Category: Faith & Ideology
Tidbits
A matter of emphasis
One bit of my succinct standing advice on recurring themes is “If you’re grudgingly trying to do the minimum God requires, you’re not doing the minimum that God requires. Mark 12:30.” I probably could have said “If you’re grudgingly trying to do the minimum God requires, you’re ipso facto not doing the minimum …,” but I use enough Latin phrases already.
I don’t recall what prompted that thought originally, but I suspect it was my old friend, who considers himself religious (although he might quibble with the word) in the Evangelical Protestant tradition, and who told me point blank, in jargon I knew all too well, that he just wanted to make it into heaven and “would leave all the jewels in the crown for others.” A fair summary of the meaning of this jargon is this, by one Kyle H at the impeccably reliable Yahoo! Answers (emphasis added):
Paul talked many times of running the race, striving for the goal, etc.
Now, we are saved through grace, not by works, lest any man should boast.
Faith saves, works get you rewards in Heaven. Paul knew he was saved but he kept striving for the rewards, a main goal of his.
I have no idea what the rewards may be but they must be very good if Paul was always talking about them.
I believe jewels in your crown = rewards, whatever they are.
There are many people of many faiths that will be in Heaven.
Paul said, if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, (in other words tell people about Him and your belief in Him) and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
He never said you have to first be Baptist, Catholic etc.
I know I will get a lot of the bad thumbs for this, but, believe it or not, there will be a few, (LOL) Catholics in Heaven.
No matter what your creed, your beliefs; your denomination, the first and only requirement to get to Heaven is to accept by faith that Jesus not only died for your sins, but the He was raised from the dead and is now at the right hand of the Throne of God.
So my friend apparently wants (a) to accept by faith that Jesus not only died for his sins, but the He was raised from the dead and is now at the right hand of the Throne of God but then (b) direct his own life, march to his own drummer, and have as good a time as possible without voiding the fire insurance policy.
When last I was deeply immersed in the Evangelical world, that attitude was epidemic. It would be unfair to say “pandemic.”
Prooftext battles are useless and futile, but my citation to Mark 12 says:
And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
So if you ask “what must I do to be saved?,” you’re asking a good question. If you ask “what must I do to be saved?,” intending to do no more and intending in particular not to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, you’re violating the first and greatest commandment, and the only possible answer is “repent.”
Unpacking “repent” is beyond the scope I’m willing to take up today except to say that nobody who’s grudging toward God deserves any “eternal security” he or she may delusionally feel.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Dietary Just So Stories
I was a husky boy. I realized that when they steered Mother to a particular section of blue jeans at Silver’s Mens and Boys Wear where the clothes were labeled “Husky.” They used to have stores like that, with real owners who lived in town, not on Manhattan’s Upper East Side or Bentonville, AR.
Whenever a movie theater (or anything else, but celluloid had a certain combustible je ne sais quoi that memorably forshadowed what awaited movie-goers in the hereafter) burned downtown, Silver’s would have a Fire Sale, though Mother insisted the only smoke damage was from the cigars the owner (I thought his name was Ben, but I think I’ve got the name confused with another haberdasher) smoked in the back room. Continue reading “Dietary Just So Stories”
Disambiguating “Mars Hill”
- It occurs to me that I may not be the only person for whom “Mars Hill” are magic words. But beware!
Confirmation bias
“Confirmation bias” is putting it gently. A lie is a lie even when the person being lied about is the President of the United States and the truth is ominous.
An old and admirable friend posted on Facebook, but now seems to have taken down, a link and apocalyptic commentary on a story about a supposed effort to make it a court martial offense to share one’s Christian faith in the military.
An individual Orthodox Christian (whose blog, in fairness to him, posts many stories without much filtering) passed on this similar story. Excerpts:
So President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime–possibly resulting in imprisonment–for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains …
This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life …
(Emphasis in original)
I earlier said “This sounds too lurid and absurd to be true, but it’s from several sources. Stay tuned.”
This morning, I saw another item from the Western Center for Journalism, which appears to be, er, more partisan that one might gather from its name:
According to Obama’s advisor on religious tolerance within the U.S. military, Christians sharing their faith, including chaplains, present “… a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs is to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.” …
And what does the Obama administration do in the face of Muslim war declared against the U.S.?
He threatens to court-martial all U.S. military personnel, including chaplains, if they share their faith ….
What are the facts behind these lurid opinions-masquerading-as-facts? Everyone is citing Breibart:
“Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”
Those words were recently written by Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), in a column he wrote for the Huffington Post. Weinstein will be a consultant to the Pentagon to develop new policies on religious tolerance, including a policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.
(Emphasis added) Read the whole Breibart piece; don’t trust me. It’s loaded with lots of inflammatory adjectives, but generally seems to state as fact only that which is fact. “Generally,” though, is important. There is no supporting citation or link for the assertion that the “policies on religious tolerance,” which apparently have not begun to be drafted, will include any “policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.”
So: Weinstein is going to be a Pentagon advisor on new policies on religious tolerance. He’s not the one-and-only Obama advisor.
I’ve heard of Mikey Weinstein. He’s a bat-shit crazy but very loud voice of intolerance, who conflates soldiers’ “solemnly sworn oath to the Constitution” and “follow[ing] the military’s regulations regarding religion” — which he hopes to shape. It’s ominous that the Pentagon feels obliged to include him as a consultant. I’m on record against the Obama administration’s already-execrable record on domestic religious freedom, and this proposed appointment does not bode well.
But we are not yet where the “Christian” liars say we are, and they should be ashamed of themselves. There’s no exemption from the command against false witness for political “war.”
UPDATE: Breibart has a followup story May 1.
The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense…Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis…”.
Neither Breibart nor Fox News linked to the written statement for anyone who might care to look at the context, but it appears that the Pentagon is alluding to some existing regulation, not to anything concocted in whole or part by Weinstein.
More update (May 6). It looks like thanks are due ADF.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Theologians
Paraphrasing Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, nobody reads monk Peter Abelard’s theology today, though he was “the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century” and people flocked to him and, so to speak, threw money at him to teach them theology. We read him, if at all, for his love letters to Héloïse, with whom he had an affair.
Still today, one can style oneself a theologian and it will pass without objection — especially if one has an academic degree in the branch of philosophy that has co-opted that title, and even if one is an atheist (I leave it to them to reach modus vivendi with their mirrors in the morning).
That’s a caveat for any sincere Christian apt to be taken in by self-descriptions like “a public and political theologian.” Academic reputations are made by breaking new ground (e.g., in “theology,” clever speculation and inventing or refurbishing heresy). Public reputations are made by calculated provocations (for instance, “Catholic” historian Garry Wills arguing for abolition of the priesthood and demoting the eucharist; mercifully, he doesn’t claim to be a theologian).
That’s not just some renewed snarkiness toward an Orthodox man who has been getting his second 15 minutes of fame lately by reprise of his calculated provocation. I feel the same way when I hear Vigen Guroian or David Bentley Hart described as “theologians.” Maybe. Maybe not. I once heard Billy Graham described as a theologian, too.
However, Orthodoxy has privileged the meaning of the term given by Evagrius Ponticus when he wrote that “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.” (Treatise On Prayer, 61).
(OrthodoxWiki) Theology of the baser sort (the academic) is one of my besetting temptations, maybe because it’s far easier than true prayer.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
