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Two Approaches to the Problem of Evil

By Jim Spiegel

One of the most challenging issues in the philosophy of religion is the problem of evil.  Put simply, the problem concerns the difficulty of reconciling the reality of evil—from immoral behaviors to diseases and natural disasters—with the existence of an all-powerful and perfectly good God.  If God is almighty, then he can prevent evil, and if God is morally perfect, then presumably he would wantto prevent it.  Yet evil exists—in massive doses, in fact.  On its face, then, the problem amounts to evidence against theism, at least as traditionally construed.  One way out would be to deny God is omnipotent, as Harold Kushner essentially does in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  Another route would be to surrender belief in God’s goodness.  But these approaches contradict the biblical portrait of God.  So, it seems, the theist is in a fix.

Since the ancient philosopher Epicurus first posed the evidential problem of evil, theists have proposed many ways of eluding its logic by contriving “theodicies”—explanations as to why God would permit sin and suffering in this world.  Two of the most well-worn among these are the “free will theodicy” and the “soul-making theodicy.”  Both of these aim to deny the premise that God would not want to allow evil.  Each explains God’s permission of evil in terms of some greater goods that God wanted to achieve in this world. 

According to the free will theodicy the greater goods God desired were the various goods that depend upon human freedom, such as genuine relationships and moral qualities.  But, of course, we have misused our freedom and, well, now things are a mess.  But the risk, so to speak, was worth it, or so say defenders of the free will theodicy.  According to the soul-making theodicy, the greater goods God aims to achieve by permitting evil is higher or “second-order” virtues which can only be displayed in response to evil.  For example, forgiveness requires sin to forgive, perseverance demands difficulty to overcome, and so on.  Such traits as forgiveness, perseverance, patience, compassion, mercy, etc. are good and beautiful virtues, and well worth the price of evil to achieve.  Or so say proponents of the soul-making theodicy.

I think both of these theodicies are helpful in dealing with the problem of evil.  But is either one preferable to or more helpful than the other?  This question has been occupying my mind a bit lately, as I will be giving a presentation on it at next week’s national meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society in Providence, Rhode Island, which will be held at the Rhode Island Convention Center.  (Once it is finished, I plan to post my paper on this blog.)  If you’ll be in the New England area from November 18-21, you might want to consider checking out this conference and hearing presentations by some leading lights in the world of Christian philosophy and theology.  It’s not too late to register.  And I also invite you to consider joining the EPS or its sister organization, the Evangelical Theological Society.  In each case, membership is inexpensive and includes a subscription to the society’s journal (Philosophia Christi or the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society).

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Snapshots

By Amy Spiegel

Brief comments on film by Amy.
Some old, some new.  Domestic films and foreign too.

Atonement — I went into this movie with pretty low expectations, but wanted to give it a try since it was nominated for several Academy Awards. When will I learn? This movie was like a puzzle that should fit together nicely but somehow everything doesn’t come together. The lovers separated by lies and war, the soldier trying to get home to his girl, the wrongdoer trying to make things right. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, a lot. For me the characters were difficult to understand and the ending was one of the most dissatisfying I have ever seen. It seemed as though the makers of the movie and the writer of the novel (that’s right, I read the book just to make sure I wasn’t missing something; I wasn’t) were trying to say “Atonement isn’t possible in the real world. Everything is senseless and without meaning. Atonement is just the fantasy of a sick mind.” Uplifting, huh? I don’t mind “depressing but true” but this one only qualified for the former.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — Now here is a depressing but true movie. True in both the sense that it is based on a true story and in its themes and message. I want to give as little away as possible but the basic story regards a man trapped in his body with only a limited means of communication. He faces the choice of sinking deep inside himself or struggling to the surface in order to touch those around him. Ironically, while The Diving Bell would certainly never appear on any “Top Ten First Date Movie” list, and movies like Atonement (am I beating a dead horse, here?) are touted as great love stories, I believe The Diving Bell portrays the truest, deepest love and makes Atonement look like a cream puff (a stale cream puff, no less) by comparison. One disclaimer, however: the technique used to film this movie can be a bit tough on the stomach. If you are prone to motion sickness, grab a Dramamine beforehand.

The Privileged Planet — Our boys are forever watching a Discovery Channel something or other and have learned to patiently listen as I drone on about how just because the narrator says we evolved from primordial soup it doesn’t mean that it’s true. So The Privileged Planet was a nice change of pace. Lots of really smart guys talking about how perfectly placed (as in by an intelligent designer and not the lottery of the cosmos) our planet is both for sustaining life and observing the universe. While not as detailed as others of it’s kind, such as Planet Earth, it was interesting and informative.

 Sense and Sensibility — I know what you are thinking: how many versions of the same story line can you watch? Answer: at least one more. This recent adaptation of one of my all-time favorite books somehow manages to tell a story that I have read and watched innumerable times and still have me in tears and breathless to see everything turn out all right. Whether you have failed to see any of the adaptations of Jane Austen’s works or you are a diehard anglophile, this is a winner. I would also recommend Miss Austen Regrets, a fictionalized account of Jane Austen’s later life, and Cranford, an excellent adaptation of several Elizabeth Gaskell novels.

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A Strange Satisfaction

By Jim Spiegel

Congratulations to all you Obama supporters out there!  Your man is going to the White House.

Prior to the election I expected that I would have been thoroughly disappointed by this result.  But, strangely, I am not.  I strongly disagree with most of Obama’s policy positions—from his extreme pro-choice stance to his position on (re-)distributive justice—and am deeply concerned about his moral judgment, but as I watched Obama’s victory speech late Tuesday night I was surprised by what welled up inside of me—a peculiar feeling of satisfaction.  What?!  Yes, I was almost euphoric as I watched Obama and his family walk out on that stage in all of their meticulously choreographed political glory.  The historico-social significance of the moment suddenly fell on me in a way I hadn’t anticipated and—at least for those few minutes—I was glad he won.  But how can this be, when the thought of the implementation of his ideas makes me shudder?

Flashback 33 years…  When I was twelve-years-old my family moved from Detroit, Michigan to Jackson, Mississippi, where I began attending a private middle school.  At this school I got my first dose of hard-core Southern racism-unmitigated hatred of black Americans, complete with brutal jokes and frequent use of the N-word, not just by students but teachers as well.  This terrified me, since, well, I didn’t hate black people, and kids who became known as “N-lovers” faced certain persecution.  I couldn’t understand how people could hate other people just because of their skin color.  My mother had always warned me never to have such an attitude, and she even scolded me when one day I accidentally mispronounced the name of the African country “Niger.”

One day in my eighth-grade civics class my teacher, Mr. Knox, went on a rant about how “our country would be better if we sent all them n——–ers back to Africa.”  Something in my head clicked.  Even at thirteen I knew this was evil, and I silently resolved to try to be a friend, not a foe, to black folks.  And as the years passed I found myself doing this almost by reflex.  Later that year I went out of my way to befriend a black kid in my neighborhood, and two years later I got my first job at a Popeyes Fried Chicken restaurant in the middle of a black neighborhood, where a friend of mine and I were the only white employees.  We loved it and even enjoyed how our fellow workers referred to us as “Pixie” and “Dixie.”  I suppose this was our meager way of raging against the Southern white racist machine.  Not a big deal, really, but for us as young teenagers in that culture, it sure felt like a big deal. 

Years later, after my conversion, I found that I sometimes had to rebuke fellow Christians for their occasional racist comments.  Even during my college years in the mid-80s this was not uncommon.  And the typical response to my challenge was a condescending roll of the eyes or a verbal dismissal—“Oh come on, Spiegel.  Lighten up.”  This was exasperating, but by now I had the resources—biblically and philosophically, to challenge their foolishness.  Still, they didn’t listen.  (By the way, I don’t mean to suggest that all white Mississippians/Southerners were hard-core racists in those days.  But racism certainly was, and perhaps still is, more rampant in the South than in other areas of the country.)

Fast forward two decades, and there I am watching a black man give a victory speech, having just been elected President of the United States.  Suddenly I felt the same way those people in the crowd looked—euphoric and satisfied.  I heard a voice deep inside me say “Take that, Mr. Knox!” and “Take that, old college buddies!” I felt vindicated somehow.  But most of all I was happy for our country, that we had reached this milestone in our racial and ethnic struggle.  It’s not the end of that struggle of course, but it’s a hugely significant step.  And I can’t help but feel good about that aspect of Obama’s election.

Of course, the Obama presidency will be about much more than racial healing, and even in that domain it is far from a cure-all.  There are enormous challenges facing the next administration, and it will be interesting to see how much success, if any, Obama can have in dealing with the problems they will inherit, particularly since he will enjoy strong Democrat majorities in both the House and the Senate.  For people like me who sharply disagree with Obama’s policies—we can at least give the man a chance.  And we can find some solace in the fact that our nation has taken a big step forward in its struggle with racism.

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The Tug of the Gender War

By Amy Spiegel

Despite the fact that I am a self-professed non-feminist, gender and the role it plays in relationships is discussed quite frequently at the Spiegels. This is in part due to fact that we have three boys and one girl. Watching them develop and relate to one another in such different ways generates a lot of conversations between Jim and me both on how to help our kids understand one another and how their differences translate to the larger scale of men and women in general. But obviously Jim and I, too, have the gender gap to overcome and find plenty of fodder in our own interactions as well.

A few Sundays back, we were riding home from the church with the kids and while I didn’t exactly have Jim’s full attention (I was competing with ESPN radio and the cacophony coming from the backseat), I took a moment or two to “remind” him of some projects around the house I thought needed his attention. This was the impetus of yet another discussion between us regarding the differences between the masculine and feminine approaches to life. He would say I was nagging and he would probably be right. Let’s face it girls, we nag. We take every opportunity we possibly can find to remind them of all the things they should be doing, could be doing, need to be doing. We cannot hold our tongues and let them do it in their own time. I can’t count the times when I have asked Jim to do something, probably more than once, and am getting ready to remind him again when he goes and does it of his own accord. And frankly when he does it on his own, when I come home and he has unclogged the toilet or cleaned up the garage, I don’t really find it as satisfying because I didn’t tell him to do it! If that isn’t a symptom of the fall of man (and woman) and the complete and total infiltration of sin into every crevice of our being, I don’t know what is.   

But here’s the thing. Even in the way that He caused our natures to be cursed and fallen, God has shown mercy. Eve overstepped her place in reaching to be like God, and Adam abdicated his role in not intervening and, instead, participating with her. So God said, “Okay Eve, you want to be in charge? Then I will pair you with a man who would rather sit on the Lazy Boy or act like he doesn’t hear the kids pulling one another’s eyes from their sockets.” And He says “Okay Adam, you don’t want to step up and be irresponsible? Then I will pair you with a woman who will nag you about cutting the grass and ask you completely unimportant questions when there are 30 seconds to go in the last quarter with the score tied and your team on the 10-yard line.” But it could be worse. God, in His wisdom, has allowed even our weaknesses to compliment one another.

Men struggle with irresponsibility when it comes to their duties at home and spending time with their families.  (I am making a generalization here. Please don’t e-mail me about how you are married to the perfect man who washes the dishes every night before he rubs your feet while you tell him about your day with the kids, okay? I get it. These are generalizations that are true to some extent in most cases. Is that a good enough disclaimer for you? Ditto for all those who think I am oversimplifying the follies of women). So God gives men women who are, generally speaking, good at organizing stuff at home and who love their husbands so much they are willing to force their spouse to spend time with them. Women struggle with keeping their emotions in check and overstepping the boundaries of their spouses. So God gives them men who are, generally speaking, much more steady in their mood swings and who are laid back enough to handle encroachment in the small areas and strong enough to repel encroachment in the big ones. I love that Jim is strong where I am weak and vice versa. It’s like spooning—you fit where your partner is lacking. So rather than belittling one another for the areas where we differ, let’s appreciate these as opportunities for grace and hope the other guy (or gal) will do the same. Otherwise we are back in the garden, once again trying to assign blame, locked in an eternal tug of war in which no one wins. So the next time the wife gives you the stink eye (again) for not putting your socks in the hamper (again) or the hubby drifts in and out of listening to the minute details of your day, just take a deep breath and move on. After all, it could be a lot worse.

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Why I Can’t Vote for Obama OR McCain

By Jim Spiegel

We are now just five days from Election Day, and most Americans have decided on the presidential candidate for whom they will cast their vote next Tuesday.  I have decided who will get my vote, but it will be neither Barack Obama nor John McCain.  And the reason in both cases boils down to personal integrity.  For all of their considerable talents and leadership skills, the moral character of both of these men is too flawed to justify my support.

In the case of Obama his character flaws are apparent in his questionable associations, the most astonishing of which is his long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  Wright is not just a liberation theologian.  He is a radical anti-American racist, whose rhetoric is more venomous than anything I’ve seen in public life.  Yet Obama sat under his preaching for twenty years?  Unbelievable.  Another disturbing association of Obama’s is Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist with whom Obama served on a Chicago education board. Obama’s claim that he didn’t know about Ayers’ terrorist past at the time is implausible.  Finally, there is Obama’s utter insensitivity to sanctity of life issues.  Set aside his unyielding pro-choice position and his breathtaking assertion that determining when human life begins is “above my pay grade.”  (Come on, Barack.  As difficult as that might be, you must have some belief regarding the matter.  And surely anyreasonable person must admit that a pre-born child is human at least by the point of viability.)  The most astounding thing is Obama’s refusal (four times) to support the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which simply mandated that babies which survive abortions should receive medical attention to keep them alive.  Intentionally allowing a baby to die is, of course, infanticide.  And Obama’s refusal to support legislation to prevent such is complicity with this heinous act.  To say that this reveals a character flaw on his part is, well, an understatement.

As far as McCain is concerned, I do appreciate the man’s honorable service as a soldier, especially his heroic commitment to his fellow servicemen while a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War.  I also appreciate McCain’s respect for the sanctity of life and his take on several other issues.  But he, too, has a seriously chequered past.  McCain was unfaithful to his first wife, leaving her for his current wife, Cindy, even while his first wife was recovering from a serious automobile accident.  Yes, this was nearly thirty years ago, but there have been whiffs of questionable behavior since, such as regarding McCain’s inappropriate relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman.  Adultery is no small matter, as it demonstrates a person’s willingness to flout the most sacred vow two human beings can make.  If a man is willing to break that vow, then why should we trust him when it comes to his commitment to the American people?  And if the Clinton years taught us anything, it is that the so-called “private life” of a President is never just that.  So I cannot cast a vote for McCain.  (In fact, I have a personal rule never to vote for a known adulterer.)

But I do plan to vote in the presidential election.  So for whom shall I cast my ballot?  At this point I plan to write in the name of someone who is consummately qualified and has impeccable character:  Condoleeza Rice.  I will refrain from extolling her virtues here, otherwise this post might never end!  Suffice it to say that she has the moral integrity that I wish either Obama or McCain had.  Oy vey.

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Drinking from the Cup of Ritual

By Amy Spiegel

In these politically divisive times, there are lots of ways we see our nation divided and categorized: by political party, race, religion, occupation, beverage of choice. Okay, so maybe this last category doesn’t cut as deep a divide as the others, but nonetheless, I think you can tell a lot about a person by what they choose to imbibe. Now there is the classic divide of coffee or tea. People of both persuasions take the process of brewing or steeping, whatever the case might be, pretty seriously. I have seen people approach their coffeemakers, if they are hard core, like priests approaching the altar, especially if they have a French press.

Jim switched from coffee to tea a few years back, due to his battle with gastric reflux. While this was a great disappointment to the kids who had become accustomed to begging a swig or two from his coffee mug each morning, I think he is now in the correct camp for his disposition, not to mention his digestion. I see the coffee drinker as high energy/intense. This is not Jim, who relates much better to the methodical and slower pace of tea drinking.

Allow me to describe the typical process of making a cup of tea in our house. First, heat the water. This is actually a great controversy in our household because Jim much prefers the microwave, while I rely on the electric kettle. Next you forget that you have heated the water (in either way previously described) and you have to start again, because by the time you remember, the water has gotten cold again. After reheating the water, you choose a tea bag and once again walk away, perhaps to wipe a bottom (always a great pre-beverage-consumption activity) or to settle a dispute. Returning to your steeping cup, you realize that once again, it’s cold. After reheating, adding half and half and honey (if you are Jim, you use more honey than Winnie the Pooh) you try to drink it. But wait, it’s too hot. So you leave the tea, and do something else only to come back too late and find that your tea is—say it with me now—cold. So you give it one more zap in the microwave (it now contains enough microwaves to scramble a pacemaker) and drink, burning your tongue with each sip, but you’ve come this far, right? Gee, I don’t’ know why I don’t do that more often. My aversion to this process obviously reveals my issues with patience and instant gratification. I applaud Jim for his perseverance but prefer my beverage consumption not to be an exercise in self-discipline.

So, you might be asking yourself, what do I drink—water? Please. I am among an elite group of drinkers whose beverage of choice is the Polar Pop. Now allow me to enlighten those of you who do not have the honor of living in Indiana. The Polar Pop is a very large, very cold fountain drink. You can only buy it in a limited number of convenient stores in our area, though it has its imitators, like all greats do. You can get a Polar Pop in either brand you prefer, but I, of course, like all distinguished connoisseurs of carbonated beverages, head directly for the Coke side of the dispenser. I quickly fill my Styrofoam (that’s right, not only am I consuming 32 oz. of liquid goodness-knows-what, but it is all contained within a large, non-biodegradable container) with ice and fill with half caf and half decaf Diet Coke. In and out in less than a minute if the line is short, which is good thing because I am usually squeezing the stop in between either dropping off or picking up one of the kids and dropping off or picking up one of the other kids. The size of the drink is definitely a plus because if the kids are present, there is usually a lot sharing going on. If the choice of coffee or tea reflects on the chooser, then what does the Polar Pop reveal about me? Besides the obvious—that I am not as environmentally or health conscious as I ought to be—I think the draw of the Polar Pop for me is the ritual of it. I love the fact that with little variation I can go through the ceremony of getting my Polar Pop in a very orderly and predictable way each time, going to the same gas station and getting the same drink. I get the same style of cup (the cup holder-friendly model) and get cranky if they don’t have the blue straws as opposed to the skinny white ones. (I also drink tea, when I can endure the process, out of the same mug, eat the same cereal for breakfast every morning, and reread books again and again. It’s a sickness, I know.)

In an attempt to pull this post out of the abyss of complete triviality it has thus far been wallowing in, I will say this. There is a natural human tendency to cling to what is visible, that which we can touch and feel and even taste. While my near-obsession with the Polar Pop seems harmless enough, there are days when I suck down Diet Coke like a prayer to heaven, seeking comfort from the familiar. But I think that even in routine, God speaks and does indeed comfort. Otherwise, why would He make the sun rise and fall each day in pretty much the same way and have the seasons follow one another in the same order? If He likes order and routine, why shouldn’t we who are created in His image? Perhaps the draw of routine is part of the Imago Dei, however dimly disguised in the contents of a Styrofoam cup.

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A Series of Deaths

By Jim Spiegel

I have a good friend who likes to say that “life is a series of deaths.”  In saying this, he is referring to the fact that our journey on this planet involves many farewells and demands of self-denial—and each of these represents some kind of permanent loss.  As you grow your childhood perishes.  With each graduation during your school years you say goodbye to friends, many of whom you will never seen again.  And the ones with whom you do stay in touch you will never know in that context again.  When you marry, much of your freedom dies, and with the birth of each child you must lay aside worthwhile projects and even some dreams.  And then come the real deaths.  You lose friends to accidents, cancers, and even suicide.  Your parents begin to fail and suddenly you find yourself having to parent them in return, perhaps nursing them into that good night—always half believing its not really happening.  It’s just one death after another.

Sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it?  Well, it would be if that were the whole story.  And I suppose that if I thought it was, perhaps I’d have gone the way of some of my departed friends by now.  But it’s not the whole story.  Because with each of those deaths has come new life.  God has a way of replacing lost projects and dreams with even greater projects and dreams.  Far beyond the meager imaginings of my youth and even my young adulthood is the joy and satisfaction I’ve found in my wife and children as well as the broader community of which we are a part.  What calling is higher than investing your life in other souls?  Even the pains we feel in this context are, as C.S. Lewis would say, “more precious than all other gains.”

Of course, there are goodbyes ahead for all of these relationships as well.  More deaths to come in a seemingly endless train.  But it’s not really endless.  One day, we are told, all death will cease and God will wipe away every tear.  And, if Scripture is to be trusted, there are good things which emerge from our earthly trials—good things which are endless, such as the virtues we develop in persevering (cf. James 1:2-4; 1 Pet. 1:5-7).  God does not put us through this soul-grind without reason.  He does so to mold us into something wonderful, even the image of Christ.  And if that isn’t worth enduring a series of deaths, then nothing is.

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Theological Roadtrippin’

By Amy Spiegel

In picking up Ed Cyzewski’s new book Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life, I had many different expectations. Ed, Jim and I had exchanged several e-mails and I greatly appreciated Ed’s style and humor. I was looking forward to my first nonfiction read in a while and happily accepted Ed’s request for Wisdom & Folly to be included on his blog tour. What I didn’t expect was a cross-cultural experience.

One of my most convicting and enlightening experiences occurred immediately after I graduated from college. Why is it, by the way, those two so often road trip together? Just once I would love to have Enlightenment show up on my doorstep unexpectedly and say “Hey, I thought I would leave Conviction sleeping on the couch this time. How about some mind-blowing insights, just you and me?” Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes-mind-stretching and self-mortifying experience. I embarked on an overseas missions trip with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to Ukraine. I can’t really say why I went on this trip (it certainly wasn’t for any of the reasons one should), but I definitely learned a lot from it. I had traveled overseas before, but more as a sightseer and general laborer, never in a one on one situation, day in day out. Frankly, it was exhausting. As the days stretched on and I felt myself being drained of what little spiritual energy I had at the time, I found myself clinging more and more to anything American. I drank Diet Coke at every opportunity, gobbled candy bars like there was no tomorrow and wept at the sight of the American delegation making its way into the Olympics. I didn’t want to share my precious symbols of home with anyone, which very much went against the communal mindset of the Ukrainians. I was happy to buy you your own, but keep your distance from my Snickers, okay comrade? One day two friends and I had had enough of the boiled beets and hot tea for lunch and headed to the nearby village with visions of pizza dancing before our eyes. As we neared the village, our faithful leader came thundering down the path to stop us. We had unintentionally offended our Ukrainian friends by shunning the prepared food and showing off our ability to buy an alternative. With great embarrassment and not a little righteous indignation, we returned to eat lunch with the rest of the group. (I believe humble pie was on the menu that day.) It was then that I began to reflect on just how ingrained certain values were to me as an American: independence, individualism and consumerism, to name a few. Not all bad in the proper context, but they nonetheless placed me in a certain context both culturally and economically. If I wanted to minister to these students I had traveled so far to meet, I was going to have to check some of these values like luggage at the gate, knowing I might never see them again.

This is the challenge that Ed Cyzewski gently but forcefully issues in Coffehouse Theology. If we are to attempt to understand God and his inspired word, the Bible, we must understand ourselves and the context in which we live, because our biases and cultural beliefs form a lens through which we see the world and the scriptures. As Ed puts it “Once we understand where we come from and who we are, we can then step into the important task of knowing God through Christian theology.” For me, just as with my experience overseas, this book was an opportunity to be challenged by a different perspective and come to understand myself as well as others more clearly. I didn’t always agree with Ed, but I could certainly appreciate where he was coming from and also appreciate the magnanimous spirit with which he presents all sides of important debates. As Ed says, he isn’t so much interested in convincing you one way or another, but rather opening a healthy dialogue, and he does just this with a light and humble touch. (Plus, I must add, I greatly appreciated his somewhat random cultural references and the use of parentheticals.)  I would definitely recommend Coffeehouse Theology to anyone interested in theology as a way of better understanding God in everyday life and especially within our postmodern context. Within its pages, you just might find Enlightenment hanging out all by his lonesome, ready to go wherever the road might take you.

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Stubbing My Toe on the Stumbling Block of Tradition

By Amy Spiegel

I love tradition. If ever we do anything the same way twice (the same holiday routine, the same vacation spot, the same meal two Saturdays in a row), I immediately want to canonize it and say that we have to do it the same way every year. When Christmas time rolls around, I try to find as many ways as humanly possible to “create” tradition while Jim huddles in a corner somewhere, waiting out the storm of my enthusiasm. We have to listen to the same Christmas CD while putting up the tree, eat the same foods, use the same ornaments, etc. This also applies to my church-going routine. If I could convince my family to attend a church that played only hymns from the first century A.D. sung in Latin, I would do it. I am greatly comforted by the knowledge that if I am in error, I can blame some guy with a funny name who died thousands of years ago who may or may not have shaken the hand of our Lord and Savior. Sadly there are no such churches in our area so we have settled on a reformed church with one foot solidly planted in traditional worship and maybe a big toe and a few smaller appendages dabbling in the territory of the more contemporary.

Anyhoo, when we are visiting my greatly esteemed parents, we have occasion to visit their church. It is a good church and the preaching is excellent but the worship style is definitely a stretch for my traditional tastes. On a recent visit, I was struggling with both the style and content of a string of choruses, when a realization hit me like a censer between the eyes. (According to Wikipedia a censer is a small metal or stone dish used for burning incense which in the Roman Catholic Church is suspended on chains.) The reason I object to so many of the modern choruses is what I perceive to be an overemphasis on our emotional response to God. It isn’t that I am against emotion in general. (Just ask my kids, who enjoy forcing me to read “The Giving Tree” or “The Story of the Three Trees” just to watch me blubber like a whale on hormones at the end of each.) I love classic hymns because they tend to focus our attention on God’s attributes and his saving works, and my pigheaded self-centeredness needs all the refocusing it can get. But what I hadn’t realized was that although there are certainly some doctrinally justifiable objections to a number of choruses making the rounds these days, I was not responding based on such reason. I was responding with my emotions. I don’t like that style and it doesn’t make me feel like I am worshiping God.

I believe that there are some objective standards by which we can evaluate sacred music. (Like, for starters, could we have an actual melody that most of us can sing? And is it mandatory to repeat the chorus fourteen times? Just a thought. Not that I am bitter or anything.) But I do believe that there is a lot of room for diversity here, and we (okay, I) need to be careful that worship is what it is meant to be—an expression of our obedience to God, not an expression of how we are feeling at the moment. And if I like to worship in the traditional (read: correct) ways and you like to worship in the contemporary (read: slightly less correct but perfectly within the bounds of orthodoxy) ways, then that’s okay. Yes, we should hold one another accountable to standards of excellence in both content and form. But within those standards there is a great deal of room for diversity, just as there is a great deal of diversity within the body as a whole. After all, we are a body of many parts, not just one big toe.

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Is Christianity the One True Religion?

By Jim Spiegel

My son, Bailey, has a friend named Conner who has been asking his parents some very challenging theological questions of late.  He is only eight years old, but Conner has been stumping his mom and dad just like my kids stump me from time to time.  Recently he asked, “How do we know that our religion (Christianity) is the true one and the others are wrong?”  Whoa.  That’s a toughy.  This is one of those cases where the kid’s question itself is as encouraging as it is challenging.  It’s encouraging because it shows that he is already thinking critically about worldviews.  And it’s challenging, of course, because, well, the question raises a whole nest of difficult issues.  It’s also worth noting that Conner’s question presupposes two important truths.  First, it assumes that there is such a thing as truth in religion and, secondly, it assumes that not all religions can be true.  So the question as to why we should believe Christianity is the one true religion is itself insightful.

So, then, how do we know that Christianity is true?  The short answer is that we know this through special revelation—the Bible.  Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ is the unique of Son of God, that he lived a sinless life, and that he died and rose from the dead to save humanity from their sins.  This is the essence of the gospel and the heart of Christianity.  It is also the essential doctrine of our faith which distinguishes it from all other religious faiths.  The great theistic traditions of Judaism and Islam, for all their many insights and true doctrines (e.g., that there is a personal God who created the world and communicates with us through special revelation, etc.), deny the divinity of Christ.  And pantheistic religions, such as Hinduism and New Age thought, deny that Jesus Christ is uniquely divine (since they affirm that all human beings are essentially divine). 

Christianity stands alone in affirming that Jesus is the unique God-man and savior of the world.  And this core Christian belief is based on the teachings of the New Testament.  So, then, the next question is whether the New Testament is trustworthy.  Without delving into technicalities, the evidence for the historicity (historical reliability) of the N.T. documents is overwhelming.  In fact, the manuscript attestation for the New Testament documents is incomparably greater than that for any other ancient documents.  For an informative—a surprisingly stimulating—book on this subject, I highly recommend F. F. Bruce’s classic The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?  And there are many other excellent resources, such as Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels and Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which confirm our confidence in the New Testament and, in turn, its central claim that Jesus Christ is uniquely divine.

So it all comes down to the identity of Jesus Christ.  Is he the God-man or a mere mortal?  This is not only the central question in the study of comparative religions but also the central question of human history.  Either Jesus is divine and Christianity is the one true religion, or he was a fraud and Christianity is a scandalous lie.  Neither of those alternatives is benign.  Both have profound implications for the meaning of life.  So kudos to Conner for posing such a foundational question.  He has gotten to the heart of the matter.  And all of us, not just his parents, need to be ready with an answer.

By the way, in my book Gum, Geckos, and God I tackle many questions like these posed by my own kids.  I’m interested in hearing other insightful and challenging theological questions posed by children (or adults, for that matter), so let me know if you have a good one to share.