When I was a kid we had, arguably, the most ridiculous public service film in the history of civilization. It was called Duck and Cover and the film featured a turtle named Bert. You can enjoy a couple of chuckles
The film spent nine terrifying minutes telling you a nuclear bomb could detonate at any moment. To be fair, the film primarily advocated finding appropriate shelter. But if such shelter was not readily available you should duck and cover when you saw the bright flash of detonation. While I guess such an action is better than nothing it seems ludicrous that this would be of much value in the event of nuclear attack. I remember the fear that this film generated for an elementary student. But even then my mind wasn’t normal. When I took a break from being terrified I wondered about important questions. Like why does a turtle wear a safety helmet? How could the helmet fit inside the shell when Bert ducked and covered? Told you my brain isn’t wired to factory specs.
That apparent wiring deficiency is showing up in areas of my Christian experience. I just can’t work up the righteous indignation that some other Christians seem to possess in vast quantities. Does that mean I don’t care? I don’t think so. I hope not. I care deeply about my faith and how I represent Jesus to those around me. So as I address two hot news topics I am prepared to “duck and cover” when I check my e-mail and website feedback. Please understand that I am examining myself even as I write these words.
Topic One: Madonna
Madonna has included a tasteless and, to me, repulsive “mock” crucifixion as a part of her stage show. This caps a very long list of tasteless and repulsive actions on her resume. My Cal Ripken like streak of not buying Madonna CDs’ or tickets will definitely continue. The controversy is that there are (or perhaps were) plans to air her concert on NBC. The anger from the religious community has been intense and I understand it. I do not condemn or question the motives of the organizations or groups that do want this mocking display on the air. What I am wrestling with is a couple of bigger questions.
- Is this the best strategy?
- Do we misrepresent Jesus in our attempts?
I wrote about the Christian response to negative portrayals at length when the awful show the Book of Daniel aired briefly on NBC. I mentioned how much I loved the controversy because it gave me a chance to discuss Christianity and Jesus in the natural flow of conversation. While I can not and will not ever agree with Madonna’s gratuitous use of a cross in her show it can and does open opportunities to discuss. What is the meaning of the cross? Why is it important to people of faith? When a topic is all over the news the opportunity is there to have a dialogue. I wonder if we lose that chance with our anger? When Jesus showed anger it was because His Father’s House, the Temple, had been defiled. I don’t think Jesus much cared what was going on down at the local amphitheater and entertainment venues. His focus was on individual hearts and minds. Changing hearts and minds would change a culture and the world. That was the Jesus strategy. I am not saying that efforts to improve the content of popular media and culture are not important. I do fear that we have lost balance in that area.
The second question is the really troubling one. I do not wish to throw Donald Wildmon under the bus because I believe he is sincerely trying to do the right thing. He has developed a powerful voice with the American Family Association and I am not going to question what he believes God is calling him to do. I am pretty sure (make that positive) he doesn’t agree with everything I say and do. His comments in a recent story were intriguing. The first I completely support.
“We don’t see this animosity toward other religions,” he said. “They’re antagonistic toward people of the Christian faith.”
That is true. I believe it gives us a chance to demonstrate a real difference in how we, as Christians, respond. And I fear we are not passing the test. I sometimes receive the angry, condemning, personal attacks when readers disagree with me. And I am a member of the family! So I really fear that the communication that NBC receives is ungraceful, mean, and not representative of the love and grace of Jesus. I am not saying you need to be soft and weak. Just don’t be mean and ugly and gleeful in your evaluation of their eternal prospects. Be firm but not threatening. Speak truth but mix in a healthy dose of grace.
Wildmon’s next comment made me cringe.
“I think NBC is going to feel the wrath of the righteous right,” he said.
I believe he simply means that NBC will understand they are offending a large percentage of viewers. I just wish he had chosen another word besides wrath and I really wish he had not used the phrase righteous right. Again, I understand what he is trying to say. I speak Christian. Then I remember how Paul spoke about his righteous zeal before he met the Lord Jesus.
I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own goodness or my ability to obey God’s law, but I trust Christ to save me. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. Phil 3 NLT
One other thing really touched my heart as I examined the Madonna controversy. I did some research about a young girl born in Michigan. Madonna Louis Cicconne was five years old when her mother died of breast cancer at the age of 30. Yes, Madonna offends me. Yes, her cross act is repulsive. But I wonder how much that tragic loss changed a little girl in Michigan? Perhaps Joni’s battle with breast cancer makes me realize how difficult this had to be for a Kindergarten student. And I wonder if a more gracious response from Christians could have made a difference later in her life? I wonder if it still could? Her venture into Kabalah indicates she is searching. And I wonder if the response of Christians has driven her away from the Cross she really needs to seek?
Topic 2: Sam Harris
The second controversial person is an author named Sam Harris. He has written a couple of books (“The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation”) that advocate that religion is the problem in the world and that reason is the answer. Read the newspaper today and you can easily see why his ideas are getting traction. I disagree on most counts about his views on Christianity. And I believe his ideas that we can all sit down together and reason are hopelessly idealistic. But my focus with Sam Harris is a letter he wrote in response to a Christian.
Since the publication of my first book, “The End of Faith”, I have received thousands of letters and e-mails from religious believers insisting that I am wrong not to believe in God. Invariably, the most unpleasant of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally believe that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. Please accept this for what it is: the testimony of a man who is in a position to observe how people behave when their faith is challenged. Many who claim to have been transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While you may ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that the hatred these people feel comes directly from the Bible. How do I know this? Because the most deranged of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.
Why do we feel the need to attack those who deny Jesus and God? His most devastating point is that those who claim to be transformed are incapable of speaking the truth with that transforming love. I do not need to persuade Sam Harris that I am right. In fact, I cannot persuade him that I am. I would like to tell him that I don’t hate him for his views. I don’t fear Sam Harris. If I am wrong about God then Sam Harris is harmless and perhaps helpful. If I am right about God then Sam Harris can not damage or thwart His plan for mankind. God does not need me to defend Him from attack. If I believe in the Creator of the universe I suspect He is quite capable of dealing with an author. What I believe God does expect and desire from me is that I reflect His love. Harris often makes comments like this.
If Christianity is correct, and I persist in my unbelief, I should expect to suffer the torments of hell.
I do not wish ill on Sam Harris. I do not take delight or satisfaction in thinking about his eternal fate. I am simply sad that he has such a low view of adherents of faith. Here is my bottom line. I have called myself a Christian for over 30 years. I have wrestled with doubt. I have read the views of all sides. I have absorbed the arguments of the best thinkers on every side. I have decided that Jesus is the Son of God. That is my decision. His presence and reality in my life have only been amplified in our recent trials. I guess I don’t have the energy to spend on indignation. There is so much more to be accomplished by reflecting the love and grace of Jesus. That is the way we will make a difference to a suspicious and skeptical world.
And now excuse me while I “duck and cover”. I will be under the dining room table if you need me. And I think I am going back to the iPod devotional series. It is much safer.
Dan in Maine
I find the new book by Sam Harris disburing on many levels. Mostly it is a blatant attempt to cast stones at Christian and their faith by setting up straw men that he can easily topple. His argument will surely impress many, distrub others and hurt the faith of those who don’t have the intelectual knowledge to counter his arguments. This kind of religious attack has become very fashionable and is an exceptable form of religious intolerance today.
In his book, "Letter to a Christian Nation" he points to reason as the ideal to which all people need to ascribe, not faith. And yet, I as a Christians find my faith to be very reasonable. If I could not support it intellectually I would not be a Christian. Christianity has stood the test of time. Yet if one begins with the premis that both God and the miraculous are impossible than no amount of reason will convice one otherwise.
Clearly Sam Harris is a man with an axe to grind and he swings this axe at any object of faith he thinks he can easily destroy. But in so doing he shows his own ignorance of Christianity and the Bible. The Bible is an amazing book, which perserved both an oral and written tradtion that surved thousands of years and yet remained intack. Despite minor gramatical flaws and various questions of intreptation, its thematic consistency, historic intergrity is nothing short of amazing. Yet Sam discards the whole book in part because of minor flaws in math. His picking the value of Pie is one them.There are always too sides to every arguement. Here is one of the many responses to this controversy.
"Chuck Missler of Koinonia House Ministries in another blog responded to this
apparent discrepancy in 1 Kings 7:23. This passage deals with Solomon’s Temple and the products of Hiram the Bronzeworker:
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. (1 Kings 7:23)
The huge cast bronze basin in 1 Kings 7:23 was 10 cubits (note 1) in diameter and its circumference was 30 cubits, which is mathematically inaccurate. Almost any schoolboy knows that the circumference of a circle is not the diameter times 3, but rather, the diameter times a well-known constant called ("Pi").
The real value of 7r is 3.14159265358979, but is commonly approximated by 22/7.
This is assumed, by many, to be an "error" in the Old Testament record, and is often presented as a skeptical rebuttal to the "inerrancy" of the Scripture.
How can we say that the Bible is inerrant when it contains such an obvious geometrically incorrect statement? How do we deal with this?
It is interesting that whenever we find such a thing, we should simply take it to the Throne and claim the commitment Jesus made His disciples:
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14:26)
Is this really true? Then why don’t we resort to it more often?
In this case, the Lord ultimately brought to our attention some subtleties usually overlooked in the Hebrew text (2). In Hebrew, it reads:
A Spelling Lesson
The common word for circumference is (qav) Here, however, the spelling of the word for circumference, (qaveh) adds a heh (h) as a conjunction for the masculine singular noun.)
In the Hebrew Bible, the scribes did not alter any text which they felt had been copied incorrectly. Rather, they noted in the margin what they thought the written text should be. The written variation is called a kethiv, and the marginal annotation is called the qere
To the ancient scribes, this was also regarded as a remez, a hint of something deeper. This appears to be the clue to treat the word as a mathematical formula.
Numerical Values
The Hebrew alphabet is alphanumeric: each Hebrew letter also has a numerical value and can be used as a number.
The has a value of 100; the has a value of 6; thus, the normal spelling would yield a numerical value of 106. The addition of the with a value of 5, increases the numerical value to 111. This indicates an adjustment of the ratio 111/ 106, or 31.41509433962 cubits. Assuming that a cubit was 1.5 ft. (3) this 15-foot-wide bowl would have had a circumference of 47.12388980385 feet.
This Hebrew "code" results in 47.12264150943 feet, or an error of less than 15 thousandths of an inch! (This error is 15 times better than the 22/7 estimate that we were accustomed to using in school!) How did they accomplish this? This accuracy would seem to vastly exceed the precision of their instrumentation. How would they know this? How was it encoded into the text?"
Sean
"First of all, faith is not science and not trying to be science."
This is true. Unfortunately, many of the faithful will equate faith to reason as an equivalently valid method of viewing the world, and more dangerously, making public policy. If people were content to believe what they wanted and let reason drive government and social policy, there would be no problem. He lays these arguments out clearly in Letter To a Christian Nation.
"Secondly, science is an every changing study, with theories and ideas constantly evolving on a daily basis. According to Harris, we do not allow scientists to continue to speak on a subject unless they can prove what they are saying. What??? If that were true, scientists would be pretty mute."
This is a tragically ignorant misunderstanding of science. Science relies on the best available evidence and the very nature of it’s changeability makes it far more reliable than faith. Why is the idea of faith more compelling? It relies on no evidence – or evidence that has been cherry-picked to from a conclusion that is already firmly believed.
In order to adequately respond to Harris’s arguments, you must use the tools of reason. Once you start using these tools, hanging on to a fundamentalist faith will not be possible without thorough self-delusion. Without the tools of reason, you just cannot make a coherent argument.
Texmom
Of course, Sam Harris should have the right to express his views, but your article almost sounds like you see no reason to respond. Here is why I do see a need to respond…
From Wikipedia:
“Rather he is arguing for a conversational intolerance, one in which we require in our everyday discourse that people’s convictions really scale with the available evidence. He feels that the time has come to demand intellectual honesty right across the board, and ignore the prevailing taboos and political correctness which, in his view, appear to prevent us from openly criticising religion.
Harris observes that these are the rules which seem to apply to every other field of knowledge. He notes that we are rarely admonished simply to respect someone’s views on, say, physics or history; instead, we both demand reasons and expect evidence. Anyone who so fails to substantiate their viewpoint, he suggests, is quickly marginalized from the conversation on those topics.”
Can’t say that I think this is true. First of all, faith is not science and not trying to be science. Secondly, science is an every changing study, with theories and ideas constantly evolving on a daily basis. According to Harris, we do not allow scientists to continue to speak on a subject unless they can prove what they are saying. What??? If that were true, scientists would be pretty mute.
Certainly, we should never respond in a hateful way, but I think it is wrong not to respond at all to this kind of thinking.
Shawn - Ohio
– Came across your article from a google alert for Sam Harris.
I am an atheist and actually appreciate a Christian that would have the restraint to not "wish ill on Sam Harris.". That, to me, is refreshing. Too many Christians feel it is their duty to tell me, and those like me, how to live. It is in our gov’t, in our schools, in our sporting events, in most every aspect of life in America; Christianity.
Infact, if faith-based ideals/religions didn’t interfere with anything other than on a personnal level, I would have no problem. But we all can see that faith plays a huge roll in our world today.
"No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. " -GHW Bush
Chris:
"P.S. Isn’t the term "athiest" a paradox? Doesn’t one have to actually acknowledge the existence of God before he or she can deny Him? "
Shawn:
Atheism is a default position. Someone who makes a positive claim: god exists. must provide evidences for those claims for me to accept the truth of the statement. I can then examine and determine if those evidences are valid or not. We’re all atheistic about some belief or another.
Chris:
"For example, how could I say water does not exist unless I knew first what water is?"
Shawn:
I find it interesting that you would use an identifiable object, water, as an example. I don’t need faith to determine water exists, do I?
Thanks for the article Dave. Wish there were more Christians like you.
-Lonely athiest is a sea of Christianity
Sean
"Jesus taught that GRACE always precedes truth. If we made that principal our lifestyle as followers of Christ (which is what "Christian" means), there would not be enough room in churches to hold all the people."
Even if that is what Jesus taught (assuming he existed), what does that have to do with rejecting reason and critical thinking?
"Isn’t the term "athiest" a paradox? Doesn’t one have to actually acknowledge the existence of God before he or she can deny Him? For example, how could I say water does not exist unless I knew first what water is?"
NO. One has to acknowledge the IDEA that God exists before deciding that certain ideas about God don’t stand up to reason. This basic logic, Chris.
Chris
Jesus taught that GRACE always precedes truth. If we made that principal our lifestyle as followers of Christ (which is what "Christian" means), there would not be enough room in churches to hold all the people.
P.S. Isn’t the term "athiest" a paradox? Doesn’t one have to actually acknowledge the existence of God before he or she can deny Him? For example, how could I say water does not exist unless I knew first what water is?
Sean
Dave,
Regarding your comments on Sam Harris:
While I’m glad to read someone representing positive Christian traits, it would be far more satisfying to to read a counter-argument.
Although I wouldn’t call myself an atheist, my beliefs must line up with rational thought. Otherwise they get discarded.
You write: "I have decided that Jesus is the Son of God. That is my decision. His presence and reality in my life have only been amplified in our recent trials. I guess I don’t have the energy to spend on indignation. There is so much more to be accomplished by reflecting the love and grace of Jesus. That is the way we will make a difference to a suspicious and skeptical world."
I strongly support making a positive difference in the world, and I wonder if you could make a difference and reflect the love and grace of Jesus without clinging to the irrational beliefs Harris clearly describes?
jeff
I lost my father to cancer last year and since then I have been seeing life from a different angle. I am finding that I am less upset about what upset me in the past. People who have never had their world rocked seem to have a lot of excess emotion to release at things like Madonna is doing.
I have also found, on the flip side, that I get more upset about things that never bothered me before. Things that actually mattered. like why there are so many lonely people in my own church.
Take in every moment of what you are going through. No matter how it ends, life will never be the same. I enjoy reading your thoughts.
MadAngel
I came across your article because I was searching Madonna. I found your opinion, even tho I don’t agree, to be spoken of fairly. Many groups are ready to condemn Madonna to hell for her actions, yet they forget that it is only God who can judge. I agree with your method of protest too. These groups that are protesting NBC because of the Madonna concert are going at it too strong and are trying to ‘scare’ the network. Like I said, I don’t agree with protesting Madonna, but you are right to let people know that if they want to protest, do it nicely.
I have seen Madonna’s show and being a Catholic, I actually didn’t find the number to be offensive. While she is singing on the cross, there are images of suffering children in Africa. At the end of the song, scripture appears on the screens behind her. (For I was hungry, you fed me; For I was thirsty, you gave me water; For I was sick, you took care of me …). The point she is trying to make, in my opinion, is that God wants us to help each other and many people forget that there is suffering going on outside of our homes. I think the controversy of her being on the cross is overshadowing the message she is trying to make … but would her message get through if she wasn’t creating controversy.
It was nice to see your compassion for Madonna’s loss of her mother, that is the true meaning of a Christian.