The Gospel literally means ‘good news’ in its original Koine Greek ‘euangelion’. The Gospel is God’s good news to the suffering, the dominated, the oppressed, the victimized and the marginalized persons in this world. The church, as most Christians understand it in the United States, is the body of believers both locally and globally who are to act as ambassadors and participants in Kingdom of God. The church is entrusted with the ‘good news” and is to proclaim and live out that good news in the hope of repairing and restoring the world. This Gospel is good news because it doesn’t merely rely information it is supposed to foster and provide solidarity and reconciliation among all people. Because the Gospel is an announcement that our world can change, that our world should change, that our world will change.

The church in the United States is almost unanimously guilty of the heresy of Gnosticism. The heresy includes the belief that secret knowledge that one must acquire leads one toward salvation. Special incantations and secret knowledge understood in specific ways allow one access to salvation. This was contested by the orthodox church in the fourth century as a major threat to the views implicitly held by the Church regarding the deity of Jesus. With the rise of Arius, an Alexandrian presbyter, and thus his ideas of Gnosticism becoming more formidable, they were examined and found to be a heresy by the early church fathers.

Yet the church in The U.S. today has these special prayers, and special doctrines, or things one ought to believe if they are to be a Christian. These special prayers and special doctrines vary from church to church and denomination to denomination. Many Evangelical churches refer to this special prayer as ‘the prayer’, it is an action where an individual asks Jesus Christ to come into their heart, to forgive their sins and to open their lives to Christ’s teachings.

This asking Jesus into ones life, refers to an individual accepting the Lordship or guidance of Christ as the force through which they will attempt to live differently in this world. This prayer allows one to give up the things in which they were previously held captive to, addictions, emotional scars etc, through the healing power of Christ, or so the claim of many attest. However, if one where to attempt to find these mandates in the New Testament or the Hebrew scriptures they would discover that this special knowledge and these special prayers are entirely undetectable.

There is no mention in the Christian scriptures of any sort of special prayer that one must pray in order to become a follower of Jesus. There is no mandated or required cannon of theological principles one must acquire or accept in order to become a Christian. There is not a theological statement that one must understand or an amount of scriptures one must have memorized in order for the good news to be for them. The Gospel is an announcement, not a secret, that the way in which the world is currently is not the way in which it is supposed to be, nor the way in which it will always be.

The Gospel is God’s loving, accepting, forgiving, exciting, shocking, counter-cultural announcement that our world is not the world. This announcement to those who don’t have everything together in the way that the world tells them they should have it together. It is an announcement to those who are not thin, attractive, rich, smooth, charming, intelligent or that are getting ahead in this world. Rather it is an announcement to those who have a feeling that they are not getting their slice of the pie, to those who are always falling behind, to those who can’t get it all together. Its the Good News that all the marks that this world tells us are important really aren’t that important, that we were created to love and to be loved, to repair and to be repaired to restore and to be restored, that dear readers is Good News.

Editor’s Note: Here’s the latest in the correspondence between “Common Sense Atheist” and me (Mark Van Steenwyk). Go HERE to read Luke’s (he’s the atheist) initial letter. My response was posted here. His second letter is here, followed by my second letter. To mix things up, all future letters in this series written by me will be posted over at Common Sense Atheism.

Mark,

Are you a mystic? Mystics irritate orthodox believers because orthodox believers value creeds and the defense of certain propositions, but mystics value relationships and “being.” And in one sense, mystics may irritate non-believers, too, for the mystic’s assertions are so fuzzy that the non-believer cannot clearly show why they should be rejected. (At the same time, they are so fuzzy the mystic cannot show why they should be supported.)

For example, I can’t make sense of a statement like “The Divine exists in community.” Does that mean that Divine spirit is generated wherever believers are gathered? Or does it mean that God pays more attention to groups than he does to a similar sum of individuals? Or does it mean the Divine’s mission is a social mission? Or does it mean that divine action supervenes only on groups of believers? Or does it mean something else?

Or consider your statement “All that exists is created, sustained, and moving towards the Divine.” But what does it mean to say that a table is moving towards the Divine? What does it mean to say that a virtual particle, which pops into and out of existence in less than a second, is “sustained” by the Divine? What else in your ontology is subject to this rule? Were necessary truths “created” by the Divine? Are propositions moving toward the Divine?

I have similar questions about every one of the ten statements that loosely comprise your own Mere Christianity. And since I’m not much clearer on what you affirm, I’m still not in a position to explain why your particular beliefs are unwarranted.

Instead, let me try to explain why I think your epistemic methods do not provide warrant for any particular beliefs.

You wrote that:

…while I think my convictions are rooted in reason, I also will be the first to acknowledge that they are rooted in mystical experience and personal desire as well.

…the non-believer aesthetically perceives the “glory of God” in the life of a holy person. This serves as the best “proof” for the non-believer.

…it is impossible to have any knowledge of God or verify the truth of revelation apart from actually living within a Christian faith-stance….

I think your epistemic methods represent a poor path to truth. Let me explain why.

Here’s how I see humanity’s situation with respect to knowledge. Recently, humanity awoke in a strange and beautiful universe. We did not know where we came from or what we should do, but we did our best to survive. We made some guesses about what things existed and how they worked, and most of those guesses turned out to be wrong. It turned out there was not a magical being that would give us a good harvest if we sacrificed virgins to him every so often. It turned out we were not at the center of a small universe. It turned out disease was the product of microorganisms, not sin or demons. It turned out earthquakes and tsunamis were the product of shifting tectonic plates. The universe was full of surprises.

So how can we figure out what things really exist and how they really work? The answer is important. The answer helps us decide what to do. If disease is the product of microorganisms and not demons, then the best way to heal billions of people is to train more doctors, not more priests and shamans. Knowledge is power; the power to do something about the condition of our universe.

Okay, so which methods give us reliable knowledge? There is no a priori answer. We could have awoken in a universe controlled by a playful demon who always delivered us truth whenever we raped antelope. In that universe, the best way to learn how the real world works would be to rape antelope as often as possible. Or we could have awoken in a universe in which our minds contained a special faculty that could directly detect truths about the universe, and so the most reliable path to knowledge would be to trust our inner sense. Or we could have awoken in a universe where our minds were programmed such that truth was always attached to things that were aesthetically pleasing to us. In such a universe, the best path to truth would have been to look for beauty.

But which universe did we wake up in? Which methods tend to work best for uncovering truth in this universe?

It could have been the case that our inner sense was a reliable guide to truth, but it’s not. Apparently, our inner sense was mankind’s primary (or only) method for finding truth for thousands of years, during which time we were dead wrong about damn near everything. Even today, the natural world continues to confound our most assured intuitions about the nature of space and time (see relativity), identity and causation (see quantum mechanics), and much more. I know that our inner sense delivers to us a sense of assurance along with its hypotheses, but the simple truth is that our inner sense has a horrible track record with the truth.

It could have been the case that mystical experience was a reliable guide to truth, but it’s not. Mystical experience has, over many eons, lead to belief in thousands of absurd and contradictory spiritual realities. Once again, it is the nature of mystical experience to deliver to us a strong assurance of veridicality along with its metaphysical claims, but the simple fact remains that mystical experience has a horrible track record with the truth.

I know the personal sway of mystical experiences. I had many of them myself. It was hard to even consider they might be an illusion. But anyone with a passing knowledge of psychology and neuroscience knows many good reasons to doubt the common metaphysical inferences drawn from mystical experiences. Mystical experience is what I call The Ultimate Bias, since we rarely hold our own mystical experiences to the same standards of proof as we do the bizarre (New Age, Hindu, Zen Buddhist…) mystical experiences of many other people. Mystical experience is another very poor guide to the truth.

It could have been the case that persons who rose to become public authorities were a reliable guide to truth, but they’re not. They’ve been wrong as often a “common” people have, and spouted just as much nonsense. Moreover, authorities constantly disagree with each other. So authority is a poor guide to truth.

It could have been the case that personal desire was a good guide to truth, but it’s not. People often have contradictory desires, and these desires often lead them to support contradictory claims. And many truths are disappointing to nearly all of us. So there seems to be little connection between what we want to be true and what is true.

It could have been the case that that beauty was a good guide to truth, but it’s not. For one thing, different people see different things as beautiful, and contradictory propositions cannot both be true. For another, there are many ugly truths. The atom bomb is very ugly but the nuclear physics behind it is deafeningly true. Suicide terrorism is ugly but it is rising in popularity precisely because its practitioners have realized an important truth: that it successfully coerces democracies to withdraw forces from a people group’s homeland. (See Robert Pape, The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.)

Instead, mankind awoke and tried dozens of different methods and found that one particular set of methods – the ones we call “scientific” – are the ones that work best at uncovering the truth about the world we live in. The proof is in the pudding, as they say: scientific methods probably add a greater number of usable truths to humanity’s stockpile of knowledge than all the other methods had for thousands of years, combined. And that’s exactly why science has the prestige that it has. That’s why it’s “the game to beat.” That’s why theologians and philosophers envy scientists and try to borrow their methods as much as possible into their own practices.

Finally, I have some thoughts on Balthasar’s Christian epistemology, which you sum up thusly:

…a person must first participate in Christian experience before one can have knowledge of God. Sure, people can draw implications about God from nature and all of that… but ultimately, people will apply whatever rubric they want to the data at hand. A mountain is pretty, but isn’t [by itself] an argument for God.

In the context of your original letter, it seems like you’re saying that the believer can’t convince the unbeliever of God’s existence through traditional arguments or public evidence because the unbeliever must first willingly experience God before he can have knowledge of God – but when you accept the Christian experience and live it out, then you’ll see that God is real.

This seems problematic in at least two ways. First, if someone willingly participates in a certain worldview, of course he’s more likely to come to believe it is “true.” You could just as well say that if someone willingly participates in Hinduism he will come to “see” that it is true. But that doesn’t mean it is true.

Second, hundreds of millions of people have operated from a position of faith and have still concluded that religious traditions are false – in the last century alone! According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, non-believers skyrocketed from 3.2 million in 1900 to 918 million in 2000, from 0.2% of world population in 1900 to 15.3% of world population in 2000.

And I am one of those who are leaving the church in droves. I did operate from a position of faith in Jesus. I did experience his love and action as surely as my fellow believers did. But I still concluded, in the end, that he did not exist.

Mark, I would still like to understand what, exactly, you affirm, but at least I have explained (very briefly) why I do not think your epistemic methods could warrant any set of beliefs, let along the particular ones you affirm.

Now, you asked me two questions. The first was:

Is there ever room for a “leap of faith?” In other words, is it ever good to accept or act on something without evidence?

I assume you’re asking if it is morally good to act on beliefs that are unwarranted. I think the answer is yes. Without going into more detail right now, I’ll just point out that if we were morally required to gain warrant for every belief before acting on it, we would hardly be permitted to act at all, and many deeply evil states of affairs would result.

But I do not think a leap of faith toward theism is morally or rationally justified. I agree with most philosophers and scientists that theism is so thoroughly refuted that no leap of faith is justified in this case, just as no leap of faith toward belief in Santa Claus is justified.

Your second question was:

Is there any wisdom in evaluating belief systems for their effects, rather than for the rationality of their beliefs? For example: I may disagree with certain religious sects, but can recognize the beauty and outcome of their way of life. How does one evaluate such belief systems?

There is great wisdom in evaluating belief systems for their effects. Doing so may help you make moral decisions, for example a decision on which false belief systems to oppose most urgently.

But there is a great gap between the moral consequences of a belief system and the ontological truth of its metaphysical claims. Jainism has generally superb moral consequences in the world, but this does not increase the epistemic merit of its metaphysical claims one iota. Or let us imagine that the stories about a particularly genocidal religious group were true – the Biblical myths about the early Israelites, for example. Their many campaigns of terror, genocide, pillage, and rape in Canaan are morally evil and aesthetically ugly, but this does not show that their God does not exist or that their God did not command such atrocities. It could well have been that Yahweh existed and commanded many genocides and that was the truth about the universe, however immoral and ugly.

So yes, there is wisdom in evaluating the effects of belief systems. But no, there is no link between the social effects of a belief system and its truth. It could easily be the case that the truth about the universe is not conducive to healthy human society.

Mark, in your next letter I hope you can clarify (1) what you believe and (2) why your reasons are good reasons to believe.

Cheers,

Luke

“Let Him do with me whatever He wants
as He wants for as long as He wants.
If darkness is light to some soul—even
if it be nothing to nobody—I am
perfectly happy—to be God’s
flower of the field.”

You mean it, Mother?
Suffering, surrendered like a
petal dropped and wasted. No matter
how thinly you felt His Absence
or how callousedly your heart beat?

Did your watery eyes even pinken,
with signs of hope drooling away?
Or sometimes did you say, “I have to
refuse what He desires to take,”
perhaps at night or in your mourning?

Is it true you longed to love Him,
Dark Mother, His Hiddeness—His
dark Passion too? Your Poverty
on the Cross with His, a Victim
for us and, you, a victim for Him.

“I can’t express in words—the gratitude
I owe you for your kindness to me.—For
the first time in this 11 years—I have
come to love the darkness.—For I believe
now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness & pain on earth…More than ever I surrender myself to Him—Yes—more than ever I will be at His disposal.”

There was a struggle, then Jack growled OK, OK. But Steve started him towards the door. “You´ve been drinking again, haven´t you?” Jack didn´t say anything, but he tried to get out of Steve´s grip. “You know the rules, Jack. You can´t be in here if you´re drunk.” “I´m not drunk.” “And if you get in a fight, you´re out too. You know that. C´mon, let´s go.”

Jack resisted, but Steve was firm and calm and kept him moving towards the door. Then a brief wrestle and Jack was out. But from the sidewalk she heard “You wouldn´t treat Jesus like this, you sonuva…” The door slammed shut.

“I would if he was drunk,” Steve muttered angrily, and went to get the mop.

Situations like that always made her uneasy. But she wasn´t sure what else to do, and someone like Steve, more experienced―and bigger―usually stepped in right away. And there were the rules, which were pretty clear cut. How could they run a place like this without them? But she still didn´t feel quite right―especially when it was up to her to enforce them.

And once again she asked herself the question, How do we see Jesus in people like Jack? I know we´re supposed to be able to see Jesus in everyone, especially in the “least of these,” but it´s not easy. Especially in the “least,” the poorest, the most down and out, like Jack…

She wasn´t sure what she heard first, the crash or the words. It was almost as if the front window exploded from the force of words alone. “…damn hypocrites―screw you!”

Large pieces of glass, and the garbage can he had thrown, crashed to the dining room floor. Steve stumbled back against a chair and fell. But none of the tables were near the window, and no one seemed to be hurt. Steve jumped up and looked, but apparently Jack had fled. She started into the dining room to help, but Steve told everyone to stay back, he didn´t want anyone getting cut. So she brought gloves and a bucket from the kitchen, and some coffee to refill the mugs of the men still there. They didn´t look like they wanted to leave, even with stuff like this happening. Actually, they didn´t even look surprised.

As she started on the potatoes, she heard one of the men ask, “Do you want to know why you couldn´t see Jesus in that guy just now?” She looked up. The man wasn´t a regular, she didn´t recognize him; but his army field jacket was familiar, lots of the guys who showed up here wore them. He was looking at Steve when he said, “Because Jesus didn´t act like that―and he still doesn´t.”

Steve glanced at the man. Then going back to work, he replied, “Jesus said he was even in ´the least of these´… hey, is there some plastic sheeting back there? Something to cover this window?” She took him the plastic and some duct tape.

The stranger asked, “Did he call them ´my brethren´ just because they were ´the least,´ the poorest?” The man leaned forward. “Or did those ´least´ get that way, poor, powerless, outcast, oppressed, because they were his brothers and sisters, because they did what he taught and followed his example―and so ended up just like he did…”

She didn´t hear Steve say anything, but when she was back in the kitchen she heard the man say, “Instead of looking for him, trying to serve Jesus, you should be him. His body―his hands, his mouth, his heart. Be Jesus to others…”

Steve came into the kitchen to wash his hands. “We need to replace that with plexiglas. Should´ve done that a long time ago.” She asked softly, “Who is that man?” “I don´t know, I don´t think he´s from around here.” He turned off the water. “Someone with too much time on his hands…” Steve smiled and went back into the dining room.

Yeah, she thought. And what´s he talking about? We feed over 100 people a day here, take in 30 off the street every night, and are constantly giving out clothes to whoever needs them. How can we “be Jesus” any more than that?

Then she heard the man ask, “How many stories do we have of Jesus feeding people, compared with all the times he was fed at other people´s tables? Who did he clothe? And how many did he take in off the street―Jesus, who himself ´had no place to lay his head´?” She looked up. Huh. I never thought… wait―how did he know what I…

The man continued, his eyes on Steve, her eyes on him. “You don´t have to serve blindly, like those who helped Jesus without recognizing him. You too are called to be one of ´these my brethren.´ To be ´one of the least,´ in his kingdom where the least are the greatest. To become ´the least of these´ yourself. The poor, the powerless, the outcast―who are like that because of him. Who Jesus identifies with because their life is just like his. But then you won´t be in charge anymore, you won´t be the benefactor…”

“Shut up!”

It was Slim, one of the older regulars. “You shut up about Jesus. He wasn´t no bum like you! An´ these people here, they´re doin´ sumthin´. They´re makin´ this a better place. We need more people like them… so just shut up. Or get out.” The old man stopped and it was very quiet. Then the stranger looked at him and said, “The one who has ears will hear.” “What? What the hell´s that supposed to mean?” Slim was on his feet.

Now Steve looked up. “All right guys, we don´t need another fight today. I think it´s time you took a walk, buddy.” She saw the stranger get up, zip his jacket, and move quietly to the door. But before he went out, he bent and said something to Steve that she couldn´t hear. Then the door closed behind him.

Steve brought the bucket of glass through the kitchen. But just as he was going out the back, she turned and asked, “What did he say to you?” He stopped, but didn´t look at her.

“He said, ´Would you treat Jesus like this?´”

She watched the back door close. And slowly put down the knife. Then she quickly took off her apron and rushed through the dining room, grabbing her coat―then paused at the door. “Tell Steve I won´t be here for lunch.” And she was out on the sidewalk, looking up the street.

“Hey! Hey mister, wait up!” She jogged to catch up with him.

Recently I have been struggling with what the appropriate response to a Liberationist perspective within my context would be.  At Missio Dei, Latin American Liberation theology has influenced a lot of our ideas about what the gospel really means, what Jesus calls us to, and what the Kingdom of God looks like.  We’ve talked a lot about becoming family with the poor and marginalized in our context, about questioning the assumptions underlying the accumulation of wealth (embracing jubilee), and rejecting social structures that disempower.  As we’ve talked about this, we’ve tried to reorient our lives and adopt practices that will conform us to God’s kingdom and the person of Jesus, but until recently I’m not sure I’ve understood what it means for me to do these things.

There is always a tendency within me to believe that I am simply called to give what I have to the poor, to serve them, to somehow leverage my power in such a way to help the poor and marginalized among us.  While I think we are called to those things, they are not at the heart of Liberation theology.  As long as I reject the basic reorientation of perspective that Liberation theology calls me to, I am still reinforcing the same systems and social structures that dehumanize and disempower.

The basic message of Liberation theology to the wealthy and powerful (which of course, includes most of us in the global north in some way or another) is not redistribution of wealth.  It isn’t generosity or care for the poor.  It is penitence.  We are called to repent, not simply for the sake of the poor, but for our own sakes, for our own humanity, and for our salvation.

I’ve often been warned that when I give to the poor, I have to be wary of those who seem to have a sense of entitlement.  I must be concerned if the guy I buy lunch for begins to believe that he somehow deserves that lunch.  I must make sure he always knows that it is my money he is benefitting from and that I have every right not to give it to him.  But this is entirely backwards.  It is my own sense of entitlement that I have to be wary of.  My belief that I’m entitled to the position of affluence I’ve inherited: the inflated paycheck, new clothes a few times a year and a growing savings account.  None of these are bad things in and of themselves, what is wrong with the world is that I believe that I am owed them and that they are mine.

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have already receive your comfort!”

If we are going to be at all interested in liberation, we have to primarily begin by embracing a penitential life.  As desperate as the situation is in the global south,  our situation is equally desperate (if not more so).  We must take head of Romero’s proclamation:

“Would that the many bloodstained hands in our land

were lifted up to the Lord with horror of their stain

to pray that he might cleanse them” (The Violence of Love)

Recently I have seen Saint Francis as a model for our penitential liberation.   He didn’t try to use his resources wisely in service of the poor.  Instead he forsook all his wealth, giving it away for the sake of solidarity and identification with the poor.  Francis did not seek equality with the poor or to eliminate poverty, but did penitence by embracing poverty and always seeking to be “the least” in any situation.  This is a very different attitude than most white Christians have adopted in regards to the poor.  We don’t usually see ourselves as sinners, shaking off sin’s bondage, but benefactors using our experience and God-given resources to help the poor.  In the spirit of penitence, and within a liberationist perspective, we should consider ourselves less than the people are called to serve.

Though my introduction to these ideas was largely within Latin American liberation theology,  I have to be careful of the abstraction this can lend itself to.  I don’t live in Latin America or Africa or some other “third-world” country.  If I am going to embrace this perspective, I must embrace it in my own context.  Which means looking for how I can penitentially submit to the historically poor and oppressed in the United States.  It means, as James Cone writes, letting the oppressed set the terms of our reconciliation and their liberation (and subsequently my own freedom and humanization following this).  As of yet, I and my white brothers and sisters (and/or my affluent brothers and sisters) have largely resisted having any terms set for us.

Again, this isn’t because this is the most “effective” way to end poverty or obtain “equal” rights (though ultimately I believe it is the only way towards either), the penitential attitude I’m prescribing is as much about us shaking off our oppressor perspective as it is about bettering the lives of the poor.  It’s about discarding the “bad” eye for the good.  For if “your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” (Matthew 6:22-23).

In any of our relationships with the poor and historically marginalized we must submit our culture to theirs, our reason to their reason, and our identity and goals to theirs in order to identify with their perspective and shake off our own.  Ideally we will treat them as a holy brother and receive them as Christ, never allowing ourselves to have more abundance.  Until we are capable of that, we at least must make it our goal and lament when our sin and self-preservation and self-importance keep us from fully living in identification and service of the poor and oppressed.  In the midst of this we must begin embracing practices that are penitential, slowly forming us into Christ-minded people.

Ultimately, I don’t want do this out of shame, guilt, or fear, but like Saint Francis: whose face shone with joy even when he confessed his evil-doing, sin, and unworthiness, and who rejoiced when he received less than his brothers. I want to be motivated by my love of Christ, out of which grows the desire to imitate him. My action needs to be based on my faith in the gospel and the Kingdom of God in which I embrace the foolishness of the cross.  Finally, I feel compelled to remember that the only reason I can walk this path, the reason I can continuously fail and continue, is by the unfailing, loving grace of God.

Editor’s Note: Here’s the latest in the correspondence between “Common Sense Atheist” and me (Mark Van Steenwyk). Go HERE to read Luke’s (he’s the atheist) initial letter. My response was posted here.  To mix things up, all future letters in this series written by me will be posted over at Common Sense Atheism. And all letters written by Luke will be posted here. Luke and I feel like this will foster deeper conversation as neither of us will be preaching to our respective choirs. Luke’s latest is below.

Mark,

You’re right, there is a faint hope you could play a role in my reconversion to Christianity. I will always keep an open mind.

My apologies for the length of this letter. I had to break it into sections.

Your questions for me

1) What drives your desire to engage people of faith regarding the unreasonablity of their faith?

When it first happened, my discovery of critical thinking (and consequently, atheism) was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was gut-wrenching. Terrifying. Heartbreaking. I wished I could go back in time and never gain an interest in critical thinking – that horrible devil that destroyed my faith, killed my best friend (God), made my relationships difficult, and demolished all the meaning and purpose I had in life. I kept hoping it was all a nightmare. I would wake up one day and be a happy Christian once again, oblivious to logic and epistemology and Historical Jesus studies and philosophy of religion. I could just live out the beautiful mission of Jesus with the help of my good friend Mark, and all would be good.

Later, I found that life via critical thinking was pretty cool. The universe we find ourselves in, as revealed by science, is more surprising and wonderful than any religious fairy tale crafted by human minds. Indeed, reality turns out to be bigger and stranger than human minds can imagine. You can’t make this shit up. Literally.

I also discovered, as hundreds of millions of atheists around the world already knew, that life can be full of purpose and meaning and morality without God.

It turned out that my discovery of critical thinking and atheism was the best thing that ever happened to me. And when something transforms your life for the better, you want to share it with people. So that’s one reason I engage people of faith.

But Christianity had transformed my life for the better, too. So there’s something else going on here. It’s this: I engage people of faith because I care about the truth.

Truth matters. If God does not exist, billions of believers are wasting a lot of time and money and resources that could be devoted instead to making the world a better place. If God does not exist then believers need not fight back science that happens to contradict their Iron Age mythologies. If God does not exist, then believers need not hate and fight and kill each other over whose Book is right or whose religious doctrines are correct. If God does not exist, believers need not terrify their children with fears of hell, or tell them it’s the next life that matters, or train them to accept magical explanations rather than encourage their curiosity to figure out how the world really works. If God does not exist then we don’t need to play intellectual Twister to make the demands of the Old and New Testament relevant and moral. We can just do what is relevant and moral.

Now, on to your second question for me:

2) You’ve said before that Jainism is a more ethical religious system than Christianity… I’d like to hear more on that.

Sure. Here is Sam Harris, in Letter to a Christian Nation, pages 11-12:

While the Jains believe many improbable things about the universe, they do not believe the sorts of things that lit the fires of the Inquisition. You probably think the Inquisition was a perversion of the “true” spirit of Christianity. Perhaps it was. The problem, however, is that the teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. You are, of course, free to interpret the Bible differently – though isn’t it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith failed? Of course, many Christians believe that a harmless person like Martin Luther King, Jr., is the best exemplar of their religion. But this presents a serious problem, because the doctrine of Jainism is an objectively better guide for becoming like Martin Luther King, Jr. than  the doctrine of Christianity is. [In fact, MLK Jr. got his non-violent methods from Gandhi, who got them from the Jains, in India.]

The first and most important commitment in Jainism is the doctrine of ahimsa, non-violence. Jainism without a commitment to non-violence is like Christianity without affirmation of the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus.

Here’s another way of seeing what I’m trying to say. After 2600 years of schisms and new sects, all Jain denominations still hold ahimsa to be their central commitment, though they disagree about ritual and cosmology and sainthood and so on. And after 2000 years of schisms and new sects, all Christian denominations still affirm the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus, though they disagree about ritual and hierarchy and Biblical interpretation and so on. In Christianity, non-violence is affirmed only by a few small sects with a fairly heretical interpretation of Scripture. In Jainism, non-violence is affirmed by every sect, and always has been. That is what Harris means when he says that “Jainism is an objectively better guide for becoming like Martin Luther King, Jr. than… Christianity is.”

Put simply, I suspect the world would be a better place had Jainism become the world’s most successful religion rather than Christianity.

Finally, Mark, your third question:

3) What, do you believe, gives your life purpose and meaning?

I recently published a post called What is the Purpose of Life? The end result of my (greatly summarized) argumentation there was that, depending on your definition of “purpose”:

The purpose of life is to encourage desires that tend to fulfill other desires and discourage desires that tend to thwart other desires.

But that is not quite what you asked. You asked where my purpose comes from. My purpose does not come from the arbitrary will of a cosmic dictator. My purpose comes from objective facts about moral value in the real universe.

Clarifying my questions

I asked about your “basic Christian beliefs,” but I wasn’t referring to foundationalism. I just meant: “What is your Mere Christianity?” I assume it looks something like this:

1. God exists.
2. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving.
3. God created this universe.
4. God wants to use humans to achieve his goals for humankind, which are…
5. God speaks to humans by way of the invisible sensus divinitatus inside each of us, with a method similar to telepathy.
6. God resurrected Jesus from the dead.
7. Jesus primary message while on earth was…

…and so on. It’s a fuzzy line between Mere and non-Mere Christianity, but all I meant was that you needn’t list proposition #72 of your Christian worldview: “The criteria for deciding which parts of the Jewish Law remain relevant to Christians today is…”

I’ll wait to hear back from you about what you mean by Christianity before I respond to your explication of why you think Christianity is true.

Also, since you’re sympathetic to those damned obscurantist postmodernists, I need to ask: By “truth” do you mean “that which corresponds to reality,” or something else?

You can not stop the future, that is obvious, but what is not obvious is why progress is synonymous with the future of our planet. Progress is causing the death of our planet, not ensuring the future. Progress is directly related to food and water shortages that cause the death of more people each day than anything. In the name of progress nation rises up against nation and causes the conflicts ravaging our planet.

Progress is fighting the war on terror, which makes our planet ’safer’, which allows ‘free trade’ and greed to be unbounded, for that is certainly ‘progress’… Global corporations and governments that kill, apathetic well fed masses who don’t want to share with the oppressed. Violent revolutions rise up, out of sheer necessity the starving grasp for the only objects they have ever known to bring change, weapons, having received silence for so long, maybe now they can force others to listen to their plight. But despite this progress, war cannot make things right, more than that it is unoriginal. War is an ancient force, the war to end all wars has been promised and fought over and over throughout history, without resolution.

In the midst of this fallen mess of rag tag domination I can only ask one question, who is the Kingdom of God for? Who gets God’s blessing anyway? Who is the kingdom of God for, the thin, the good looking, the religious, the strong, the rich, the beautiful, the intelligent, the righteous, those with the ability to get ahead, those who have an edge over others.

But Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed according to Frederick Dale Bruner means I am with you, or I am on your side. Which means Jesus is on the side of the losers, the spiritual zeros, the pathetic, the lame, the out of it, those at the end of their rope, the bankrupt, the morally bankrupt, those without a shred of good within them. In other words, there is nothing praiseworthy or appealing about being poor in spirit, especially since our world worships progress.

This is an announcement, it is not helpful advise, it is not a command, neither instruction nor blaming, it is not information on how the world works. But it seems to be in direct conflict with progress, the gods of this present world are not impressed by this announcement, which renders all their power useless.

The very moment in the name of progress that we look down upon anyone simply because they seem not the be as disciplined, hard working, upright, smart, responsible, moral, god fearing, or trustworthy as we are, because they have done something or made idiotic, immoral or oppressive choices over and over again, we at that moment are in fact rich in spirit and Jesus’ announcement is no longer for us. As we knowingly choose to serve other gods.

Who gets the earth? Again, Jesus said, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. According to the Mishnah, “All Israelites have a share in the world-to-come, for it is written, Your people shall all be righteous; they shall Possess the land forever.” (Isa 60:21) Just as we already thought, the earth belongs to the strong, the righteous, the powerful, the Kings and Rulers, the rich, the good looking, the thin, the stars, those who have used their abilities to pick themselves up by their own boot-straps. Those who have an edge, but once again Jesus’ announcement shocks the powers as it renders all their schemes powerless.

Once again Jesus takes the power of the principalities and renders them useless. All those years of conditioning, all those years of learning what beautiful people look like, what successful people do, what leaders are supposed to say, how they dress, how they move, their manners and mannerisms…But it is the meek shall inherit the earth.

Frederick Dale Bruner says, “First and literally the beatitudes are Jesus’ surprisingly counter-cultural God-bless-you’s to people in God-awful situations.” In other words, blessed are the shy ones, the unnoticed, the average, the quiet ones, the addicted, those who live with a nagging feeling that life is passing them by, with those who are missing out, with those who are not getting their slice of the pie, those who feel that no matter how hard they try they are constantly falling behind. Blessed are those who can’t quite get it together, who can’t seem to ever get on top of things, who constantly feel as though they are falling short….Blessed are they because God’s world has plenty of room for them.

The Kingdom of God is for them because now that Jesus himself is present among us, God’s imminent rule is here and we are to live in that world, here, now, today. God’s kingdom is here, we do not hope for death to be defeated because death has already been defeated, we need not kill ourselves in the name of progress as the progress of this world is already dead to us.

The god’s of this world are no longer our god’s and we need not fear them. We need not fear nor comply with progress at any cost. The Kingdom of God has instilled within us the audacity to utter no in the face of national allegiance, to utter no in the name of unethical practices that allow some to get ahead. To utter no in the face of judgmental-ism, racism, hatred, fear, preemptive strikes and exclusion. Is there a promise for the principality that is progress, is there no American dream except nightmare? Is there hope for these fallen principalities and our involvement with them…

William Stringfellow in regards to the powers says, “The categorical answer is no, the answer informed by the biblical witness is no. The answer for those who are Christians is no, and therefore the answer which Christians commend to other human beings is no.”

This no is hope, that confesses the nations idolatry to progress and hence to death. This is a hope liberated from a thin moral naivete about any supposed unique destiny for the future, a hope that is emancipated from vain ambitions that progress is God’s holy plan.

This no is the no of resistance to the powers that be, a no that is the only way to live humanly. Babylon the great is fallen and in the midst of that fallen empire we cry out HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, Long Live the Slaughtered Lamb. Which issues the only hope worthy of humanity, because a no to death means yes to the gift of life. In God’s kingdom there is room for all, not just the ones who we expect to be there…

How Long shall we sing the Lords song in a Strange land?

‘This work is inspired by the recent Series on the beatitudes by Rob Bell, and by William Stringfellows work, “Ethics for Christians and other aliens in a strange land”.

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

The Gospel of Luke (and its sequel: Acts) isn’t an ethereal philosophical text. Luke doesn’t deal with wealth and poverty abstractly, rather in Luke we see poor people and wealthy people engaged directly.

We learn in this passage that it is seemingly impossible for the rich to enter the Kingdom, for probably a number of reasons including the simple truth that the kingdom belongs to the poor (Luke 6:20).

Perhaps it is Luke’s assumption that there are no “innocent” independently wealthy people. Rather, Luke’s approach to poverty and wealth must be understood in light of Jubilee. According to the Hebrew Jubilee (which at the very least informed Jesus’ approach to economics), if someone has amassed wealth, it doesn’t NECESSARILY matter if it is directly at the expense of the poor. Hoarding would be seen as INTRINSICALLY stealing from the poor. And, as such, it would have been unjust. Take a look at Leviticus 25 to read more on what YWHW was going for with the Jubilee.

I’m not advocating that Christians practice Jubilee exactly as understood in Leviticus 25 (and elsewhere). I don’t believe we should just cut-and-paste the Torah into our contemporary Christian lives and try to live it out as-is. However, when Jesus begins to call people into the Kingdom of God, he raises the bar on Jubilee, rather than watering it down. If you read through Christ’s teachings on wealth and poverty, it becomes apparent that Jesus wants people to live in an ongoing practice of Jubilee. The early chapters of Acts show this in practice. And we can also assume that, given early church practices and teachings on wealth and poverty, they extended their Jubilee-inspired economic practices to aliens and stranger who were, in Leviticus, excluded from Jubilee.

Whenever I talk about Jubilee, people push back. Especially if they have money. The modern USAmerican understanding of justice is quite different than the justice of Jesus. Nowhere can we find in his Jubilee vision that a wealthy person needs only to give alms to be justified, since wealth comes from the Land, and the Land, which ultimately belongs to God, is granted to His people. In light of this, the call of the wealthy isn’t simply to be charitable. Charity doesn’t get at justice. Even when Jubilee ceases to be rooted in the promised land, it is still assumed that, in Christ, everything belongs to the Lord and should, therefore, be redistributed to those in need as an act of justice–not as an act of “charity.”

Before I dive back into the story of the Rich Young Ruler, I want to make a quick statement about an understanding of Jesus that often gets in the way of a healthy reading of Scripture.

We often use Jesus as an example of the downwardly-mobile. It is assumed that, in Heaven, Jesus was kinda wealthy…and that he left that all behind to slum it with the poor folks. But Jesus isn’t simply someone who decided to serve the poor. He was poor. He didn’t speak as the affluent who advocates for the poor…he spoke as a representative of the poor. I wonder if, to Jesus, it was a more condescending act to address the poor or to address the Rich Young Ruler? Maybe he looks at everyone the same–but I wonder if he held more pity for the Rich Young Ruler than he did for the poor Lepers he sometimes healed.

Whether Jesus addressed the wealthy or the poor, his goal was to call folks into a righteous relationship with God and neighbor. Jesus’ sermons and acts serve to convert the marginalized into human beings. His are acts of liberation for the oppressed and the poor.

But what of the rich and the powerful? In this encounter with the Rich Young Ruler, we see the way that they are to enter into the Kingdom. They also need to be converted into human beings.

If the poor become marginalized and dehumanized because of oppressive power and the crushing weight of social, economic, and religious systems, then the ones who wield that power and create or support those systems also become dehumanized, but in a different way.

In fact, if you read through Luke/Acts carefully, it becomes apparent that Luke isn’t simply rejecting the wealthy (it is valid to believe that Luke himself was wealthy at some point), but is instead deeply interested in the salvation of the wealthy, which requires them to divest of their wealth.

But let’s get practical. What is, ultimately, the goal of the wealthy divesting of their wealth? The goal is to share  possessions…which is what we see in the early chapters of Acts. When wealthy people come to faith, they are to share everything with the poor, who receive it. But the poor and the wealthy don’t then go their separate ways, rather, they live as family. The goal of downward mobility isn’t mere charity, but solidarity.

To Luke, and to Jesus, Mammon (money) is like a false God who woos away the Rich and keeps them from being a part of the People of God. Mammon isn’t a neutral thing–it is a perilous tool that can either purchase solidarity or serve as a wall dividing the wealthy from the poor.

So, like the Rich Young Ruler, we USAmericans are being asked to embrace the Christian Jubilee.

So, given the way the early Church ran with Jesus’ economic vision (which was inspired by the Hebrew Jubilee), how should we live?

Editor’s Note: Out of all things posted here at Jesus Manifesto, the article with the most (several hundred) comments has been From Faith to Common Sense Atheism by Luke Muehlhauser. Luke is a smart young man…and as much as I had hoped to steer him towards a profound faith in Jesus Christ, I ended up playing a part in his deconversion.  Conversation with Luke is always thought-provoking, so when he asked to publish a series of letters back-and-forth, I happily accepted. Below is my first response to his initial letter.

* * * * *

Luke,

Thanks for asking me to engage in this dialogue. I accepted for several reasons. First, I like talking to you…as much as we may disagree, I never find our conversations to be meaningless or fluffy. Secondly, I have to admit that you are right in your assumption that I don’t spend much time examining my basic beliefs about God; It is healthy for me to reexamine the “plumbing” of  my beliefs. Third, I always cling to a faint hope that I will serve a role in your “reconversion.” :)

I am a firm believer that the “truth” of Jesus and his Gospel is tied to its beauty and goodness. The reality that Jesus’ way of life is both good and beautiful lends a weightiness to the truth claims he, and his most devoted followers, make. I tell you this because this perspective shapes how I understand truth. I don’t have a very modernist way of arriving at truth.

Because of this, I’m not sure what is wrong with having my “feelings and relationships” prohibiting me “from examining the grounds of [my] faith.” Not only do I assume that everyone’s feelings and relationship make it virtually impossible for someone to examine the grounds of faith in the way you advocate, I also believe that feelings and relationships SHOULD play a big role in belief. Relationality is at the core of how I understand belief–not something that gets in the way of my epistemology.

So, while I think my convictions are rooted in reason, I also will be the first to acknowledge that they are rooted in mystical experience and personal desire as well. Before I get to your questions, I want to explain what I mean by the “aesthetics of belief.”

I’ve quoted this to you before, but I think it is a helpful to bring up again in this conversation. One of my favorite thinkers (Hans Urs von Balthasar) writes: “Instead of possessing a ‘proof,’ [Christians]‘are’ a reflection of it in their lives. As they respond to the glory of God and reflect it, it shines forth not only for them but for others.” So, Balthasar argues that the non-believer aesthetically perceives the “glory of God” in the life of a holy person. This serves as the best “proof” for the non-believer.

Balthasar argues that it is impossible to have any knowledge of God or verify the truth of revelation apart from actually living within a Christian faith-stance. The individual outside of this faith-stance (the non-believer) is unable to come to the Christian faith of his or her own accord. In order to perceive revelation, “eyes are needed that are able to perceive the spiritual form.” Non-believers are unable to have knowledge of God. The non-believer is struck by the reflection of the Glory of the Lord in the life of the holy person, and as the non-believer is attracted by the holiness of the Christian, s/he is drawn into living a similar life. As this person engages in “Christian experience,” the reality of God begins to take shape. In other words, a person must first participate in Christian experience before one can have knowledge of God. Sure, people can draw implications about God from nature and all of that…but ultimately, people will apply whatever rubric they want to the data at hand. A mountain is pretty, but isn’t (by iteself) an argument for God.

Jesus has no need of apologetics. He shines through. He shines upon everyone who comes into the world and does not deliberately look away. It is my conviction that the Church should not pursue any apologetics for itself, but should instead make Jesus visible–embody Christ. That is why I try to live the way I do–to show the beauty and goodness of Christ.

I realize that one’s own mystical encounters do not provide anything for anyone else to go on. But they have been very potent to me. So much so, that I’ve often remarked that I would disbelieve in God before I disbelieved in Jesus and, if it were to be shown that there was no God, I would still be left with the desire to worship Christ. My experience with Jesus is deep and lasting.

And so, I am left with this strong desire for Christ. It is based upon experience of a mystical sort, but this aesthetic desire for Christ has led to goodness in my life, which has led to an ever-deeping understanding of the truth of the world. And so, beauty has led to goodness has led to truth.

To get to your questions…you ask me to outline (1)”which propositions of basic Christian theism” I affirm and (2) why I believe these propositions are true. Also, you ask (3) how my beliefs about God inform my sense of meaning and purpose in life and (4) what the Christian life means to me.

Before I can say which Christian propositions I affirm as “basic,” I need to know what you mean by “basic.” If by “basic” you mean which beliefs do I hold as justifiable without reference to other beliefs…then I’m not sure I can say I have any basic beliefs, since I am highly sypathetic to postfoundationalism.

My beliefs, however, center on the person of Christ and flow from my own experience of him. As I’ve tried to live more like him, the more he makes sense to me. I put a fair amount of trust in the writers of the New Testament and in those persons throughout church history that most resemble the Christ I know and read about in the New Testament. This is all highly subjective and deeply relational, but that is how all relationships work.

My sense of purpose comes from trying to live in such a way that best shows Christ to the world–my community tries to live simply and hospitably. We try to include “strangers” and “marginal” people in our attempts to create a little pocket of humanity that conforms to Jesus’ teachings. The Christian life, to me, is about living like Jesus, by the empowerment of his Holy Spirit, in the context of a community of love. For us, this means embracing simplicity (seeking a sustainable life with a proper relationship to possessions), hospitality (inviting friends and strangers to share our life together), prayer (being rooted in life-giving spiritual rhythms), and peacemaking (breaking our addiction to power as we get in the way of violence and injustice). But to me, Jesus isn’t simply an exemplar of this–but the source of this.

So, I have some questions for you, Luke:

1) What drives your desire to engage people of faith regarding the unreasonablity of their faith?
2) You’ve said before that Jainism is a more ethical religious system than Christianity…I’d like to hear more on that.
3) What, do you believe, gives your life purpose and meaning?

Missio Dei (an Anabaptist intentional community in urban Minneapolis) has an opening in one of its community houses. In particular we’re looking for either a single or couple who are willing to commit to a year or more.

Missio Dei includes residential members (in three houses) and members who live nearby. We are committed to following Jesus’ way of simplicity (seeking a sustainable life with a proper relationship to possessions), hospitality (open our lives to strangers in the spirit of Matthew 25:31-46), prayer (being rooted in life-giving spiritual rhythms), and peacemaking (breaking our addiction to power as we get in the way of violence and injustice).

Missio Dei is anchored in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood–a diverse neighborhood of immigrants, refugees, punks, artists, homeless people, students and professionals all within about one square mile. Two out of our three houses are in this neigborhood. The other is a mile to the south.

• We’re looking for someone(s) to commit for at least a year. During their stay, they will be expected to participate in our community rhythms, embrace our rule of life, and follow house rules.
• During your first six months, you’re encouraged to engage in various reading and learning opportunities, as well as to meet weekly with one of the longer-term members of the community to process your experiences at Missio Dei.
• Folks in community generally work half to full time, and are encouraged to do some volunteer work in the neighborhood.
• Suggested housing contribution is $425 for a single, $650 for a couple–though that is negotiable.
• Hospitality is a regular practice of our community. Folks interested in living in one of our community houses need to be willing to receive strangers (sometimes including street people and others in a high-need situation).
• Early on in your time with us, we’ll help you get to know the area, and try to help in a potential job search if neceesary.

Preference will be given to folks with experience in practicing hospitality, as well as to those with life experiences or skills helpful to our community’s way of life and mission. However, we will carefully pray about all applications–so don’t be afraid to apply. For more information or an application send an email to info@missio-dei.com

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here. They may be helpful to others interested in living in community.