religion.

While some of my friends have tried to argue that the speaker in this video is only talking about false religion, it is significant that one of the reasons so many Christians repudiate the term ‘religion’ is in order to self-consciously downplay the public and corporate aspects the term immediately brings to mind.

Another reason why the term ‘religion’ is falling out of favor is because it is considered cool to pit the relational aspect of Christianity against the structural and ecclesiastical connotations, with the term ‘religion’ being emblematic of the latter. As you’ve probably heard people say before, “Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship.” The only problem is that this false dilemma is about just as illogical as if someone were to claim that marriage cannot be a close relationship if it is also an institution. The love relationship of marriage depends on the integrity of marriage as an institution, just as our relationship with Jesus depends on the integrity of the religion in which that relationship is situated. 

If you are interested in reading further about the problems with the 'Love Jesus hate Religion' movement, you might want to get hold of some of the resources I share in the following articles:

Don't Try to Find Jesus on Your Own

The Glories of Institutional Religion

The Implications of Digitizing Scripture

 

We all come to online texts with a different set of expectations that we bring to a book. We read books cover to cover, and even when we scan it tends to have a sequential quality to it. But research has shown that the average person does not read a webpage from left to right and from top to bottom. Instead they skip around, scanning for relevant information. (See the study released in 2008 by the research and consulting group nGenera).

 

While reading, and especially silent reading, works against the brain’s natural predisposition to constantly shift its attention from one object to another, reading online does just the opposite: it feeds the brain’s propensity for distraction. It is not difficult to see this at work. From pop-ups, to animations, to email notification, to live feeds to hyperlinks , the internet seems designed to distract us from one thing to focus our attention onto something else. When we go online, we enter what Cory Doctorow has appropriately termed an “ecosystem of interruption technologies.” Our attention is scattered amid a cacophony of stimuli, inundated with the type of mental stimulation that feeds off “small, rapidly dispensed pieces of information.”

 

In short, the calm, focused and linear mind of the reader is being pushed aside by what Nicholas Carr has called “a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts – the faster, the better.”

 

This suggests that our reading habits when we’re online will be considerably different to how we read a book, or even to a newspaper or magazine. The question is whether this differentiation can be sustained in the face of the increasing digitization of books. As everything from the King James Bible to the latest bestsellers are put in digital format, will the book begin to embody the furniture of the online environment, namely “cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning” ? If so, what are the implications for the church’s use of scripture? Should we resist the digitization of scripture, or does the form of a book even matter?

  

These are some questions that I have addressed in my series of articles "From the Kings James Bible to the i-pad." To read these articles, click on the following links:

 
From the King James Bible to the i-pad (Part 1)

From the King James Bible to the i-pad (Part 2)

From the King James Bible to the i-pad (Part 3)


 

The Sweetness of Mormonism

My book Saints and Scoundrels is not just detached facts about good guys and bad guys. In every chapter I endeavor to draw out lessons that can be applied in our daily walk with Christ.

Here is a point I make at the end of my chapter about the villain Joseph Smith. These reflections arose from my fascination with the way Smith's followers, the Mormons, are able to so successfully perpetuate the faith to the next generation. While the Latter Day Saints represent only 1.7% of America’s adult population, they have the largest retention rate of any religious tradition in America.

Joseph Smith's Vision

The way the Latter Day Saints have achieved self-perpetuation has not primarily been through conversion but through organic growth from within. Being encouraged to have large families plays a key part in this process. But even more significant is the fact that Mormon children are raised not simply to accept their parents’ religion, but to love it. In Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Lecture he noted, “In vain does one repeat what the heart does not find sweet.” Mormons repeat what they are taught because they have been trained to find it sweet. One major reason for this is the sense of community shared by those within the movement – a strange antidote to the individualism in which the movement was birthed. The Latter Day Saints look after each other, put a high premium on loyalty to the extended family, practice hospitality in one another’s homes, and intentionally structure their parishes in a way to facilitate a sense of community among their members. Children growing up in this environment simply do not want to leave it.

The rest of us stand to learn a valuable lesson here. As Christian parents our task is not merely to pass on the truth to our children; rather, we must endeavor to show them that the truth is also lovely. Many Christian young people have willingly walked away from a faith they knew to be true because they were enticed by the illusory attractiveness of idols. But few will abandon a faith they believe to be both true and beautiful. The deceptiveness of Mormonism is that it is packaged in such a way so that the youth find it beautiful.

Salvo Pump

Blasting holes in scientific naturalism, marveling at the intricate design of the universe, and promoting life in a culture of death; 

Critiquing art, music, film, television, and literature, interrupting mass media influence, and questioning the sanity of our consumerist lifestyle;

 

Countering destructive ideologies, replacing revisionist fictions with undeniable facts, and paring away political correctness;

 

Debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence;

 

Recovering the one worldview that actually works. 

The above is from the mission statement of Salvo magazine.

If that isn't already enough to interests you in subscribing to Salvo magazine, the clincher is that nearly every issue includes an article by me.

The articles I write for Salvo explore everything from political correctness to the influence of the media on our sexuality. Although most of the articles that appear in the magazine are only available in the print edition, Salvo has kindly put some of my past articles online, including

• The Illusionist  How Herbert Marcuse Convinced a Generation that Censorship Is Tolerance and Other Politically Correct Tricks
  
  
• Baby Freeze  Is Population Control the New Solution to Global Warming?
  
  
• Gender Benders  Is My Sexual Identity an Accident Just Waiting to Happen?
  
  
• The Neuro Transformers: Culture and the Malleability of the Human Brain

In addition to the magazine articles, Salvo has also hired me to write a daily blog post for their blog, 'Signs of the Times' beginning this Wednesday. You can subscribe to my daily blog post here or just visit the website everyday.

Subversive fiction

Fiction is a powerful tool for portraying truth, and this is why fictional movies have such power. They affect you on a deeper level than mere fact. But it is also for this reason that fictions can be so subversive. In his book Intellectual Morons, Daniel Flynn describes why fiction has been central to utopians and social engineers throughout the ages

"Fictional expression is so appealing to Utopians precisely because anything, no matter how ridiculous, can be made to seem realistic....What fails in real-world practice is often an unmitigated success in film, on the stage, or in the pages of a novel. ...the cultural message might be subtle, and as a result it can have a greater impact. Propaganda can be particularly effective in entertainment because people are supposed to suspend reality when they watch sitcoms, movies, plays, and other dramatic performances. With enough theatrical reptition, the abnormal becomes normal, and far-fetched ideas seem plausible."

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The Republican Election

Americans are probably sick and tired of hearing news about the election, but for the sake of my foreign readers, it may be helpful to see the explanation I wrote four years ago about how the process of electing a president actually works in America.

Additionally, the following summary which I recently wrote for the Christian Voice newsletter may be helpful. (It was written prior to Romney's Super Tuesday victories, most of it still applies.)

The Politics of Literary Criticism

In an article I recently published with the Colson Center, I bemoan the way that Postmodernism has turned  literary criticism into merely one more instrument for advancing political agendas.

Through a twisted course that has involved the influence of German hermeneutics, French language theory, and the American social sciences, we have arrived at a place where the intention of the author counts for very little when we approach a written work.

Thus, throughout the 20th and 21st century we have witnessed Jungian interpretations of Homer’s Odyssey, Marxist interpretations of Plato’s Republic, poststructuralist interpretations of the New Testament, post-9/11 readings of Milton’s Samson Agonistes, socialist interpretations of the American constitution, etc., ad infinitum. 

Did Homer actually intend for the journey of Odysseus to be an allegory of Jungian archetypes? Did Saint Paul really intend that his words to the Corinthians would not be decoded until the 21st century? Were the framers of the American Constitution really proto-Marxists without realizing it?

After Postmodernism, the answer to these questions is that it doesn’t matter. Since postmodern literary criticism does not have to be anchored to the intent of the writer, there is no longer a court of appeal by which we may adjudicate between the vista of competing interpretations that now accompany any single text.

Unhinged from authorial intent, the science of literary criticism is collapsing into merely another instrument for furthering political agendas and ideologies.

To read more about this in my Colson Center article, click on the following link:

Literary Criticism and Postmodernism 

The EU is NOT a common market

‘Zero-Sum’ Theology and Sacred Space

Economists use the language of a ‘zero-sum game’ to describe a transaction in which one person’s gain is directly tied to another person’s loss. The outcome will always be zero, with one side coming out in the negative and the other side coming out in the positive, unless both sides come out at zero.

 

By contrast, a non-zero-sum situation is that in which the aggregate gains and losses of the interacting parties can be more than zero.

 

The ancient Gnostics didn’t know about game theory, but they tended to treat God’s glory as if it was a zero-sum contest between God and creation. The glory of God, they seemed to think, could only be maintained by denigrating the created order, or at least denying that anything of spiritual value could be derived from the creation. In fact, the Gnostics adopted such a low view of the material world that they ended up denying that Christ even had a physical body. It would be beneath the dignity of the Divine Being, they thought, to have his glory mediated through material flesh. For precisely this same reason the Gnostics were deeply suspicious of the sacraments. Spiritual growth was directly correlated to being disencumbered with materiality, so that final salvation for the Gnostics involved eternal release from the physical body. (To read more about the Gnostic heresy, see my review of Against the Protestant Gnostics and my article ‘Tears in Things’.)

 

In this article I will suggest that one of the temptations of the reformed theological tradition has been a tendency to operate with similar ‘zero-sum’ assumptions. What I am calling a ‘zero-sum’ approach (though the economic metaphor is only a metaphor and should not be pressed too closely) manifests itself in a number of ways.

Keep reading...

Intellectual Disconnect

On November 16 this year, the Barna group published an article summarizing the results of extensive research over the last five. The research focused on young adult church dropouts, and asked questions such as, "Why Are Young Christians Leaving the Church and Rethinking Faith?"

Based on their extensive research, the Barna group debunked the following five myths: 

1. Most people lose their faith when they leave high school.
2. Dropping out of church is just a natural part of young adults' maturation.
3. College experiences are the key factor that cause people to drop out.
4. This generation of young Christians is increasingly “biblically illiterate.”
5. Young people will come back to church like they always do.

What interested me about the research was what they discovered about young Christians being unable to apply the Biblical worldview to their intellectual and professional lives. Even young adults who say they hold to a Christian worldview, often have an intellectual disconnect when it comes to applying that worldview to every area of public life. This intellectual disconnect is often exposed when a Christian goes to college.

Keep reading...

Richard Baxter's Heaven

In Almond's book Heaven and hell in Enlightenment England, he takes a paragraph to summarize the fascinating concept of heaven propounded by our blessed brother Richard Baxter. (If you're uncomfortable talking about 'heaven' like this, just substitute 'new heavens and new earth'):

Though, for Baxter, all joy in heaven would be derived from Gods joy, he, like a number of his contemporaries, did distinguish between the primary glory of the vision of God and a secondary glory which consisted of fellowship with the other Saints and angels. Baxter looked forward to the day when he would sit down with Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David; to the time when he would eternally dwell with Peter and Paul, Augustine and Jerome, and with worthies of the Reformation - Luther, Calvin, Zwingly, Beza, Bullinger, indeed with 'all the saints of all ages, whose faces in the flesh we never saw, whom we shall there both know and comfortable enjoy'. Baxter's heaven is, in the final analysis, a heavenly society.

Further Reading

Jonathan Edwards at His Best

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Feminism and Gender

Salvo magazine has now made available on their website the first article I ever published with them. In the article I discuss the confusion of gender that permeates our contemporary society. I also show the folly in a particular strain of feminist theory which has tried to deny the legitimacy of the gender polarity. Among such feminists is Andrea Dworkin who has asserted that "the discovery is, of course, that 'man' and 'woman' are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs . . . demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both." 

 

Family therapist Olga Silverstein expresses similar sentiments when she urges "the end of the gender split," for, according to her, "until we are willing to question the very idea of a male sex role . . . we will be denying both men and women their full ­humanity."

 

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir is even more blunt: "Women are made, they are not born," she asserts. And since women have been "made" by society, the corollary to becoming more enlightened is that we should strive to unmake the female. 

 

This is exactly what the influential psychologist Sandra Bem has suggested. She would like to see the concept of androgyny so absorbed by the culture that, as Melanie Phillips puts it in The Sex-Change Society, paraphrasing Bem's views, "concepts of masculinity and femininity would cease to have distinct content and distinctions would 'blur into invisibility.'"

 

Susan Moller Okin is equally wistful when contemplating a future without gender. She thinks that "a just future would be one without gender. In its social structures and practices, one's sex would have no more relevance than one's eye color or the length of one's toes."

 

If we take the above statements seriously, then we'd have to say that Nietzsche was wrong when he posited the Übermensch as the pinnacle of the evolutionary process. Rather, true utopia will be found in neither the superman nor the superwoman, but in the liberated unisex being that will emerge out of the liquidation of gender.

 

Other, less radical gender scholars have taken the view that while gender does have coherent meaning, there is no necessary relationship between one's gender and one's biological sex. Thus, it is now standard orthodoxy among sociologists that not all members of, say, the male sex are members of the male gender. (They can produce Venn diagrams to prove this, by the way.) 

To read my entire article, visit Salvo Magazine's website.

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Read my columns at the Charles Colson Center

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Secular Psychology, Nouthetic Counseling and the Bible

Jay Adams 'discovered'
Nouthetic Counseling in the Bible.
But is it really Biblical?

One of my most popular blog posts is an article I wrote last October on the dangers of Nouthetic counseling. Yesterday I found myself in a couple conversations where I had the opportunity to defend the appropriateness of Christians cautiously appropriating elements of secular psychology (an approach that some people have called 'integrationism' to distinguish it from what is called 'Biblical counseling.'). In both these conversations I was challenged to provide Biblical support for my claim that in principle it is appropriate, and sometimes even necessary, for Christians to incorporate secular psychology within counseling contexts.

Rising to the challenge, last night I studied the Bible's teaching on the subject and have gone back and edited my article on Nouthetic counseling to incorporate these Biblical insights. To read the updated version of my article, click on the following link:

 

Why Nouthetic Counseling is Unbiblical

Thoughts are Free...or are they?

When the “peat bog soldiers” were sent by the Nazi’s to work until they died, they took consolation in singing a song titled, “Die Gedanken sind frei” (“Thoughts Are Free”). The idea expressed in the title of this piece - that thought remains the outpost of human liberty – gave a measure of comfort to the prisoners who had been deprived of every other human freedom. At least they could defy their captors in this one remaining quarter: they still exercised control over their minds.

In his dysutopian classic 1984, George Orwell imagined a society in which even this final liberty had been taken away. Using omnipresent surveillance technology, Orwell’s thought police root out and punish those who engage in unapproved thinking. 

Keep reading...