23. SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE BIG
PICTURE
I
shall address three objections to all that I have written to this point. They are the following:
1. Some
people cannot “buy” the world view that I have presented. They cannot accept the “fall” of humanity as being
consistent with their scientific understanding of the nature of humanity.
2. Some
people cannot accept the negative and pessimistic understanding of humanity
that I have presented.
3. Some
people cannot accept that I have really answered the question. They believe that some instances of suffering
are so terrible that they render invalid the idea that God has adequately
answered human suffering through the plan of salvation.
A. Objections from a Scientific
Standpoint
A brief statement of this objection would
be something like the following:
It is understood that human beings
arose from previously existing ape-like animals. These organisms gradually reached sufficient
intelligence and social structure to be called human. They progressed through human pre-history and
finally developed writing and entered the era of recorded history. Human culture has since then advanced from
the barbaric into more advanced societies that are learning to control and
modify human behavior. Modern
sociological and psychological developments hold promise eventually to lead
people into socially beneficial paths of behavior. Talk of sin and the fall of humanity and of
judgment are crudities from primitive times that have no place in the twenty-first
century. Therefore, the idea that
suffering is a consequence of sin has no validity.
Descriptions
from anthropologists and archeologists of the origins and development of
humanity, such as I have briefly outlined above, are widely accepted. I shall refer to this understanding as the
evolutionary model.
A
secondary conclusion that has been drawn from the evolutionary model is that
humanity has progressed and continues to progress toward perfection. Most people understand this in a very broad
sense. That is, if one takes a very long
view, over hundreds or thousands of years, then progress has been made, in this
view. Most of these same people are
realistic enough to admit that we should not be too optimistic about the short
term.
It
is far beyond the scope of this work to attempt to engage in discussion of the
mass of human learning that stands behind these ideas. I shall make only a few comments.
·
The ancients were primitive in the sense that
they did not have access to our technology, but they were not ignorant. They, in fact, were quite wise, and their
writings still speak to us today. One
cannot read the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses, and not be
struck with the profound insight into the human condition that is contained
there.
·
The Biblical record, from Genesis to Revelation,
bears the marks of inspiration, not just for its insight into humanity and its
amazing historical accuracy and detail, but for what it tells us about
God. Thus, when we deal with the Bible,
we are dealing with revealed truth.
·
The Biblical insight is that there is a profound
spiritual problem in the human condition.
That spiritual problem can only be solved by a reconciliation with
God. That insight is not provable
scientifically, but it has the ring of truth.
It has been verified experientially by countless persons who have found
the joy of life in Christ Jesus.
·
If one grants the validity of the Biblical
revelation about the human condition, then
one must take seriously the Biblical revelation about human origins. I do not say that one must immediately
convert to the “creation science” point of view. I simply say that one must take seriously
what the early chapters in Genesis say.
When I say take these things
seriously, I mean that one must ask, “What do these chapters say to me about
God, people, and origins?” There are two
approaches to such a question. The
“minimalist” approach asks, “What is the bare minimum that I must believe in these
texts and still take them seriously?”
The “rich” approach asks, “What marvelous insights into God and humanity
and origins can I learn from these texts?”
The minimalist feels the Enlightenment breathing down his neck. The rich approach embraces the Bible with
joy, hoping to learn all he can from its pages.
Such a person is not worried whether she will appear uneducated. She has a good notion of the scope of modern
developments in biology, anthropology, archeology, and history. But such a person is not intimidated by the
intellectual establishment and is willing to look at what Biblical revelation
has to say.
Is there a contradiction between
the Bible and science? I think there
is. My biggest argument with “creation
science” is its unwillingness to admit the size of its project. I am sympathetic with the project, but I am
not sympathetic with foolish boasting and silly
pronouncements. When folks say
something like, “The Bible and true science do not contradict each
other,” real, professional scientists want to laugh them out of existence. In the minds of professional scientists who
are convinced of evolution, they are doing valid science, period. So, to expand my statement about the
contradiction between the Bible and science, I would say: there is a contradiction between the Bible’s
understanding of creation and the origins of humanity and the widely accepted
understandings of the scientific establishment.
That does not mean that those widely accepted understandings are not
subject to review and questioning. It
does not mean that “creation science” and similar projects will not eventually
reverse those understandings. But in the
present-day intellectual environment, to accept the Biblical views of the
origins of humanity is to go against widely accepted understandings.
Consequently, it would also be
against those widely accepted understandings to accept the Biblical
understanding of the sinfulness of humanity.
I cannot reverse those widely accepted understandings with a few
well-phrased sentences or with some sort of ranting against evolution. I shall limit myself to say that the revealed
truth of the Bible is that the human condition is best described by the Law of
Sin and Death as I have described it previously in this work.
B. Objections to the Pessimistic
View of Life
The
most popular notion that has come from psychology in recent years is the idea
of “self-esteem.” The response of those
who are convinced of the ideas about self-esteem might react to my ideas in the
following way:
What people really need is greater
self-esteem. When they think highly of
themselves and act in ways that demonstrate that they value themselves, then
their behavior is positive and not self-destructive. Your ideas about sinfulness and the inability
of people to bring themselves to righteousness are very destructive to people. They would drive them into patterns of
self-hate and misery and greater unrighteousness. The last thing we should ever tell people is
that they are sinners. They need to know
that God loves them and accepts them unconditionally. Then they can accept themselves and begin to
live positive productive lives.
Though
the gospel of self-esteem has run out of steam in terms of breeding more books
and talk-show appearances, it has not lost its wide appeal with the
public. This idea has permeated all
areas of thought, including Christian theology.
Again, I cannot devote sufficient space to this subject and can only
make a few comments.
I
shall begin with the idea of the unconditional love of God. “Unconditional” refers to the idea that God
loves us no matter what we do or have done.
His love is not conditioned on our behavior, but is an expression of His
own nature. I believe that that is true
and an accurate expression of the Bible.
However, it is a very limited understanding of the Biblical
revelation.
The Bible definitely speaks of
God’s love, including God’s love of sinners.
John 3:16 is most obvious Scripture to quote: “For God so loved the world that He gave His
only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting
life.” But the Bible speaks in no
uncertain terms about the wrath and judgment of God. These are not Old Testament topics. The New Testament has the most specific and
graphic pictures of eternal judgment.
Nor are these topics that come out of the Epistles. Jesus speaks directly about eternal
punishment in hell.
How can we reconcile these two
ideas about God—that He is a God of love that loves everyone no matter their
sinfulness and that He is a God of judgment who hates sin and punishes sinners
with the fires of hell? Traditional
Christianity has always reconciled these in the following way:
God loves sinners, and He proved that by
sending Christ to save them.
His
love extends to all in the sense that He sent Christ for the salvation of all.
His favor or blessing, however, is found in Christ, that is, as we have faith in
Christ, we enter into the favor of God.
Those who do not believe in Christ
receive God’s punishment for sin. He is
just in doing this because He has a provided a way of escape through Christ.
Thus,
the love of God is centered in His saving act in Jesus Christ. Those who seek it elsewhere are rebelling
against the provision of God in Christ.
Therefore,
God’s love is not very accurately described as unconditional. It is unconditional in the sense that God
will receive anyone who accepts His Son’s redemptive work. The worst offender—child abuser, slave
trader, vile pervert, murderer—may call out to God for salvation in Christ. God will not turn any away. But, outside of Christ, that person must
receive the full punishment for his or her sins.
So,
if God accepts us, should not we accept ourselves? Should we not convince ourselves that we are
OK and love ourselves? If we do not,
shall we not fall into the horrible condition of lack of self-esteem? After all, did not Jesus teach us to love our
neighbor as we love ourselves. This has been the theme hammered home by many
a preacher-turned-psychologist.
When
Jesus said we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves, His point was that
we love ourselves and that gives us guidance into how to love our
neighbor. We love ourselves enough to
feed and clothe ourselves, to avoid cold and to come in out of the rain. We love ourselves enough to seek the most
attractive of mates, to pursue the most rewarding of careers, and to do all
sorts of things that call attention to ourselves. Even when we do self-destructive things, it
is often not because we do not love ourselves.
We may do them because we have some really distorted notions about how
to assuage negative feelings or how to grab the attention of certain people
whose attentions we value.
I
grant you that many people do some pretty self-destructive things, but
generally they do so more out of short-sightedness than out of low self-esteem. The kid who gets drunk with some buddies may
be yielding to peer pressure. But the
pressure of the peers is on the desire of that young person to be liked (a
reaction of a person who likes himself).
I am not convinced that a person with extremely high self-esteem will
not want people to like him or her. Yes,
I agree that a mature person will pursue friendship in wiser ways than by
chug-a-lugging beer. But stupid, self-destructive
behavior is not necessarily evidence of low self-esteem.
The
self-esteem movement began with psychologists who had studied severely
disturbed people. It may have been that
some of those people genuinely hated themselves. But that understanding should not be
projected onto the whole human race.
Most people probably think too highly of themselves and need a healthy
dose of humility. Most people act out of
selfishness that needs to be curbed, not encouraged.
Does
simply preaching to people that God loves them cure their low self-esteem and
thus “save” them from self-destructive behavior? I cannot be convinced of that because I do
not believe that it is the whole revealed truth of the gospel. It seems to me to withhold the truth is a very
cruel thing to do to people.
I
believe that people who receive Christ as Savior have the potential to have
healthier understandings about themselves.
I recognize that we all have past histories that color our thinking and
can haunt us. In some cases, we may need
to be counseled by a person who can recognize unhealthy patterns of thinking
and behavior and can lead us out of those problems. I do not believe the vast majority of
Christians need counseling about their low self-esteem. I think that people do need to grow in their
experience of Christ through the Holy Spirit.
As that growth takes place, they are going to experience the “witness of
the Spirit” that assures them of their acceptance by God as beloved
children. That certainly will affect
their mental health and well-being.
What
about calling people sinners? First, I
defend that as an accurate statement of Biblical revelation. Second, it is done in the context of God’s
offer of salvation. Generally, a
physician reveals her diagnosis to a patient in a straightforward way. But the diagnosis is in the context of treatment. “You have coronary heart disease. The best treatment for you would be bypass
surgery.” This is your disease, and this
is the cure. So it is with the
gospel. One cannot preach the gospel
without talking about sin. But the
center of the gospel is the salvation that is in the work of Jesus Christ.
We
cannot accept Christ without accepting the truth of our sinfulness. But that truth does not devastate us because
we recognize that Christ has died for our sins and we can be saved through Him. The truth of the gospel does not damage our
self-esteem, because we know God has done great things for us in Christ. The disciples of self-esteem used to love to
sneer at the old hymn’s words: “Alas,
and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head for such as
worm as I?” “That is worm theology!”
they would snort. Well, excuse me, it is
Biblical theology. The author of that
hymn recognized that without Christ he was indeed nothing. He also recognized that God loved him so much
that He gave the most sacred head—and most sacred blood—in the universe for his
salvation, so that he no longer would be a worm but would be a child of
God. That many Christians reject that
theology as “worm theology” is a sad
commentary on the destructive influence of the gospel of self-esteem.
C. Objections Based on the
Degree of Some Suffering
Some people just do not buy my
whole thesis, that God has provided an answer for suffering through the plan of
salvation. They would say something like
the following:
I have read your plan of
salvation. I understand what you are
saying, that God someday will remove all pain and suffering and that, if we
accept Christ, then we have received God’s answer to suffering. However, how does that make the pain of a
hungry child any better? How does that
take away the horror of innocents killed in war? How does that make a young mother who is
dying of cancer feel any better. It
simply is not enough! If sin is the
reason the suffering has come, then God has allowed too much suffering to come
because of sin. The whole “system” is
unjust and God still must answer for the “why” of all this suffering.
In
a sense, it seems that I would have to repeat my whole argument to try to
answer this objection.
Moreover, there is a logical
difficulty. The problem is that the
argument is based on the perception of the degrees
of the suffering that people are undergoing. That is, those who would argue this way are
saying that my argument cannot hold up because the suffering in some cases is
so bad. So, the question would be, how
much less would the suffering have to be for my argument to be valid? Could the argument be valid if only old men
and women got cancer? What would they
say about that? Would the argument be
valid if only soldiers died in war?
Would it be valid if only rich people were robbed? It is obvious where this is going. It is an attempt for us to play God by
choosing our part of The Big Picture that we want changed. In this case, we are not picking and choosing
in order to make life bearable, but, rather, to make God seem just in allowing
the suffering that goes on. But it
really is not different than earlier examples that we discussed in which people
try to select those aspects of The Big Picture that they desire to delete in
order to bring life as it is in conformance with their own ideas about how life
should be.
That is not what God is offering to
us. God is offering to us a radical
solution to the human condition. His
offer implicitly concedes that this present order of existence is far from
ideal. But Paul’s conclusion is
this: “I reckon that the sufferings of
this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that shall be revealed
in us.” When some dispute this, they are
arguing with the revealed Word of God through the Apostle.
Also, I believe, implicit in this
objection is a rejection of the horror of eternal punishment. It is bad for someone to be very sick. It is sad to see someone die. But I believe that we need to recognize that
there are eternal issues. Jesus talked
about fear. He said, “Do not fear the
person who can kill your body, fear the One who can destroy body and soul in
hell.” If we dwell exclusively on
temporal sufferings and somehow make our estimation of them a reason to reject
the gospel, then we have not seriously considered the God with Whom we
deal.
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