Charleston, South Carolina

In between distractions in my life, I’ve been working on a few posts that haven’t come together very well, but the murders two days ago in that historic black church in Charleston require a response that cannot wait.

I used to love the United States of America.  Back when I was a kid, half a century ago, there seemed to be so much promise.  People were really starting, it seemed, to take seriously our national rhetoric about liberty and justice for all.  Sure there were problems, but the good guys seemed to be winning.  Dr. King had galvanized the nation’s conscience, the President was working hard to get civil rights legislation passed, we were tackling the problems of illiteracy, poverty, and unemployment, trying to ensure that all American citizens had the same starting advantages, so that we could all make what we could of ourselves.

True, there were problems. John Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were all martyred for trying to bring the vision of a new America into reality.  There was violence on college campuses, the nation was becoming mired in a divisive war abroad, and the national debated was becoming acrimonious.  At the time, however, these seemed like unfortunate potholes on the road to progress.  Decent people no longer felt justified in spouting hateful sentiments about blacks and women; support for other prejudices was also waning.  Even gay rights were becoming a thing that people of good will were starting to take seriously.

What happened?  For one thing, the Reagan years saw a backlash.  The unholy alliance forged by Richard Nixon between the Republican Party and conservative evangelical religious leaders started to bear fruit, as prejudiced white people, with their new-found access to the corridors of power, began to have forums in which to spew their hatred—and what is more, all in the name of Christ.  From feeling themselves to be a minority threatened with extinction, these hate-mongers began to relish their new-found opportunity to shape the national dialogue.  In return, they pledged themselves to supporting the agenda of the biggest corporations and the greediest of the wealthy.

Laws began to be passed, allowing corporations to make obscene profits at the expense of their workers, for corporate executives to earn huge salaries and enormous bonus by busting the unions, eliminating the jobs of decent, hardworking Americans, and hiring foreigners to do the work at a small fraction of the cost—paying them wages that even in the economies where those workers lived were hardly enough to live on.  The moral underpinnings of the capitalist system were jettisoned, so that anything that might restrain the unhindered acquisition of the richest of the rich could be eliminated.  “Greed is good” became the mantra of the day, and the conservative evangelicals said nothing.  (They apparently need to be reminded that in Christian theology, greed and avarice are mortal sins, not virtues.)  Rejoicing in their access to political power, the conservative evangelical leadership began to fight back against the rise of equality for women and for racial and ethnic minoirities, and basically against any effort to get people to love their neighbors as themselves.  We went from laughing at the Archie Bunker types to taking them seriously and giving them radio and television programs on which they could spew forth their hate-filled arguments.

So here we are today, trying to cope with the resulting moral mess.  In particular, we are finding that policemen around the country appear to feel that the black-skinned citizens they are supposed to be protecting are not as important as the white-skinned citizens in their jurisdictions; and behavior that would get a policeman disciplined or dismissed from the force if exhibited against a white citizen is acceptable when directed against a black citizen.  There are even those who support the police in this attitude when others try to call it into question.

This attitude is, unfortunately, nothing new in the United States of America.  Black people have been scapegoats in white thinking ever since the racial difference began to be used as a justification for the institution of chattel slavery.  (We like owning slaves, but we can no longer justify owning one another, but look! here’s a group of people who can’t fight back—let’s enslave them and invent a reason for its being okay.)  The phrase “liberty and justice for all” remains just as much out of reach for a significant percentage of the population as it ever did.  And the wealthy and most of our political leaders seem to like it that way.

Let us be clear:  the deaths of these nine Charlestonians were an act of racially-motivated murder; worse, they were an act of terrorism equivalent to the most nightmarish deeds of the Ku Klux Klan.  The young man who committed this act of terrorism seems to feel that white people are somehow under some kind of threat, a threat serious enough to justify the taking of lives in revenge.  And anyone who is trying to direct the national conversation to the topics of racism and the regulation of assault weapons is being pooh-poohed and decried.

Let us be clear:  the deaths of these nine Charlestonians were not part of some mythical “attack on Christianity” in this country; they were perpetrated by one Christian against other Christians.  The motivation was clearly racism, not religion, and the intent was clearly to strike fear into the hearts of other black people.  If a Muslim had perpetrated this attack, it would be called an act of terrorism, and terrorism is what it is—but perpetrated by a member of the white race against the black race, so we don’t think of it that way.  And you know in your heart of hearts that if a black man had murdered nine white people, we would definitely be calling it an act of terrorism.

Let us remind ourselves of the eternal truths at issue here:  firstly, God created all human beings—not just some—in his image.  Second, our Lord told us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Third, he defined “our neighbors” as pretty much everyone else in the world.  If a despised Samaritan can be considered a neighbor to a godly Jew, then black people are “the neighbors” of white people, women are “the neighbors” of men, foreigners are “the neighbors” of Americans.  Whatever category we see ourselves as belonging to, “our neighbors” are the people of our worst nightmares—and we have to love them the way we love ourselves.

If you consider yourself a Christian, you have no choice in this matter; loving your neighbor the way you love yourself is what your Lord told you to do.  If you believe that the Bible is literally and inerrantly the Word of God, then God is telling you:  you must love your neighbor as yourself.  On that day when we are called before the Throne of Mercy to render an account of our actions, it will not do to say, “But, Lord, they were blacks (or foreigners, or women, or gays, or drug addicts, or pedophiles), so what I did to them was okay.”  No, the Lord of Love will want to know why we did not love them as ourself.

And Jesus said to them:  “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.  Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’  And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

“Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’  Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

—Matthew 5:31–46

What is the real age of the earth?

Erasmus would have delighted in the Internet, and most especially in YouTube, where human folly is everywhere evident.  Although I have watched many an instructive, delightful, awe-inspiring, or heartwarming video on YouTube, there are an equal number depicting disgusting, distressing, or foolish human behavior.  I have also learned from my watching that there is no topic so elevated, no subject that so tugs at the heartstrings, that someone can’t come along and post hateful filth in the comments section.  If there were any doubt about the fallen nature of human beings, YouTube would lay it to rest.

I got started watching YouTube because I have small animals, and I love to watch videos of rats, hamsters, gerbils, and chinchillas doing cute and adorable things.  But I got seriously involved in watching YouTube because I am both a devout Christian and a lover of the physical sciences, and there are lectures available about physics, astronomy, cosmology, and about Christian theology—as well as about Christian theology and physics, astronomy, etc.

I am particularly interested in the debate between atheist scientists and the Christians who agree with them that science and religion cannot both be right. I suppose that there must be a gene, the possession of which allows one to see this conflict.  It is a gene that I appear to lack—for try as I might, I have never been able to see how Christianity and science are supposed to conflict.  But that is the topic of another essay.

I recently came across a putatively Christian video about the so-called “young-earth hypothesis,” which claims that despite all physical evidence to the contrary, the earth is actually only six or ten thousand years old, and was created with all the geological evidence and all the fossils necessary to give the appearance of great age and of the evolution of biological species over time.

If anyone should try to sell you the young-earth hypothesis as a Christian doctrine, send him or her packing, because it is no such thing.  The Church has never taken a doctrinal stand on the age of the earth.  Of course, individual Christians have had their opinions and have done their best to determine the age of the earth in the light of the evidence available to them in their day.  What is Christian doctrine is that the universe had a beginning, and it was created by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—in other words, the God of the Bible.  When God is supposed to have done so has never been the subject of a settled Christian doctrine.

But it is worth remembering that the consensus among physicists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used to be that the universe was eternal and had neither beginning nor end.  The Big Bang hypothesis of the formation of the universe was originally resisted by mainstream scientists, on the grounds that it was too similar to the notion that the universe was created by God.  Nevertheless, the Big Bang hypothesis was conclusively confirmed by Robert Wilson’s and Arno Penzias’ discovery of the cosmic background radiation, and it is ironic that atheist scientists are now citing the Big Bang as proof that Christianity cannot be true!

It is now pretty well proved that the universe is around 13.7 billion years old.  Likewise, the available evidence indicates that the earth itself is somewhere around 4.5 billion years old. The young-earth hypothesis directly contradicts this evidence-based opinion by asserting that the evidence is all fake.  In other words, when creating the earth, God deliberately tried to mislead us by planting fossils and arranging the radioactivity of the rocks in such a way as to give the false appearance of great age.

There are four problems with the young-earth hypothesis.  First, it is unverifiable:  in other words, if all the physical evidence of the age of the earth is fake, then there is no way to prove whether the earth is young or old.  Moreover, if God is willing to fake fossils, why would he stop there?  Surely an omnipotent God is equally capable of having created the universe five seconds ago, and of giving us all the memories (and the aches and pains) to think that we were actually born years ago, instead of just a moment ago.  Once you deny the validity of the physical evidence, then the five-seconds-ago hypothesis becomes just as reasonable as the young-earth hypothesis.

The second problem is that once you are willing to admit that God is a liar, then nothing can be trusted.  For if God is willing to lie in stone, why would he not be willing to lie in words?  This means that the very Bible on which the young-earth hypothesis is based is rendered completely untrustworthy by that very hypothesis.

The third problem is that by undermining the truth of the Bible, the young-earth hypothesis destroys the very foundations of the Christian faith that supposedly supports it.  The Bible is the history of God’s dealings with the human race in general and the people of Israel in particular.  It is supposed to contain all things necessary to salvation.  But if it cannot be trusted, then (as Saint Paul tells the Christians at Corinth) our faith is futile, and we are still in our sins.

The fourth and last problem is that, in the context of Christian doctrine, the young-earth hypothesis is a prima facie heresy.  For Scripture tells us that God is the God of truth, and this hypothesis makes him out to be a liar.

The upshot is that not only is the young-earth hypothesis useless as a strategy for fighting atheist scientists because it is logically meaningless, it is also incompatible with the religion in which the people advancing this hypothesis claim to believe.  All in all, I believe that the true victor here is our ancient Adversary, who is using the young-earth hypothesis to bring the Christian religion into disrepute and to lead the people who believe in the hypothesis away from true faith in Christ.

The Resurrection of Christ

I want to see if I can put some thoughts in order about the resurrection of Jesus.

Firstly, I was surprised recently to discover that there is substantial unanimity among historians about the Resurrection.  It is apparently one of the best-documented of historical events, with more extant evidence for it than for other historical events that we accept without question.  Of course, since people are not returned to life every day, it is a story that can be very hard to swallow.

But whether you believe or not that Jesus actually returned from the dead, it is certainly clear that something extraordinary has to have happened, something that fell outside the normal categories of thought and experience in first-century Palestine.  How we account for this extraordinary experience will depend, surely, on whether or not we accept the a priori possibility of miracles, and on whether or not we are predisposed to believe the eyewitness testimony handed down to us.

There seems to be no doubt that the tomb was found empty on Sunday morning.  Nobody disputes that; what they disagree on is the reason for the tomb’s being empty. And what they really disagree about is the stories of Jesus’ appearances to various people, beginning with the female disciples who make a point of hurrying over to the tomb before work on Sunday morning to finish off the burial preparations that had had to be curtailed on Friday afternoon because of the approaching Sabbath.

If we believe the stories, however, the disciples initially found the empty tomb just as hard to accept as anyone else.  Because the first people to discover the absence of the body were women, who were not considered reliable witnesses in those days, the male disciples have to go check it out themselves.  It is interesting, therefore, that the first people actually to experience the risen Lord were those very women.  (The story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter, related in the twentieth chapter of John's Gospel, is particularly poignant.  Mary quite naturally mistakes Jesus for the gardener, and has to be convinced that it is really Jesus.)

Likewise, the other people who encounter Jesus in these accounts all have a hard time recognizing him.  They are downcast and disheartened by the death of the teacher in whom they all had such great hopes, and the last thing they expect is to see him again, after having watched his execution.  This makes the transformation in those people, when they finally realize whom they are talking with, all the more remarkable.  They go from hopelessness and dejection to enthusiastic energy.  A case in point is the couple who fall in with Jesus on the way from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  They are so downhearted that the trip there takes them quite a while, but once they recognize Jesus, it is hardly an effort for them to hurry back to Jerusalem with the good news.

So what did seeing the risen Lord mean for the disciples?  Firstly, it appears to have been an extraordinarily vivid experience.  The Gospel accounts are make it clear that the witnesses are certain that they are not having a vision or a hallucination, that they are not seeing a ghost or a projection of Jesus’ spirit (the New Testament calls such a projection of someone’s spirit his or her “angel”), and that these visits are not wishful thinking on their part.  Once they adjust their mental framework to accept that this is really Jesus in the flesh, they have no further doubt in the reality of the experience.

Second, the implications of the Resurrection seem to have transformative power.  For one thing, and most importantly, it means that Jesus actually is the Messiah.  (A dead Messiah is no Messiah, after all.)  It also means that God has taken a hand in bringing an end to Israel’s long exile and that the long-awaited general resurrection of the dead is at hand.  Jesus’ return to life shows, beyond all hope, that he is indeed the long-awaited figure who will restore Israel’s relationship with God.  In fact, after some further theological reflection, the disciples realize that the Crucifixion and Resurrection have restored not just Israel’s, but all humanity’s relationship with God.

The Resurrection is also a key experience in causing the disciples to reevaluate their understanding of just who Jesus really was.  Thomas is the first to articulate the new understanding, when he encounters the risen Jesus and falls to his knees exclaiming, “My lord and my God!”  This is an extraordinary utterance for a monotheistic Jew to make, but it articulates a sense that in Jesus of Nazareth we see God made manifest, that he is not just a prophet, not just the Messiah, but in some mysterious but very real sense, God present among us.  (This realization, combined with the experience of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is what the doctrine of the Trinity tries to account for.)

Third, the risen Christ is alive in a new way; this resurrection is different in kind from the restoration to life that Jesus wrought for Lazarus and the daughter of the synagogue leader.  They were restored to life in their original bodies and were still subject to eventual death.  Jesus, however, is given a new body that is, as Saint Paul puts it, as different from our normal bodies as a wheat plant is from a wheat seed.  What is more, Christ’s resurrection is the harbinger of something we will all experience at the time of the general resurrection of the dead, the time when we will all be brought into new life as God’s servants, through our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Lastly, the resurrection of our Lord is the beginning of the transformation of the entire world.  Many Jews at the time of Christ believed that there would be, at the end of time, a general resurrection of all believers, and this belief has been carried into Christianity.  So Jesus’ resurrection is a foretaste, the “first fruits,” as Saint Paul calls it, of something that will happen to all of us when the Kingdom of God is fully and finally established here on earth.

The upshot is that in Christ God has wrought a new thing in human history, and we are all living in a world that is very different from what it was before the Resurrection.  It is the supreme act that has restored our broken humanity and reconciled us with our Creator, and that presages the ultimate transformation of the world.  Surely that is cause for great joy, and surely it explains how the disciples, forlorn and dejected after the Crucifixion, were able to joyfully go out into the world to tell this good news to everyone.

“Alleluia, Christ is risen!  The Lord is risen indeed!”

Resurrection

I started this blog five years ago, when certain political issues with moral and theological implications were weighing on my mind.  I doubt anyone ever read any of the posts, so I haven’t scrupled to delete them and resurrect this blog as a series of musings on theological preoccupations as they arise in my life.

On this day, the Sunday of the Resurrection in the two-thousand-fifteenth year of our Lord, it seems appropriate to resurrect and refashion this blog.  We’ll see if the universe will prove any more interested in the new posts than it was in the old ones.