By Chaplain Mike

The other day I was reading a blog that will remain unnamed. I’m not interested in interacting personally with the author or “answering” his post. I simply want to use his take on a particular subject as an illustration to make a point here today.

That point is: The Bible simply does not speak to many aspects of our lives.

Even when we think it does. Even when we can take verses and passages and apply them to certain situations and conditions in our lives, the bottom line is that they were not written for that purpose. The fact that we think the Bible is God’s detailed instruction manual for life, containing information, counsel, and specific advice for every bit of need and mystery in life can lead us astray in many ways.

Today I want to talk about one of those ways—about how this view of God’s involvement in our lives and the nature of the Bible’s counsel can lead us to be way too hard on ourselves and to seek “spiritual” answers when in reality, all we may need is a bit of common sense and simple attention to earthly and human realities.

The subject is depression.

The post I read was about battling depression. It got off to a good start, first giving two good disclaimers in its counsel to those who suffer from this malady: (1) See your doctor, (2) Go talk to your pastor.

He rightly notes that there may be physical causes that a doctor could diagnose and treat (an observation that he unfortunately dismisses later when he disparages anti-depressant drugs as “happy pills”). And his advice to see one’s pastor is helpful in the sense that one should first seek out counsel from someone that person knows and trusts. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this blogger is recommending the pastor and not a counselor because he views the problem as primarily “spiritual” and because he would advocate the “Biblical counseling” approach, with its heavy emphasis on Bible verses as the cure for all that ails us.

He goes on to make one more helpful point. Depression can get comfortable for many people and start feeling like a friend that embraces us, when in reality it is draining all our strength. So we must be aggressive and determined in battling it. This is wise and helpful advice.

But from that point on, the writer’s emphasis is all spiritual all the time.

He starts by saying that if you’re not a Christian, you should be depressed. He has no good news whatsoever for the nonbeliever until he/she gets right with God. Is this really where we have to start every conversation?

Now, I’m in full agreement with sharing the gospel with people, but is it right to say to someone, “You can have no relief from debilitating depression until you embrace saving faith in Christ”? Have I no comfort and support to offer this person as a friend and companion on the human journey? Aren’t I implying that Christians never suffer this life-controlling disorder? Would it not be better to listen to my friend’s complaint, to sit in silence as Job’s friends did, and let him/her know that someone cares and will not abandon him/her? Are there no words of encouragement I can share? No deeds of love and support that I can perform? No practical ideas, no counsel about ordinary means that I may share? No common grace I may extend?

He then addresses Christians, and says it is our Lord’s clear word, revealed in the Bible, that God’s gift to us is joy, and that God’s will for us is to rejoice. Because we are in Christ, we have every reason to be the happiest we could ever be, right now. He then points the reader to an article that says straight out, if we are not experiencing this joy, it is possible that we do not want it. He goes on to question whether we are really believing Jesus if we say we don’t or can’t seem to find joy. The remedy he then suggests is repentance. Of course, he has Bible verses to go along with all of these points.

This author next pinpoints another potential spiritual problem—perhaps we are demanding that God change things first so that we can then receive his gift of joy. He brings out Scriptures that condemn “testing” God as the answer to that. He warns that staying in unbelief will lead to more depression—as it did for the Israelites in the wilderness.

Then our blogger has the reader examine himself, realize and “own” various sins that accompany depression—laziness, stubbornness, pride, wanting to see ourselves as “noble sufferers” or victims, and, the ultimate sin: trusting in our own perceptions and feelings rather than in the Word of God and what it says. All these things are sins, plain and simple, to be repented of and mortified. We must stop embracing them and coddling them.

Bottom line? Depression is the result of lazy, stubborn, habitual unbelief. The Bible says so.

And I say…

It may be.

Certainly a person’s relationship with God can affect one’s mood, emotions, and ability to participate in life with energy, purpose, and optimism.

But it may not be.

And what I object to the most is when someone presents “teaching” that asserts the Bible specifically deals with the subject of depression and provides remedies for it. It does not. The Bible does not address our moods and feelings and tell us how to straighten them out. When Paul wrote churches and encouraged them to “rejoice in the Lord,” he was not speaking of personal depression and how to overcome it. When Jesus told his disciples that he had told them certain truths so that their “joy might be full,” he was not saying that if they ever found themselves depressed, all they had to do was go over their memory verses, believe really hard, fight the devil, and everything would be alright.

The story and teachings of the Bible speak to something deeper than the emotional vicissitudes of our human experience, to whether we find ourselves happy or sad, or whether we struggle with clinical depression or some other psychological malady. The “emotion” words of Scripture speak to eschatological realities. “Joy” is not the opposite of “depression.” Joy is an unquenchable assurance that is ours no matter how we feel. It speaks of the kingdom, the kingdom that has dawned in Jesus, that has begun to take root in our hearts through the Spirit, that will be consummated in the new creation. I can be depressed and still have ultimate joy. I can be depressed and still believe.

This article represents a superficial “Biblical” approach that I find does much more harm than good.

• For one thing, it takes my eyes off God, off Jesus, off the power of the Gospel, off the newness the Holy Spirit brings, off the promises of God’s Word, and puts them on myself. In calling me to overcome afflictions like depression, it turns my attention away from the acts of God that bring me the deepest assurance and my only hope of any kind of victory.
• It calls me to self-examination, to a microscopic focus on my own sins, weaknesses, failures, and flaws. It enrolls me in SMI—the school of morbid introspection—and puts the onus on me to learn my lessons, repent, and get right.
• It enlists me to “battle depression” as some dread spiritual enemy, thus raising the stakes for any setbacks or defeats.
• It intensifies my fear of spiritual failure and bases the way I grade myself on my feelings.
• If you want to talk about the Bible—it takes the Psalms away from me, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and a thousand passages that portray faithful people coming to God in both depression and faith.

Furthermore, this approach is ultimately docetic and world-denying. There are so many things the Bible doesn’t address in life, or if it does, it speaks of them through its Wisdom literature. Wisdom literature like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and so on contains ground level observations about life, people, family, finances, character qualities, decision-making, and other aspects of living in this world. It has a spiritual context: the God who created us and the good world in which we live. It contains observations that arise from “great discernment and breadth of mind” like Solomon had (1Kings 4:29), not just from special revelation about “spiritual” matters.

It is my position that we should deal with matters like depression from the perspective of wisdom. That means taking a person’s full humanity and life in this world into account. If someone should come to me to ask about how to overcome the depression that is disabling him/her, my list of questions and recommendations would look quite different than the ones I read in that article.

• Have you seen your doctor? I recommend getting a full physical and talking with your doctor about your symptoms. There may be a physical cause or causes, and if so, this should be treated, including the treatment of chemical imbalances through anti-depressant drugs.
• Tell me about your eating, sleeping, and exercise habits. Our daily routine and taking good care of ourselves has a lot to do with our mindset and how we feel.
• Talk to me about the stressors in your life and how you deal with them. The way we handle pressure can contribute to depression and anxiety.
• What losses or changes are you grieving over? Grief is our natural reaction to losing something or someone important to us. Even normal life changes involve loss. We may not even recognize the sadness we feel and how it inhibits us from full engagement with life.
• What makes you angry? In many cases, depression involves anger turned in on oneself. Helping people find healthy ways of dealing with anger and conflict can help.
• How are your key relationships? Do you have someone to talk to regularly about what you are thinking and feeling? Are there people in your life you can simply relax and “hang” with? Withdrawal from this kind of companionship can deepen depression.
• What do you do for fun? People who are depressed can have a hard time enjoying life’s pleasures. It may be just as “spiritual” to prescribe pleasure as some spiritual practice for the depressed.
• What are you looking forward to in your future? Hopelessness is one key feature of depression, and helping people find hope in a better tomorrow is a key part of treating depression.
• Tell me about your faith background and how you practice your faith. A general question like this gives people permission to talk about God and spiritual matters without feeling like you have identified their problem as failure of faith from the start. If they reveal spiritual problems that are contributing to their depression, by all means point them to Jesus and God’s promises.

Can we please just learn to be human beings with our neighbors? Can we please discard this semi-gnostic notion that the Bible holds the secret keys to overcoming life’s mysterious and intractable problems? Can we please stop blaming those who are hurting? Can we stop putting the burden on them to make things right? I can’t think of any approach more antithetical to the Gospel. There may, of course, be times when we confront stubbornness and pride, and will need to do so directly with a strong word. But most of the time, I would think we are called to be like Jesus. When he dealt with the afflicted, it was said of him, “He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle.” (Matthew 12:20, NLT)

Now there’s a Bible verse that speaks to us.

New Orleans Mardi Gras, Manzano

• Now when the Lord your God blesses you with a good harvest, the place of worship he chooses for his name to be honored might be too far for you to bring the tithe. If so, you may sell the tithe portion of your crops and herds, put the money in a pouch, and go to the place the Lord your God has chosen. When you arrive, you may use the money to buy any kind of food you want—cattle, sheep, goats, wine, or other alcoholic drink. Then feast there in the presence of the Lord your God and celebrate with your household. (Deut 14:24-26, NLT)

• So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God. (Eccesiastes 3:12-13)

• God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. (1Tim 6:17, NIV)

• One will have to give account in the judgment day of every good thing which one might have enjoyed and did not. (The Talmud)

By Chaplain Mike

In this morning’s Gospel lesson, we heard a story from Jesus’ lips about how the trappings of religion can keep us far from God. Oddly, the benefits of the religious life that enhance our thoughts, words, and actions, that re-order our relationships and priorities and bring us new purpose and direction, can also corrode our hearts. Such is the human capacity for self-deceit and self-righteousness, that we can transform God’s undeserved blessings into trophies of pride and weapons of contempt.

It’s even more dangerous than that. In the very situation where we are trying to do a faithful and obedient deed, our religious habits can lead us astray. We can forget the simple human act. We can define, “doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God” (Micah 6:8) in such “spiritual” or ecclesiastical terms that we neglect the common practices of ordinary neighborliness that actually embody such Biblical instructions.

It may be time to close the Book, exit the sanctuary, and look into our neighbor’s eyes.

At the moment, I am reading two “new” books by the late Henri Nouwen. Both were assembled from his writing, notes, journals, and courses by friends. (Reviews to come later this week.) As always, when reading Nouwen, I am struck by the simplicity and utter humanity of his words. For Nouwen, any claim to a life with God is not authentic unless it makes us profoundly human. We find God in the brother as well as in the Book, in our neighbor in the world as well as among his people.

Though his ability and wisdom were apparent from the start, Nouwen’s chose to leave the academic world of Harvard University to live among mentally handicapped people, first at L’Arche in France and then at Daybreak community in Toronto. These intimate experiences of companionship and service pressed a deep sense of humanity into Nouwen.

His first assignment at L’Arche was to care for a severely handicapped 24 year-old man named Adam. Adam could not talk, walk, dress or undress himself. His body was misshapen and he suffered from epileptic seizures. One could have no ordinary converse with Adam. Nouwen helped him get up in the morning, bathe and toilet, and transported him to breakfast. He assisted him with eating, which Adam loved to do, taking over an hour at the table for a single meal. In sheer silence. Through this daily companionship, the teacher, a master with words, learned to be silent. The activist learned to be still. The one who thought he must be constantly doing the Lord’s work learned to simply be with another human being.

Their relationship lasted for ten years, and then Adam died. In their time together, God spoke to Henri Nouwen through this profoundly disabled man. He learned to embrace Adam as a brother and friend. He realized that the ones we deem “helpless” can give as much or more than they receive. Adam taught this renowned scholar and priest to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”

Nouwen used to tell a tale from the Talmud to remind religious people that we must not allow our “spiritual” practices to lead us astray from our calling to love our neighbors, to be friends with people like Adam.

One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the solders who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every person in it unless the young man was handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the Rabbi and asked him what to do. Torn between handing over the boy to the enemy and having his people killed, the Rabbi withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. In the early morning, his eyes fell on these words: ‘It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.’

Then the Rabbi closed the Bible, called the soldiers, and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the Rabbi had saved the lives of the people. But the Rabbi did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him and asked, ‘What have you done?’ He said: ‘I handed over the fugitive to the enemy.’ Then the angel said: ‘But don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?’ ‘How could I know?’ the Rabbi replied anxiously. Then the angel said: ‘If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.’

• Spiritual Direction, p. 26f

It may be time to close the Book, exit the sanctuary, and look into our neighbor’s eyes.

By Chaplain Mike

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

• Ephesians 2:8-10 (TNIV)

God does not need our good works. Our neighbor does. Strictly speaking, we do not ever “serve God.” He always serves us, and through us, he serves our neighbors. God always works through means. In the spiritual kingdom, he graciously provides salvation in Christ through the means of Word and Sacrament. In the earthly realm, he works through human beings fulfilling their vocations.

This, in a nutshell, is one of the most important contributions to Christian theology that Martin Luther and his heirs have given to the church—the doctrine of vocation.

In the future, we will explore this further, but on this “Labor Day” in the United States, when we honor workers and their contributions to our lives and society, I offer the following quote from Gene Edward Veith for your meditation.

When I go into a restaurant, the waitress who brings me my meal, the cook in the back who prepared it, the delivery men, the wholesalers, the workers in the food-processing factories, the butchers, the farmers, the ranchers, and everyone else in the economic food chain are all being used by God to “give me this day my daily bread.”

This is the doctrine of vocation. God works through people, in their ordinary stations of life to which He has called them, to care for His creation. In this way, He cares for everyone—Christian and non-Christian—whom He has given life.

Luther puts it even more strongly: Vocations are “masks of God.” On the surface, we see an ordinary human face—our mother, the doctor, the teacher, the waitress, our pastor—but, beneath the appearances, God is ministering to us through them. God is hidden in human vocations.

The other side of the coin is that God is hidden in us. When we live out our callings—as spouses, parents, children, employers, employees, citizens, and the rest—God is working through us. Even when we do not realize it, when we fulfill our callings, we too are masks of God.

• Gene Edward Leith, “The Masks of God”

For Further Reading
A full set of links to Veith’s articles on vocation, which he wrote for The Lutheran Witness in 2001, may be found at Justin Taylor’s website here.

I also recommend Veith’s book, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Focal Point Series)

I’ve been job-hunting for months.  This has surprised me, as I’ve never had a hard time finding a job before.  But the school where I was teaching closed, and I have to do something else.  Suddenly my education and experience, which were considered assets where I used to work, seem to be worth nothing any longer and can’t keep my resume from the trash can.  And the maddening thing is that I don’t know what to do about that.

Thirty years ago we were given good advice about job hunting:  Make it personal.  Get your foot in the door.  Talk on the phone.  Send your resume in the mail.  But you can’t do that anymore!  Many want ads don’t even list the company that’s hiring, only an email address of an agency.  If the company is named, there is no telephone number or person’s name to apply to.  Bold print on the ad insists that job seekers must not call, must not mail materials, must not come to the office.

Human resources has it all their way.  The system is set up entirely for their convenience.  The jobseeker is an annoyance who has to be barricaded against.  But ironically, not only the jobseeker suffers from the human resource hegemony.  In most places the people and departments who need new employees don’t even get to see the majority of applications coming in.  They’ve all been screened by HR, and most HR people aren’t in the position to go out on a limb, to follow a hunch, or to give someone a try.  I suspect that the people who ultimately do the hiring suffer as much from the HR barricade as the jobseekers do.

My point here, though, is not to complain about the difficulties of finding a job.  (Email me if you’d like to join my tirade about that!)  My point is that the system has become inhumane and materialistic. “Inhumane” is obvious to anyone who’s been buffeted by it.  I chose the word “materialistic” to imply that the universe of the current HR-dominated job exchange is a closed system.

A materialist believes that the material universe is all there is.  Therefore everything is finite.  Goods are ultimately in short supply.  Any good you have is a loss to me, and anything I acquire is taken from you.  “To be” means “to be in competition,” as Screwtape says.

The materialist sees the jobseeker as a competitor for scarce resources, red in tooth and claw, prowling to seek his own advantage at whatever cost to those around him.  “We can’t let him in the door!”  HR wails and starts nailing crooked pieces of wood over all the windows.

The idea that jobseekers are assets, are a potential good that they and the company would mutually benefit from, is entirely foreign to this way of thinking.  Materialists don’t assume that all the people out there are in fact valuable human beings.  They assume that one of the crowd will have proved himself fitter to survive than the others, will have clawed his way to the top, and that he is the one they want.

It’s a very adolescent view, the materialist one.  Do you remember, as you got older, noticing with surprise all the happily married couples of plain, even dumpy-looking, people?  When you’re a teenager, you think that only the “best” will attract a mate or succeed at anything — only the cheerleader, or the football player, or the valedictorian, or whatever the aristocracy was in your adolescence.  Then you notice that even the average people, even the bottom of the social heap, seem to be happy, find love, do well in their lives.  And it first occurs to you that maybe life is not a competition to establish my value over yours, maybe life is a courtship of equally valued beings.

Mostly the materialist view is rooted in a profound misunderstanding about who and what God is, and what his universe is like.  Materialists entirely miss the point of the loaves and the fishes.  But there is another reason for the prevalence of materialism nowadays.  It is the perception that there are too many of us competing for too few resources, that in olden days (probably apocryphal) people lived in small communities and could afford to be in relationship with their few neighbors, but now in our big cities we get overwhelmed.

There was a Doonesbury cartoon from the days of Pol Pot.  BD and Fred the Viet Cong (if I remember correctly) are cooking a pot of rice over a fire.  A refugee comes up and says, “Can we share your rice?”  “Umm, sure,” says Fred; “how many of you are there?”  “Five hundred thousand,” says the refugee.

We call it compassion fatigue.  There are too many hungry, the rice won’t stretch that far.  There are too many homeless, they can’t all fit in the guest room.  There are too many unemployed, they can’t all be hired.  So to protect themselves from despair people build barricades, set up impersonal email addresses, move into gated communities.  Many who do that aren’t bad people.  If you could get through the barricades you’d find that they were friendly and generous enough.  But they’ve missed the point of the loaves and fishes.

The point of the loaves and fishes is this:  Jesus would just have been an admirably generous man if he had shared the little he had with the crowds.  But he was — is — God.  His creative and beneficent power is infinitely greater than we can imagine.  The universe is not a closed system.  There is a limitless supply, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.  Life is a courtship, not a competition; a giving of gifts and not a staking out of territory.  Against all human imagining, there are bread and fish enough for all, with more left over.

Now I only wish I could meet the human resources person whose faith is strong enough to let me in the door, who could believe that I — or one of the other desperate people — might be an asset and a blessing, not a debit and a drain.

And I also want to remember, if I ever do get a job and am the one wearing the boot, what the sole looks like from underneath.

A word from Chaplain Mike:

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts by good friend Damaris Zehner.

Thanks, Damaris!

We Christians ought to have more enemies.

This post is not about fat and happy Christians needing more suffering to test their faith. It’s not about standing up for what we believe, regardless of who we offend. It’s not about drawing a circle around ourselves that leaves out everyone who doesn’t agree with us.

It’s about the commandment in the Bible to love our enemies and to forgive them.

I was reading that passage recently. It hit me: “There’s no one I call my enemy.” Maybe that’s a good thing. My life has been an easy and comfortable one compared to many people’s. I’m not persecuted, imprisoned, impoverished, or the victim of prejudice. And maybe I’m such a nice person that everyone likes me and I like everyone else.

Well, no. Let’s not go that far.

So therefore, if I have no enemies, I have no one I need to forgive or make an effort to love, right? When I arrived at that conclusion, I began to get suspicious of my thought process. I really don’t think that love and forgiveness are optional in the Bible. They are the irreducible way of the cross, as the Lord’s Prayer makes clear. If we have to learn forgiveness, what was someone like me to do, someone with a pretty good life and no enemies to forgive? Obviously, find some enemies.

According to Matthew 5:44, an enemy is someone who despitefully uses me. Has anyone done that? Well, yes, several people have done that. Have the people around me loved me as they love themselves? Have they sought my good? No, not all of them. Has anyone hurt me, insulted me, ignored me, disagreed with me in a hateful way? Certainly.

Are these people then my enemies? Enmity seems like a big word for such minor offenses. I’m almost ashamed to use it when other Christians are being tortured and killed. But if I allow a category of people who have hurt me in some way but who are not my enemies, then I have a category of people I don’t need to forgive. All these people who aren’t really my enemies: I can gripe about them, cut them down, avoid them, act sour or distant to them — but I don’t need to forgive them, because they aren’t torturing or killing me.

That’s a dangerous way to think. Is this kind of thinking really a problem among Christians other than me?

I believe it is. I noticed during the last election, for example, a torrent of hateful speech about our current president. Life-long Christians spoke with venom about Barack Obama and passed on gossip that had been proven to be untrue. Some even joked — I didn’t laugh — about killing him, which is treason in addition to sin. But if I had asked them, “Is Barack Obama your enemy?” most would have said no. They too had a category of people whom they didn’t have to love but also didn’t have to forgive.

It sounds funny, and a little paranoid, to say we need to identify more people as enemies. But once we have, then we can learn to forgive and to love as God has forgiven and loved us. We think it’s Christian to shrug off and minimize offenses, but if by doing so we absolve ourselves from the duty to be like Jesus, then we are doing wrong.

I posted a comment after an iMonk article recently, that there are only two categories of people: friends, whom I have to love, and enemies, whom I have to love. There is no other category; no “slightly annoying people whom I can handle on my own, thanks;” no “wrong-headed politicians who haven’t harmed me personally but whom I’m free to slander if I want.” If you can’t call someone a friend, then call him an enemy, but love him and forgive him, as God has commanded us to do.

And I’d highly recommend avoiding people who electronically or in the flesh act as if there’s a third category of people we’re allowed to hate. But be careful – if those hatemongers are our enemies, we have to love them, too.

By Chaplain Mike

I am thoroughly enjoying writing on Internet Monk.

This new venture has involved a huge change in my daily work and schedule, but I am thrilled to be pursuing this new avocation. Carrying on the legacy of Michael Spencer, who had such a unique voice and perspective to share, is a joy and challenge, and I find it exhilarating. Your company has been stimulating as well, and the conversations we’ve been having have enriched my thinking.

However, I have already realized the need for a periodic reality check. So here it is. Please hear me out. I want you to know that…

This is not where I live.

There is no “Internet Monastery” where blog writers conduct their daily lives. These discussions, as valuable as they may be, are just conversations. They occur in a funny place, a unique forum we’ve never experienced before—a faceless, fleshless place—a place of less than real relationships. It is, by and large, a good place, with many benefits. We learn from each other. We prompt each other to think. We ponder and evaluate our positions on various subjects.

It’s like a classroom on a day in which the prof leads a discussion, a forum in the public square, a group of strangers bellying up to the bar at a watering hole, hanging around the lounge at seminary, meeting people from other churches in the fellowship hall at a conference and sharing observations about the things you’re experiencing. You say a little something. You hear a little something. Then you go get coffee and move on. Eventually you go home.

Because it is not life.

Michael Spencer wrote about this in a 2004 post:

My continuing fascination with online “relationships (not romances)” continues. I’m in this big discussion with a lurker, and he’s mad as heck that I support the President, and he’s all up into the Tin Foil Hats and so on. Then he starts in with….”I used to like you…”

Puh-leeze.

You read a few pages of my script. You read what I hung out on the net. You made up your own mind about what I was like and what I thought. In your mind, you created an imaginary friend out of my essays. And then you found a subject where we differ…and BOY are you mad!

This is just so juvenile. People, people, PEOPLE! Get a life. The internet is not real life. OK, as the facilitator of one of the more successful blog communities on the net I know that there can be some level of friendships, but even then, they are artificial. My guys at the BHT are talking about getting together in “3D.” Why am I not all that excited? Because I barely know anyone, don’t want to ever know some, have passable feelings of friendship for a few. The BHT largely exists in my imagination. These real people in the room and at my job and next door….they are much more complex, challenging, rewarding and genuine.

I love my online friendships, but mostly because of what they do for ME. I do some listening and ministry for them I guess, and my writing helps them feel they are not alone or to think a bit. But my internet life is pretty self centered. I can’t say it’s made me more holy in the real world. It’s not my church or my family, that’s for sure. It’s a set of somewhat real, somewhat imaginary relationships that allow me to paint on their canvas a bit while they paint on mine.

So I wish some of these online fans/haters would get out of the house and into a coffee shop or a school or a club where they can have real relationships. Saying I am great or going to hell is fun, but it’s not real. OK?

This issue goes beyond the internet, blogs, or one’s view of a particular blogger. It’s the entire culture we’re dealing with in our time.

I’m concerned that:

• far too many of our opinions and “convictions,”
• too much of what we think the church should “stand for,”
• too many of our political positions and perspectives,
• too many of our culture war attitudes,
• too much of the stuff we hear from the pulpit and talk about in the narthex at church,
• too many of the attitudes we have toward our neighbors, the public schools, liberals or conservatives,
• too many of our judgments about people in various socio-economic classes and lifestyles,

are not being formed by experiences lived out in daily events where we actually relate to others and learn to deal with matters in active, personal ways.

Instead,

• we watch Fox News or MSNBC,
• listen to Rush or watch Jon Stewart,
• surf the watchblogs that conform to our views,
• join causes and groups on Facebook and post their slogans,
• confirm our opinions on the basis of forwarded emails.
• I become a “Glenn Beck” guy or a “Jim Wallis” guy.
• I tell the world what I believe by my bumper stickers and T-shirts.

I have to remind myself every now and then that most of this is bluster and noise. It’s not life. Frankly, I’ve turned most of it off.  The pundits too often become propagandists. Spectacle and screaming trumps truth. A long time ago, A. W. Tozer warned against having a “Reader’s Digest” way of thinking—shallow, simplistic, edited down to its bullet points. What in the world would he say today?

Furthermore, on Internet Monk, I can’t let myself get all emotionally invested in some guy who declares me a heretic in a blog comment for my views on Genesis 1. It is just a public discussion, folks. It’s not my life.

My life happens in a small town in central Indiana. I live it with my wife, children, grandkids, and neighbors. My life involves talking with them, praying for them, helping them, being forgiven by them when I mess up. It’s eating meals together, talking about the little things we’ve done throughout the day, coordinating our schedules, staying in touch, keeping short accounts.

My life involves helping coach my grandson’s Little League team and remembering how to talk to seven-year olds again. My life involves singing in the choir at my church, going to practice, cutting up with the rest of the tenors. In my life, I occasionally serve on some committee for our local school district, attend the high school baseball games because the coach is a good friend, greet fellow townsfolk at Walmart or Starbucks, or visit a friend in the hospital whose spouse is having surgery.

Many hours of this life are spent doing my daily work as a hospice chaplain. I drive around the city, visiting folks in their homes, in hospitals, and other facilities. I have face-to-face conversations with them. Surprise! Most of these conversations don’t involve swapping the kinds of slogans I get in forwarded emails. No, these talks take place in the context of actual living and dying. We talk about what’s happening to someone’s body right in front of us. We talk about the feelings raised by this, the spiritual issues, and what dad’s going to do when his wife of 62 years walks through death’s door and leaves him behind.

My fellow team members are a huge part of my life. We meet and talk and laugh together, respect the expertise each one brings to our work, consult on difficult questions, help each other in practical ways, and support each other when it all gets heavy. We also recognize that each person has a full and meaningful life outside the team, and so we try to be sensitive, caring, and available as friends for one another.

This is life. Real life. Daily life. Faces. Flesh. Conversations. Decisions. Relationships.

I’m worried about churches in our current electronic and cyber-culture. Reliance upon programmed approaches and technology can easily promote “sound-bite” theology, activity masquerading as meaningful interaction with others, and a culture that “takes stands” on the big issues of the day, but cares little for actually knowing and loving one’s neighbor.

So, for example,

• You may have a position on the gay lifestyle or gay marriage. How many gay people do you know and relate to regularly?

• You rant and rave about the decline of morals in our society. Do you have any relationships with “sinners”? Do you welcome them into your home and sit down at table with them? Do you develop long-term friendships with them?

• How much time do you spend online? In front of the TV? Hooked to some electronic gadget? On the other hand, how much time and energy do you give to genuine relationships, down to earth activities, serving others, having real conversations?

I love Internet Monk. It has a place.

And I honestly appreciate all of you who read and participate. It’s an exceptional online community, a vibrant conversation.

But it’s not where I live. Nor should you.

By Michael Bell

A study just published in the March issue of the Social Psychology Quarterly confirms what many liberals and atheists have told us for years. Those who hold to conservative religious beliefs are just not as smart as their liberal and atheistic counterparts.

Based upon data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the General Social Surveys, two VERY large studies of American youth, Satoshi Kanazawa found the following:

1a. Average IQ of very liberal youth – 106
1b. Average IQ of very conservative youth – 95

2a. Average IQ of those young adults “not at all religious” – 103
2b. Average IQ of “very religious” young adults – 97.

It would then follow that the average liberal atheist is quite a bit smarter than the average religious conservative.

But what does this all really mean?

First lets represent this graphically.

As you can see, roughly 68 percent of the population falls within an IQ of 85 and 115. If we look at the differences between the conservatives and the liberals, you will note that the conservative red bar is significantly to the left of the liberal blue bar. (If you are a Canadian reader, please note that I am using a U.S. color scheme. In Canada, the colors are reversed for liberals and conservatives.)

I decided to look for further data that would confirm or deny these results, and I found it in two places. If a higer IQ is related to liberal thinking then you would think that if we could determine IQ by state then we could cross reference it against voting patterns or church attendance to see sort of impact differences in IQ might have. A hoax website, that has been duplicated widely by people not realizing it was a host, showed just that. In this hoax almost all states with a higher IQ voted Democrat and almost the states with a lower IQ voted Republican. The chart was even published in the Economist magazine, for which they later had to offer a retraction. I see that the same fake study has shown up for the 2008 election as well.

The truth is that there is a difference, though it is not as great as the fake websites have shown. The true relationship showing the difference between IQ and state voting patterns is shown below. (IQ by State is calculated here.)

For each state I have plotted IQ on the horizonal (x) axis and voting share on the vertical (y) axis. You can see that there really is quite a lot of variety between IQ and political preference. This is demonstrated by the intersection of IQ and voting percentage represented by dots on the graph. The lines running on a diagonal through the graph are called “best fit” lines, and they show that on average, a one point increase in IQ leads to between a .36 and .58 decrease in Republican support, depending upon the election. Notice that I wrote “on average”, because as we all know that there are really intelligent people, and really unintelligent people at both ends of the political spectrum.

The best fit lines are even more striking when it comes to charting IQ against Church attendance. This is the matter to which I want to draw our attention to most. As can be seen from the graph below, on average, a one percent increase in IQ corresponds with a 1.4 percent drop in church attendance. Clearly the idea that the smarter you are the least likely you are to be religious in an idea with some validity.

I confirmed the data through a third source, though this was not a properly randomized study its results mirrored what we see above. In Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) has a yearly test the nation challenge. The results were much higher than a truly randomized test, and typically, the smarter you are, the more willing you would be to take a test like this. Those who took the test also answered some questions that would help to determine things like political groupings, or religious leanings. In Canada, the political parties are not as differentiated as they are in the United States, so it was not surprising to see that all the primary parties (we have five up here) scored within two points of each other.

Religion showed a much wider difference. Those who called themselves religious scored on average almost three IQ points below those who called themselves atheist, and almost four IQ points below those who called themselves agnostic. This spread is not as large as what we saw for the U.S. data, but still quite significant.

So why does this happen?

While Kanazawa, the author of the original study, uses an evolutionary argument to explain the difference, I think some of the reasons for this disparity can be something quite a bit simpler.

It has been proven that IQ has been increasing with each succeeding generation. One of explanations for this is an increased information flow in each successive generation. It would follow then that you would expect a higher IQ in an urban area compared to a rural area, not because of political leaning, but as a result of geography and urbanization. The CBC data also tended to confirm this idea that IQ is higher in larger metropolitan areas. As there is also strong correlation between conservatism and rural areas, and liberalism and urban areas, you would expect a higher IQ from liberals living in urban areas. We have to be careful with our cause and effect relationship here. Are people liberal because they are smarter, or are they are smarter because they live in an urban area with increased access to information? Are there other factors that make urban areas more liberal than rural areas? These are questions that are perhaps beyond the scope of what can be handled in this post.

Secondly, because we are looking at adolescents, we know that they will question some of the presuppositions of their parents or society as a whole. This can be seen in election campaigns where youth are dramatically more liberal than the generation that preceded them. We also might make the assumption that the smarter you are, the more that you might be likely to question societal standards, and so the more likely in a conservative society that you will be liberal. I have also read an argument that in a liberal education system, the smarter kids will absorb more of the liberal ideas, and so will increase the correlation between IQ and liberal thought. Again, these are just theories, you might have some better ones.

U.S. Evangelicals 2000

These same two arguments can also be used when considering IQ and religious trends. Could it be that geography plays a significant role in the IQs of those who are religious and those who are Atheist or Agnostic. As you can see from the accompanying graph, Evangelical Christians certainly are more concentrated in certain regions.

So what are we to do?

Regardless of the reasons for the difference, there is a problem. One of the concerns that Michael Spencer spoke of in the “Coming Evangelical Collapse”, was the Christian shunning of higher education. He writes:

Despite some very successful developments in the last 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can hold the line in the rising tide of secularism. The ingrown, self-evaluated ghetto of evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself. I believe Christian schools always have a mission in our culture, but I am skeptical that they can produce any sort of effect that will make any difference. Millions of Christian school graduates are going to walk away from the faith and the church.

Chaplain Mike Mercer, in his recent post on staying in the discussion, wrote the following:

Christians have nothing to fear from science. What we should be afraid of is being marginalized, not because of our thoughtful and considerate faith, but because we think it is somehow faithful to refuse to imagine we might be wrong in some of our assumptions or commitments. I, for one, am thankful for serious Bible scholars like Waltke, who has not stopped thinking and who continues to use his gifts in active engagement with truth from many different sources.

I agree… up to a point. There is a verse on the wall at the front of our church sanctuary. Wir aber predigen den gekreuzigten Christus. (My church is of a German heritage.) For those in the congregation, like me, who don’t understand German, they finally added the reference last year, 1 Corinthians 1:23. But we preach the crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. Our message is one that doesn’t make sense. To the Jews, a crucified Messiah was a paradox that they could not get there minds around. For the non-Jew, a leader sentenced to death is not much of a leader to follow.

This is a theme of Paul’s throughout the early chapters of 1st Corinthians:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe… but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles… For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength… The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

The message of the good news of Jesus Christ is a hard one to accept. It will appear as foolishness to many. We need to engage with those around us. We need to engage with science. We need to be prepared to have an answer for the hope that is within us. We need to not put up unneccessary stumbling blocks. But we also need to be prepared to be seen as fools in the eyes of the world.

I leave you with the word’s of Michael Card:

Seems I’ve imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God’s Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind

For even His family said He was mad
And the priest say a demon’s to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

Chorus
We in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
And we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
And so we follow God’s own fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable
Come be a fool as well

So come lose our life for a carpenter’s son
For a man who had died for a dream
And you’ll feel the faith His first followers had
And you’ll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see

Chorus

So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable, come be a fool as well

Are Liberals and Atheists smarter? Maybe, but this is one guy who doesn’t mind being a fool for God.

By Chaplain Mike

MOD NOTE: Comments are closed.

I hope this will come as a bit of good news to you today. Maybe it will help you stop beating yourself up unnecessarily. I hope it will help us all to that end.

What I have to tell you is…

It’s OK.

It’s OK to just be a Christian.

It’s OK to just be a person who knows and is thankful that God loves you and gave his Son for you.

It’s OK to just be a person of the cross, to know that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again for the world’s salvation.

Really, it’s OK.

It’s OK to be someone who only really cares about trying to love God and love your neighbor.

It’s OK to think that the Apostles’ Creed is a comprehensive enough statement of faith for you, and that you are willing to have fellowship with other people who think the same.

You don’t have to be a certain kind of Christian. Adjectives like “reformed” or “conservative” or “emerging” or “missional” or any number of denominational or theologically constricting labels are not necessary.

It’s OK just to love Jesus and be thankful for what he’s done for you.

You don’t have to go to a “cool” church with a name like “Revolution” or “The Rock” or “Journey” or “The River.” Your plain ol’ First Presbyterian or First Baptist or First United Methodist will do. It’s OK if it’s St. Peter’s and your pastor waves incense around, or St. Basil’s, where intriguing icons invite you to meditate on them.

It’s OK if you don’t listen to Christian music, shop in Christian stores, wear Christian t-shirts, go to Christian conventions, become a Christian homeschooler or send your kids to Christian schools, patronize Christian businesses, participate in Christian causes, read Christian books, or identify yourself with Christian organizations. You can be a Christian without all that, it’s OK.

It’s OK if you don’t have a big library of theological books or Bible commentaries. It’s OK if you struggle reading through the Bible, because you can’t even make it past Genesis 5—you can’t pronounce that long list of funny names.

It’s OK if you have no idea what it means to “engage the culture,” or “have an impact in the world.” You may not understand what “social justice” is all about. If you’ve never been in a small group or taken a missions trip, never had your spiritual gifts inventoried, never tweeted the pastor during a message and wouldn’t know a PowerPoint sermon if it bit you, it’s OK.

I don’t think it really matters if you know John Piper from Piper Laurie, N.T. Wright from the Wright Brothers, YEC from NAACP, or Willow Creek from Nickel Creek.

You are OK staying out of the culture wars. Culture wars? You’re too busy visiting your neighbor who’s in the hospital, taking some food to the family, coaching that little kid who doesn’t have a dad, writing a note to a friend who’s discouraged, making coffee for the congregation on Sunday morning, volunteering at the school, mowing the lawn of a shut-in.

Oh, by the way, it’s OK if you say, “I don’t know” when people ask you about the burning issues of the day. It’s OK if you don’t have an opinion on gay marriage or stem cell research or global warming.

And it’s even OK if you are a bit fuzzy on your theology. If you can’t give a precise formulation of the doctrine of justification by faith or distinguish between the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed teachings on sanctification, you’re still gonna be OK. If you think “rapture” is what you felt on your wedding day, and have no idea of its theological meaning, that’s OK.

It’s OK to say, “I don’t know.” Doesn’t make you less of a Christian.

Baptized as an infant? OK. Dunked in the creek as a young teen? OK.

Love to receive communion because you meet Jesus there, but have no idea how to explain it? In my opinion, that’s OK.

Because you trust in Jesus.

You know in your heart that you’re broken and need fixing.

It’s clear to you that he is the only one who can forgive your past, enliven your present, and guarantee your future.

And in response you have found simple ways to worship the One who means everything to you, with others who feel the same.

That’s what you know, and that’s who you are.

You’re just a Christian.

And that’s OK.

By the way, if you know someone like this, you might want read this post to them, because I have an idea they have no clue what the “Christian blogosphere” is, and they will probably never find my words.

That is perfectly OK with me.

Bruce Waltke is a renowned conservative Old Testament scholar. He served on the translation committees for the NASB and NIV Bibles. Waltke is a professor emeritus of Old Testament studies at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia and a former president of the Evangelical Theological Society. His commentary on Genesis is one of my favorites.

In this video from one my favorite sites, BioLogos, Waltke appeals to the church to stay in the discussion when it comes to issues of contemporary science, particularly the issue of evolution. He cautions:

“If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult…some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God’s Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.”

Personally, I have never understood the fear Christians have when it comes to the findings of science. And it strikes me how ignorant most Christians are of earlier battles from which we should have learned. The classic example is how the church handled Copernican theory and Galileo. The church had “Biblical truth” and evidence on her side against the “godless” theory that the earth orbits the sun rather than vice versa.

Of course, one could still take a consistently “Biblical” position (as understood in a 16th century way) and end up a “geocentrist.” Maybe you’d like to follow teachings like those found on fixedearth.com, where it is taught that the earth is not going around the sun, and that it does not even rotate. Or, you could join the Flat Earth Society, which reflects the views of Samuel Rowbotham in the 1800′s who, based on literal interpretation of Bible passages, held that “the earth is a flat disk centered at the North Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice, with the sun, moon, planets, and stars only a few hundred miles above the surface of the earth.”

Christians have nothing to fear from science. What we should be afraid of is being marginalized, not because of our thoughtful and considerate faith, but because we think it is somehow faithful to refuse to imagine we might be wrong in some of our assumptions or commitments.

I, for one, am thankful for serious Bible scholars like Waltke, who has not stopped thinking and who continues to use his gifts in active engagement with truth from many different sources.