Hieropraxis

Bayside Apologetics Seminar: Conference Report

2010-09-06T21:46:19Z

Two former atheists, now apologists!

On August 27-28, I had the privilege of being invited to speak at the Bayside Apologetics Seminar, hosted by Bayside Church of Granite Bay, California. My co-presenter, Stephen Notman, and I spoke to a packed room (well over 100 attendees!) on the topic of “Inside the Mind of a Former Atheist.” More on that later, because the seminar as a whole was an amazing experience!

The seminar began Friday evening at 7 PM for attendees. However, for the speakers, it all began forty-five minutes earlier, as we gathered in the backstage “Green Room” for prayer. With all the hustle and bustle – PowerPoint details to be worked out for the folks in the tech room, microphone checks, and a general aura of excitement – it would have been easy to let this slip, or to reduce it to a quick blessing said before we started. To me, it spoke volumes about the depth of character of our “big name” speakers and the church staff who organized the conference that we in fact gathered very seriously and intentionally for prayer before starting, commending ourselves and the gathered audience and all our activities into God’s hands, that He would do His work in and through us that weekend. The entire conference was soaked in prayer starting well before we all arrived – and continuing through the weekend – and I believe we saw the evidence of that in the success of the conference.

Dr Moreland speaking to a packed house.

The Seminar attracted 1400 attendees! (Wow.) What’s more, the majority of attendees noted in their registration materials that this was their first exposure to apologetics. That adds up to a lot of people who were drawn to attendance by a hunger to hear solid teaching to answer the question: “Why do we believe what we believe?” I believe this is a great example of the need for apologetics ministry within the Church: helping people to understand that our faith is a rational and reasonable faith, that we have good reasons to believe what we profess as true, is not just part of evangelism but an essential part of discipleship and spiritual growth. I hope that many people went home from the Apologetics Seminar stronger in their faith and better equipped to live out their life in Christ.

Dr Craig Hazen presiding over the Biola book table.

The first lecture for Friday evening was Dr Craig Hazen, director of the Biola Christian Apologetics Program, speaking on “Christianity and the Challenge of World Religions.” He was followed by Dr William Lane Craig in back-to-back talks on “Arguments for the Existence of God” and “Evidence for the Resurrection.” There was more information presented in those two hours than anyone could possibly assimilate… which made a larger point: There is a great deal of knowledge at the highest levels of philosophy and historical study that backs up the claims of Christians about the way the world is, and about what happened on the first Easter. Even if attendees didn’t follow every single part of Dr Craig’s argument, he clearly pointed in the direction of encouraging further study (and the book tables outside the main hall were an immediate resource for that purpose!).

The Breakfast Breakout Team: L-R, Holly Ordway, Stephen Notman, Mikel Del Rosario

Brains full, everyone trooped home for a good night’s rest, to return bright and early Saturday morning for the breakfast breakout sessions. Mikel Del Rosario spoke on “Why Does God Allow Suffering?”, a question that frequently arises not only in apologetics discussions, but also in the reflections of Christians about their faith.

Stephen Notman and I spoke in the concurrent breakfast breakout session on “Inside the Mind of a Former Atheist.” Since many Christians have either grown up in the faith, or accepted Christ at a relatively young age, many people who want to share their faith with non-believers are puzzled or confused about the worldview of atheists. In our talk, we discussed our upbringing (mine, in a totally non-religious household; Stephen, in a nominally Anglican household much like Richard Dawkins) and the experiences that brought us to where we could hear the Gospel. For both of us, a direct experience of Christ was central to our conversion, but the role that apologetics played in that journey was different, as was the path that led to our willingness to hear the Gospel. For me, poetry and seeing the witness of Christian character made me willing to listen; for Stephen, recognizing his own moral evil drew him to a recognition of the reality of God. My journey to conversion was heavily intellectual, while Stephen’s was heavily emotional; apologetic arguments played a key role in allowing me to accept Christ, while apologetics helped Stephen recognize the rationality of his experience of Christ. Both of us stressed the volitional aspect of our conversion: after a certain point, accepting Christ was not a question of having more information, but a question of making the choice to accept His authority – or not.

Dr William Lane Craig (center) graciously attended our talk.

One personal highlight of the talk was having Dr William Lane Craig in attendance!

The opening lecture for Saturday’s main session was Dr Tim Muehlhoff, on “How to Talk the Talk: Communication Keys for Apologetics.” How we communicate our faith is at least as important as what we say, and Dr Muehlhoff provided an excellent presentation on authentic communication.

Behind the scenes, in the tech room!

Later that day, Stephen and I served as moderators for the Q&A sessions up in the tech booth (very very cool!) as Dr J.P. Moreland gave back-to-back lectures on

“Don’t Sell Your Soul to Naturalism: The Case for the Existence of the Soul” and “Is Science in Conflict with Christianity?”

After these two amazing lectures, Stephen and I had the privilege of being invited to participate in an “Advanced Q&A Panel” with Dr Hazen, Dr Muehlhoff, Dr Craig, and Dr Moreland, as a small group of seminar attendees, mainly pastors, asked tough questions about apologetics and evangelism. It was an incredible privilege to be on the same panel as these truly great apologists!

L-R: Dr Craig Hazen, Mr Stephen Notman, Dr Holly Ordway, Dr Tim Muehlhoff, Dr JP Moreland

All in all, the Bayside Apologetics Seminar was a resounding success. Dena Jackson and the rest of the seminar planners and staff were incredibly gracious to everyone and treated us speakers as honored guests! The material was thought-provoking, the conversations were stimulating, and the atmosphere was Spirit-filled. I came home from the Seminar inspired by the example of Dr Moreland, Dr Craig, Dr Hazen, and Dr Muehlhoff, who are not only brilliant scholars and inspiring speakers but also genuinely humble and caring men who were welcoming and encouraging to the “new recruits” on the apologetics team. Thanks be to God!

For further reading, check out Stephen Notman’s blog, Psalm Trees, and Mikel Del Rosario’s blog, Apologetics Guy.

You can also find out more information here about my book, Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith.

For my speaking schedule and links to selected radio interviews, you can visit my Lectures and Interviews page at Hieropraxis (or just click on those links!).

Skepticism and Reality: Avoiding the Doubt Dodge

2010-09-04T04:08:37Z

The most important questions in life are the big ones. Is there a God? What does it mean to be human? How should we live? What is justice? Big questions tend to have equally big answers – that is, answers that, once understood and accepted, change our lives.

Big questions are not always easy to answer. Why should they be? Just because something is true doesn’t mean it has to be easy to find out or understand – just ask a mathematician or scientist who has sweated blood over figuring out the answer to a tough research problem. Sometimes truth is simple, and sometimes it is complex; like reality itself, at times it is simple on the surface but reveals increasing complexity when examined closely.

So, at times it is a hard slog to find the answers to these big questions – and sometimes the big questions have answers we don’t like, or that we fear we won’t like.

One way to avoid the difficulties (and possibly distressing answers) of a real search for truth is to declare that it is impossible to know anything for sure. It’s very tempting. On the one hand, it’s apparently unanswerable, and on the other hand, it feels intellectually sophisticated. Two for one!

It is indeed possible to doubt everything – even our own existence – and thus avoid addressing questions about ultimate truth. But in the end, radical doubt is a cowardly dodge, because we don’t actually live that way – and we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Let’s consider why that is so.

It is theoretically possible that I, myself, do not actually exist; I might be a brain in a vat, or a character in a super-realistic computer simulation. It is also possible that what I call reality is not real; that the images that I take in of my surroundings only seem like other things and people. Maybe everything is an illusion, and I am just a character in someone else’s dream.

OK, that could be true. However, would you change anything you are going to do today, or next week, or next year based on the idea that you are just a brain in a vat? Or would you carry on doing your laundry, finishing your college degree, and hanging out with your (possibly unreal) friends?

Consider two possible truth claims: First, that hummingbirds often come to the feeder in my yard. Second, that it is immoral and wrong to murder innocent people. The two claims differ; for instance, we would go about verifying the first claim through observation, and the second through moral reasoning or the application of tradition. It would seem that the second claim is harder to verify than the first, since it is abstract and invisible: perhaps it is only to me, personally, that it seems true that murder is wrong.

However, the radically skeptical position can be applied equally to both. Perhaps I only think murder is wrong because I have been programmed by a computer scientists from Alpha Centauri to think so! Perhaps that hummingbird buzzing around the feeder is not really there, but is just a projection of my brain based on something else. How can I be sure that I am really seeing what I think I’m seeing? Perhaps I only think I see a hummingbird! After all, I am only seeing what my brain presents to me as assembled data taken in by my eyes – how can I be sure that I am seeing anything, much less that I see what I think I see?

To which, at a certain point, we have to just say: Stop!

The fact that I am able to doubt my own perceptions does not mean that my doubts are justified; it simply means that as part of being human, I have the ability to think of counterfactuals: things that are not true, but possibly could be. We use counterfactuals all the time: for instance, when we experience regret or relief over a decision that could have turned out a different way.

In actuality, we do not and cannot act as if there is no truth. We act as if we do know things. I know that other material objects are real, and that my perception of them is accurate – not perfect, since I wear glasses, but generally accurate. When I cross the street, I behave as if the cars were real. If I were to behave according to the belief that the “cars” are just sensory images that impinge upon my neurons, I would come to an abrupt and unpleasant end if I were to step out in front of one of them as I cross the road. And I know that and behave accordingly.

Certainly we cannot know all truth, and we can never know it completely. As each human being is finite, and the amount of true knowledge is infinite (for instance, the amount of true things to know about the past increases with every second that goes by), it is literally impossible to know all true things.

However, such a condition should not paralyze us. Some statements are more important than others. The claim that hummingbirds visit my yard is of localized interest and limited consequence; the claim that murder is wrong is of universal interest and profound consequence.

In real life, we are constantly making decisions about what is important and what is not important, and we make decisions about our beliefs and actions based on the assumption that reality is real and we can know it. We can’t know everything, but we can know some things – or we can at least try to find out the truth about some things as best we can.

In the end, a difference that makes no difference is no difference. If we behave in all aspects of our life as if we existed, and reality is as we perceive it to be, and that we can rely on our senses and the workings of our reason, then it is irrational and inconsistent to backpedal on reality when it comes to matters that impinge on eternity. If the only time that we question reality is when we are confronted with issues regarding morality, obligation, and ultimate truth, but we otherwise are happy to take reality as it comes, then the most logical conclusion is that we just don’t want to face those questions of ultimate truth, and we’re looking for an exit.

Questions about truth can be disconcerting, even frightening – which makes it all the more important to face them with courage and constancy.

Worship, Belief, and Response

2010-09-04T03:43:56Z

These days, it is hard to imagine Christian worship without a creed to recite or a New Testament canon to read from. But for many years, the first Christians gathered every week without the use of either a creed or a completed New Testament. What they believed was shaped and expressed through the way they worshipped together: through their liturgy.

There is an ancient Latin expression which speaks to this Christian principle: lex orandi lex credendi. It means “The law of prayer is the law of belief.” In other words, how we pray and worship expresses what it is we believe.

This is still an essential principle for Christians today, especially for us Anglican Christians. Anglicans do not have a single person who has shaped our doctrine, like a Calvin or a Luther. Nor do we have a pope or a magisterium like the Roman Catholics. For Anglicans, what we believe is expressed primarily through worship: through our liturgy. To understand our liturgy is to understand what we believe – and vice versa.

Our liturgy is comprised of two basic parts: the Word and the Sacrament.

The Liturgy of the Word is always first. We read from the Scriptures: the Old Testament, a Psalm, a New Testament letter, all of which leads to the weekly Gospel proclamation, the good news of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That Gospel is then preached and applied to our lives in the sermon.

The creed is an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word, because the creed expresses the very core of Christian faith and doctrine. It is our confession of faith: that God is one; that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And that Jesus Christ died for us, rose again, and ascended into heaven, where he lives and reigns with God, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

This fundamenal profession of faith is literally our entrance into the church – as it is our baptismal covenant.

From the Liturgy of the Word, we move immediately into the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Eucharist means “thanksgiving.” It is our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the sacrifice Our Lord made for us. Through his death and resurrection, we have life beyond the grave. And that eternal life is gifted to us through his mystical body and blood, made present for us on the altar.

As we are spiritually born through the waters of baptism, so are we spiritually fed through Christ’s own body and blood.

This sacramental grace of eternal life is freely and bountifully offered to us in the Eucharist. It is that River in the Psalms “whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the most high.”

The death and resurrection of Our Lord has “opened up for us the torrents of the River of God’s grace to the Church.”

That saving grace of God is manifest for us, and made incarnate through, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

St. John tells us that the “Word was made flesh.” It is the same Word whom we profess in our Liturgy of the Word. And it is the same flesh manifested for us and our salvation in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The way we worship expresses precisely that which we believe.

But! There is just one more critical piece of the Christian faith; it is our response.

How we respond to this good news of God’s Word, and the gift of life he has given us through his death and resurrection, makes all the difference.

In Luke chapter 13, someone says to Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

And he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us.’ He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!’”

Notice what Jesus says.

“Some of you will call me ‘Lord’.” In other words, some of you will profess the Good News that I am indeed Lord and God.

And some of you will testify that you ate and drank in my real presence.

But, because you are workers of iniquity, you will be thrust out of the kindom of God?

These are very difficult and alarming words.

We can profess Jesus as Lord, as we do in the Liturgy of the Word.

And we can eat and drink with him, and receive of his sacramental grace, as we do in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

And yet, our continual response to the gift of God’s Word made flesh still matters! What we do matters!

And this is precisely why the door is so narrow.

“Behold,” Jesus says, “some are first who will be last.”

St. Theophylact, writing in the 8th century, saw these first who became last as those in the Church who “from infancy have put on Christ and have been taught the Word, but who become last by transgressing against it.”

Our sin, no doubt, is capable of taking us to the back of the line.

But Jesus also says, “Behold, some are last who will be first.”

And these are, I believe, true words of comfort and peace for us today.

When we repent of our sin, we are cleansed completely by those same “torrents of the River of God’s grace.” And our return to the front of the line (as it were) is swift and immediate.

But there is another kind of “last” who will become first.

Those who suffer unjustly or innocently. Those who suffer for righteousness’ sake. All those whom Jesus mentions in the Sermon on the Plain, are the last who will be first.

“Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven. For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.”

Behold, some are last who will be first.

Because—we follow him who became very last for us, suffering innocently the shame and horror of his passion and death on the cross. And by his resurrection he has become first. But he did not do so for himself. He did so for us! That we might become first through him; that we might have life in him.

Beloved, we are most emphatically not alone in our suffering. He has gone before us. He is both the first and last, the Alpha and Omega. And he is with us on our own journey toward Jerusalem.

Preached on Proper 12: 22 August 2010

“Inside the Mind of a Former Atheist”: Speaking Engagement at the Bayside Church Apologetics Seminar

2010-08-14T01:55:33Z

I will be co-presenting on the topic of “Inside the Mind of a Former Atheist” with Stephen Notman (PsalmTrees.org) on August 28th at Bayside Church’s Apologetics Seminar in Granite Bay, California. The program is headlined by two renowned apologists, Dr J.P. Moreland and Dr. William Lane Craig, and includes lectures by Dr Craig Hazen and Dr Tim Muehlhoff as well. If you are in the Sacramento area, this is a can’t-miss opportunity to get serious answers to important questions about the Christian faith.

Here’s the schedule:

Friday, August 27
5:30 PM Check-In / 6:30 Doors Open

7:00 Craig Hazen — “Christianity and the Challenge of World Religions”

7:45 William Lane Craig — “Arguments for the Existence of God”

9:00 William Lane Craig — “Evidence for the Resurrection”

Saturday, August 28
8:00-8:45 AM Breakfast Breakouts

Holly Ordway and Stephen Notman — “Inside the Mind of a Former Atheist”
Mikel Del Rosario — “Why Does God Allow Suffering?”

9:00 Tim Muehlhoff — How to “Talk the Talk:” Communication Keys for Apologetics
10:00 J.P. Moreland — “Is Science in Conflict with Christianity?”
11:30 J.P. Moreland – “Don’t Sell your Soul to Naturalism: Case for the Existence of the Soul”

Visit the web page of the Apologetics Seminar to get more information and to register for the seminar. Hope to see you there!

Welcome to Hieropraxis’ newest guest contributor: Melissa Travis!

2010-08-11T18:36:39Z

I’m delighted to welcome Melissa Travis as a guest contributor to Hieropraxis! Melissa writes for her own blog, Hard-Core Christianity: Apologetics, Worldview, and the Kingdom Mindset, and in her own words:

I am Melissa Travis, a Daughter of the King seeking His will in all of life. I am a graduate student at Biola University, studying for my Master’s in Science and Religion (a Christian Apologetics degree). I am wife to Jonathan (12 years and counting) and a homeschool mom to two boys, Corban (7) and Cayden (3). As a family, we love watching movies at home in our pj’s, Tex-Mex food, and taking relaxing vacations. I am an obsessive reader, and my favorite things to read are books on apologetics, the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and Christian historical fiction.

Melissa’s first contribution is a review of J.P. Moreland’s Love Your God With All Your Mind. Check it out and keep an eye out for more to come!

Getting Out of Intellectual Neutral: A Review of J.P. Moreland’s Love Your God With All Your Mind

2010-08-11T19:39:47Z

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” Matthew 5:13

In Love Your God With All Your Mind, J.P. Moreland sets forth the thesis that the extraordinarily diminished effort to cultivate the Christian mind has resulted in the marginalization of Christianity in society and a shallow faith becoming characteristic of today’s church. Whether because of apathy, intimidation, or something else altogether, many evangelical Christians devote very little of their time to intellectual development, and as a result do not have the ability to reason effectively, think critically, articulately defend their faith, or integrate their beliefs with other facets of their lives. In essence, many are not fulfilling the Biblical mandate of Matthew 22:37, to love the Lord God with all their minds.

This is not a problem that ends with the disobedience of the individual believer. The ramifications of anti-intellectualism are dire and far-reaching. The church is quickly becoming culturally irrelevant; it has become incompetent in the debate about worldview issues because of sheer lack of knowledge and apologetic training. It is no wonder that our society has fallen into such an amoral, relativistic state. The church has allowed it, and our Great Commission, evangelism, is becoming magnitudes more challenging and decreasingly prosperous. Christians are often perceived as being under-educated, superstitious, and prejudiced; this has a significant effect on how seriously we are taken when speaking about our faith to unbelievers, especially those who are highly educated in the secular sciences and humanities.

After a thoughtful overview of the deplorable state of Christian intellectualism and how this is affecting the various facets of our culture, Moreland elaborates on the solution: development of strong Christian minds within the body of Christ. He identifies the major areas in which intellectual development is essential: evangelism, apologetic reasoning, worship, fellowship, and vocational knowledge. The ultimate benefit is a full integration of our spiritual, intellectual, and vocational lives in such a way that we know God more, show God more, and offer a mature, respectable Christian voice in our overly-secularized society.

As Christians on a quest for holiness, for godliness, we must remember that God is a reasonable, rational being. As His image-bearers, we should seek to obey and glorify Him by strengthening our skills of reason and critical thinking as we endeavor to grow and use our minds to know Him and to competently serve Him in every aspect of life. It is with well-developed faculties that we correctly understand God’s truths as revealed in his general and special revelation, and are equipped with a Christian worldview that can be ubiquitously applied to our lives, most especially our chosen career. Furthermore, as we seek intellectual excellence in the extra-biblical knowledge required in our work, we become an articulate voice in the marketplace of ideas. As such, we gain an outlet by which to exert Christian influence on our culture in a manner that honors God and furthers His kingdom.

Love Your God With All Your Mind is essential reading for Christians, most especially church leadership. If the church is to recover from its unfortunate decline into anti-intellectualism, there is hard work to be done. We must reach beyond the comfortable, emotional side of our faith and do the hard work required for mind development. After all, we are called to present ourselves as well-equipped, holy vessels that can be used by God for the benefit of the Kingdom. This mandates a permanent shift out of intellectual neutral.

On the Importance of Church Family

2010-08-10T00:19:42Z

My church has a custom, on the second Sunday of every month, of calling everyone who has a birthday or anniversary during that month to come to the altar rail and receive a blessing. Birthdays go on one side of the altar, anniversaries on the other. Since my birthday falls in August, this past Sunday I went up and knelt with the other August birthday-ers – and, as it happened, on my left was a young girl of sixteen, and on my right, a mature woman in her sixties, both of whom I consider friends.

After we received our blessing, I went back to my pew, and watched as the priest blessed the anniversary couples. As usual, he asked how many years of marriage each couple was celebrating, and repeated the number for the congregation to hear: this month we had celebrations of 20, 55, and 65 years. (We applauded.)

I got to thinking: where else do we get this kind of example? Where else do we see teenagers, adults, and the elderly all together for the same reason? Where else do we see single people and married couples, those with wiggly toddlers, with grown-up children, and those without children, all spending time together? People who are part of a large extended family – and who live in the same area as that family – get this experience as a natural part of their life, but I suspect that’s increasingly rare these days.

As a military kid, I lived in half a dozen different states before high school, and college brought more moves, more distance from the roots that for me had never sunk very deep anyway. All of my grandparents had passed away by the time I was in my 20s, and I had never really gotten to know my aunts and uncles and cousins. The result was that until I became a Christian, and perforce began attending church, I had spent most of my life interacting almost exclusively with people of my own age group – with all the lack of depth that entails.

Trust me, there are life questions for which the advice of someone older and wiser than yourself is exceedingly helpful.

In our culture, we are age-segregated in school; in college we continue to hang out with people our own age; after graduation, social clubs and activities tend to fall along age lines as well. Teens don’t hang out with thirtysomethings; retired and working people have different schedules, different interests. People with children gather with others who have children their own age. It’s all very natural, in a way, but it also means that we tend to congregate with those who have no more experience than we do on the big questions in life. In short, we lack perspective and wisdom.

So much of the time we get our ideas about life from all the wrong places: looking to the media and the news to show us how to have relationships, what marriage is, how to grow old, what it looks like to handle misfortune and suffering with patience and grace, how to love each other. Too often the message we get is either of false romanticism or false despair: that everything will be perfect all the time, and that if it’s not perfect, we should just give up and move on.

Seeing the real example of men and women living out the life of Christ, in real time, gives me hope. My brothers and sisters in Christ help me be more realistic; life will continue to be a challenge even when I have a success or an important milestone of achievement. And they help me to have hope, and to rejoice: because I can see what it looks like to live out this Christian life, one step at a time – and take that step.

American Idolatry

2010-08-08T23:11:43Z

The fact that we have a television show called American Idol is a bit of an indication that we don’t really know what an idol is – or what our attitude toward one ought to be.

I will confess, I am sufficiently behind the pop-culture curve that I have never actually watched American Idol, but because I do not live under a rock, I am familiar with what the show is about, and how it works. (Call it cultural osmosis.) As far as I can tell, it’s a harmless and entertaining show.

I do find the name interesting, however. American Idol. Who will be the next Idol? Lots of people want to be an idol – and millions more are eagerly waiting to find out whom they will idolize next.

But what really is an idol?

An idol is anything that we worship other than the one true and living God. Period.

We have to stop here for a moment, and think about what that means. Let’s start from the basic premise: in order to put something in the place of God, we have to recognize that God exists – and that He exists whether we recognize His existence or not. (Along similar lines, San Diego Gas & Electric supplies the power to my home, whether or not I give any thought whatsoever to the reason why I magically get light whenever I flip a switch.)

If we deny His existence, then we are going to become idolaters, no matter what. The human heart seeks to worship God, the God who made us in His image, and if we deny ourselves the correct orientation for our worship, then we will put something else in that place. In human lives, something always has to come first. The only question is, what? If we recognize His existence – for instance, by using our reason to understand the evidence that points to Him – then we are in the favorable position of being able, with His help, to put Him first in our lives.

Next, what does it mean that He is a living God? It means that putting Him first doesn’t mean just attaching a “High Importance” label to the idea of God. Rather, it means that we seek to enter into, sustain, and deepen a relationship with the most holy Trinity, the God who not only made us, but who also became incarnate to save us from our own alienation from Him.

If we remake God in our own image, we are engaged in idolatry just as much as if we deny Him and worship something else. If we translate “God is love” into “love is God,” then we are making an idol. If we re-cast Jesus into a figure who makes no inconvenient demands on our lives, if we try to make him something other than true God and true man, the crucified and Risen Lord, then we may think we are worshiping Christ but we are really worshipping an idol. Yes, orthodoxy is a matter of life and death.

Finally, what does it mean to worship? To worship an idol does not mean that we have a little statue of Baal in the backyard, to which we offer sacrifices. To worship, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “to honour or adore.” In other words, to put it first, to give it the best and largest share of our thoughts, time, and energy.

I would argue that the most common idols in our culture are money and consumer goods; sex; and work. All of these things are good when used rightly, but all become terrible when put first. You don’t have to be a philosopher to recognize this; just look at the families of workaholics, or the character and personal relationships of those who pursue sexual gratification for its own sake.

Or look in your own heart. In a culture so full of idols, all clamoring for our devotion, it would take a real saint to not struggle at least a little bit against the siren song of idolatry. For myself, I recognize the temptation to make my teaching into an idol, particularly since I work in an environment that encourages an unhealthy level of identification of oneself with one’s work, and a culture of workaholism. I have to resist the temptation to think that the work itself is of the highest importance in my life. Yes, it’s challenging, rewarding, exciting, and worthwhile – but only insofar as I recognize that it’s work God has given me to do, at this particular time in my life, using the gifts He has given me, and putting Him first.

There’s one last thing about idols. Idols demand sacrifice. We even use the word, if our particular idol is work and money: we make sacrifices to rise in our career, to get the promotion, to achieve what we think is success. Those sacrifices are usually of other people, aren’t they? Friends. Children. Spouses; consider how high our divorce rate is – how many marriages have been immolated on the altar of Success?

The idol of sex has its demands for sacrifice, too – oh, indeed it does, and they are terrible.

God the most holy Trinity also asks for sacrifice – but He does not call us to sacrifice someone else. He asks for nothing less than ourselves, holding nothing back. Yet, in the great mystery of redemption, when we say Yes to that sacrifice, that death of self, we learn that He has already made the sacrifice for us: our Father has provided, Himself, the one sacrifice that is all in all, never repeated, yet eternally present: His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both our great high priest and the sacrificial Lamb of God. When we participate in that sacrifice, when we die with Christ, we also rise with Christ – and in giving ourselves wholly to Him, we become, ever more completely, who we were always meant to be.

No idol can ever deliver on that promise.

What is idolatry? Seeking the gift and not the Giver; loving what He has made when He calls us to love and be loved by Him. May we turn from our idols, whatever form they may take, however appealing they may be, and instead seek the face of Reality, the one true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Places Worth Visiting (or, Blogroll II: The Return)

2010-08-08T00:34:34Z

In last year’s re-design of Hieropraxis, the blogroll got misplaced – but now it’s back!

So let me call your attention to three great blogs for your reading pleasure. All three authors are my Biola Christian Apologetics classmates; you can be 100% sure to find interesting, intelligent, thought-provoking essays on topics of real substance:

Hard-Core Christianity: Apologetics, Worldview, and the Kingdom Mindset – Melissa Travis

Psalm Trees – Stephen Notman

Thinking Eternally – Paul Rupple

Happy reading!

Summer Reading Short Reviews

2010-07-25T21:04:59Z

One of the joys of reading is being able to bounce around and read lots of different things as the fancy takes me. Here, in no particular order, are a few thoughts on a few of the books I’ve read so far this summer.

The Lost Virtue of Happiness: J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler. I think this is an important, even an essential book. In combination with a lecture by Dr Moreland that I heard this summer (and wrote about here), this book helped me put some pieces together in my own heart about trusting God and taking risks along the road toward true happiness: eudaimonia, a life well lived.

Searching for and Maintaining Peace: Father Jacques Philippe. I’m a very intense person, so Fr Philippe’s writing has helped me fully realize what “peace” really is. It is not being unemotional, or unreactive, or detached in a negative sense, but rather is something deeper, a real sense of trust in God, not tied to particular outward circumstances. For instance, I sometimes recognize that I am not at peace even when I am outwardly calm, solitary, and silent, because I am clinging to some fear or anxiety in my heart. In contrast, I just spent almost two weeks in residency at Biola, a spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually challenging time with a lot of outward activity and stimulating discussion… and in reflecting on the residency, I realize that I was completely at peace during that time.

At this rate, my comments on Fr Philippe’s book will be longer than the book itself, so let me just pull one quote from it to show how to-the-point and sensible he is: “If we wait until we are saints to have a regular life of prayer, we could wait a long time. On the contrary, it is in accepting to appear before the Lord in our state of sin that we will receive healing and will be transformed, little by little, into saints.”

Authentic Communication: Tim Muehlhoff and Todd V. Lewis. A must-read for anyone who wants to share their faith in a loving, respectful, and also effective way. It’s also excellent just in terms of explaining effective interpersonal communication. Our words can hurt or help others, strengthen friendships or weaken them; we should learn to use them well.

Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge: Dallas Willard. I’ll confess that I found this book slow going at first and I almost put it down a number of times… but I kept picking it up again. In the end I think that was best, because it meant that I read it slowly, and this is a book that’s sufficiently dense that it merits slow reading. The closing chapter in particular had an impact on me, with its call for pastors to live up to their responsibility to teach that we can have real knowledge of God. Though I am not a pastor, as a teacher (both in the secular world, and now within my church as well) I feel that this challenge applies to me as well. Also, although I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, I have to admit that I find the cover art to be simply lovely.

Mercy Among the Children: David Adams Richards. Richards is a new author for me, and I am delighted to have been introduced to his books (thanks, Fr. Kraft!). I won’t spoil this book by attempting to describe it, but I will say that it is exceedingly well written, and haunting.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Oh! Absolutely delightful. It’s a “light reading” book, but one that is both very well written and very thoughtful. It’s funny, but with a serious side as well that comes out bit by bit as the book unfolds. It’s a love story and a paean to the fellowship of all who love books, and flat-out really fun to read.