The Bible on trial for a third time in Finland

 

The Bible on trial for a third time in Finland

For the third time in three years, Päivi Räsänen will stand trial in Finland for the “crime” of tweeting a Bible verse. A sitting member of the Finnish parliament, Päivi is being prosecuted for “hate speech” for her 2019 tweet, along with a 2004 church pamphlet she wrote expressing the Christian view of marriage. Her pastor, Bishop Juhana Pohjola, is also being prosecuted for publishing the pamphlet. The pair were unanimously acquitted by the district court in 2022 and the appeals court in 2023. But the Finnish prosecutor has continued to push to censor and sanction them for their free expression, appealing again to Finland’s Supreme Court.

The Story of a Miraculous Healing

 

Yesterday at Redeemer we had the funeral of Carl Cocherell. There were many beautiful testimonies and tributes to Carl.

In my part I shared the miraculous healing Carl experienced some years ago. 

When it happened, I shared it with my friend Craig Keener. Craig inserted the story of Carl's healing in his book Miracles: Two Volumes - The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Craig also shared Carl's story in his book Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God In the Modern World. 

Lee Strobel interviewed Craig for his book The Case for Miracles. As part of the interview Craig shared Carl Cocherell's story. Here it is, from Strobel's The Case for Miracles.

***

“In March 2006, on a trip to Missouri, Carl was checking the oil in his car when he stepped down and felt a sharp crack,” Keener said. “He fainted from the pain, which was the worst he had ever endured. I have a copy of the radiology report of his X-rays, confirming the fracture. The orthopedist ordered him to stay overnight. During that night, though, Carl experienced a voice from the Lord.” 

“What did the voice say?” I asked.

“That the ankle was not broken.” 

I cocked my head. “Despite the X-rays?” 

“That’s right. The next day the doctor casted his leg and warned he would eventually need months of physical therapy. Back in Michigan, his family doctor ordered more X-rays, and this time the results were radically different.” 

“How so?” 

“There were no breaks or even tissue damage where a break had been. Again, I have the radiology report that says there’s no fracture. In fact, the doctor told him, ‘You never had a broken ankle.’” 

“But,” I interjected, “what about the Missouri X-rays?” 

Keener calmly continued the narrative. “The doctor looked again at those Missouri X-rays and said, ‘Now, that’s a broken ankle.’ But at this point, there was no sign of a break. He removed Carl’s cast and sent him home. Carl never had further problems or needed any therapy.” 

“What do you make of all that?” I asked. 

“Personally, I don’t see how this could have occurred naturally,” Keener said. “Would a sixty-two-year-old man’s bone heal so quickly that no sign of a fracture would remain at all? It doesn’t seem likely. And, of course, that wouldn’t explain how God told him in advance what would happen.”

(Strobel, Lee. The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural (p. 106). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. )

Mathematical Platonism As a Problem for Physicalism

Comerica Park, Detroit

(At dinner tonight my friends J and D and me discussed mathematical Platonism and the ontological status of abstract objects. I'm re-posting this for them.)

University of Toronto philosopher James Robert Brown argues for Mathematical Platonism in Philosophy of Mathematics: A Contemporary Introduction to the World of Proofs and Pictures. Brown uses Plato's theory of Ideas and applies it to math, arguing that non-physical mathematical ideas have ontological status; i.e., mathematical ideas exist. 

See Chapter Two - "Platonism." This was the chapter that "disturbed" Massimo Pigliucci. (See here.)

Brown is not the only mathematical Platonist. A number of mathematicians are, to include Frege, Godel, et. al.  Pigliucci writes:

"If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math , one has to face several important philosophical consequences, perhaps the major one being that the notion of physicalism goes out the window. Physicalism is the position that the only things that exist are those that have physical extension [ie, take up space] – and last time I checked, the idea of circle, or Fermat’s theorem, did not have physical extension. It is true that physicalism is now a sophisticated doctrine that includes not just material objects and energy, but also, for instance, physical forces and information. But it isn’t immediately obvious to me that mathematical objects neatly fall into even an extended physicalist ontology. And that definitely gives me pause to ponder."

Brown cites the connection between Platonism and semantic theory. The logic of mathematical Platonism runs like this.  He writes:

"Let us suppose the sentence 'Mary loves ice cream' is true. What makes it so? In answering such a question we'd say 'Mary' refers to the person Mary, 'ice cream' to the substance, and 'love' refers to a particular relation which holds between Mary and ice cream. It follows rather trivially from this that Mary exists. If she didn't, then 'Mary loves ice cream' couldn't be true, any more than 'Phlogiston is released on burning' could be true when phlogiston does not exist.

The same semantic considerations imply Platonism. Consider the following true sentences: '7+5 = 12', and '7 >12'. Both require the number 7 to exist, otherwise the sentences would be false. In standard semantics the objects denoted by singular terms in true sentences ('Mary', '7') exist. Consequently, mathematical objects do exist." (Brown, 13)

So, the number '7', and 'pi', and you-number-it, exist. But where? Surely, not in physical reality. I just hit the number 7 key on my keyboard. The number 7 key exists physically. But I won't be hitting the number 7 anytime in the future.

Brown states: "Mathematical objects are outside space and time." (Ib.) They are non-physical, abstract objects with ontological status.

***

For more see Pater van Inwagen and William Lane Craig, Do Numbers Exist?

Mathematical Platonism

(At dinner tonight my friends J and D and me discussed mathematical Platonism and the ontological status of abstract objects. I'm re-posting this for them.)

This past Sunday, as a passing note in my sermon, I mentioned that many mathematicians are mathematical Platonists (MP). I picked up this bit of information in reading Jim Holt's excellent Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. 

I'd heard of this before. MP is "the metaphysical view that there are abstract mathematical objects whose existence is independent of us and our language, thought, and practices. Just as electrons and planets exist independently of us, so do numbers and sets. And just as statements about electrons and planets are made true or false by the objects with which they are concerned and these objects' perfectly objective properties, so are statements about numbers and sets. Mathematical truths are therefore discovered, not invented." ("Platonism In the Philosophy of Mathematics," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Holt writes that "a majority of contemporary mathematicians (a typical, though disputed, estimate is about two-thirds) believe in a kind of heaven— not a heaven of angels and saints, but one inhabited by the perfect and timeless objects they study: n-dimensional spheres, infinite numbers, the square root of –1, and the like." (Holt, 171)

Who are some MPs?

• Alain Connes, holder of the Chair of Analysis and Geometry at the Collège de France, who has averred that “there exists, independently of the human mind, a raw and immutable mathematical reality.” (Ib., 172) 
• René Thom, who became famous in the 1970s as the father of catastrophe theory. Thom has said: “Mathematicians should have the courage of their most profound convictions, and thus affirm that mathematical forms indeed have an existence that is independent of the mind considering them.” (Ib.)
• Kurt Godel: “We do have something like a perception” of mathematical objects, “despite their remoteness from sense experience.” (Ib., 172)
• James Jeans - "God is a mathematician." (Ib.)
• Eugene Wigner -  How else can we account for the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences”? (Ib.) 
• Max Tegmark (MIT cosmologist)   
• Frege. (Enough said.)
• Quine. (Enough said. Note: Quine's Platonism is "empiricist Platonism.")

And, e.g., Sir Roger Penrose, the emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford. "Penrose is among the most formidable mathematical physicists alive." (Ib., 173) Holt spends this chapter interviewing Penrose. On the brilliance of Penrose: "He has been hailed by fellow physicists, notably Kip Thorne, for bringing higher mathematics back into theoretical physics after a long period in which the two fields had ceased to communicate. In the 1960s, working with Stephen Hawking, Penrose used sophisticated mathematical techniques to prove that the expansion of the universe out of the Big Bang must have been a precise reversal of the collapse of a star into a black hole. In other words, the universe must have begun as a singularity." (Ib.)

For Penrose "there are three worlds: the Platonic world, the physical world, and the mental world. And each of the worlds somehow engenders one of the others. The Platonic world, through the magic of mathematics, engenders the physical world. The physical world, through the magic of brain chemistry, engenders the mental world. And the mental world, through the magic of conscious intuition, engenders the Platonic world— which, in turn, engenders the physical world, which engenders the mental world, and so on, around and around. Through this self-contained causal loop— Math creates Matter, Matter creates Mind, and Mind creates Math— the three worlds mutually support one another, hovering in midair over the abyss of Nothingness, like one of Penrose’s impossible objects." (Ib., 180) 

These and many other MPs believe that mathematical truths such as '1+1=2' exist objectively and are discovered rather than invented. Amazing! The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article states that "mathematical platonism has been among the most hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mathematics over the past few decades."

With this we have the belief in a non-physical world. "If it were true, it would put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical." (SEP)

A Prayer Tree and A Holy Indifference

(Walking through trees in my backyard)

When we lived in East Lansing one of my prayer places was thirty feet up in a tall pine tree in a forest preserve. The branches formed a ladder leading upward. It was an easy climb to the two thick branches that formed a seat. Many times I climbed that tree, hung my backpack on a branch, sat on that natural seat, and prayed. I loved when there was a slight wind that gently waved the tree from side to side. I would close my eyes and think of the Holy Spirit, shaping and forming me.

During that time I wore a leather wristband I had made. On the wristband I burned the words "A holy indifference." I got the phrase from Henri Nouwen. Nouwen prayed that he would have a holy indifference to the opinions of others, so that he might have a holy concentration on God. 

This word was for me, too. If I had a holy indifference I would be able to more purely love people. I would not go up and down with what others thought of me. I would be free from people-pleasing, and striving to gain others' love and avoid others' criticism. 

I had been doing too much of that. The result was much outward striving and agitation in my heart. So, I carved "a holy indifference" on a leather band, wore it on my wrist, climbed a tree, and prayed. 

One day, as I was in the praying tree, God told me to take off the wristband and tie it around a branch. I felt I could let it go. God was doing a good thing in me. I was moving into greater freedom, from pleasing people to loving people.

That was forty years ago. Sometimes I think of going back to the praying tree, climbing it one more time, and touching the leather wristband which has now become part of the tree. I'm writing "a holy indifference" on a 3X5 card and carrying it with me today. I'm commemorating the freedom God brought into my life many years ago, while swaying high in the praying tree. 

***
Is it possible to hear from God? I've written about this in Chapter 5 of my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

My Leadership Book Is...

 

The Importance of Remembering in Maintaining Hope

(Our downstairs office)

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, 
for he who promised is faithful.

Hebrews 10:23

In this difficult time of moral mentorlessness, political chaos, and the "soma" of show business, what is needed is hope.

Hope: the mood of expectation that comes from a promise that something good is going to happen.

When I hope, I expect. "Expectation" is the mood that characterizes hope. Hope is expectation, based on a promise that has been given. 

It seems that every day Linda and I meet someone who has lost hope. Loss of hope produces stagnancy and passivity. And depression. The loss of hope threatens life.

How important is hope? Lewis Smedes writes:

“There is nothing more important in this whole world than keeping hope alive in the human spirit. I am convinced that hope is so close to the core of all that makes us human that when we lose hope we lose something of our very selves. And in the process we lose all reason for striving for the better life we were meant to live, the better world that was meant to be. Let me put it as baldly as I can: there is nothing, repeat nothing, more critical for any one of us, young or old or anywhere in between, than the vitality of our hope.”  (Smedes, Keeping Hope Alive: For a Tomorrow We Cannot Control, p. 6)

Real hope leads to activity, because it is attached to a promise that fuels the sense of expectation. The hope-filled, expectant person prepares for the promised, coming event.

A husband and wife are said to be "expecting" when she is pregnant with their inborn child. The reality of this hope is seen in their active preparation for the promised one to arrive. They create a space in their home for the newborn to dwell. They buy clothes and toys. They think and dream and pray. Hope, grounded in a promise of something good, is joy-filled.

Hope is different than "wishing." "Wishing" is not attached to a promise, and hence is devoid of the sense of expectation. The wishing person is inactive. The person who wishes to win the gazillion-dollar lottery does not quit their job and sell their house. When no promise is given, passivity reigns.

How can I overcome hopelessness and begin to hope again? I remember.

"Remembering " plays a role in "hoping." My spiritual journal, which is a record of God's activity in my life, helps me to remember. My journal includes God's promises to me, and promises realized. I have many stories where things looked hopeless, and then life returned. When I re-read and re-meditate on my journals, I am filled with hope. I remember the deeds of the Lord in my life. I come to know God, in whom I have placed my trust, and makes good on his promises. I am then in a good spiritual place. It affects how I look at the unseen future. I see that "he who promised is faithful."

I am intentional about remembering. This includes carrying lists of God's blessings to me, and looking at them often. I have found that a hoping person...

...remembers the deeds of God in their life; 

...remembers God-promises given, and God-promises fulfilled; 

...makes God their trust today, and each day; 

...dwells on the promises of God in Scripture;

...listens for God's voice, and his promises;

...is expectant; 

...is active, since real hope always leads to present vitality.

I encourage a hopeless person to list, and thereby remember, the deeds of the Lord in their life. Write down ways God has been faithful to them. I have seen this result in a refocusing and re-membering of the person, as the members of their heart are put together again.

Another antidote for hopelessness is connectedness to the Jesus-community. Hopelessness isolates people; unattended-to isolation breeds hopelessness. Be intentional about being part of a small group. Be intentional about gathering with others on Sunday mornings. Many times I have come on a Sunday morning, holding on to some fear in my heart, only to find it lifted and removed as we meet with the Lord together.

The Power of Solitude to Combat Depression

                                                         (Linda and our grandson Levi)

(I am re-posting this for a friend.)

For the past fifty-one years I have spent a lot of time alone with God. I write about this in my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Solitude is not loneliness. 

An emerging body of research suggests that spending time alone, if done right, can be good for us. 

Leon Nayfekh, in "The Power of Lonely", says solitude is a good and needed thing, he says. Here are the bullets.

• Even the most socially motivated among us should regularly be taking time to ourselves if we want to have fully developed personalities, and be capable of achieving focus and creative thinking.
• Research suggests that blocking off enough alone time is an important component of a well-functioning social life. If we want to get the most out of the time we spend with people, we should make sure we’re spending enough of it away from them. I know, after years of regularly taking solitary times with God, that solitude helps me be better with people.
• Solitude (if done right) makes our bodies and minds work better.
• One ongoing Harvard study indicates that people form more lasting and accurate memories if they believe they’re experiencing something alone.
• Solitude can make a person more capable of empathy towards others. (I am certain this is true. Especially if solitude is done in the right way. My compassion for others, even for my enemies, increases in extended solitary times with God.)
• In an age when no one is ever more than a text message or an e-mail away from other people, the distinction between “alone” and “together” has become hopelessly blurry, even as the potential benefits of true solitude are starting to become clearer.
• Nayfekh writes: "Solitude has long been linked with creativity, spirituality, and intellectual might. The leaders of the world’s great religions — Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses — all had crucial revelations during periods of solitude. The poet James Russell Lowell identified solitude as “needful to the imagination;” in the 1988 book “Solitude: A Return to the Self,” the British psychiatrist Anthony Storr invoked Beethoven, Kafka, and Newton as examples of solitary genius."
• Solitude is to be distinguished from "loneliness."
• Nayfekh has an interesting review of "solitude research." U-Mass graduate student Christopher Long "started working on a project to precisely define solitude and isolate ways in which it could be experienced constructively. The project’s funding came from, of all places, the US Forest Service, an agency with a deep interest in figuring out once and for all what is meant by “solitude” and how the concept could be used to promote America’s wilderness preserves."
• There is "an emergence of solitude studies." For example, Robert Coplan of Carleton University studies children who play alone. "Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, a leader in the world of positive psychology, has recently overseen an intriguing study that suggests memories are formed more effectively when people think they’re experiencing something individually." 
• Gilbert's study shows that solitude combats "social loafing," "which says that people tend not to try as hard if they think they can rely on others to pick up their slack. (If two people are pulling a rope, for example, neither will pull quite as hard as they would if they were pulling it alone.)" 
• Solitude fosters "metacognitive activity." "Metacognition" is the process of thinking critically and reflectively about our own thoughts."  As Richard Arum shows us in his book Academically Adrift, today's multitasking university students are doing that less and less. (This is Daniel Kahneman's "slow thinking.")
• Reed Larson of the U of Illinois, in his study of teens and solitude, has shown that meaningful times alone allows for a kind of introspection and freedom from self-consciousness that strengthens their sense of identity. I can personally see how this might happen in the fruit of years spent in intentional aloneness with God. Larson found "that kids who spent between 25 and 45 percent of their nonclass time alone tended to have more positive emotions over the course of the weeklong study than their more socially active peers, were more successful in school and were less likely to self-report depression."
• "John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago, whose 2008 book “Loneliness” with William Patrick summarized a career’s worth of research on all the negative things that happen to people who can’t establish connections with others, said recently that as long as it’s not motivated by fear or social anxiety, then spending time alone can be a crucially nourishing component of life."
• Psychologist Adam Waytz of Harvard says that "spending a certain amount of time alone... can make us less closed off from others and more capable of empathy — in other words, better social animals."
• Finally, "kids who spent between 25 and 45 percent of their nonclass time alone tended to have more positive emotions over the course of the weeklong study than their more socially active peers, were more successful in school, and were less likely to self-report depression."

Henri Nouwen has told us that there is a "ministry of presence" and a "ministry of absence." There is a time to be alone with God and a time to be with God and people. I've written about the need for Jesus-followers to regularly enter into solitary times with God here.

See my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

FYI - two important pieces on prayer and solitude are: The chapter on "Solitude" in Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, and Henri Nouwen's chapter on solitude in The Way of the Heart.

Good Leadership Is a Channel of Water Controlled by God

Squirrel, in my back yard

In the past week at Redeemer three different people felt led by God to do something that would involve our church family. 

Each person shared their idea with me. Each idea sounded like a from-God thing. And, each person will be the leader of the vision God gave them.

This is how most things happen at Redeemer. Our people pray. God calls them to do something. If it involves our church family, they share it with me. I become one of their support persons, cheering from the sidelines as they lead.

Advantages of doing leadership this way include:

• the pastors doesn't have to come up with things for the people to do
• the pastor doesn't have to recruit people to do those things
• the people experience God leading them to do something
• the people gain ownership over the God-given vision
• the people grow in leadership

This is leadership in a Presence-Driven Church. It is more exciting than top-down, hierarchical leadership. It's healthier, too. We are not striving to make some event happen. It's about hearing from God, and following. Then, watching God produce the results.

We see this in Proverbs 21:1:

Good leadership is a channel of water controlled by God;

he directs it to whatever ends he chooses.

(The Message)

***
My leadership book is:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

How to Lead a Church Meeting

The War Over Beliefs, Statements, Words

 

                                       (Green Lake Christian Conference Center, Wisconsin)

We are engaged in a battle over beliefs.

Beliefs are expressed in statements.

Statements are houses built with words, whether written or non-written.

To control words, statements, and beliefs - that's Orwellian totalitarianism.

Johnathan Haidt (one of my favorite thinkers today - see this, e.g.) expresses our situation this way.

"What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:

Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.

The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.

The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past."

- The Atlantic, May 2022

Holy Spirit Declarations - For Pentecost!

Warren Dunes State Park, Michigan

This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday.

Here are some Pentecostal declarations to carry with you. (With a HT to Steve B.)

***

Whatever is true,

whatever is noble,

whatever is right,

whatever is pure,

whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable,

whatever is excellent,

whatever is worthy of praise,

think on these things.

Philippians 4:8

HOLY SPIRIT DECLARATIONS

• God is revealing deep things about himself to me. (1 Cor. 2:10)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit is explaining spiritual realities to me. (1 Cor. 2:13)
• 
  
• I am experiencing an outpouring of revelation knowledge. (1 Cor. 2:13)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit has made his permanent home in our church. (1 Cor. 3:16)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit is making my heart into his home. (Rom. 8:11)
• 
  
• I have become God’s inner sanctuary.
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit is giving life to my physical body.
• 
  
• Every day I am opening spiritual gifts the Holy Spirit is giving me to encourage and comfort those around me. (1 Cor. 12:11)
• 
  
• I am an equipped, competent, life-giving minister of God’s new covenant of love and power. (2 Cor. 3:6)
• 
  
• Every moment of my life the Holy Spirit is calling out to me that I am God’s true child, and God is my true Father. (Gal. 4:6)
• 
  
• I am moved by the Holy Spirit. I move with the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 8:14)
• 
  
• I am soaring above the domination of the law and experience the full freedom of the Spirit of grace. (Gal. 5:18)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit whispers into my innermost being, telling me I am God’s beloved child.” (Rom. 8:16)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit’s intense cravings are overpowering any sinful cravings I am tempted by. (Gal. 5:17)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit is strengthening me in my weakness. (Rom. 8:26)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit, who knows my deepest longings, is bringing my life into perfect harmony with God’s plan. (Rom. 8:26-27)
• 
  
• What the Holy Spirit is doing in me is better than anything I could have ever thought or imagined. (Rom. 8:28)
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit is unveiling within me the unlimited riches of God’s glory. Supernatural strength is flooding my innermost being with God’s divine might and power. (Eph. 3:16)

God Does Not Affirm All Behaviors

                                                                    (Redeemer Monroe)

In this post I attempt to establish one point, using 'pedophilia' as an example. 

"Pedophilia is an ongoing sexual attraction to pre-pubertal children. It is a paraphilia, a condition in which a person's sexual arousal and gratification depends on objects, activities, or even situations that are considered atypical. Pedophilia is defined as recurrent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children—generally age 13 years or younger—over a period of at least six months. Pedophiles are more often men and can be attracted to either or both sexes." (Psychology Today)

Does God love the pedophiliac? Yes. 

Does God affirm sexual activity with a child? No. 

The Christian belief is that pedophile activity is sin. That is, it misses the mark God places before us. (See, e.g., what in ethics is called "divine command theory.")

This troubling, yet simple, example proves the following: God does not affirm all behaviors. 

Neither do people affirm all behaviors. 

Whether they believe in God or not, good parents morally screen what beliefs are to be championed in their home. The good parent will not allow their child to be taught the beauty and happiness of pedophilic beliefs and behaviors. 

All institutions have moral filters. These moral filters emerge from worldviews. People may differ in their worldviews. People do not differ in having moral filters rooted in a social imaginary. (See Charles Taylor here.)

Churches are no different. As a pastor of a church, I testify that we would not allow someone to teach our children, youth, and adults, that God affirms sexual activity with children. Obviously.

Every person, every institution, embraces some things and excludes other things. (On this, see Amy Chua's Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations.) That's what doctrine does, and why doctrine is important. Understand this: Real love embraces and excludes.

The matter than becomes how, as Christians, we are still to love the pedophile, while establishing moral boundaries. To begin with, a lot will depend on how the pedophile views pedophilia. And, do they want us to embrace this belief, or exclude the belief? If the latter, do they want help?

Now, instead of 'pedophilia', plug in any sin.

Speaking on "Freedom from Addictions" at the "Free Indeed" Conference

                                                                         (Green Lake)

Join me and Linda and several of our ministry colleagues at the HSRM "Free Indeed" Conference.

When: Sunday, June 30 through Thursday, July 4. 

Where: Beautiful Green Lake, Wisconsin. 

Detail and information: https://hsrm.org/events 

It's my joy to open the conference on Sunday evening. I'll speak on "Freedom from Addictions." Expect!

Our Strategy for Evangelism

 

                                                   (Northern lights, from our front yard)

Here is our strategy for evangelism.

1. Make disciples.
2. The disciples share Jesus with others.

The Moral Argument for God's Existence - John Piippo

Here's a presentation I made on The Moral Argument for God's Existence.

Pride and Receiving Criticism

 

                                                                       (Our lilac bush)

I'm now using Tim Keller's 365-day devotional book on Proverbs. I love Proverbs! It's straight-shooting, in-your-face, no-nonsense wisdom about how to live a godly life (and how to avoid destruction).

Yesterday's entry Is on Proverbs 16:5; 18.

The LORD detests all the proud of heart. 

Be sure of this: 

They will not go unpunished. . . . 

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. 

Keller writes:

"The Bible does not say that pride might lead to destruction—it says it will. Why? The practical reason is that pride makes it difficult to receive advice or criticism. You can’t learn from your mistakes or admit your own weaknesses. Everything has to be blamed on other people. You have to maintain the image of yourself as a competent person, as someone who is better than other people. Pride distorts your view of reality, and therefore you’re going to make terrible decisions."  (Keller, God's Wisdom for Navigating Life: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs, p. 134). 

Keller asks us this. "What negative practical results of pride have you seen recently worked out in your own life or the lives of others you know?" 

Pride is the root of so many things that are wrong with us. This is why C. S. Lewis called pride "the great sin."

Every Community Embraces and Excludes

 

                                                                           (NYC)

All communities both embrace (if you buy into the narrative) and exclude (if you don't).

Amy Chua (Yale) presents this in her book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations. 

Chua writes:

"Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. We crave bonds and attachments, which is why we love clubs, teams, fraternities, family. Almost no one is a hermit. Even monks and friars belong to orders. But the tribal instinct is not just an instinct to belong. It is also an instinct to exclude.

Some groups are voluntary; some are not. Some tribes are sources of joy and salvation; some are the hideous product of hate mongering by opportunistic power seekers. But once people belong to a group, their identities can become oddly bound with it. They will seek to benefit their group mates even when they personally gain nothing. They will penalize outsiders, seemingly gratuitously. They will sacrifice, and even kill and die, for their groups."

For a deep dive, see Miroslav Volf, 

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation 

If Jesus Is the Only Way to God, What About Those Who Have Never Heard of Him?

Shipshewana, Indiana (photo by Linda Piippo)

How about some theological discussion as we come to the end of 2018? The question: If Jesus is the only way to God, what about those who have never heard of him?

Imagine this story. John does not believe in Jesus. But Jason does. Jason tells John about Jesus, and John is interested. 

Jason feels God wants him to get back to John soon, but does not find time to get back to John. John dies without hearing more. What was John’s status before John died? To be saved, did he need more information about Jesus? 

Paul Copan asks: “Was his eternal destiny in the hands of [someone] who happened not to respond to an inner prompting? Could it be that God is more interested in a person’s spiritual direction or responsiveness than in his spiritual ‘location’ on a continuum?”

Theistic philosopher Copan does an excellent job of presenting the issues and suggesting answers to the question: what if someone has never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus? The points below are from Copan’s book True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith. Read the book for more detail and explanation, especially regarding Copan’s “middle knowledge” position.

Here are the relevant points. 

1. God’s desire is that all be saved.

2. All who desire to be saved will have the opportunity to be saved.

3. We can trust that God is loving and just. We can trust that the eternal outcome of every person is in the hands of a loving and just God.

4. Persons who have self-inflicted “transworld depravity” will not want God, or God in Christ. So God is not unjust in applying eternal justice to them; viz., everlasting separation from his presence. (1 Thessalonians 1)

5. God has given persons free will. This is risky. Some will likely freely choose to reject God’s offer of salvation, and his revelation in creation and the moral law within (Romans 1 and 2). As C.S. Lewis wrote, re. this, there are two kinds of persons: one who says to God “Thy will be done,” and one to whom God says “Thy will be done.”

6. If God has middle-knowledge (knowledge of future choices) and knows that John will reject Him in any possible world, then God is not unjust in not presenting John with the opportunity to be saved.
 
Here are five views on the question "What about those who have never heard?"

1. The Agnostic View.

a. Alister McGrath and J.I. Packer are agnostic on the matter.

b. If God really loves the whole world, and if Christ died for all without exception, and if God commands all to repent, and if God does not want any to perish, “then it follows that his initiating grace, though resistible (Acts 7:51), is directed toward all without exception. This would include the unevangelized.” (Copan)

c. We can trust that God has the question of the unevangelized figured out.

d. Further, God has done so much to reach us all, even to suffer with us in a world filled with evil and misery, that we have good reason to believe the unevangelized are in excellent hands.

e. We can trust that God is loving and just. So God won’t condemn anyone for being born at the wrong time and place (viz., in a time and place where the message of the Gospel of Jesus was not known).

f. God is able to reach people in ways we don’t expect. For example, he can reveal himself – and has done so – through visions or angelic messengers. Copan cites examples of Jesus appearing to Muslims who had never heard of him.

g. In the end we can trust in a good God to do no wrong. “We should not think about the unevangelized apart from God’s character, motives, and good purposes.” (Copan)

2. The Inclusivist (Wider-Hope) View 

a. In Romans 2:7 Paul writes: “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, [God] will give eternal life.”

b. Could some unevangelized people fit in this category?

c. Inclusivists say: Salvation is exclusive in its source – Christ alone as God’s full, final revelation. Salvation is available to every person – even those the missionary can’t reach.

d. One criticism of this view is that accepting it would diminish missionary zeal. Why bring Christ to the nations if the nations can be saved without hearing of Christ?

e. The inclusivist responds by asking why anyone’s fate should solely depend on evangelists who are not always available and/or faithful?

f. Belief in the sovereignty of God makes us think God will not really leave the destiny of unreached people in the hands of imperfect, fallible missionaries. Can’t God work beyond the boundaries of the gospel’s proclamation and our expectations?

g. What about those in the Old Testament who didn’t know about the historical Jesus and his death and resurrection? “Clearly they were saved on the basis of what Jesus would eventually accomplish (Rom. 3:25; see Acts 17:30).

h. And what about infants and those who are mentally incapable of grasping the gospel message?

i. The inclusivist believes that human beings are guilty and helpless before God, separated from him, and cannot be saved apart from Christ.

j. The inclusivist believes that God wants all to be saved. This seems to imply that he makes salvation available to all.

k. The inclusivist claims that salvation through Jesus’ “name” doesn’t necessarily imply knowing the historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth. While Jesus is ontologically necessary for salvation, he is not epistemologically necessary.

l. Natural revelation may have a positive role and may be used by God’s Spirit to show the unevangelized their need for him. For example, Romans 1:20 and Romans 2:14-15 may give us two ways persons can be saved without hearing of the Jesus story. Here inclusivists are optimistic about the role of “general revelation” through the creation, and the moral law within each human heart. Millard Erickson, who is not an inclusivist, says: “If they [persons who know about God through his self-revelation in nature (cf. Romans 1:20) but still reject God] are condemnable because they have not trusted God through what they have, it must have been possible somehow to meet this requirement through this means.If not, responsibility and condemnation are meaningless… Perhaps there is room for acknowledging that God alone may know in every case exactly whose faith is sufficient for salvation.” (In Copan)

m. The Roman centurion Cornelius (Acts 10) seems to be an example of someone who seems to display the working of God’s Spirit and grace in is life.

n. John Stott summarizes the inclusivist argument: “What we do not know, however, is exactly how much knowledge and understanding of the Gospel people need before they can cry to God for mercy and be saved. In the Old Testament, people were certainly “justified by grace through faith,” even though they had little knowledge or no expectation of Christ. Perhaps there are others today in a somewhat similar position. They know they are sinful and guilty before God, and that they cannot do anything to win his favor, so in self-despair they call upon the God they dimly perceive to save them. If God does save such, as many evangelical Christians tentatively believe, their salvation is still only by grace, only by Christ, only by faith.” (In Copan)

Copan presents an argument against the inclusivist position.

a. Inclusivism can blur important distinctions, which can result in disastrous affirmations. For example, some inclusivists hold that Muslims whoa re seeking Allah can be saved.

b. Romans 1 seems to argue against the inclusivist position. Paul has a pessimistic view of humanity’s ability to turn to God because of God’s revelation in nature.

c. There are people who don’t respond to general revelation yet respond to the preaching of the gospel.

d. Inclusivism dampens concern for missions. “It seems doubtful that inclusivism would actually increase evangelistic fervor.”

3. The Accessibilist/Middle Knowledge View

a. God judges the unevangelized based on their response to natural revelation, which his Spirit can use to bring them to salvation. “Natural revelation doesn’t damn anyone without furnishing genuine opportunities to be saved (Romans 2:7) God’s initiative offers them prevenient (“preceding”) grace to respond. All they need to do is humble themselves before him and repent. God is not only just in his judgment, but also gracious in genuinely offering salvation.” (Copan)

b. God can’t make people freely choose to respond to the gospel. “Some might be like NYU philosopher Thomas Nagel, who said, ‘I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.’ Indeed, with every new indication of God’s reality, a person might come to resent or hate him even more.”

c. God knows all future possibilities and free choices of human beings, and whoever would want to be saved will find salvation. God knows all truths – even future ones. God knows all possible future events and human choices – what free creatures could do in various circumstance and what world-arrangements are feasible.” For example, Jesus knew (from the Father) that Peter would deny him three times. God knew that Peter would freely choose to deny Christ under certain circumstances.

d. God takes human free will seriously. Copan says: “No one will be condemned as the result of geographical or historical accident, lack of information, or failure of a missionary to “get there.” All who want – or would want – to be saved do find salvation. Those who would always refuse salvation get their way in the end.”

e. Perhaps there’s no feasible world of persons who all freely choose Christ; this God creates a world containing an optimal balance of fewest lost and greatest number saved. Sometimes people ask: “Why didn’t God create world in which everyone freely chose to love him?” But if humans are truly free, then there’s guarantee they will use their free will to love him. Remember that God does not create out of any need. God desires that none perish; he wants us to embrace him and live. Copan writes: “So it’s reasonable to believe that he wants a maximal number of persons saved and a minimal number condemned. He wants his renewed creation – the new heaven and earth – to be as full as possible and hell as empty as possible. The only thing preventing hell’s being completely empty of people is the human will’s resistance to his loving and gracious initiative. God isn’t less loving because some people are condemned for rejecting him. So why couldn’t this world be the one that achieves this optimal balance?”

f. Some persons possess self-inflicted “transworld depravity” or “transworld damnation”; they would have been lost in any world in which they were placed.

g. Missions motivation isn’t diminished, since God has also providentially arranged fort human messengers to bring the gospel to those he knew would accept it if they heard it.

h. Some individuals may seem “so close” to salvation in the actual world without finding it. But perhaps this actual world is the very nearest the transworldly depraved ever come to salvation.