Some Thoughts on Government

I once heard a pastor say that, technically speaking, America's War of Independence was a sin because we failed to be "subject to the higher powers." In refusing to submit to British authority, we violated said biblical mandate, and therefore our country's freedom and very existence is founded on sin. That is the first thought I wish to address.
It had been the long held, orthodox Christian stance that all communitive dynamics are reciprocal in nature. Take Paul's command to husbands ("love your wives") and wives ("submit to your husbands"). Though one of those can happen without the other, the way it is supposed to work is that they happen because of the other. The husband loves the wife because she submits; the wife submits to the husband because he loves her. It does not matter who starts it, just as long as it keeps going. This reciprocal element means that the participants will do their part willingly, and not out of force or a sense of duty.
This reciprocal element is the key to the citizen/government dynamic as well. Generally speaking, Christianity has taught that the purpose of government is to seek the good of the people (or so Romans 13:1-7 says). In response to said good-seeking, the people submit to the government (see vs. 7 of Rom. 13; the "therefore" implies that it is the logical outcome of the previous verses). That is how it is supposed to work. Our founding fathers said as much in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness [i.e., the 'good']. That to secure these rights [i.e., 'seek the good'], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Because they understood the reciprocal element that makes a healthy citizen/government dynamic, our founding fathers knew that when a government ceased to keep its end up, it ceased to be a government in the biblical sense and no longer merited submission (obviously, they were drawing heavily from Aquinas and Locke as well as the Bible):

"Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect [i.e., 'seek the good'] their Safety and Happiness [i.e., the 'good']."

In Matthew 22:21 (one of my favorite government verses), Jesus simultaneously denounces tyranny and anarchy. The only way to avoid both is to follow what is laid down in Romans: governments, seek the good of the people and not your own good (therefore, do not be tyrants); people, submit yourselves to the government, and let them be your authority (therefore, do not be anarchists). Our founding fathers understood this, and I defiantly claim that their move for our independence was one of the most Christian acts our government has ever committed. It was done with a complete understanding and sensitivity to biblical mandates, and was in no way a sin of any kind.

My second thought concerns the ludicrous "separation of church and state" clause that does not exist in our Constitution or its Amendments (check for yourself). It has come to my attention that proponents of said non-existent clause seem to be confused in regards to the difference between religion and truth. Our founding fathers, having come from the tyrannical state church of England, and being Protestants with a firm memory of "holy Roman" empires, knew well what happens when politics and religion become bed-fellows. Thus, they made the first amendment, which guarantees that the two are to never get bound up with each other. However, there is nothing in that amendment (or any founding document) that even remotely suggests that politics is not to be bound up with truth.
I say this because it frustrates me to no end when politicians today denounce the involvement of religious ideas, citing the first amendment as their grounds, without first checking if said ideas are true. It is perfectly fine (and American) for the government to deny favoritism to or endorsement of any religion; it is not at all fine (or American) for the government to deny favoritism to or endorsement of the truth. Separation of church and state (if it were real) does not mean separation of truth and state. That religions happen to endorse or adhere to certain truth claims does not mean that those truth claims are religious, but that those religions are philosophies that seek out the truth. Truth transcends religion. Our founding fathers knew that. That is why they could make the first amendment without batting an eyelash: they could tell the difference between what was religious and what was true. We could sure use a return to such sanity.

God's Impracticality (or, Why God is Not a Superman Villain)

This blog entry has piqued some curious thoughts in my brain. The subject matter (and comments, and atheist blog responses) is a bit much to all take in, so I'll summarize and then make my point. Basically, there is an atheist argument put forth against God that goes a little something like this: if man is the crown jewel, the apex of God's creation, then God would have built a more "human-scale" (i.e., smaller) universe, a universe more conducive to human exploration and dominion, a universe that reflected man's position as the apex of creation. However, because the universe is not "human-scale," because it's so...so...big, obviously there is no God, because if there was one, than He would have made a universe fit for man. Yeah.
I could get bogged down in historical facts (like how people have known since Ptolemy that the universe was huge, and it never affected Christian faith), or cultural facts (like the real meaning behind Dante's universe in The Divine Comedy; our good old friend atheist Joe completely butchers it), but I won't. Heck, I won't even quibble with old atheistic trump cards (old Joe asks what was the purpose of all the suffering of animal life that existed before man; you know, for a man that supposedly has something "equivalent" to a "Ph.d." in theology, he forgets the Fall at the drop of a hat. Just a quickie: Death is a result of sin. Sin is a result of the Fall. Therefore, before the Fall, there was no death, e.g., "the law predation"). Anyway, I found something more interesting to grapple with.
You see, I couldn't help noticing several atheists (when commenting on the blog) kept making statements like this:
"What about places in the universe where mankind hasn't reached and will never reach? What about parts of the universe that are inhospitable to man? What's the point of them if man can't reach them?"
"What was the point of life before man? Why did God not just make man and everything all at once?"
These statements (and those like them) come from the basic premises of the aforementioned argument (i.e., If God were real, He would have created a universe that reflected man's position as the apex of creation). There are all basically asking the same thing: Why is God so impractical? You would think He would not be so wasteful, so distracted. Why all these galaxies? Why not just ours? Why all this stars? Why not just ours? Why all these worlds? Why not just ours? Why is there anything other than that which is necessary for man?
What I find interesting about all this is the assumption behind these statements, i.e., that God (if He's real) is practical. He would take the most effective and most efficient course in all His doings. Any signs of ineffectiveness or inefficiency, any signs of impracticality, speaks against God's existence. It was here that I was struck with a tremendous (though blindingly obvious) thought: the God the atheist claim we believe in is not the God we believe in.
Apparently, the God that the atheists believe that we believe in is mere machine, mere brain, a cold, calculating computer (kinda like Brainiac, the villainous Kryptonian computer from the adventures of Superman). The universe as it is disproves the existence of such a God. That's perfectly fine. Such a concept of God should be damned as heresy.
I want to say this deliberately and defiantly: Christianity has never believed in a practical God, per se, i.e., we have never believed in the God that is all brain. We have long held that the God who is is a brain and a heart, i.e., a person (in fact, three persons in one). Christianity has always held to a personal God, a God with artistic flair, a God who is "wondrously wasteful," a God who enjoys a perfect disinterestedness that does not require Him to create anything other than for the joy of creating it.
We have never believed in a machine God. If God is a machine, then why stop your questions at the "wasted spaces" and "wasted times" of the universe? Quit being cowards and ask the courageous question: Why is there anything at all? Why is there history? Why are there races? Why are there people? Why is there our world, and star, and galaxy? Why did God even bother with creation? Why did He bother with angels or mankind? The fact is that even a "human-scale" universe would be impractical in the end. The universe, of any conceivable size or structure, is ultimately superfluous, fundamentally unnecessary; it does not need to be. Than why is it?
Why does an artist create? Generally speaking, for the sheer joy of creation, and nothing more. The atheists are most correct in saying the universe disproves a machine God; any universe would disprove a machine God. Thank goodness we do not believe in such a God.
In addition (and this is key), Christianity has never held that the universe is for man. That man is the "apex" does not necessitate that the universe is about man. The universe is for and about God. Man's "apexness," man's very existence, is meant to point to Him, not us. The universe is for Him, not us. We are for Him, and not ourselves. The animals that existed before us were for Him, not us. The spaces we can never reach, both on and off our world, are for Him, not us. They are to His glory, not ours. The glaring error in the argument "If God were real, He would have created a universe that reflected man's position as the apex of creation," is that creation reflects the creator, and man is a part of the creation; its "apex" maybe, but still just a part, just as a peak is just a part of the mountain, and the mountain is just a part of the earth, and the earth is just a part of the universe. As a part of the creation, man joins in all creation by reflecting the glory of the creator. Simply put, the universe is not supposed to be "human-scale." It is supposed to be God-scale.
By the way, that all is for God and for His glory rubs atheists the wrong way. "Why does He deserve it?" God deserves it because He is God, the highest and the greatest, the par excellence of all things. Strictly speaking, God doesn't need to do anything to be worthy or praise; He just needs to be, and He is worthy. Creation is, in one sense, an added bonus, a superfluous wonderland for His pleasure and ours, built to bathe us in the glory of God.
Interesting enough, C.S. Lewis dealt with this very issue (surprise, surprise). In Perelandra, the protagonist Elwin Ransom had an interesting question for the king of Venus, to which the king (and the angelic guardians present) had an interesting response that states the Christian stance I have been talking about much better than I ever could (this excerpt can be found in the last chapter):

"I am full of doubts and ignorance," said Ransom, "In our world, those who know [God] at all believe that His coming down to us and being a man is the central happening of all that happens. If you take that from me, [sir], whither will you lead me? Surely not to the enemy's talk which thrust my world and my race into a remote corner and gives me a universe with no centre at all, but millions of worlds that lead nowhere or (what is worse) to more and more worlds for ever, and comes over me with numbers and empty spaces and repetitions and asks me to bow down before bigness. Or do you make your world the centre? But I am troubled. What of the people on [Mars]? Would they also think that their world was the centre? I do not even see how your world can rightly be called yours. You were made yesterday and it is from old. The most of it is water where you cannot live. And what of the things beneath its crust? And of the great spaces with no world at all? Is the enemy so easily answered when He says that all is without plan or meaning? As soon as we think we see one it melts away into nothing, or into some other plan that we never dreamed of, and what was the centre becomes the rim, till we doubt if any shape or plan or pattern was ever more than a trick of our own eyes, cheated with hope, or tired with too much looking. To what is it all driving? [...]"

Does that sound familiar? "Why all the wasted spaces? Why all the wasted time? How can mankind by the focus of it all when it all is so big?" The angelic guardians answer. Their answer is huge, so I will only copy some key parts. I recommend you find the book and read the whole section...heck, read the whole book while your at it:

"Though men or angels rule them, the worlds are for themselves. The waters you have not floated on, the fruit you have not plucked, the caves into which you have not descended and the fire through which your bodies cannot pass, do not await your coming to put on perfection, though they will obey you when you come. Times without number I have circled Arbol while you were not alive, and those times were not desert. Their own voice was in them, not merely a dreaming of the day when you should awake. They also were at the centre. Be comforted, small immortals. You are not the voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come. No feet have walked, nor shall, on the ice of Glund; no eye looked up from beneath on the Ring of Lurga, and Iron-plain Neruval is chaste and empty. Yet it is not for nothing that the gods walk ceaselessly around the fields of Arbol...
"That Dust itself...is at the centre. It waits not till created eyes have seen it or handled it, to be in itself a strength and splendor of [God]...[Always], and beyond all distances, before [beast, man, or god] came and after they are gone and where they never come...[Dust] utters the heart of the Holy One with its own voice...
"Each grain is at the centre. The Dust is at the centre. The Worlds are at the centre. The beasts are at the centre. The ancient peoples [i.e., Mars] are at the center. The race that sinned [i.e., Earth] is there. Tor and Tinidril [i.e., Venus] are there. The gods are there also...
"Where [God] is, there is the centre. He is in every place. Not some of Him in one place and some in another, but in every place the whole [God], even in the smallness beyond thought. There is no way out of the centre, save into the Bent Will which casts itself into the Nowhere...
"Each thing was made for Him. He is the centre. Because we are with Him, each of us is at the centre...Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest [angel], is the end and final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him...
"All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans that it looked for...There seems no plan because it is all plan: there seems no centre because it is all centre..."

Tornaders and The Big Picture

This past Tuesday evening was one wild night, and I'm not talking about the elections. A huge cold front ripped across the Mid-south, bringing with it around 30 tornadoes and killing about fifty people from Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Union University was totaled; the Hickory Ridge Mall was smashed; houses were obliterated; cars were flipped; and, oh yes, people died.
Times like these can bring out the old atheistic trump card: "If God is so good, why all the destruction?" Ah, yes; the good old "problem of evil." For me, however, times like these make that "problem" a rather odd question to ask.
Consider: why did only fifty people die? (Stay with me, now; I'm not being callous.) We had thirty tornadoes cutting across three states. Why aren't we hearing about hundreds, even thousands, of deaths? Why only fifty? Those fifty are horrible and sobering on their own, but problem-of-evil proponents don't like those nit-picky details; they like the big picture (Try and tell them in the midst of a tragedy: "What about all those who survived?" They'll say: "What about all those who were killed!" See? Big picture). They'll say: "Look at the big picture! All that devastation! All those deaths!" Okay, fine. We'll stick with the big picture then: thirty tornadoes and only fifty deaths. That is not a "problem of evil." That is a miracle, and nothing else.
Consider also: Union University was slammed with a F4 tornado, the second most powerful tornado possible (the highest is an F5). The university dorms (where the F4 tornado mostly hit) were full of students. How come no one was killed? That's right: the second most powerful tornado possible strikes buildings full of people, and no one is killed. Is that an opportunity for agnosticism, or to fall down on your knees and worship? Only a narrow-minded fool chooses the former.
At the risk of sounding very cheesy (and cliche), why can't atheist just look at the bright side? In other words, why can't they see the miracles that occur in the midst of (and not in spite of) the tragedies? It's like they wear blinders that funnel everything bad and wretched right into their faces until they are smothered by darkness. I am convinced that most atheistic tendencies are the result of always seeing the glass half empty. Chesterton was right in noting that atheist and agnostics seem to be caught in perpetual pessimism: they are forced to be "gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones;" and I believe Chesterton to be right when he said, "It is not native to man to be so."
For the Christian, the big picture is joy, the joy of the Lord, the joy of knowing the Lord; and grief is merely another opportunity to know Him even more. Joy is fundamental; grief is superficial. For the atheist, however, it is reversed. The big picture is grief, the grief of man, the grief of man alone; and joy is merely a way to escape reality, to escape the despair. Grief is fundamental, but joy isn't even superficial; it is non-existent, an illusion. True Christianity is wise enough to admit that there is grief; but it is also brave and courageous enough to defiantly proclaim that grief is not the end, not the big picture. The big picture is transitory grief surrounded and penetrated by eternal joy.
There is grief (fifty people really were killed), but there is joy (many more should have died that didn't). The question is, "Where is your focus?" Solely on grief, and a man turns from God. Solely on joy, and man becomes naive (though much happier). Solely on both, and man sees the big picture; and consequently, finds God, for His presence is found in both the laughter and the pain. Amen.

Echoes of Heaven: "Magic"

"It never comes when you look for it,
But only on its own terms,
On its own time,
In its own way.
To seek it is to lose it.

"It's silent, then sudden,
Like a stab in the dark
From a friendly fiend
Trying to make us remember what we forgot.
To lose it is to seek it.

"You hate it when it comes to you:
Its pains are too deep, too heavy, too eternal.
You hate it when it goes from you:
Its pleasures are too sweet, too joyous, too eternal.
May they ever end and never stop.

"Oh to place the pool that runs these rivers!
Oh to find the fountain that sends these streams!
Will I ever find that exalted ocean,
Of priceless pearls and unglittering gold,
And drown forever beneath its waves?"

-Jon Vowell (c) 2008

How Clever We Are

"How clever we are
To be able to escape from God,
The one who is everywhere.
Let me tell you how it was done.

"First we ripped out our eyes
And hid ourselves from the heavenly declaration.
Then we ripped off our ears.
Nature's glossa can no longer reach us.

"The orderliness of words is laced with His presence.
So we ripped out our tongues and throats.
Even this poem is an abomination.
(Oh, can we never escape Him?)

"Life itself is an evil;
Every beat reveals its maker, every breath its source.
So we cut out our hearts, and lungs too,
And passed them through the fire.

"Our very minds betray us to Him:
All thinking betrays to reason, all reason to truth,
All truth betrays us to Him,
It is illumined by His presence.

"This thing we will do: we cut off our heads,
And dashed our brains against the rocks.
We have put away childish things:
God, and our hearts, and our heads.

"How dare our hands feel and commune!
They offend us; we cut them off.
How dare our feet touch the earth of legend!
They offend us; we cut them off.

"But whither shall we flee from Him?
All things contain Him; so we turn to no-thing,
We cast our bodies live into Hell.
We are very clever, indeed!

"We finally escaped Him.
In the burning dark you hear us sing,
'We are damned and doomed! Alone and afraid!
We couldn't be happier!'

"Escaped at last.
How clever we are, indeed."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2008

Missing the Point

This article by an atheist is part of a long critique of the last chapter of a Josh McDowell's book Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Though rather byzantine (and a tad confused), this part's basic point is that the reality of the "transformitive power" of the "Christian experience" ("I was a [insert vice of choice] before I got saved") in no way proves that Christianity is true, mainly because all religious and secular organizations that purport philosophical ideals and ideas about life have their own "experiences" based on some sort of "transformitive power." In short: Christianity's experiences do not prove it is the right way, but only one way in a sea of different ways (and he lists quite a few).
The atheist's point is right, but it is only right because he is missing the real point. I can't speak for Josh McDowell (I have not read his book, so I don't know what he was actually saying), but I can speak as a Christian. The real point is not that Christianity has these experiences, but that these experiences exist at all. Why is it that when people adhere themselves to a certain set of ideals and ideas they suddenly (or gradually) "transform" at all? What is it about these ideals and ideas? Why do they have such power?
One book I have read is Lewis' The Abolition of Man, and in the second chapter, Lewis freely admits that various religions (and secular moralists) across time hold and have held to similar ideals and ideas. His point was not that Christianity had some sort of monopoly on the truth, but that there really does seem to be a "truth" that we really can "know" and that really does "set free" when it is adhered to. Furthermore, although numerous religions, sects, cults, and philosophies hold similar beliefs, they all held similar beliefs (with minor variations). Why is that? What is it about all those different religions, sects, cults, and philosophies (emerging from numerous different cultures, histories, societies, regions, beliefs, and times) that they seem to adhere to the same thing? Is there a unified, objective truth that all know?
This atheist has missed the point and, consequently, the real issue. The point is that there apparently really is a universal, inherent moral code based on the truth and a "compass" within all humanity that seeks for (and even finds) the truth, a truth that really affects for good and that really says something about reality (i.e., we really shouldn't murder, or lie, or dishonor our parents, etc.). That is the point, and it raises the real issue: Where did this code and compass come from? Why is it that reality seems to better itself by conforming to that code?
Christianity's uniqueness (the only "uniqueness" it has ever consistently claimed) is the Incarnation. It's "experiences" prove only that it too adheres to a moral code that tries to ascertain the truth. That is not a vital issue. What is vital is whether or not there is a truth we can know, and from whence did it come.

The Winter of the Numinous

"The Numinous, they used to play
They used to sing and dance
They used to love and say,
'The world is full of magic!'

"The Numinous, their playing was heard
In ever tale and laugh
In every poem of man and earth.
The heavens declared their play.

"The Numinous, their song was sung
By every rock and rill and stream and sea.
There was no language
where their voice was not heard.

"The Numinous, their dance was seen
Across the sky and in the stars
Skimming the surface of dawn and dusk, saying,
'The world is full of magic!'

"The Numinous, their love was felt
In every touch and every kiss,
In every heart and every soul.
All communion was filled with their presence.

"The Numinous, their words were echoed
On every lip and instrument and pen.
The whole earth in chorus sang,
'The world is full of magic!'

"The Numinous
are gone.
Their play
is gone.
Their song
is gone.
Their dance
is gone.
Their love
is gone.
Their word
is gone, is gone, is gone, is gone.
We have killed them.
We wash our hands of their blood.

The world was full of magic."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2008

Enough Foolishness

I would like to make a statement.
There is much frustrating and foolish drivel that passes for wisdom these days, and I would like to address one of them. What I wish to address is the commonly hailed pseudo-axiom: "Christianity (sometimes religion in general) is for the weak." By "weak," proponents of this foolishness do not mean what our Lord said: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10) In other words, by "weak" they do not mean that Christianity leads to the one who takes the broken and heals them. If that was the case, then there is no harm or foul. However, this is not what that statement (or its proponents) means by "weak." What it means is more in keeping with Marx's "opiate of the masses," i.e., a mellowing agent meant to suppress people's fears and allow them to get on with life. People who need Christianity are like crackheads--they need it because they do not want to deal with reality. Therefore, "weak" means those who are self-delusional about life because they just can't or won't face real life, with all its trials and trifles.
The bite of this critique of Christianity (and religion) is that, like most exaggerations, it is not completely unfounded. There are, sad to say, naive, well-meaning idiots out there whose idea of religion is to cloister themselves away from all the evil and sufferings of life, acting like everything is absolutely dandy when everything is absolutely not. We all know such people, and feel a strange mixture of pity and abhorrence in their presence.
However, the fact that such people exist does not actually prove anything about Christianity itself. In fact, it actually proves something about those kinds of people, namely that they are well-meaning, naive, and idiots. Their abuse of Christianity and its doctrines says more about their character than that of Christianity's. Shouldn't that be obvious, though? The abuse of a thing does not prove that the thing itself is evil. Fire has been used for both warming and war, for comfort and cruelty, but only a fool would say that fire is evil and not the people who abuse it. So too, with Christendom. Crusades, Inquisitions, miscellaneous wars and power struggles prove that it can be abused, but it has not proven that it itself is evil (or false, or anything else) but only that people are evil. Thus, the exaggerated pseudo-axiom proves nothing except that there really are weaklings in the world, and sometimes they are religious weaklings.
Christianity itself (weaklings aside) flies right in the face of such nonsensical blather, and this part I want to say very deliberately: Any weak-minded jellyfish of a fool can look at the world and depressingly note (with nauseating obviousness) that evil is real, and that we should just live with it. Only the truly brave and strong, those burning with the fiery Spirit of God Almighty, dare have the audacity to stare plain-faced and open-eyed into that sprawling abyss that is the presence of evil and suffering, and defiantly proclaim, "Yes, you are real; but you are not the end."
That, of course, is the essence of what Christendom has called faith. It is not a trusting while being in ignorance of the facts; it is a trusting in spite of the facts. Better yet, it is trusting in a Fact that transcends all facts, and that Fact is God and His good will. Christians (if they are real) are not willfully ignorant of reality, but willfully spiteful of reality in favor of Reality. Alone among all men, they have found the courage and strength to laugh in evil's face and find joy in the midst of tribulation, almost as though they were in revolt against all of reality as it is given, a rebellious crew who will not bow or surrender like a coward beneath the crushing weight of darkness. That is what Christianity has always taught.
Chesterton (in Orthodoxy) put it this way:
"The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial...Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity...Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this way: that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small...Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian."
Christians are not joyful out of ignorance, but out of a completer knowledge of reality. They know more about the nature of things than the lost man, know that which gives unconquerable strength (Romans 8:37). The foolishness of this world would have you believe that the joyful man is a blind man. The inverse is the truth: the man of sorrow is the blind man, unable to see and escape to the unbreakable, never ending joy of the Lord and make its strength his own.

The End of Everything

In this article by an atheist (let's call him Joe), I find a rather disturbing quip: "The evidence Christians use to support their case is historical evidence, but as I’ve argued [before], history is a poor medium to reveal anything of importance." [emphasis mine] Then Atheist Joe cites several of his own articles where he "defended the notion that history is a poor medium for God to reveal himself to humanity."
How, exactly, is history an unreliable medium? He answers (or begins to answer) thus: "Anyone who studies the philosophy of history knows that history (and historical writings) should be interpreted in light of the historian's present perspective. Why? Because that's all we can do...we cannot do otherwise." Translation: History (including our own) is a slave to context and biases. Hence, history's function is utilitarian. It's only function is to press our own beliefs and ideas. He list an example here.
Where did Joe get such an idea? He doesn't say exactly, but I'll hazard it has something to do with 18th-19th century Liberal Humanism/20th century Deconstructive nonsense, a deluded hangover of New Historicism, which basically says that History is about nothing because everything it reports are facts that have been affected by the contexts and biases of the one(s) writing the facts, contexts and biases that we (who have our own contexts and biases) know nothing about. Therefore, we really do not know what happened. Therefore, history is about nothing.
In addition, because history is contextual and biased, and therefore about nothing, we cannot trust it as a reliable source for truth. Only logic and reason is the reliable source for truth. Joe seems to agree: "[We must] distinguished between the contingent truths of history and the necessary truths of reason." [emphasis mine] Translation: History is biased, reason is not, and therefore reason can be used to debunk history. Not just specific elements (for there I would agree with him), but on the whole: "Practically any event in history can be rationally denied, even if that event actually occurred!" Joe's resulting response to Christianity's "historical evidence" is that in order to debunk it, all you need to do is let reason debunk history in its entirety.
First, I'd like to say that I wish I could (at the drop of a hat) use reason to just discount an entire field of study (and reality) that inconvenienced me (Oh, wait. As a Christian I do that already in regards to reason, because reason has nothing to do with religion, right? How silly of me to forget).
Second, Mr. Joe is on shaky ground if he thinks making the whole of history questionable somehow solves his problems. Here's a quick example: In this entry, Joe uses the historical statements of a Mr. Gotthold Lessing as an example of how history is unreliable to ascertain truth. So, he used history to debunk (or make debunkable) history. If that's not a Schafferian point-of-tension, then I don't know what is.
That quick example, however, leads to my main point: Mr. Joe's statements about history's unreliability can be just as catastrophic for his beliefs as well as mine. I find interesting the seemingly shaky (or perhaps non-existent) relationship between Mr. Joe's atheism and his atheism's own appeal to historical evidence.
You see, a lot of what I have read by atheist shows a heavy (almost mythological) reliance on and faith in the claims, assertions, and impacts made by the Enlightenment (I am speaking generally). The Enlightenment, however, is a historical event, and its claims, assertions, and impacts are all historical claims, assertions, and impacts. They all are as much a part of history as the Gospels and its claims, assertions, and impacts are.
Now, given Joe's own logic about history (i.e., its contexts ad biases make it an unreliable source for truth), the Enlightenment, as a historical event, is based upon historical contexts and biases that we know nothing about but affected the event profoundly. Therefore, because the Enlightenment is based on contextual biases that we know nothing of, we can know nothing for certain about it, and it is, therefore, unreliable as a source of truth, because its statements, claims, founders, proponents, and even its very existence are founded on those unknown biases and contexts that shaped it. Therefore, the Enlightenment is just as unreliable as the Gospels or the Resurrection are in ascertaining truth about anything.
Oh, but hang it all! History is now as much as it is the past. We exist in history in this moment, which means that this whole "debunk history" thing can be pretty scary when you apply it to its logical conclusion. It is scary because, in reality, everything we do is a historical event. In a few moments, this blog entry will be a historical event, my using my computer will be a historical event, my heading to the kitchen to make and drink raspberry hot chocolate will be an historical event, and so on. All those events, however (if we follow Mr. Joe's logic), are based upon biases and contexts that neither you (nor even I) know fully of that shaped and affected those events. Because of those biases, you have (in effect) no way of knowing whether or not this blog actually happened, or that I ended it, or that I made and drank anything, or that I am even here at all, or that anything anywhere is really happening or here! When history is no longer fixed, when it becomes fluent, then we can know nothing historical, not even the here and now, or yesterday, or tomorrow when it comes and goes.
History cannot be fixed for Mr. Joe. What is fixed for him is logic. He makes that pretty clear in this entry:
"What I argue for is that logic is of a much greater value than historical evidence when it comes to testing the foundational miracle and doctrinal claims of Christianity. The role of logic is to test these resultant doctrinal claims for consistency. That’s what logic is supposed to do, test beliefs for their internal consistency...I think historical evidence is important, and I think I can know what happened in the past, in varying degrees of assurance, but never with certainty. However, given the fact that the evidence of history won’t convince the believer to think otherwise, I use logic to debunk what historical evidence doesn’t do." [emphasis mine]
Mr. Joe is right on one point: if reason and logic truly discover something contrary to a historical element thought to be accurate, then that historical element should be immediately discarded as false. However, reason and logic are dependent on history too, at least for an atheist. And that creates a problem.
In this previous post of mine, I observed how atheists, since they cannot allow transcendent grounds for logic or reason (they are naturalist after all), claim that we must simple trust that it works because we have seen it work in physical space and time. Mr. Joe believes as much, as a quote of him in the comment section of this entry reveals: "Maybe reason has merely shown itself trustworthy by pragmatic verification based in the anthropic principle evidenced in the universe--it just works." In other words, we know logic and reason exist because it has been used before and it has worked before, so therefore it must be real.
Perhaps you see the problem now: for an atheist, the veracity of logic and reason is based upon historical verification, i.e., because we have seen it work, then it must be there. That means, therefore, that all the evidence an atheist can produce for logic and reason is historical evidence.
Therefore (given Joe's logic about history), all those evidences for logic and reason are just as questionable as the Gospels, or the Resurrection, or the Enlightenment, or Gotthold Lessing, or anything, for the same exact reasons: they all are historical events that have been shaped by contexts and biases that we know nothing of, and therefore we don't really know what happened, and therefore none of logic or reason's historical veracity is reliable in ascertaining the truth about logic or reason.
In short, the end of history, its outright debunking or being made easily debunkable, is not (as Mr. Joe would like to assume) the end of Christianity; it is the end of everything: religion, atheism, logic, reason, science, art, politics, etc., etc. If everything historical, if everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen is in doubt, then we can know nothing about anything. All questions become asinine, and all answers more so. It seems that, in the effort to "debunk" Christianity, atheists (or at least brave Mr. Joe) are willing to debunk everything else, including themselves.

On the Freedom of Choice, and On Suffering

In this article, an atheist (we'll call him Bob) vehemently calls foul over Christians' use of the "Parental Analogy" when answer the Problem of Evil. That analogy basically runs like this: God allows evil and suffering in people's lives to serve as a punitive learning experience for our own good, just like any good parent who allows their child to suffer the consequence of their error in order to learn from their mistakes.
Atheist Bob calls this analogy "asinine" for the following reasons:

1. "If God created us and gave us freedom, then as a loving parent his moral concern should be that we that we don’t abuse the freedom he gave us in the ways we do. The giver of a gift is blameworthy if he gives gifts to those whom he knows will terribly abuse those gifts." Pretty self explanatory: God should not have given the ability (or full ability) to choose right or wrong until we were capable of handling that responsibility.
2. "Why should we as human beings have to learn the consequences of our actions by such draconian kinds of sufferings when we err? When my children misbehaved or didn’t understand the consequences of their actions, I didn’t send a proverbial hurricane their way...No caring father would let [their children] suffer the full brunt of their mistakes--no father." Translation: God is too harsh.
3. "Not communicating to children who seek to understand is being an unresponsive parent...Reflective and responsible children, if they are to be treated as the adults they are about to become, require answers, reasons, and evidence. This is not what I see from the God who supposedly is a good parent." Translation: Why is God so cotton-pickin' mysterious?

Why didn't God wait until we were responsible enough to handle the freedom of choice? Answer: He did. Adam and Eve were innocent (neither inherently inclined to good or evil) and rational (able to think within the bounds of reason). How much more capable does one have to be in order to keep four simple commands: (1) Rule the earth, (2) Enjoy the earth, (3) Fill the earth, and (4) do not touch the forbidden tree? Get it through your heads: the Fall is our fault, not God's. Quite frankly, shifting the blame on Him is one of the most childish things ever.
After the Fall, why didn't God simply limit mankind's freedom of choice until we became more responsible and mature enough to handle it? Because: we would never become more responsible and mature. The Fall was not simply the first mistake in a long line of mistakes. The Fall was the mistake that caused all the other mistakes. The Fall caused a change to occur in humanity: where once we were innocent (neither inherently inclined to good or evil), now we are fallen (inherently inclined to evil). We chose to disobey God; we chose the evil. Now we are bound to it. No amount of time will ever change that, will ever allow us to learn our way out of it. It is a part of our inner human disposition that we cannot get to. Only God can "get" at it, and that is exactly what He did in Christ. Quite simply, God did not have the option to limit our freedom of choice when we fell. He only had two options: destroy us, or save us. We Christians worship Him primarily because He chose the latter.
Why is God so harsh? Frankly, I don't know much about hurricanes, but I do think Christian "wrath-casting" is presumptuous and (like real weather forecasting) unreliable. God sends the rain on the just and unjust alike (Matthew 5:45). "No caring father would let [their children] suffer the full brunt of their mistakes--no father." Right; and neither does God. The "full brunt" of our mistakes is not hurricanes, but Hell. Christ came and took the "full brunt" of our mistakes on the cross. If you refuse that gift, you will suffer the "full brunt," and it will be your own fault. God is harsh on Sin because He is righteous and holy. Sin has to be dealt with, not overlooked.
Why is God so mysterious? Because we are fallen. The Sun is forever a mystery to a blind man. C.S. Lewis dealt with this same problem in his novel Till We Have Faces. The main character asked the same question: "Why are holy places always dark places?" Why doesn't God just make Himself plain? The question is answered later on by the same character: "How can we meet the gods face to face till we have faces?" Translation: How can we know God when our present fallen state means that we are not even in the proper standing by which we can begin to know God?
You want God to stop being mysterious? Impossible. His ways are "past finding out," beyond full comprehension. Christian doctrine has always taught that. In addition, it also has taught that the joy of Heaven is knowing God for all eternity, and because His ways are beyond full comprehension, throughout all eternity there will always be another mystery, another surprise, another adventure. We cannot, however, even begin this process of knowing until our eyes are opened by the gospel of Christ and we accept what He has done on the cross as our means of salvation. If God is just completely in darkness to you, it is simply because you never have been regenerated into the life of God by the redemption of Christ. Period.

In conclusion, God does not let us suffer consequences so that we will learn from our mistakes. He lets us suffer the consequences so that we will know (1) there is something wrong with us, and (2) there is something wrong with the world. That is not Him being a "good parent." That is Him being a holy and loving God. The analogy is asinine, not because it is wrong, but because it is incomplete. As fallen creatures, we can never learn from our mistakes; we can only learn that there are mistakes. We cannot fix ourselves or the world. Only God can, and Christ is His "fix" so to speak. In Christ, God became one with our sufferings and bore them in Himself. That sacrifice provided the way to escape suffering, not immediately, but eventually. For now, we are to spread the good news that although suffering and evil is real, they are not the end. There is a hope beyond all of it. There is a way out.