BIASED TO BELIEVE

BIASED TO BELIEVE

French Philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre

Why do we believe what we believe? Richard Dawkins has stated that belief in God is due entirely to having been raised by religious parents. Of course, this may be true for some or even for most, but it is a far too sweeping over-generalisation to be true for everybody. One wonders of course whether atheists such as Dawkins recognise that their own upbringing may have led them to believe atheism is true? After all, atheism is not the lack of belief in something, but is rather a belief system itself. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre was a French Philosopher who fought with the French Resistance during World War 2 and ended up becoming a prisoner of war. After the War he became an outspoken atheist. One wonders how much influence on his belief in atheism the horrors of war which he witnessed (and experienced) played in shaping his atheism? It seems we may all be biased in one way or another about what we will be more inclined to believe.

 Christopher and Peter Hitchens both grew up in a church-going home. But then something happened in their childhoods which deeply affected them both in different ways. The tragedy is that it involved a moral failure by a Christian which resulted in the disruption of their home-life. Older brother Christopher ended up despising God and went on to become a celebrated journalist and writer. He used his popularity and platform to espouse atheism. His resultant book, GOD IS NOT GREAT (How Religion Poisons Everything) became a best-seller. He was famously noted for saying at his debates and public talks, “There is no God and I hate Him!” Miraculously though, his brother Peter became an ardent apologist for Christianity and wrote a contrary book to his brother’s, THE RAGE AGAINST GOD (How Atheism Led Me To Faith). Both brothers had the same upbringing yet eventually viewed God and religion quite differently. Upbringing and circumstances therefore do not always correspond to someone becoming, or not becoming, a Christian. 

If Christopher was louche, hedonistic and iconoclastic, (Peter) Hitchens would be fastidious, puritanical and Christian.
The Guardian, October 22nd, 2012

   

Christopher and Peter Hitchens together in 1999. Christopher Hitchens died in 2011.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL BELIEFS

Yet there is little doubt that our circumstances do play a role shaping how we believe. I have mentioned Jean-Paul Sartre’s outlook of despair and eventual atheism being shaped by the trauma he endured as a World War Two prisoner of war. 

“For Sartre, the individual stands as a tragic and lonely specimen of humanity. We must look to ourselves, because there is no God and no purpose or meaning in the universe”
Living Issues In Philosophy, 1995, p. 338

Christopher Hitchens was clearly shaped the moral failure of a Christian leader who should have been a model of godliness and character. In the nineteenth century, German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, was turned off God by the cold harshness of his Christian father and grandfathers who all Lutheran ministers. His father died when he was quite young and he was raised by his mother, sister, grandmother, and two maiden aunts (“Living Issues In Philosophy”, Titus, page 332). He attacked Christianity and coined the phrase, “God is dead”. He taught that humanity must be unshackled from the restrictions of Christian morality and eliminate the weak from society to produce a society of “übermensch” (‘supermen’). At the age of 45 he had a complete mental breakdown and died in a mental asylum 11 years later. Nietzsche was sadly shaped in a very negative way by his circumstances.

Even Christians are subject to our theological beliefs about God and the Bible being shaped by our circumstances as well. During the 1500s, and on, the Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Knox, Zwingli, etc.) were revolted by the spiritual and moral degradation of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. They wrote pamphlets and published books decrying the Pope and the Roman Church as the fulfilment of what the Book of Revelation forecast as ‘the Harlot of Babylon’ (Revelation 18). The authors of the Westminster Confession even declared the Pope to be the ‘Antichrist’. Despite this being exegetically impossible, their circumstances had shaped how they had interpretted the Scriptures.

ARTICLE 25:VI. There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ.[13] Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.[14]The Westminster Confession of Faith

 As recently as the 1960s and 70s many mainline denominational church leaders were critical of Pentecostalism and what was being called the Charismatic Renewal where many Christians were claiming that they had received an experience with the Holy Spirit whereby they were able to pray in tongues and exercise certain spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues, prophesying, exercising words of knowledge and wisdom, healing the sick and casting out demons. Conservative mainline denominational church leaders had been erroneously led to believe that such gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased when the New Testament Canon was completed. (This was based on an exegetically impossible understanding of “when that which is perfect has come, these things will be done away with” [1Cor. 13:8-10].) But then a funny thing happened to many of these mainline denominational church leaders – they themselves were baptised with the Holy Spirit and began to pray in tongues and exercise the very gifts of the Holy Spirit they had just been protesting were done away with! It is estimated now that there are millions upon millions of Pentecostal Christians around the world who all testify to having been baptised with the Holy Spirit subsequent to having been born-again by the Holy Spirit – and I am one of them.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL CARE

We need to be very careful that we do not allow our circumstances to blind us to the truth. Just because your circumstances tell you that because you have not heard God, it does not mean that God does not speak today. Just because your circumstances tell you that because you have not been blessed, it does not mean that God does not bless people. Just because your circumstances tell you that because you have not been healed, it does not mean that God does not heal today. Just because your circumstances tell you that because your prayers have not been answered it does not mean that God does not answer prayers today. Just because your circumstances tell you that because you have not been delivered from your sin it does not mean that God no longer saves and delivers people from sin’s bondage. Just because your circumstances tell you that because you have not been baptised with the Holy Spirit so that you have been enabled to pray in tongues and exercise the gifts of the Spirit it does not mean that God no longer baptises believers with the Holy Spirit so that they can. 

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Luke 11:13

Our circumstances change, but truth never does. God’s Word is true, but our interpretations of it are sometimes more circumstantial than true.

Amen.

Pastor Andrew

WHO CAN WE BLAME FOR THIS?

Blame doesn’t really solve anything. Yet most of us seem content to blame rather than solve. When David Attenborough was asked by Charles Woolley, during last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview, why he didn’t believe there was a God, Mr. Attenborough didn’t give a reason, rather, he raised an objection. (There is a world of difference in proving that something does not exist, and, objecting to its existence!) His objection was to blame God for human suffering. He said, “I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs.” How could there be a good all-powerful God who would create such a barbaric scenario, reasons Mr Attenborough.

Blame doesn’t really comfort anyone.

Blame can lead to unforgiveness and the highly emotionally toxic condition of bitterness. An unforgiving bitter, person, doesn’t solve anything or even find any lasting comfort in their blaming. Some of life’s difficulties can not be solved in this life-time, but the one who is afflicted with difficulties can always at least be comforted in this life-time. But not if all anybody does is blame.  

Blame doesn’t really help anyone.

Our propensity to blame started with our first parents. When the Creator arrived in the Garden of Eden to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, Adam and Eve hid. When God confronted with Adam about why he had eaten from the forbidden tree, Adam's immediate response was to blame Eve. Eve in turn blamed the serpent, and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on!

When Job’s so-called comforters turned up to solve, comfort and help, all they did was blame. They blamed Job for his predicament. Surely he had sinned, they argued, or had been foolish or not given God His due honour? In all their blaming, Job was not comforted.    

Blame doesn’t really change anything.

Harsh criticism may, at times, be warranted – but unless it is accompanied by aid nothing will change. A pastor may be criticised for a particular ministerial deficiency, but unless he is aided by the support of the same critic, there is very little likelihood that his deficiencies will be addressed and thus, nothing will change.

When Christ’s disciples saw the man born blind, they asked who was to blame?

¶ As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
John 9:1-2

Jesus Christ brings comfort, help, solutions, and change.

Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
John 9:3

Rather than blaming anyone, Christ solved, comforted, helped, and brought change to the situation. This is the difference that Christ can make in any difficult situation. God may be the One to blame in some people’s minds for what appears to be senseless suffering in this world, but this necessarily requires that He also exists. Thus, David Attenborough’s (and it is an objection repeated by Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins) objection to God only works if there is a God to blame. I wonder if our ability to see any possible good from tragedy, suffering, misery, pain, has more to do with our very very finite knowledge of how the world works? Similarly, I wonder if God always has morally good reasons for having a world in which tragedy, suffering, misery, pain, happens. Someone has pointed out that in the absence of these adversities such positive virtues as compassion, mercy, forgiveness, long-suffering, patience, toil, could not be developed in those God is preparing in this life for the life-everlasting.

The emptiness of Mr Attenborough’s misplaced blame.

When David Attenborough shakes his fist at God and blames Him for the suffering of the East African boy blighted with the “Loa Loa Eye-Worm”, nothing is solved. The boy is not comforted by this blaming. The boy is not helped by this blaming. (I wonder whether the boy shares Mr Attenborough’s blame God for his affliction or whether he actually looks to God to solve, comfort, help and change his predicament?) By the way, Mr Attenborough is only partly right about this parasitic worm which pervades the swamps and rain forests of West Africa (not East Africa). According to Wikipedia–

Loa loa filariasis is a skin and eye disease caused by the nematode worm Loa loa. Humans contract this disease through the bite of a deer fly or mango fly.

Something that Mr Attenborough fails to mention is that this parasite doesn’t require a human eye for its survival (even though he asserts that it does) and that it can be hosted by a human or animal without detection or even symptoms for many years. He also fails to mention the many medical missionaries who have gone into these regions of Africa to comfort, heal, help, and change this situation on behalf of those who are afflicted with such parasites. The Loa Loa Filariasis Parasite is treatable with medication and in some incidences, surgery. The God whom David Attenborough, Stephen Fry, and Richard Dawkins blame for such injustices appears to be the same God who has raised up people of compassion, self-sacrificial love and dedication, to bring healing, hope and comfort to those afflicted.

Blaming won’t heal you.

Organisations such as CBM (Christian Blind Mission) are tremendously effective in providing solutions for people in Africa and other parts of the world who are afflicted with curable blindness and other diseases. Of  course, they aren’t the only organisation doing such work, World Vision, Compassion International, are also providing hope, help, and healing in Jesus’ Name to the poorest, most desperate people’s of the world. When Jesus told His disciples that this particular blind man was afflicted so that the works of God could be made manifest (John 9:3), He was stating a principle for dealing with any life-difficulty: rather than wasting your time looking for someone to blame, seek our Heavenly Father’s grace to minister hope, help, healing, solutions, and comfort to those who are afflicted. This means we get involved with the hurting, broken, damaged, lost, and confused individuals of our world and show them the love and holiness of God. And it also means that we care enough for our society to speak up about injustice and unrighteousness that can only lead to even further hurt, brokenness, damage, pain, and confusion. This is one reason why we take a stand for the sanctity of marriage as the only legitimate context for human sexuality. 

  

It’s time to stop blaming and time to start your healing.

Blaming pours fuel on the fires of unforgiveness that simmer and flare-up in your soul. It’s time to let it go. It’s time to unclench your fist and open your palm toward Heaven. It’s time to change. It’s time to be healed. You may have been blaming God for how unfair your life has been, and secretly withdrawing from Him because you feel you can no longer truly trust Him with your life. Let it go. He is trustworthy. He knows what’s best for you. He loves you more than anybody else can or does. He offers you hope, help, healing, comfort, and solutions and it begins with you acknowledging your need for Him.

“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.
John 9:4-7

Amen.