Here’s some news for those who might not know: my newest foray into the non-fiction, Christian living / theology territory, releases next week Wednesday, 3 February. It’s called Jesus Crushes Sin: A down-to-earth, Jesus-centred holiness for those who keep losing.

It’s a book for the losers in Christian living. Those of us who know what God expects of us, but find we just can’t do it. We never quite seem to reach the place where we know we’re supposed to be. And the “good news” doesn’t seem to be so good anymore.

When I started writing I wanted to release my Christian-specific books for free to the public, and print versions at cost. I just think that kind of stuff should be free. But, of course, a writer has to also make a living. Plus, many people have told me that they actually want to support me financially, but if I keep doing everything for free they can’t really do that, unless I take donations (which I’ll feel a bit weird about, to be honest).

Over the years I’ve never quite known what to do.  But now I think I’ve finally found a way to do both, and why on earth I never realised it at first, I don’t know.

1. I’ll be offering up the ebook and PDF versions of Jesus Crushes Sin at my website for free download from 3 Feb.
2. The paperback version (I’m still busy with the printers) will be made available at just above cost, to give me some margin for calculation errors (I’ve learned that there are all sorts of sneaky costs that come in with print at various stages of getting it to people). It’ll be available directly from a distributor’s website. The link will be made available here when it’s all ready. ** UPDATE ** – it’s now available for preorder.
3. Those who want to support me financially and want the ebook can purchase it from their favourite platforms. All the main distributor links will be on my site. ** UPDATE ** now available for preorder.

I think that’s a great compromise.

** UPDATE ** The book can now be preordered.

From February 3rd, you can download the free ebook here at my website.

I’m really excited about this book as I’ve been working on it for about three years, on and off! It’s finally ready, and I think what it has inside is going to be super helpful for people who struggle to live the Christian calling.

After having read Eusebius McKaiser’s recent article “Why God’s not a moral imperative”, having attended the debate he had with Christian apologist John Lennox, and having engaged with him on my personal blog (Why Eusebius McKaiser’s article is a perfect example of apologetics gone wrong) I felt – in the interests of fairness – to present some thoughts from “the other side”.

For those who didn’t read McKaiser’s article or know about the debate, McKaiser, as an agnostic, asserts that we don’t need God to know what is right and wrong. Of course I cannot speak for all Christians, but there are several problems with McKaiser’s attempt to put Christian ethics on the “backfoot” in an “800 word article” that are at least worth thinking about. (By the way, it was 1278 words – I say cheekily.) The main problem is this: I think he may be barking up the wrong tree.

McKaiser’s sentiments appear well-founded but I think he is ignorant of Christian theology and philosophy which has addressed the problem in many ways. So much so, that in many respects, Christian theology actually agrees with McKaiser’s analysis.

Really? Yes. McKaiser says he was “shocked that Lennox’s main response” to him “was that he partly agrees” that God is not needed for morality. I didn’t find it shocking but consistent. Christian theology forces Lennox to do so. The book of Genesis says that God didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat from the “tree of knowledge of good and evil”. Many people don’t think about that. It wasn’t a tree of sin or of pleasure or even of just knowledge, but knowledge of good and evil. This is why Christian theology asserts an interesting philosophical point: our knowledge of good and evil is actually core to our problem.

We know what’s right but we repeatedly fail to do what’s right. We constantly judge others by standards we believe in but can’t even live up to. We live under guilt and try to justify our actions to get rid of it. We’re an inherently self-righteous and prideful bunch to be honest, and Christian theology teaches that God didn’t want us to live by good and evil but in a trust-filled relationship with Him.

Many miss the relational aspect of the Christian God, which is why they are confused about what Christians really mean by faith. Sure, we all know it’s all about a “personal relationship with Jesus” but many just don’t make the link as to how that looks. Many Christians don’t even know, thanks to decades of prosperity name-it-and-claim-it nonsense.

McKaiser says he can “communicate sensible rules to children: ‘Don’t hit your sister, Johnny! It’s wrong to go around just hitting people for no reason my boy!’. He is right and Christian theology actually agrees with him. But atheists and agnostics hardly ever address why Johnny needs to have this communicated to him if he inherently knows it. Most of us know that even though children know right from wrong, they still often choose the wrong. We do it too. All the time. But why?

According to Christianity it’s because we ultimately have a heart problem not a knowledge problem or even an ability problem. (The fact that Christians believe no one has an excuse for not knowing right from wrong actually gets people’s backs up.) The heart problem limits our ability and distorts our knowledge, but those are just symptoms of the real problem.

Agnostics and atheists don’t like this kind of language because it comes close to speaking about a soul or acknowledging a spiritual problem. But that doesn’t mean that we can be accused of thinking what McKaiser and / or others accuse us of thinking. Let’s reiterate: for the Christian, the issue of whether or not we need God to tell us if something is right or wrong isn’t the issue. What is the issue is whether we need God so that we will do what is right. Can anyone be moral without God?

As far as the Christian is concerned, the answer is yes on the one hand but no on the other. “Yes” because we can all be moral to a certain degree, “no” because even when we do what is right our motives and our pride and self-righteousness still come into play. Many an outwardly righteous person is inwardly hateful and full of themselves. We call them hypocrites. And we’re all one.

Jesus was all about this in Matthew 5 – 7. And this is where Christian theology differs from other religions in that it states that we are saved from our propensity to evil (we are saved from sin) by faith (trust in God) because of grace (God’s love for us) instead of works (doing what’s right). Furthermore we can grow morally inside (grow in perfect love) which results in outward action – not by principles or laws or religious codes, but ultimately by God himself living in us (the Holy Spirit). For those wondering: I’m speaking beyond just Protestantism here.

If a society continues down the path of self-righteousness, it eventually ends up not being very righteous at all. All religion faces this problem and this is also my personal problem with modern liberalism. Left to our own, morality goes one of two ways: either to horrific licentiousness or to oppressive legalism. And so the question isn’t whether or not we need God to know right from wrong, it’s whether we need God to live it out consistently.

Does mankind need a parent or not? Christians say we do but others say we don’t. McKaiser says we don’t, but I wonder why we need to teach children any morality at all in his framework (they know it already, why do we have to guide them?) and I have questions around how he doesn’t fall into some kind of moral relativism when he says humankind is learning how to be more moral over time. (“…flowing from social and psychological truths we have come to know about human beings over time like a general negative preference for being beaten up…”). I also think he is speaking beyond epistemology and ventures into ontology here, and such a statement puts his moral realism into a quagmire. But it was only an 800 (1278) word article, not his thesis, and I don’t expect him to lay it all out in this forum.

You’ll have to make up your own mind – just make sure you have good reasons to do so that go beyond, “I just don’t like someone else telling me what to do.”

OTHER POSTS OF INTEREST:

• John Lennox’s response to the debate and subsequent articles

• Winston Mashua, moderator of the discussion, comments: Pondering issue of God and morality

• Jacques Rousseau: John Lennox and @Eusebius McKaiser debate: does morality need God? (atheist perspective)

So what happened? It was invigorating and stimulating, as these debates should be. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was impressed with the turn-out. I loved the brilliance and civility of both speakers. However, I did feel that Lennox could have been stronger, McKaiser could have been clearer. I loved the debate but felt it got bogged down in the wrong areas.

The topic was whether or not God is required for morality. Can morality exist on its own? Or does it require God? (How you frame the question really betrays your bias, doesn’t it?) Each speaker opened up with a brief breakdown of how they came to believe in the existence or non-existence of God. Some interesting points: Lennox said that the conflict between Science and Religion is superficial and then stated, “I am coming to believe that atheism and science don’t mix at all.” From McKaiser’s side, he simply stated that he does not believe that “God exists” is a true claim and all of his philosophical study has never really produced any viable evidence for the existence of God. At the very best you can come to the conclusion there is a deity, but not that the Christian god exists, he said.

But onto the real debate

But this was a debate on morality and it’s here where I felt McKaiser didn’t address the key question I was hoping he would. McKaiser, interestingly enough, believes that objective morality exists, but it doesn’t require God to exist. That was fascinating for me. He is not a moral relativist. (He even stated that relativism is, in his opinion, highly dangerous.) But what does he ground objective morality in? The answer seems to be rationality (or his own rationality, I would imagine, as a starting point). So the question posed to him from Lennox was, “Why do you put so much faith in your own rationality?”

Why does McKaiser believe this is a reliable base? Unfortunately I didn’t feel he answered this question or articulated his position clearly. This for me was really what I wanted to hear. But whether he dodged the question or just didn’t make it clear, I didn’t hear an answer that satisfied me (I’m using that phrase deliberately in a tongue-in-cheek way to McKaiser’s argument about evidence for God). At first he answered the question by highlighting that Lennox is thoroughly convinced of the reliability of scientific method, but makes a jump to believing that water could turn to wine. It was a brilliant challenge and Lennox didn’t really answer it directly in my mind either, but it didn’t really answer the question. I suppose he was saying that Lennox himself places great faith in rationality, but Lennox was clear that the only reason why that is is he believes we are made in God’s image and as a result we share some attributes of God, such as the ability to be rational.

Why does McKaiser believe people have intrinsic value? On what basis does he make that claim? As my friend Wesley asked, “If moral objectivity exists outside of God and we say rape is bad, because that person has value, who / what determines that value?” I wondered: if I must trust my own rationality for morality, how do I know I can trust it? What if I’m actually mentally ill and don’t know?

Some assumptions

So I’m left to play a bit of a guessing game on McKaiser’s position. I wondered if McKaiser was going to bring up some sort of Kantian model for his position, but he didn’t go there. I wondered if he was going to bring in society and “nurture”, or evolutionary arguments, but he seems to reject either of those. It would seem to me that he takes rationality for granted. Where does rationality come from? What is the standard for rationality? Where does that standard come from? Does it come from an external place (society?) or an internal place (EQ?). Is this really about cosmology? (For example, the universe is an ordered place, and therefore we are naturally inclined to order. But of course, the drive for order has resulted in some pretty immoral actions!) Is this really about the conscience? And where does that come from? McKaiser obviously wants to avoid anything that sounds like an inner light or mysterious “knowing” or a soul or even the “heart”, or something along those lines, and talking about the conscience might force him in that direction (and besides, it seems the conscience can be tweaked).

I realise the limits of this sort of debate in terms of time and structure, but I really didn’t feel satisfied by the end that this was answered. Yes, I know my own presuppositions but try my best to be open-minded.

Usually arguments that say we don’t need God for morality seems to venture around the idea of how we “ought” to be. (Lennox brought this up saying it seems people move from “is” to “ought”.) We “ought” to not need anyone to tell us right from wrong, but we all know the world is not like that. (Lennox’s statement that atheism in particular has no argument for the problem of evil was an interesting one.) Simple observation tells us that not all people are rational and not all societies are rational – including some religious ones. So where is this grand objective rationality coming from?

Obviously, given my beliefs, I would agree with Lennox that it comes from something external and bigger than us, built into us as part of our very make-up. That, of course, is God.

Two common answers

There are generally two common answers I find to the question of “If it’s not God, what are you basing your rationality on?” The first is, “It doesn’t need to be God” and then we need to know what it is. Unfortunately, like last night, I never quite find that people who hold that position really get to what it really is. The second is, “Why does it need to be God?” which doesn’t answer the question. That answer is really just being the irritating mountain man seer who only ever answers your questions with a question; or a psychologist who is trained to just ask you questions to help you come to your own conclusions. That doesn’t work for philosophy, though.

Lennox could have been stronger last night and could have pushed this question harder, in my opinion. Yes, there are some questions he didn’t really answer either, but what I really wanted to hear addressed wasn’t – not to a degree that satisfied me, at least!

The point of debate

But don’t get me wrong – I learned a lot last night, which is the point of this sort of debate. It’s about learning, not about winning. All the smack down comments on Twitter and some of the blogs I’m expecting to see today I think will miss this point. Some people seem to go to these things pre-deciding who will “win”. What’s the point of that? You’re never going to learn anything like that.

There was no clear winner last night (there seldom is) but there was a ton of stuff to think about and consider from both sides, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It didn’t get into ridicule zone (which I was afraid it might) and the crowd was fantastic too. Thanks Eusebius and John for an invigorating, enjoyable evening!

LAST LAUGH: Someone put a Dianetics book from L.Ron Hubbard on McKaiser’s seat when he wasn’t looking. Chuckled at that!

(In the article McKaiser advertises his upcoming debate with well-known Christian apologist John Lennox, which will be taking place this Thursday, 7pm, at WITS University JHB’s Great Hall. I’ll live-tweet the debate and blog about it on Friday. My Twitter handle is @RyanPeterWrites.)

McKaiser basically takes religious people apart in his article for being sensitive when their personal beliefs are questioned, especially publically. He is right that “too many religious believers think that debating their beliefs is intrinsically offensive” and that questions about our beliefs should turn us on. He is wrong about how this should be done – or at least he hasn’t explained his position too well.

On one hand, McKaiser states that he “doesn’t mean being offensive is acceptable” but on the other hand he says, “Why do many people who believe in some sort of higher power think that religious convictions are beyond lampooning, ridiculing, criticism or close intellectual scrutiny?”

Unfortunately, ‘close intellectual scrutiny’ and ‘lampooning’ and ‘ridiculing’ don’t really belong in the same sentence. McKaiser says that ideas should be engaged with a ‘mix of reason and ridicule’ but I fail to see how the latter has ever helped the former to take place. He uses Richard Dawkins as a prime example, but it runs against his point – Dawkins has, in recent years, decided that ridicule works better than reason, but all we’re seeing is a quick degrade into irrelevance and silliness.

Much like the comments section at McKaiser’s article. (Don’t read the comments – you’ll waste precious hours of your life.)

If he is talking about comedy, that’s fair and well, but he isn’t. Substitute all that he says about how ridicule and lampooning is perfectly acceptable with homosexuality or race and it all falls flat. In fact, all he would look like then is that wonderful debate-stirring word used for anything these days, ‘bigot’. Why should religious people have to grow thick skin but everyone else is the victim of some vicious hate speech crime if you disagree with their views?

McKaiser’s article represents all that can go wrong with apologetics because it encourages the wrong things. Respect should be encouraged. And so should love.

Respect doesn’t mean that everything is relative and there is no truth and facts fly out the window. Respect simply means that, regardless of your views, I still see you as a person of intrinsic value and treat you as such. Ridicule, however, never does that as it’s about attacking the person.

Unfortunately, anything McKaiser wants to say about morality (that’s what his debate with Lennox will be about on Thursday) is weakened when he says ridicule is a valid form of debate. Does McKaiser have any reason outside of his own relative and changing morality to respect or love someone despite their beliefs? Is that kind of morality something we can build our lives on?

This is the kind of question the debate on Thursday will probably cover. Should be a good one!

In fact, if anything, the real shallow philosophy worth speaking about is the general church culture and hopelessly pathetic theology around depression. Yesterday when I read the news of Williams’ death and how he battled with depression I felt a jab in my heart. I’ve known too many people who’ve lost their lives to this disease. In fact, I think I know more people who’ve battled with this than any other disease, including cancer. And I’ve been a first-hand sufferer of it too.

If you’ve battled with depression you know – modern ideas of success and happiness miss the point. Motivational clichés lack power. I think Robin Williams knew that. I think that’s why he chose the film roles he did.

I know that feeling of being surrounded by friends and family and people who really do love you at a dinner table – and everyone is laughing – and you’re laughing – and suddenly, out of nowhere, something deep inside you changes. It’s hard to explain what it is, but heartbroken kind of does explain it. You literally feel like something inside is broken, as if you’ve just been cut open inside, and it burns. Before you realise it, you’re talking to yourself in your mind about how you’re really not worth anything – that it would be better if you just didn’t exist. All of your fears and your guilt and your absolute inability to win with anything crush any semblance of happiness inside. Some might call it an existential crisis, saying that everyone gets that, but here you’re having an experience where you wish life itself just didn’t exist.

It’s interesting to me that at the age of 63, Williams still hadn’t “gotten over it”. People who don’t really experience this sort of thing to this sort of degree perhaps don’t realise how “getting over it” and “think positively” and all the usual motivational nonsense means precious little. Motivational posters aren’t going to cut it, and your sayings like “your attitude determines your altitude” are just nonsense. And, (some) Christians, “praise music” is not a cure-all. At the wrong time it can do the very opposite to what you think and can diminish faith.

While I don’t think I’ve ever suffered to the degree of others I know (including loved ones in my family) I do think I’ve suffered a bit more than I was ever comfortable admitting when I was going through my worst time. It was then that I realised just how shallow modern theology is – how so much of what we preach from the pulpit is geared for the winners and the successful and the strong and mighty and the able and the moral and the cool and the popular and the leaders.

So much of our modern day preaching is more to do with being a good leader and a success in life and taking it by the horns and being a good example and on and on and on it goes. You must be this, do that, look like this, act like that, and only then will God or anyone else take you seriously. It’s all a formula. People have built ministry empires around providing all the formulas to make you healthy, successful, and a strong, respected leader. Some has its place but most of it isn’t the gospel, it’s just shallow motivational-speak.

Ann Voskamp, in a recent blog post on the subject, says it perfectly when she says: “The Jesus I know never preached some Health Prosperity Gospel, some pseudo-good news that if you just pray well, sing well, worship well, live well and deposit all that into some Divine ATM — you get to take home a mind and body that are well. That’s not how the complex beauty of life unfolds.”

How true. But don’t think it’s just prosperity churches – evangelical churches can place such a big emphasis on leadership and success in that area that the result is fewer leaders, not more, because so many people feel they can’t make the grade, don’t have the right personality, or just don’t have the right ambitions in life. (Meanwhile, 1 Thessalonians 4:11 tells us to live a quiet life!) I often wonder if we now, in the evangelical church, have too many leaders and too little actual pastors. Pastoring is hard work. And thankless.

Over the years when I really had to face my depression head-on I realised that modern Christian pop-theology offers no real answer: it’s too shallow, full of clichés, and only seems to work for the strong. My depression did two things: one, it opened me up to a pornography addiction and, two, it (and the addiction) forced me to really get to the bottom of my faith. In a strange way, I’m thankful for it and even the addiction. It’s brought me to a place where I can say this with experience and conviction: what most people think Christianity is, it actually isn’t. What most people think Christian theology teaches, it actually doesn’t. What most people think Jesus was about, he wasn’t. 

In my struggles I discovered some funny things: Christianity isn’t for the winners at all. It’s not for the big names and the popular. God isn’t actually impressed with big leadership and big ambitions (although we certainly are!). He isn’t into categorising people. He also isn’t just into accepting everything about our sin. He it totally Other, yet we can know him. Jesus wasn’t a success by the world’s standards – he died without creating a political movement or creating a squeaky clean philosophy with all the answers. He himself had to cry, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46.) Read Lamentations and see how real Christianity can get. This is a faith full of promise and positivity without ever side-lining the reality of the brokenness of our world and the souls that live in it. Christian theology isn’t squeaky clean – it makes space for the questions and often only answers by saying: You don’t need answers. What you need is Presence. Intimacy and union with God.

Life is a romance – it’s full of heartbreak and it’s full of beauty. All at the same time. Often beauty and joy actually rise out of the heartbreak. “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” (Psalm 30:5.) There is something deeply perplexing about this and our rational mind finds difficulty in grasping it. It just doesn’t make sense. Yet, actually, it does, if we think of sense in the fullest meaning of the word. Christianity is both rational and experiential, just like life is; and ultimately just like God is. He is not all mind. He is not all spirit. He is a person. Once you come to accept mystery you come to find that mystery is actually far more rational than cold, hard logic.

Williams was an episcopalian, which he jokingly called “Catholic lite – half the religion, half the guilt!” My prayer is that somewhere in there he found Jesus and who he really is. Perhaps he never explored the depths of Christian theology and perhaps he had some other funny ideas, who knows? There is so much rubbish in this world I’m sure we all have some funny ideas that just aren’t true. But Christianity isn’t about knowing the facts but knowing the Person who is true – God the Father, revealed in Jesus Christ.

Recently, John Ellis from Tree63 came under a great deal of fire when he had jokingly said in an interview with well-known personality Gareth Cliff that he had written Christians songs ‘for the money’. He also stated that Tree63 were not a Christian band – in an effort to try and make the (rather tired, by now) distinction between a “Christian band” and a “band full of Christians”.

Over at JohnEllis.co.za, Ellis put the record straight and apologised for the whole ordeal. The money comment was, in Ellis’s words, a “wry joke, badly timed,” and regarding the issue of a Christian band versus a band full of Christians, Ellis says:

“I tried to make the age-old distinction between a band full of Christians and a ‘Christian’ band. It’s a thorny issue that’s been raging since the very first idea of Christian-themed pop music ever surfaced, and any band that has sung about spiritual things in the secular arena (Stryper, U2, Kula Shaker, Delirious?, Switchfoot, Tree63 etc.) has had to field those questions. It can come across as splitting hairs, which is ironic for a bald man to do… essentially Tree63, as ‘Christian’ as it became, was primarily a rock band singing about Jesus, not a church band with a missional agenda and music as second-thought.”

Meanwhile, in the comments section at his post, you can see how people responded. Some happy, others shocked.

Is there such a thing as a Christian dentist?

My brother-in-law, Jonno Warmington, said this to me the other day when we chatted about this: Is there such a thing as a Christian dentist? If you mean a dentist who does his work for the glory of God, well that’s fine and well – that’s what we all do. But if you mean a dentist who only ever does dentistry on Christians; only ever works in Christian mouths; and only ever pulls out Christian teeth; wouldn’t that be a rather odd practice? Most of us wouldn’t think it strange and a sell-out when a Christian dentist says he is happy to work on anyone’s teeth.

But when it comes to music, we seem to think that, for some reason, it ought to be different. In fact, it seems that this is really a general problem for most of Art – there’s some reason why you can’t be a Christian musician, or a Christian writer, or a Christian painter, without looking to use your art exclusively for overt evangelism. Why is this?

Perhaps it’s because of how art appeals to the imagination. But the problem is this: once you try and dictate to an artist what his art is supposed to look like (AKA, how Christian it’s meant to be) you sell the art out to the corporate, one-size-fits-all squeeky clean mass-produced culture. In other words, you actually force the artist to become the very thing you complain about: a sell-out.

Let artists be artists and then you’ll be surprised what they can do. Force them to fit your mould and wishes and you’ll be shocked at how they’ll respond. Never corner an artist. In place of it you’ll get a raging beast who will bite back, feeling trapped and confined. They don’t fit in the box, so why expect them to? Why tell them they must? It goes against the very God-given gift and personality they have.

Christian leaders are not always the best in telling people not to be rock stars

In my younger years, when I wanted to be a rock star, I noticed something that’s worth saying here, even if it is a bit harsh. A lot of Christian leaders had a lot to say to me about my desire to be a rock star, but for some reason they were blind to their own “rock star” ambitions. You know, the very real ambition to become a big deal in the church. A superstar preacher. An apostolic asteroid. The guy with the biggest church and the most influence. And for some reason, all that kind of ambition is okay because a lot of Christian leaders hide behind the idea that all that is “for the advancement of the Kingdom.” Actually, it’s the advancement of their own Kingdom and built on their own need for affirmation, and pastors and preachers and evangelists and apostolic guys need to face the reality and motivation behind the ambition in their own hearts.

I feel perfectly comfortable calling this what it is because I’ve had to work through it. Here’s a post I wrote that spoke a bit about it: I’m not interested in counting for God anymore. This sort of unhealthy ambition is one of those sins in the church that too few leaders bother to address in their own lives but are quick to see in others. I’m by no means pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but I am making the point because I think it does add value, especially when I consider how celebrity focused the evangelical church has become. (Cue this week’s unhealthy finger-pointing furore over Mark Driscoll.)

So, is Christian music important?

In short, I say no. Or, rather, not as much as we seem to think. I believe music is a nice-to-have for church services, but I don’t believe (as I used to) that it’s imperative. Most of the mainstream evangelical church puts a heck of a lot of stock in it, and I can’t really see why any more. We can use music as a “means of grace” (a way in which we connect with God and experience his grace in an intimate way) but there are plenty of other “means of grace” (I use the term loosely, not as some liturgical churches would use it) which seem to get less airtime. In fact, one of the most legitimately Biblical “means of grace”, the breaking of bread, gets far less airtime in contemporary evangelical churches than music – yet there’s scant reference to music in the New Testament.

In fact, we can’t really know for sure how the early church incorporated music into its worship services (one can build a stronger argument for liturgical practices than for the modern day contemporary service, by the way). If we thought about how we’ve put music on a pedestal in Christian living carefully, we wouldn’t get so easily shocked and shout the “sell-out” label when good musicians want to just be good musicians and make a living off it. Rather than do that, why not find ways to support the arts in our country – because you may not realise just how little support it receives in Corporate South Africa.

Psalm 2

1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”

4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.

5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,

6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”

7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.

8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

This is part of a synchroblog on the civil war in Syria set up by Steve Hayes, who wanted to solicit Christian responses to the Syrian civil war. I’ve opened up with Psalm 2 to highlight the fact that throughout all of history, and throughout history to come, the nations will continue to rage and their raging, even when they’re fighting themselves, is ultimately a rage against God and his ways. Ultimately, this show will go on until Jesus returns.

Nations live in peace and live in war, to various degrees. As leaders come and go, policies and models change, every nation will have times in its history where it will rage against God. And sometimes, in that rage, they’ll go to war – with themselves and with others.

Does that all sound harsh? Well, we’re not exactly dealing with an easy subject. But wars are ultimately the result of our deep, human problems, and there’s no denying that.

When we try and ascertain who is right and who is wrong, it’s often difficult to really even know, because the whole thing is just one big mess and no one is really in the right, or the wrong. Sure, it’s been wrong for the Syrian government to act as it has for so many years. But both the innocent and the guilty suffer because of the same underlying problem: rebellion against God.

And so the first part of how a Christian should respond is this: love the innocent and the guilty, because quite honestly, we’re all guilty in some way in the end.

Christian views of the Syrian war and the U.S. involvement

Last week, when all the ho-hum in America was about Obama and his decision to bomb Syria as a warning about chemical warfare (a card I think he played to force Russia’s hand), Christianity Today published an article entitled Three Christian Perspectives on [the] Syrian War. I checked it out but was left scratching my head. I thought: Is this the best the Evangelical Christian world can come up with?

It’s a quick read so head over to the link. But if you don’t have the time, here’s the crux: none of the three views had anything to say at all about the idea of separating Church and State. There’s this underlying belief that the government is supposed to respond in a Christian way. But how on earth can any government respond in a Christian way? Was Jesus’ message of love to your neighbour and abandoned worship to God a message to governments? A blueprint for what rules of law and legislation a government should institute? No, the message was to individuals who make up a group called the Church. This group is God’s called nation within the nations; God’s called-out people within the peoples. We are citizens of another Kingdom regardless of where we are born because, if you recall, we are born again.

We belong to another King and we follow and obey Him relentlessly. In our obedience to Him, we do submit to our authorities (1 Peter 2) and we give to the emperor what is the emperor’s (Luke 20), but we do such things in freedom because we are actually citizens of another Kingdom.

There has never been any other Christian nation besides the Church and there never will be another Christian nation. America is not, and has never, been a Christian nation. No government on this world has ever been a Christian government. South Africa certainly has never been one, which is partly why I get nervous around what some Christian organisations are trying to do about the recent spanking débâcle. Jesus’ intention for the Church is that it would never be a government but be under the government of Jesus, living out his law of love to the world, regardless of who we are and where we’re from.

Christians are called to be pacifists in their personal lives (remember where Jesus said we should turn the other cheek to our enemies?) but no government is ever called to turn the other cheek. Neither is a government ever to rule over its people – a government is meant to protect its people. That’s how we all know it should be, but we all know that all governments are corrupt. In the end, governments are ruled by people, and it’s those people God is interested in and it’s those people who will give an account to God, not to us. God is not interested in democracy, socialism or our just war theories, or any philosophy. He is interested in people. So we should be too.

Christians are to live where they live and be working within the nations, almost like a neutral force, to bring healing to people, and reconciliation between God and people, which will ultimately bear the fruit of reconciliation between people. The Church is not called to be a political peace-keeping movement of any sort.

This is why Christians need to stop trying to “Christianize” cultures through legislation. When we do that, we just become another one of the many forces looking to acquire power and use it for our own means. Even the church largely failed when it was given political power at one stage in Western history. (It is good to note, however, that medieval history is hardly as bad as many of the movies make it out to be. It’s called dramatic effect, folks!)

When we work for justice, which is necessary, we must remember that every system is, in the end, never going to be perfect. It’ll only be perfect when Jesus wraps up all of history in the end and those who trust in Him are made new, while the wicked and sin are dealt with appropriately. Justice can never work as a system, justice only works when someone perfectly just rules. This is the great hope for our faith and ultimately what we’re pointing people to. We are to be involved, but must remember, always, where our first commitments lie. Otherwise we just become part of the problem.

Others writing on this topic

This post is part of a synchroblog (syncronised blog) in which various people write about the same general theme from different points of view, and thus help one to see the bigger picture. Follow the links below to see the other posts. More links may be added later, as more people add their contributions.  If you are participating in the synchroblog, please copy the links below and paste them to the end of our own post.

1. Fr John D’Alton (Antiochian Orthodox) of Fr John D’Alton on THE SYRIAN CIVIL WAR AND RESPONSES TO IT
2. Richard Fairhead (missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed- yet hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian) of Relational Journey on Who would Jesus bomb?
3. Steve Hayes (Orthodox Christian) of Khanya on Syrian civil war: no good outcome?

Yesterday I read a review at Christianity Today of Kate Bowler’s book, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel and it certainly had some interesting tidbits. Here’s what really got me looking at it:

“Amid the strife of the Culture Wars and the heated partisan divides between Red and Blue states, one thing seems to bring together a great many Americans across both sides of the nation’s secular/sacred divide: a deep, abiding sense of amusement and incredulity—if not outright contempt—for purveyors and supporters of the so-called ‘Prosperity Gospel'”.

The review goes on to talk of Bowler’s very comprehensive coverage of the movement’s history. There are some interesting comments here – that the Prosperity Gospel is very much in line with American optimism, and you can’t fault it too much on that front (but you can on other fronts). Also, of interest is how mainstream the Prosperity Gospel actually has become, despite the fact that it’s also so hated (as per the quote above).

There are several things to say here. The Prosperity, “name it and claim it” Gospel is a huge influence in South Africa. Even researcher Ed Stetzer hints at it in his thoughts on South Africa (see his last point). I find that interesting.

But what I found even more interesting is where Bowler traces the roots of this movement:

“While the beginnings of an actual Prosperity movement only trace back to the 1970s, Bowler puts together a longer lineage that begins in the late 19th century. This earlier period brought together three influential streams—Pentecostalism, New Thought as set forth by mediators like Holiness pastor E. W. Kenyon, and the secular American belief in upward mobility, individualism, and wealth. Kenyon provided a particularly important bridge to the Pentecostal world and influenced figures such as William Durham, F. F. Bosworth, and Aimee Semple McPherson.”

I was aware of E.W. Kenyon’s New Thought, but I didn’t know he was a Holiness pastor. That means he probably preached that God promises us that we can be made entirely holy in this life – we can live in “perfect love”. Its roots date very much back to John Wesley, who taught that Christians can have a “second-blessing” experience where God sanctifies the individual completely, makes them holy, and while able to sin they won’t, because God has entirely sanctified them.

Wesleyans these days preach this, to varying degrees. When I recently read John Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfectionism I must say I was quite convinced of the teaching. I still am. It’s a wonderfully optimistic teaching that, if true, means we actually can live lives that are victorious over sin.

Unfortunately, that all became rather warped as the generations went by, it seems. Holiness preaching eventually became quite legalistic. And, on the other end, it seems that the optimism was taken so far as to bring us to the prosperity gospel message.

It’s easy to see why this worked well with Pentecostalism – after all, the Pentecostals taught a third blessing, of sorts, that of being empowered by the Holy Spirit.

At any rate, the article itself is quite interesting and worth a read, especially if you, like me, really don’t like Prosperity theology.

After reading the blurb of the book I was left dumbfounded. All I could say was, “Really?” Here’s what it’s about:

“Before its end as a nation, there appeared in ancient Israel nine specific warnings and omens of national destruction – These same nine Harbingers are now manifesting in America with profound ramifications for America’s future and end-time prophecy.

“Hidden in an ancient biblical prophecy from Isaiah, the mysteries revealed in The Harbinger are so precise that they foretell recent American events down to the exact days… the 3,000-year-old mystery that revealed the exact date of the stock market collapse of 2008… the ancient prophecy that was proclaimed from the floor of the US Senate and then came true…and more. The revelations are so specific that even the most hardened skeptic will find it hard to put down. Though it sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller – IT’S REAL.”

I wondered – is this actually fiction and listed in the wrong area? No, it’s not fiction. It’s even got a study guide.

Now I’ve been around and I’m quite aware that many Christians believe that America is some chosen nation of God.  This dates back to some of the Puritan founders. I’m also aware that this sort of thing is nothing new. But what strikes me as dumbfounding is the sheer “mainstreaminess” of it all. Are there really so many Christians out there who have no clue about the Bible that they’ll believe this sort of thing? Why on earth is a book that’s so blatantly non-Biblical so popular and why are so many people in the review section praising it and calling it a good interpretation of scripture?

Here’s what one reviewer said:

“The word of God is faultless,as this book proves… who other than our Father could bring it to pass. Out of the mouths of mere men… amazing download direct from the Spirit.”

That shows me that way too many Christians have lost their way and, rather than really reading the Bible, they’re just going with whatever is popular and whatever is being marketed well. I have no doubt that local publishers will market this book as well and local magazines will give it coverage. I’ve no doubt that many South African Christians will believe it, too. I think that the rest of us, however, can’t ignore this sort of thing – we have to at least make sure that we’re open about why we think this is nonsense and we need to educate our people in our churches about why they shouldn’t believe this sort of thing. Because otherwise the media will educate them and all the media are really about, and I mean the Christian media here too, is making some bucks out of this kind of thing. Truth is unfortunately not on the forefront of why they publish anything.

In my usual meanderings through the Internet I’ve recently come across work from Jeffrey Van Duzer, the business school dean at Seattle Pacific University and a former corporate attorney. He has some interesting things to say, including that maximising profit is not the top priority of business.

In today’s culture, that’s quite a statement! It seems that you really only have two choices when it comes to work and business: (1) Make a lot of money or, (2) If making money doesn’t appeal to you, do something else.

For many, many people, they are very good at what they do but they struggle to buy fully into the culture of the day, and for good reason! It seems, however, that sensible people who are sensible about business and money often feel as if maybe they’re called to something else, since they can’t “play the game” as the world plays it. This leads to us also viewing work and business in a negative light.

But Van Duzer doesn’t say this without offering a healthier alternative worth pondering:

“Probably the most controversial aspect of this view of business is that it relegates profit maximization or increasing shareholder wealth to a means and a constraint rather than a purpose. That doesn’t mean profit is not important. In the business school, we still teach how to run profitable businesses, but profitability is what you need in order to attract the capital that enables the business to do what it should be doing, which is to serve in the ways I mentioned.

“(These are: business… helps provide meaningful and creative work for people to do, which is part of how people express their God-given identity. Two, it produces goods and services that enable communities to flourish.)

“The dominant paradigm says the purpose of business is to maximize profit and increase shareholder value. This approach turns that upside down.

“Profit is like blood in a body. If blood isn’t pumping through your body, we don’t have to talk about your purpose, because you’re dead. Similarly, if profit isn’t flowing through a business, we don’t have to talk about the business’ purpose, because it’s bankrupt. Few of us get up in the morning and say, “Today I’m going to live to circulate blood.” Blood is important, but it’s not our purpose, and similarly for profit.

(Quoted from the website Faith and Leadership)

With my craft, ghostwriting, I’ve often wondered how I can run a profitable business when my heart is actually to just serve people; do stuff for people; use my talents for the community; and enjoy meaningful work. I’ve never been that excited about the bottom-line, about making the money, but more about all that other stuff. But yet I’ve known, somehow, that making money is something I should be interested in doing. Van Duzer’s putting this in a way that really makes sense to me.

It’s worth exploring this more, I think!