Heretics are not all bad

One of the frustrating aspects of studying at Southeastern is the frequent use of the word heresy and wherever there is heresy there is a heretic. I would estimate that at least half the time we were reading the Pastoral Epistles the practical application had to do with false teachings/teachers. To some extent, this is appropriate given the subject matter of the Pastoral Epistles. After all, Paul the false teachers are the main reason he wrote the letters in the first place (assuming he did write the letters, which I heartily accept). On the other hand, we are not Paul, and at Southeastern, there is a tendency to put those with whom they disagree in the category of THE false teachers about whom Paul wrote. One must give people room to err, because people will err. Yet if there is room to voice their thoughts, however heretical those thoughts may be there then emerges the opportunity to correct those ideas. It is an allusion that fundamentalist churches maintain a doctrinal purity among the flock. I am not sure they realize to what extent they may actually being failing to help address peoples false understandings. In my experience with fundamentalists, there is a fiery reluctance to allow for heterodox statements. If someone is saying something that is in anyway wrong, the teacher corrects him or her immediately. I have seen many times where the correction comes so quickly and so definitively that people learn to keep their thoughts to themselves. The problem with this approach is that it does not really help people come to orthodoxy. It does not mean that their ideas are orthodox; it just means that their words are orthodox. I am not suggesting that most people in these fundamentalist churches do not believe what they verbally affirm; I think they learn not to think about it. The problem of course in one’s life these ideas will be challenged. So why are heretics not all bad, let me tell you what I am not arguing. I am not suggesting that being wrong is okay. However, I am suggesting that allowing people to be wrong is not only okay it is a necessary. It is a necessary part of helping people come to understand what is in fact true.

Worship Habits

This week I am leading the youth section of our Vacation Bible School. On the first night, the Bible study focused on worship. There are some handouts provided with the teacher guide for the youth to complete. One of the activities in these handouts is a quiz about attitudes of worship. The quiz is more like a “diagnostic” test to examine the health of one’s approach to worship. On this quiz, I noted an interesting question. The question read something like this... did the student come to worship eager “to be nourished” spiritually or...did they come to worship as a habit. It seemed obvious that the “right” answer is supposed to be that the youth are to come to worship to grow spiritually. I can think of at least one faculty member of the Divinity school who would pull out what was left of his hair. Habits shape the way we interact with the world. Worship as a habit forms us to see the world in the right way. How is a youth to know what it means to be “fed” spiritually if they have not been instilled with the correct habits that enable them to see the world rightly?

The Bible is a Hard Book

Several weeks ago after Wednesday night prayer meeting and choir practice, I went home, sat on the couch, and turned on the television. I watched the end of the show The West Wing. I do not normally watch this show. I do not know the characters or the plot, but this particular episode caught my attention. One of the characters in this show was a senator with presidential hopes. In the news it came out that, he was not a person of faith. A plot in the show was the political question of whether an atheist could be elected president. At the end of the show, the senator and the president were sitting alone, and the president asked the senator why he did not believe. The senator responded that someone had given him a Bible...and he read it. In his response, he did not cite the usual concerns, at least what I expected. It was not that miracles were too difficult to believe. He did not mention any conflict between science and religion. He said that he did not believe that a loving God would condemn people for the things he found in the Bible. He did not believe a good God would call for the execution of children who did not obey their parents (see the Ten Commandments). He did not believe a good God would make it a law that a man who raped a woman had to marry her. He did not believe that a good God would command people to go to war and kill every living thing. Anyone who reads the Bible will find passages, books that are very difficult to understand. I am taking a class at Southeastern, where the professor observed that “liberals” like to say a passage is difficult when what they mean is they do not like what it has to say. The students in the class chuckled and gave a small hurrah for the importance of the bastion of faithfulness to THE BIBLE. Often times the difficulties popularly discussed about the Bible tend to focus on the first chapters of Genesis, or in the miracles, or of course, the “apparent” prohibition of women in leadership, but I think the concerns expressed by this fictional television character are a more difficult question. The Bible is to my view a record of God's work in history. The fundamentalist demand Genesis chapter one to be interpreted in a narrow sense. By demanding uniformity with some controversial issues they create for themselves an illusion that the Bible is without difficulty. God said it, I believe it, that settles it. When people have this attitude I wonder how much of the Bible they read.

LOVE AND STEM CELLS

In my ethics course we read a small book entitled Law, Love, and Language by Herbert McCabe. He provided interesting reflections on some of the limitations that are present in basing ethical decisions on love. Ethics as love seems like a great approach. Laws are inflexible unable to address the needs of particular situations. To make loving decisions is analogous to a great painting. There exist norms that need to be followed but the person who has mastered the art will know when to break the rules. McCabe using the metaphor of a painting illustrates two challenges to the use of love as a model for ethics. The first weakness is how one determines whether a painting is beautiful or ugly. When people use love as a model for ethics there are many difficulties in determining what exactly is a loving action. Furthermore, if there is no concrete correlation between love and behavior then the same act might be loving or it might not. One could never say anything about a person’s behavior as an indication of whether something was loving whether it was ethical. While love may be many things it cannot be anything. A related difficulty is the fact that love is an expanding word. As people mature they learn new facets of what it is to love, thus to know how to use the word is autobiographical. What may have at one time been thought to be loving may come to be recognized as not loving. Using the metaphor of the painting, another limitation for love to be the controlling factor in ethical decision making is determining the border. It is one thing to think about a loving act in reference to a face-to-face personal interaction, but human beings exist in larger contexts. If one only focuses on face-to-face interactions, one might miss the proverbial forest for the trees. One might love those who they have a personal face-to-face interaction with and yet be completely without love to wider societal problems. What happens when to be loving to the individual is to be oblivious to the wider societal problems? The decision about who to love becomes an arbitrary decision with this model. Why should a person be loving to one person as opposed to another? Who decides who is going to get hurt? People live in overlapping situations, love as an ethical model fails to give direction concerning how one should prioritize their ethical responsibilities. Ethics as love is not sufficient to sustain moral direction in the world of conflicting claims.

Master of Ceremonies

The master of ceremonies is a delicate position. One is tasked with providing a background rhythm that moves a program along throughout the evening. Rhythm is a good word for what the master of ceremonies provides in that rhythm is something that often times goes unnoticed especially when done with great precision. A master of ceremonies has a great role to play for concerts and other gatherings, but it is not a position without some risk. The position poses a temptation. Not a temptation that strikes all people equally, some are more vulnerable. I recently attended a function where the master of ceremonies unfortunately succumbed to the temptation facing all people in this position the temptation shall we say to want to move from playing rhythm to wanting to play the melody. In this case the shift happened when, Master of Ceremonies felt compelled to “warm up the crowd”. If you are ever required to fulfill this function you might want to consider not alerting the crowd to your intended purposes. There is nothing the crowd can do to participate in being "warmed up". Either you succeed or you fail. If you choose to alert the audience, you may not want to share how you intend to fulfill this task. “I am going to tell you some jokes this evening, you know to warm you up”. Humor can be a quite effective means towards this end provided one hits one’s target. The poor MC who provided the impetus for these reflections set out to do just this unfortunately both for himself and those in attendance he began with flatulence humor. Generally a bad idea in almost any occasion perhaps a boy scout jamboree yet this was not the occasion. The parachute pants did not add any to the particular routine and in fact only seemed to exacerbate the already tenuous position the MC had created. I think most in if not all in the audiences would have likely preferred to begin the show, but the MC was not sure that the crowd had yet been adequately warmed so he proceeded to reflect on his image in the mirror after taking a shower. I guess he thought this self effacing humor might serve some possible purpose for me it simply served rather to want to crawl into some corner and only come out after the MC had exited the arena. Whether he felt the crowd was appropriately prepared or had exhausted his repertoire the master of ceremonies decided the time was at hand for the show to begin. And finally mercifully introduced the children’s dance recital.

Why Duke

This summer I am taking a course on the Pastoral Epistles at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). This course will complete my degree. I am glad to be near the end. It is interesting that I am finishing my degree in way where I began, perhaps there is some irony in this. I began my seminary training at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS). If you are not familiar with Southern Baptist Life there are six denominational schools. New Orleans, Golden Gate, Southwestern, Southern, Midwestern, and Southeastern. After a year at New Orleans I transferred. Today at SEBTS I was reminded of why I left New Orleans. I should first note there are many things I liked about New Orleans, and that I appreciate at Southeastern. I especially appreciate the devotion and commitment of the students. There is a piety that feels both familiar and comfortable to me. The students seem to have a great commitment to serve the church. Being in this community reminds me of the great appreciation I have for SBC life. And yet when I go into class it all changes. The professor and students spend at least half the class time talking about the potential false teachings that could emerge from some potential reading of a scripture passage. The professor in his wisdom asserts the ability to divine the motives the under gird variant readings. There is absolutely no questioning of the professors’ opinion. Today I was unable to keep from probing what seemed to me to be a questionable deduction. The professor became quite agitated and asked heatedly several times if he had answered my question. I had this same kind of experience at NOBTS. At NOBTS one encounter ended with a professor asking me to stand on my desk and flap my arms. It should come as no surprise that there is very little questioning of professors. No school is perfect obviously and there are many things I could identify as weaknesses about Duke. Today has reminded me to appreciate the learning environment at Duke. This environment fosters the probing of ideas. At the two SBC seminaries I have now attended there seems to be an initial fear to any questioning like that of an over protective parent who will not let anyone touch their child for fear of germs. Two more weeks, two long weeks.

The Form of Faith

Thomas Aquinas presents what strikes me as a provocative way of understanding the relationship between faith and love. There is sometimes expressed a reticence within certain evangelical groups that some people put too great an emphasis on acts of charity without a proper balance of doctrinal instruction. The logic seems to be presented that “what good does it do to help someone with their physical needs if one does not meet their spiritual needs as well”. Can one be described as sharing one’s faith, if one does not convey the basic confession of the Christian faith? Aquinas presents an interesting approach to this question. He argues that the form of faith is charity. Voluntary acts take their species from the object to which the will is directed as an end. Things derive their species from the manner in which a form exists in natural things. The form of any voluntary act is shaped by the end to which it is directed., both because it takes nature by the end towards which it is directed and because the manner of the action is understood to by necessity correspond to the end. This does not mean that any action of “benevolence” is an act of faith. As Bertrand Russell notes albeit quite cynically there are many acts of benevolence that are by their very nature self serving. Some acts of good will are in fact done from selfish ends. However such cynicism is perhaps too quickly attributed to acts of charity. I think that one might consider in so far as acts of charity correspond to what is in fact true charity they are in fact bringing faith.

I'm glad I'm not like them

Self-righteousness is not easily identifiable, at least not to the subject. The reason it is not easily identifiable is because of the deceptive nature that can result because of the interplay between our will and our observation. One can after all only see what one wants to see. Take as an example the story about the Sunday School teacher who taught the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax collector. The teacher recounted about these two men who went to pray. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself, while the tax collector humbly sought mercy. Jesus told his onlookers those described as confident of their own judgment that it was the tax collector who went home justified. After finishing the lesson the teacher looked at her children and said, now let us be thankful that we are not like that Pharisee. The Sunday School teacher did not realize that she was doing the very thing the Pharisee had done. Aren’t you glad you are not like that Sunday School teacher! People have a great susceptibility to deception not only from others but from oneself. A hallmark of self-righteousness is that one’s own standing is fixed in relation to someone else’s. To move up someone else has to move down. This delusional approach deprives one of joy, for who knows who might come along and displace me. There is no joy, that can be displaced. I'm glad I'm not like that.