When Israel and Judah turned away from God and began worshiping idols, God sent the prophet Jeremiah to warn them of the impending destruction of Jerusalem and captivity in Babylon. Jeremiah chapter 2 lays out God’s complaint against his chosen people. Here are verses 26-28:

“As a thief is disgraced when he is caught,
so the house of Israel is disgraced—
they, their kings and their officials,
their priests and their prophets.

They say to wood, ‘You are my father,’
and to stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
They have turned their backs to me
and not their faces;
yet when they are in trouble, they say,
‘Come and save us!’

Where then are the gods you made for yourselves?
Let them come if they can save you
when you are in trouble!
For you have as many gods
as you have towns, O Judah.

As crazy as it is, we live in a world where people say to the dust, “You gave me birth!” But would anyone be crazy enough to cry out to dust or stone for rescue? Rocks cannot see or hear or walk! Revelation 6:15-17 says:

Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

Some atheists find comfort in the belief that there is no afterlife. All atheists find comfort in the belief that there is no wrathful face of God awaiting them. Instead of facing a wrathful God, they would prefer to have the rocks fall on them and hide them from His wrath. Revelation 9:6 says:

During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

It’s forgivable for Dawkins to believe that the dust gave him birth, but he would surely change his mind when faced with such strong punishment, right? I wouldn’t be so sure. Revelation 9:20:

The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk.

Do you really want to say to the dust, “You gave me birth”?

Jeremiah is beautiful poetry. I have said before that Psalm 13 is my favorite Psalm. Jeremiah references this Psalm, in Jeremiah 3:1-5, right after condemning Israel and Judah:

“If a man divorces his wife
and she leaves him and marries another man,
should he return to her again?
Would not the land be completely defiled?
But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers—
would you now return to me?”
declares the LORD.

“Look up to the barren heights and see.
Is there any place where you have not been ravished?
By the roadside you sat waiting for lovers,
sat like a nomad in the desert.
You have defiled the land
with your prostitution and wickedness.

Therefore the showers have been withheld,
and no spring rains have fallen.
Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute;
you refuse to blush with shame.

Have you not just called to me:
‘My Father, my friend from my youth,

will you always be angry?
Will your wrath continue forever?’
This is how you talk,
but you do all the evil you can.”

How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the LORD,
for he has been good to me.

This Psalm unifies many of the most important Bible passages. I won’t enumerate the relevant passages, but Psalm 13 often comes to mind when I see people speculating about God’s justice or love. People want to know if God really loves everyone? How can you tell who is saved and who is not? “If He doesn’t save my apostate boyfriend, he’s a monster!” People wonder how God could take out the wrath that was due to us against an innocent Jesus. People ask themselves whether something is good because God loves it, or God loves it because it is good.

The punishment for such speculation is that people start applying the same absurdly reductionist paranoia to their human relationships. Your mother doesn’t really love you; she’s just obeying her selfish biological imperative. Did your girlfriend love you because you loved her first? Who selected whom? What attributes caused her to love you? What attributes should you praise in her so that she believes that you love her?

It’s insanity. It’s an insanity like psychosis, where the sufferer is incapable of even realizing that there’s a world different from his diseased fantasy world.

Christ didn’t promise earthly security. He promised persecution, conflict, ridicule, and suffering. It’s very tempting for parents to manipulate their children into belief, by making parental approval contingent on belief. It’s very tempting for people in authority to “encourage” people to believe by appealing to people’s worldly self-interest — job opportunities, social standing, etc. In contrast, Christ says in Luke 14:26:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”

If you’re doing it to please your parents, your wife, your children, or your siblings; you’re doing it wrong. Christ clearly intended belief to be something that carries a tremendous worldly cost. Now, let’s take a look at one of the first attempted seminary students, Simon Magus. Acts 8:9-13 begins thusly:

Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is the divine power known as the Great Power.” They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic. But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.

From this passage, we see that Simon’s social standing and financial security were both dependent on his being perceived as a holy man. But, to his credit, he “believed and was baptized”. Like many “former Christians” and seminary students, we cannot say that he was never really a Christian. The story goes downhill from here, though (Acts 8:18-23):

When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

Wait, what? Isn’t Simon Magus the very epitome of what Christ talked about in Luke 14:26? Simon was willing to forsake money for God!

But Simon wasn’t trying to let go of worldly attachments. He was trying to make an investment in his future vocation. He wanted to be able to do what the apostles did, in public, and get the same adoration he got before. Simon’s heart wasn’t in the right place. Instead of seeing Christianity as a truth worth sacrificing everything for, he saw it as a cosmic vending machine that he could put quarters into to get what he wanted. He thought he could pay a few coins to become a big shot in the “faith based” community.

If your goal is to become a big shot in the “faith based” community, or to become a “fine upstanding citizen” among all of the “people who matter”, your willingness to sacrifice time and money is not a credit to you.

Likewise, some nominally Christian parents think that they can “buy” a fine moral character for their children by sending them to an expensive Christian school that requires creedal confession. To them, Christianity is a values-based social club — a divine vending machine that can get their children access to the right social circles.

Any time we start evangelizing Christianity out of utilitarian considerations, it’s time for a reality check. Did Peter tell Simon Magus, “Just hang in there, champ, and soon you’ll be a big shot!”? Any time we find ourselves citing the utilitarian reasons that we remain Christian, it’s time to get worried.

I’m not ready to reject dualism wholesale yet, and I’m not sure I even know what that would look like. However, I don’t think it makes sense to say that God’s interaction with the world is “supernatural”, in the sense that people today use the word.

People today use the word “supernatural” to mean “impossible through natural means”. This makes no sense to me, since the moment you observe something, it has obviously been proven to be possible. If we say that something is “supernatural” simply because we don’t have an explanation for how it could’ve arisen through natural means, we’re engaging in “God of the gaps”, and I don’t think that God would want that.

Worse, when we insist that God’s hand is, by definition, only that which can’t be explained by physical means, we’re essentially banishing God from the physical universe. I can understand why atheist materialists would want to promote this view, but it’s astonishing to me that any Christian would support this view. Christian orthodoxy for 2,000 years has insisted on God incarnate, bodily resurrection, opposition to Gnostic dualism, and belief in any number of other materialist-compatible positions.

The word “miracle” is perhaps slightly better. We could use the word “miracle” to describe something completely unexpected, rare, or inexplicably coincidental — yet physically possible. Used this way, the moment a “miracle” happens, it is incontrovertible proof of physical possibility. If a miracle were miraculous primarily due to physical impossibility, the idea of miracle, and thus the “hand of God” would be self-refuting. But has this ever been the standard view of miracles? It seems to me that the linkage between “miracle” and “physical impossibility” is a very modern view (and incoherent, as we see). In scriptural usage, miracles seem to be things which are physically possible (and in the case of Moses’s staff and the court magicians, even repeatable by others), but very unpredictable and coincidental. When coincidental, the coincidence generally centers around a moral context where someone has been granted some insight about what is going to happen.

For the committed materialist, ability to predict the future requires no supernatural pixie dust, since everything is predetermined anyway. And even for someone who believes in libertarian free will (by definition, not a materialist), the ability to look ahead over a certain window of time is not problematic. Therefore, we do not need dualism or the colloquial “supernatural” to explain miracles in any Biblical sense of the word. Of course, we don’t have a materialist explanation for future prediction any more than we have a materialist explanation of intentionality, but neither fact ought to give the committed materialist much grief. Materialists will agree, no doubt, that we don’t yet have a solution, but “we can taste it”.

Postulating some exorbitant privilege for God, where His hand escapes or negates the laws of physics, seems to me to be an act of little faith. Is God that impotent, that He cannot reconcile physics to Himself? Therefore, I don’t see why we would insist that God’s hand is immaterial or anti-material. It may be true that His fingers are not clad in animal skin like ours, but He has a “hand” that is physical, and which manipulates the physical. I still think that the attempts to measure God’s finger length or calculate the size of God’s arm are stupidly literalist, and even idolatrous. But the staunch insistence on the physicality of God’s hand can be seen as a rejection of an unnecessary and counterproductive dualism. And to the Muslim theologians, I am thankful for that.

Interestingly, the evidence shows that this phenomenon started right when black separatism began to take hold. Prior to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, black educational achievement was lauded by other blacks. As separatism took hold, educational achievement soon became identified with “being white”. In my experience, this antipathy towards education was not official, since children I knew of committed “Nation of Islam” (Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan’s organization) members would often be high achievers. Unfortunately, the separatism was interpreted by the common man as an antipathy towards intellectual achievement.

In reading Bobby Seale’s “A Lonely Rage” many years ago, I was struck by the parallels to American Fundamentalist separatism. But the leaders of Young Earth Creationism are even more damnable than the leaders of Nation of Islam, IMO. They officially preach an anti-intellectual and anti-science agenda, and smear anyone who dares to attain scientific achievement. If you study evolutionary biology, geology, or astrophysics, you are a traitor to fundamentalism, and guilty of trying to “act scientific”. Considering that fundamentalism began it’s existence in a commitment to Scottish Common Sense Realism and Baconian empiricism, the current climate is especially tragic. Separatism becomes idolatry, and when this idolatry is officially endorsed by the leaders, it is shameful indeed.

Prompted by this thoughtful post from unk, I’ve taken the time to analyze this issue.  And upon further thought, I’ve decided that the secularists can have their X-mas.  There never was any “Christ” in the secular activities that the evangelicals want so badly to “re-claim” for Christ, and it makes one shudder to think what would happen if the evangelicals got their way.

The issue is usually prompted something like this: some national discount store tells the employees to say, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, so as to avoid offending Jews and atheists.  As a result, some Christian employees feel that their “clique” has been slighted, and complain to a sympathetic media outlet.  Soon, the battle is on.  The shopping mall is witness to defiant employees willing to sacrifice their jobs for the good of Christ’s clique, and shoppers defiantly saying “Merry Christmas” to demonstrate the collective power of the Christian clique – no doubt to make the store owners think twice before martyring one of Christ’s gangbangers.

Remember when Kathy Griffin won an Oscar, and refused to give credit to Jesus?  The evangelicals were outraged!  Because, you know, Jesus deserves all the credit for actors with plastic surgery who pretend to be other people and compete for little gold statues.  If Jesus cannot take credit for such an idolatrous orgy as winning an Oscar, Christianity is doomed!

In almost every case where an evangelical demands to “keep the Christ in Christmas”, he’s talking about activities that would in no way be endorsed by Christ or the early Christians.

By way of analogy, Imagine a popular strip club in Christchurch, New Zealand, named something like “Joey’s Vixens”.  The strip club advertises far and wide, and attracts many patrons over time.  The Christians in town have little complaint with this arrangement, and many are patrons, rubbing shoulders with Jews and atheists there. 

Eventually, the strip club owner has a spasm of conscience and becomes uncomfortable with advertising his sexy ladies alongside the name of our savior.  He changes his advertisements to say something like, “Joey’s XXX Vixens, the Hottest Treat in X-Church, New Zealand!”

Do the Christians in Christchurch now take offense, and mount a campaign to “Keep Christ in Joey’s Strip Club!”?  The idea is absurd.  But this is exactly what seems to be happening when evangelicals demand that Kathy Griffin or Wal-Mart pay homage to Christ.  This seems like pure idolatry.  Is the crass commercialism of the holidays rendered holy, simply because we call it “Christmas”?  Is the Oscar less idolatrous because we thank Jesus for it?

~

And for a reminder of what Christmas should be about for Christians, check out remosntrans’ post.  I don’t see any references to “Christmas” in the Ben Johnson poem.  But if there are any, and the secularists attempt to scrub them out, I’ll gladly join arms to keep Christ in!

“About prides, superiorities, and affronts there is no book better than Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life where you’ll find us all pinned like butterflies on cards – the cards being little stories of typical characters in the most sober, astringent 18th century prose.”

He’s talking about this book (free online), which I read at the suggestion of Dissidens at Remonstrans.  I chuckled at Lewis’s use of the phrase “sober, astringent 18th century prose”, since it’s so true.

In his letter, Lewis speaks of the book as if it’s a sort of encyclopedia of human character flaws.  But this is not William Law’s purpose in writing the book, and Lewis’s own books contain much better insights about human nature, better written.  What Law sets out to do, and accomplishes powerfully, is to shake the foundation of nearly anyone who considers himself to be a “good Christian”.

Law methodically, ploddingly, dismantles every excuse proffered by Christians of his time.  Maybe you think that you’re a pretty good Christian, because you don’t look at porn or steal from widows.  Do you tithe 15% of your income?  Jesus asked for all of your money.  Do you spend even 10% of your free time on idle gossip?  There is no room for that in the Christian life.  Do you appreciate comfort and luxury?  What room for that is there in the gospel?  Law is very, very thorough in supporting his statements with scripture.

To be honest, I found nothing that Law said to be surprising or objectionable.  Scriptures are quite clear, and I’ve never understood people who preach “prosperity theology”, “easy-believism”, and the like.  Likewise, it’s surprising to me that Law’s book would change a person’s opinions on these matters.  If a person can read the clear words of Christ and the Apostles, yet still cling to the idea that worldly attachments are compatible with Christianity, said person is obviously skilled at self-deception.  Do we really think that “sober, astringent 18th century prose” will persuade such a person?  Perhaps.

~

I was not surprised to learn that Law was an admirer of the Christian mystics.  If not for the “sober” prose, I might have thought that I was reading something by one of the great mystic saints such as Theresa of Avila or Bernard of Clairvaux.  In fact, while I could imagine many protestants reading the book and taking serious issue, it seemed to me that the sentiments expressed by Law would be more readily accepted by modern Catholics.  Law essentially describes the ideal of a Mother Theresa or similar figure.

To describe authentic Christianity in a convincing manner, vivid examples like Mother Theresa’s (or better yet, Christ or the Apostles) are far more profitable than rhetorical prose.  There is at least a dollop of mother-wit in the old saying that “Christianity is caught, not taught”.  Undoubtedly, this is why Law liberally supplements his prose with stories of fictional characters who illustrate his points.  But Law’s characters lack any sort of sympathetic depth, and are obviously contrived for rhetorical purposes.  At times, it feels like reading a cross between Cicero and John Owens.

Having said that, the book is powerful and important.  Most Protestant voices who are calling for a “Devout and Holy Life” tend to focus on personal responsibility, which flirts with “blame the weak” and neglects the aspects of service to the needy.  And the voices who point out the hypocrisy in traditional Protestant attitudes, tend to be pushing decidedly heretical agendas (see Andrew Sung Park or Sara Miles).  So it is nice to have an authoritative and orthodox Protestant voice making the case so strongly.

As my brother observed, this was a Presbyterian church, so nobody can say that the congregation were not warned.  The pastor probably warned the congregation of the imminence of God’s wrath often.  And now their building is a shrine to idolatry and sophistry.

~

One of the only good things to come out of economics recently is the field of “behavioral economics”, which shatters the myth of the “rational consumer”, and provides sound empirical evidence for the concept of the “totally depraved consumer”.  For most people, behavioral economics is redundant, since we already knew that people are not rational or ethical.  But for people who have been brainwashed by scientism, the field provides an invaluable tool to reacquaint them with common sense.  It uses their own tools to dismantle their fantasies.

In that spirit, check out Tyler Cowan’s post in honor of Calvin’s birthday: “John Calvin was a Behavioral Economist”.

But their idols are silver and gold,
       made by the hands of men.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
       eyes, but they cannot see;
they have ears, but cannot hear,
       noses, but they cannot smell;
they have hands, but cannot feel,
       feet, but they cannot walk;
       nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
Those who make them will be like them,
       and so will all who trust in them

Then, I normally pull out some money and show her the faces engraved on the side, and we recite the same prayer to those little idols.

I’m pretty much in the idol-making business.  For much of my life, I’ve helped people create models and simulations to persuade and help make decisions. From simple CAD designs to linear regressions and monte carlo simulations, to large-scale clustering and basketing algorithms.  For the past few years, my medium has been narrative.  Evolutionary biology is a treasure trove of idolatry techniques, and I find that its methods can be very persuasive to people.  Just today, I deftly employed some sophisticated evolutionary arguments to argue for a specific design decision, with good effect.  I felt the pride of craftsmanship, as people praised my narrative for its beauty and agreed with my conclusions.

I tell myself that it’s OK, because I know that they are “just models”, and if anyone else fails to realize that these are just models, it’s their own damned fault.  I’m very honest about the fact that I build soulless models, and it’s not my fault if others aren’t careful enough about idolatry.  In fact, I’m happy to discuss idolatry with anyone who wants to listen.

But I sometimes wonder if I’m violating one of the most important rules of being a Christian. 

When St. Paul and St. Peter differed on which parts of the law applied to Christians, they both agreed that it was very important to never, ever eat food that had been sacrificed to idols.  Modern Christians often ignore this law, since “we don’t have idol worship in our culture, and we certainly don’t offer them food!”

This seems like a big fat cop-out to me.  We do have idols.  I build them.  And people do make offerings to those idols.  We need to understand why St. Paul and St. Peter were so adamant about this point.  I believe that the answer lies in the story of Abraham documented in Genesis.  King Kederlaomer and his allies had defeated the king of Sodom and taken all of that king’s possessions.  Abram defeated Kederlaomer and his allies, and restored the king of Sodom’s wealth.  The king of Sodom, overwhelmed with gratitude, offered to give all of his material wealth to Abram.  By the law of power, these would have been Abram’s right, but Abram declined to accept any gift from Sodom’s king, saying (Gen 14:22-24):

But Abram said to the king of Sodom, "I have raised my hand to the LORD, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath hat I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’ I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me—to Aner, Eshcol and Mamre. Let them have their share."

This scene reminds us of the time that Satan tempted Christ, and many other examples in scripture.  Can any power outside of Christ claim to us, “I made you rich”?  Can any power outside of Christ claim to us, “I filled your belly?”

For the past decade or two, the world economy has been propped up by a speculative bubble based on pure fraud and idolatry.  As this recent article explains, it was a model that blew up the world.  It made all of us rich and fat.  And some of us knew that it was pure idolatry, starting with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  When I read his books, and knew that he was right, I blogged about it.  I confirmed from other idol-makers that our economy was based on worthless idols with feet of clay, and I blogged about that, too.  I even warned some people before the idol with clay feet collapsed.  But often asked myself if I was living off of idol food, by virtue of being part of the American economy.

Am I?  I don’t know, but I think I need to consider the possibility seriously.

Jesus’ working on the Sabbath is not directed against the Sabbath.  Rather, he is fighting to preserve its original meaning, preserving it as the day of God’s freedom, so that the hands of the casuists may not pervert it into the opposite, that is, a day of tormented petty-mindedness.

This is very startling.  I’m accustomed to hearing casuist arguments advanced to explain Jesus’ working on that Sabbath (“Based on the specifics of the situation, this specific action Jesus undertook was OK”), so it is refreshing to see an argument that so clearly affirms God’s supremacy.  In fact, Ratzinger is correct.  The Pharisees were turning the Sabbath into an idol, and attempting to apply a litmus test (“Was work performed?  Yes.  Was it the Sabbath? Yes.  Did he fail our litmus test?  Yes.”) rather than understanding the underlying principle.