Worldview and Assumptions

Often Christianity is criticized by its critics for bringing assumptions by which it views the world. Scholarly method, according to many critics, unlike Christianity has no assumptions.

It is of course a secularized view of Descartes' mythology which glorifies in the human ability to know all. The irony is that increasingly most thinkers in their disciplines acknowledge that it is impossible to have any semblance of rational thought without assumptions. However, rarely is this realization ever acknowledged in the secular battle against religion.

Naturalism and evolution are viewpoints with assumptions. You will find many who claim that the case many expound against God is fully rational and has no assumptions of its own but there are innumerable assumptions these positions have.

The point of this is not to examine the assumptions of Christianity and secular method but simply to encourage Christians to not feel the field is being played fairly. Often the secular method demands far more in way of proof from Christianity than it requires of itself.

At times it argues that the secular viewpoint is "simpler" and should be the "default viewpoint" and thus the "burden rests on religion." Whatever the case, often the argument is played on terms stacked against religion.

If secular viewpoint required of its own views the rigor it often requires of Christianity (that there be not a single assumption) it would have to admit that it has many viewpoints and assumptions which it begins with. For those who believe in God it is important to remember in discussions with those who expound secular worldview that often the world refuses to give religion a rational consideration.

We Cannot Please Everyone

We cannot please everyone in life. It is an absolute.

If we are a Christian we cannot please atheists. If we vote one way we cannot please others who vote other ways. It is easy to think that we can get out of the rut of always displeasing someone by saying nothing on any issue.

Of course it is not the case. If we interact with enough people we will soon find there will be those who are displeased that we refuse to state our minds and take a side! They may have a good point to a degree as well!

It is the nature of life that people will be displeased by what we have to say at times. Often people will argue against Christianity, that it makes people unhappy, the thought of ultimate reality and heaven and hell. Well it can be said for almost any religion or any position which expresses itself.

Christianity is not unique in it's absolute claims. I think what is unique in argumentation in the current day is a widespread effort to malign the church by pointing out issues in specific areas.

Of the millions upon millions of professing Christians in the United States the faults and errors of certain leaders are held against all in a way which is quite odd. You find entire websites lampooning the religion for oddities in worship and what not.

It is a great oddity at times how often atheists who came to atheism by "rising to a higher" level of thought have very few strong arguments against the religion and rather resort to massive attacks against how they hate the culture of people who adhere to the religion.

I suppose I am not exactly being fair, but you can find a great many websites that condemn the whole of the Christian faith with little more reason than one thousand odd things I don't like about people who are Christians.

It is interesting that atheists even put up and enjoy such non-sense and do not condemn fellow atheists with such an approach. I suppose people delight more in making fun of others rather than being fair which is the point of scripture on the human condition all along.

Understanding What We Believe

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Co-Contributor

To truly be able to lead and live well, it's important to truly understand what you believe. A lot of people say that they are a Christian and assume that means they know what they believe, but may not live or think much differently than the culture around them that is not Christian these days. We live in a postmodern culture, where this is acceptable to the culture: it's viewed as good to not strongly believe anything because postmodernism is more okay and fine with everyone's beliefs.

If someone were to ask you why you're a Christian, do you know what you'd say? If they asked you what is different abut your religion compared to other religions, would you be able to answer? Does your religion cause you to live differently than people of different religions or those who don't have a religion?

A major difference in the Christian religion compared to others is that it's not our works that get us to Heaven. It's Christ's perfection and faith that does.

Some people think that feeling/emotion is most important in religion and that thinking hinders religion. For instance, feeling that God is for them in that moment, or they made God happy is what they aim for. They feel like that's all they need. But not working to truly understand their beliefs of God and what God wants--that may cause them to feel things to be true that are not true: A person may feel happy and in some sense that makes them feel like God is happy with what they're doing--but really they could be happy in that moment because the sun is shining that day or they had a great meal the day before.

The way for them to truly know that God is happy or accepting of a choice is to truly understand the Bible as much as they can. To think about it. Some people may live in the thought that they can never please God because they feel crappy and nothing seems to go as right as they envisioned it, but really understanding God's true acceptance of us would help them feel like God is still okay with them. Our feelings don't always match the reality of the situation. We are fallen and there are so many factors to what makes us feel certain ways (the weather, how much we eat or sleep, what's going on in the world and in our lives).

Of Course (Poem)

If we do not deny Jesus we are Christians of course.

Faith is saying we are Christians.

Or that is what most people say.

We make faith too easy.

We see a faith without any change as a real faith.

We see a faith which has no demands as ideal.

We would follow Jesus anywhere we say.

But not today, tomorrow, or the next day.

Today is inconvenient.

But,

True religion is inconvenient.

Take up your cross and follow me.

To repent is to change direction and head a new way.

True faith is worth it of course.

As inconvenient as it may be.

Hallow Religion

There is a great hollowness in many churches. You see a theology of righteousness has become very negative.

Being different than the world in many cases is a list of things not to do, with prayer added on as the activity to do.

You see this is such a thin religion. Nothing is required for righteousness except not sinning.

Ultimately religion in its best state is very active. It does and wishes to do.

You see Jesus is the model for Christian living and his life is a life of active doing. He is often criticized for his doing because he dares to act when those with a negative theology believe he should not act.

It allows sin to be sin and failure to act to be sin. And it rests completely on grace knowing day by day we sin.

Resting completely on grace allows and does not hinders action. Our righteousness is perfect and complete in Jesus which frees us to live.

Weighty Matters

Recently I heard a criticism of a head of state/theologian from the past that he sometimes neglected church because of pressing issues. To be fair I am not extremely familiar with the statesman/theologian but the criticism struck me as wrong at least without a fair degree of nuance.

You see if we make a claim that someone has erred because they failed to do this or that sometimes it is simply helpful to look at scripture to see accuracy. You see of course that Jesus was criticized in many ways for something similar that he refused to not work on the Sabbath.

Of course I do not mean to suggest that man should in general work on the Sabbath and minimize the day. Or to suggest that Jesus did not take a theology of Sabbath seriously.

You see there is a need for a priority of things in life. The bible has many commands and many principles. There can be a certain friction at times if we refuse to think.

You see this is why the bible has a constant call to wisdom. It is not that there is anything wrong with the law of God in itself. You see it is the nature of living in a fallen world.

In professional work we always hear a call to prioritize. There are many important things but not all are of the same urgency. But you see we do not see this in much of Christian religion of the current time.

You see wisdom in a sense is a prioritizing of spiritual priorities. You see Jesus understood that the keeping of the Sabbath in a specifically ridged way was not always as important as love.

It is not ideal to work on the Sabbath but often it is right in a certain circumstance. You see we need to always think and allow for a faith which allows wisdom. So much theology is in a box today.

May we have eyes to see that wisdom is needed and a desire to understand the world in a way which requires us to use wisdom. You see we often simplify religion so much that we no longer need wisdom. And we have erred in doing so.

Our True Selves

Often our feeling about Christianity from the outside or inside is that it may destroy our personality. Christianity asks us to live in a certain why which limits our freedom and forces us to conform to principles.

It is often viewed that autonomy from religion is true freedom that preserves personhood, and therefore we are giving up freedom to accept religion.

The reality is that we find our true selves when we accept God. You see our personhood is based on the image of God in us which has been marred by the fall.

It is through our union with Christ through faith that the image of God in us which is marred slowly is restored.

God has always had man's happiness as a priority. We rarely see the fact that God has our happiness as a priority.

The problem of course is we see each moment in isolation and are lost in the thicket of the moment and cannot see the whole story of our life from start to finish as God can.

People often wonder why this or that happened. How can God use it. Often we can see this or that that God uses.

But he never shows us everything. We must always live by faith in his promises.

True Freedom

Augustine wrote of the pleasure of stealing fruit simply for the pleasure of stealing it. Often people are pleased to do wrong simply because it is wrong.

You see man is angry against law and there is a part of him which wishes to break law for the sake of breaking law. Man wishes to express his freedom.

You see man defines freedom in having things his own way. He is free if he can do what he pleases and he is never truly free.

You see only under anarchy could man truly be free if freedom is having things each man’s own way. And in anarchy the strong will have their way over the weak so no one can ever be truly free in this definition.

Often freedom is rephrased into an ability to choose. You see even here there are issues.

Man would often choose this car or that house but they belong to another. You see if each person is free to choose than many cannot choose since of a limit of supply.

Really the man who wishes to have freedom in this way is never free. He is always in one way or another outmatched. He cannot have absolute freedom.

Christianity redefines freedom. Freedom is the ability of man to do God's will.

It seems sort of laughable to man that man's freedom is service to God. But you see man was made for this purpose.

I have found that doing God's will often leads to happiness and breaking God's will often leads to sadness. I suppose it is what you would expect if you accept the Christian teaching that God created man.

If God created man to be most free in doing God's will it is not surprising that he also created man to most enjoy doing God's will.

Many people of course say that the church is boring and a place of suffering. It is true in a sense it is a congregation of men who have barely woken from spiritual death and some may still need awakening.

Often we confuse feeble religion or fake religion for the real thing. Feeble religion is real but at a low form. It is often the lowest forms of religion which are critiqued.

It is if we reject music as potentially beautiful upon hearing a sampling of 5 middle school concerts. You see there are very few who get far in the faith.

The way is narrow and we tend to see the masses that are off the path or barely a few miles down it. True deep religion is infinitely beautiful. Shallow religion beautiful but often in many sense painful as well.

God Speaking

It is often noted that there seems to be some sort of spiritual danger associated with the systematic study of theology. It is as if the topic has harmed people.

It is not surprising really. In theology God speaks to us. If we are not prepared to listen we are not positively affected by the encounter and more likely we are negatively affected by the encounter.

You see one of the great issues with systematic study of theology as a profession or in seminary is approaching the topic with weariness. It would be like listening to the words of our spouse and simply not caring what they are saying.

If we are honest it is difficult to always care what God has to say. Some moments I'd rather simply sit and watch a sports game on TV than care what God has to say to me.

I admit on a few occasions I have simply woken up on a Sunday morning and decided not to go to church simply because I wasn't in the mood to hear what God had to say today.

I feel that in the end I am better for these decisions. I attempt to approach God with sincerity and when I cannot find the sincerity in myself at times I do not approach God.

There is nothing so hollow as religion that sees no importance in how we approach God. Programs where people read through scripture in a set time have the danger that people may be tempted to read to stay on track even if they don't care what the book of the bible is saying.

Sometimes less is more. I always feel a little theology or a little scripture studied with sincerity is better than a large amount of scripture or a large amount of theology studied because it should be.

Living by Faith

Living by faith requires constant thought. It is not that everything must always be rethought but we cannot live the Christian life in a meaningful way as a set of formulas.

You see the bible's constant call to wisdom is because wisdom is constantly needed in life. There is a great variety of situations in life many of which have many unique characteristics.

You see many business men in church who would not be satisfied with a cookie cutter solution to the problems in their business, but cookie cutter solutions to problems in the area of faith is not a problem to them.

We need to always attempt to live the Christian life in a thoughtful way. If we think we have figured out religion we haven't.

You see God is much larger than we are and the problems in the world are much harder to solve than we wish to think.

If we think we know the answers to the issues in life we are wrong. Because we have too much faith in ourselves. Humility to actually admit we do not have all the answers and frequently have very few answers is the only possible path toward really living the Christian life well.

Love and Knowledge

A certain ideal of love has been formed in our culture by movies and TV. It is as if love is something that can be found apart from knowledge.

We hear of many couples who feel "in love" almost immediately and have been married for many years. It is interesting that the value of the success of a marriage has become if peoples marriages survive.

In relationships we are often too easily satisfied. We rush into relationships with the belief of the result. The reality is that love is based on knowledge.

Sometimes "love at first sight" happens to be correct, but the reality is that true love is based on knowledge. This is why the bible describes worship as being in spirit and truth.

There is no true worship of God apart from knowledge. Worship is essentially the act of a person in which they express their love for God. So there is a tight connection between knowledge and love.

It is always interesting how worship is moving more and more into the experiential state with little care for knowledge. Maybe we have redefined love in such a way that we can no longer understand what real love is?

Maybe our worship is terribly flawed because our view of relationships is terribly flawed? I feel this is the case. We have separated love and knowledge often at a great cost in both religion and human relationships. For a post which where I talk about about how faith is based on content look here: faith is content based