Religion and Obligation – But I don’t want to obey?…
People often don’t like religion because they don’t want to obey
A lot of people react to religion and want nothing to do with it. Not because they’ve considered its truth claims but because they feel it is constricting. Interestingly, we got our modern English word “religion” from the Latin word religio meaning “obligation” or “bond.”
So, it has been recognized for a long time that religion is binding. The question is, why? Why should anyone obey a religion?
If the religion’s truth claims are accurate then there would be a good reason to obey. Otherwise, I’m not going to be bound by a religion just because that’s what my grandma believed… No. If you’re going to tell me what I can do and not do, you better offer some good reasons why I should listen.
God demands obedience
1 Kings 8:60-61 says, “The LORD is God; there is no other. Let your heart therefore be wholly true to the LORD.” It is admittedly a big claim that “the LORD is God,” and He alone. But if that claim is true it seems to make sense that the LORD could demand obedience.
So, the question it seems we need to answer is not: “Should I obey?” But: “Is it true?” A lot of times it seems we’re tempted to go at it a different way. We’re tempted to think: “I don’t want to obey, therefore I won’t consider if it’s true.”
We can see the ridiculousness of that thinking when we apply it to a different context…
Imagine you’re driving on the highway with me. I’m going 95 when the speed limit is 70. You’re concerned because you know there are often speed traps in the area. Also, you don’t want to die. So, you say, “Perhaps you should slow down. There could be a speed trap.”
I, however, am rather content with the speed I am going. But you see a police car ahead. You very kindly warn me: “Um, that’s a police car… See it?! He’s right there! Slow down!”
But I don’t listen. I want to drive fast so I ignore the possibility of a cop car.
Religion and obligation
Ignoring information that might be pertinent because we want to do what we want to do might be problematic. Just because we don’t want there to be a cop to enforce the rules does not at all mean there is no cop.
I understand people not wanting to be obligated by a religion. We all naturally want to be in charge; we want to do what we want to do. We want to be God. But we can’t be God if God is God.
If God is, then God is in charge. He is God. If the religion is real, it necessarily leads to obligation.
That brings up the very important question: “Is God?”
Naturalistic evolution teaches that our sense of morality evolved
Imagine I gave you a pill that made you feel morally obligated to give me money… Kinda random but hear me out. After the pill wore off, what would you think of your moral conviction to give me money? Would you regret it? Question it? Probably both.
That’s what moral conviction is if we’re simply evolved creatures. Why? How is that so?
Naturalistic evolution teaches that our sense of morality evolved
Naturalistic evolution teaches that our sense of morality evolved. That is, our “moral genes” just happened to make us better suited for survival, and thus those with a moral characteristic passed on their “moral genes.” And so, we have morality. But, so the thought goes, just as the Neanderthals died out, morality could have died out. Or certainly, a different form of morality could have won out.
In fact, Charles Darwin says in The Descent of Man that if things had gone differently for humans they could have evolved to be like bees, where “females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters.” The atheist Michael Ruse in his book, Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy, says, “Morality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes.”
So, if we’re simply evolved from monkeys, morality is the equivalent of taking a pill that makes us think certain moral convictions are right. But the reality would be different. We, based on this view, only have those convictions—whatever they are: treat people nice, don’t murder and maim, etc.—because we happed to evolve that way (“took the pill”).
Of course, just because the way that you arrived at a conclusion was wrong, does not mean that your conclusion was wrong. In a test where the answer is A, B, C, or D, I could just choose “C” because it’s my favorite letter. I may be correct in my answer, but I certainly don’t have a solid reason for believing in the validity of my answer. In fact, probability would say my answer is likely wrong.
Another problem with wholesale naturalistic evolution is if we believe it explains everything then it in some ways explains nothing. Gasp. Yeah, that’s not a good thing.
If evolution explains morality, then I’m moral because of evolution which at least in some ways undercuts morality. Some people even say that religious people, like people that believe in Jesus, are religious because they evolved that way. Believing in a higher power brought some type of group identity which led tribes of our ancestors to be more likely to protect each other and thus survive and pass on their genes. And so, religion is the result of random mutational chance.
In fact, you could argue all of our thinking processes are the result of evolution. We’re just matter in motion. We’re all just responding to random whims. From belief in morality to belief in evolution, we’re just evolved to think this way… We can’t do anything about it. It’s programmed into us. It’s the pill we were given…
But if all this is a pill we’re given—what we’ve randomly evolved to think—what should we think?… Isn’t all our thinking just built into us through evolutionary processes?…
Alternatively, Christians believe that humans are created with an innate moral sense.
So, it seems morality is either a fiction with no basis in reality or God created us and explains reality—explains why we have an innate sense that we should treat people nice and not murder and maim.
There are big implications for either view. What is your view? And why?
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is in vogue
I recently looked at #exchristian posts on Instagram. There are a lot of them. It’s pretty popular to recount what is wrong with the Church. Why? And how far should it go?
What’s deconstruction?
Deconstruction is more than just saying what’s wrong with church. A lot of times it’s saying what’s wrong with the Christian faith. It’s saying Christianity is essentially stupid. That’s often what deconstructionists say. But, they don’t so often set out to prove their claims.
Memes in no way prove that a worldview has no meaning or validity. And proving that there are problems with a church, the Church, or particular people in the Church is not the same as proving that Christianity gives an inaccurate picture of the world.
Deconstruction has happened before
Deconstruction is not new. The hashtags are new but deconstruction has actually been happening since the beginning of Christianity.
For example, the apostle Paul and other early Christians argued for the truthfulness of Christianity while others sought to disprove it (see Luke 1:3; Acts 1:3; 9:22; 17:3; 18:4-5, 28; 19:8; 24:25; 26:22-26; 28:23).
People have sought to deconstruct all sorts of aspects of Christianity. Early Christians were accused of cannibalism because of confusion over the Lord’s Supper. They were accused of atheism because they didn’t believe in the pantheon of Greek gods. And they were accused of political disloyalty because they wouldn’t give ultimate allegiance to the empire or offer sacrifices to the emperor.
There are things that should deconstruct
Many memes convey important messages, important critiques that should be taken to heart. There are many sad and despicable things that happen in the church. My family and I have experienced some of those things.
Spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, making idols of pastors, legalism, pridefulness, inhospitality, just to mention a few, are unacceptable and should be condemned as such. Many movements have important things that should be gleaned from them. There are things that can be learned from #exchristians. There are also things that should be confessed and cried over.
Jesus Himself “deconstructed” things
Jesus criticized the religious leaders. He was a rebel with a cause. He reached out and welcomed the Samaritan woman even when that was socially unacceptable (Jn 4). Jesus tipped tables in the Temple. He composed a letter through the hands of John partially to critique and challenge the Church (Rev. 2-3).
Jesus wasn’t silent. He brought up stuff but also proposed solutions. The apostle Paul modeled the same approach.
I believe church leaders should take the same approach. They should take the opportunity to listen, learn, and lovingly address problems.
How does one know what should be deconstructed?
Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous and influential German philosopher, came from a very devout family. Yet, he ended up a very articulate deconstructionist. He very poetically and memorably said: God is dead and we killed him.[1]
Nietzsche didn’t stop there, though. He spelled out what that means for our lives. He reasoned, and I think rightly, that if God is dead, then there is no actual meaning or morality. It is might that makes right. The strong slay and the strong say what is right and what is wrong.
Nietzsche lit a fuse and dynamited God and with Him all basis for morality and actual meaning.[2] So, how much should be deconstructed and destroyed? How do we know? On what basis can we judge what is right and wrong?
If we’re going to prune for the sake of health and good fruit, how much do we cut back? If we cut back too far do we not lose all hope of fruit and flourishing?
There is a point to pruning but if we prune back the very existence of purpose that seems like a cut too far. It seems to me that’s not going to serve the purpose of the pruning.
If one of the problems we’re critiquing is people’s failure to love it seems foolish and unproductive to cut off the possibility of the existence of actual love. And yet, that seems to be what many are doing. Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist said in his book, The God Delusion, that morality and love are simply a “blessed precious mistake;” a happenstance of evolution.[3]
Yet, as G.K. Chesterton said, if we rebel against everything we lose the grounds and ability to rebel against anything. So, is there a basis for actual truth? If so, what? And how does one know? If not, how does one know what should be deconstructed?
What are the reasons for deconstruction?
“Christian” Hypocrisy
Christians and so-called “Christians” often fail to live the Christian ethic. They fail to live a life of love. Often they even carry out evil actions. Sexual abuse seems to have even become prevalent. And so people reason, not so unreasonably, that Christianity is pointless if not also a plague on society.
Problems with people acting immorally, of course, don’t actually prove that Christianity is a shallow or wrong worldview though. This is especially the case if people are using Christian criteria to critique Christianity. Yuval Noah Harari has said,
“Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are “equal”?[4]
It doesn’t make sense to say Christianity is wrong and yet also use Christian morality as a measurement of what is morally wrong. If someone is to critique Christianity they must have an epistemological basis to do so. That is, they must have knowledge of what is right and wrong.
Is that knowledge just innate? If so, why? And how does it work?
Empty Dogmatism
Some people grew up attending a church that only offered empty platitudes and forced dogmatism. Their genuine questions were not able to be asked and certainly weren’t honestly answered. And so, when they confronted challenges or hostility with their beliefs they give it up. They don’t feel they have solid grounds for continuing to be committed to it.
Morality
Some “former Christians” deconstruct Christianity not because of reasoned augmentation but because of Christian morality. Some people don’t like what Christianity says about sexuality or other moral issues.[5] So, they criticize Christianity on moral grounds although they may have no warranted ground for their sense of morality.
Notes
[1] See his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
[2] Nietzsche grounded meaning in a doctrine he called “eternal recurrence.” He essentially proposed living in such a way that if your life was to eternally reoccur that you would be living in such a way that it would be less terrible. Nietzsche grounded purpose in this fictitious notion. Fictitious because Nietzsche did not actually believe in God or in the reoccurrence of our lives.
[3] Dawkins says, “Could it be that our Good Samaritan urges are misfirings”? By Dawkins account we have “programmed into our brains altruistic urges, alongside sexual urges, hunger urges, xenophobic urges and so on…. We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable to reciprocate) than we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile or otherwise unable to reproduce). Both are misfirings, Darwinian mistakes: blessed, precious mistakes”). (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 252-53).
But, if we are brutes, why shouldn’t we be brutal? Nietzsche, for instance, promotes the strong acting like “large birds of prey” and freely abusing the weak “lambs” because after all that’s what comes naturally and there is no God to impose morals. He said, “I expressly want to place on record that at the time when mankind felt no shame towards its cruelty, life on earth was more cheerful than it is today,… The heavens darkened over man in direct proportion to the increase in his feeling shame at being man” (See par. 7 of the Second Essay in On the Genealogy of Morality).
Jean-Paul Sartre said, “The existentialists… thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is not infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, what we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men” (Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, 22).
If we don’t acknowledge God then the moral laws that flow from His character are gone as well, and we are left with blind skepticism and relativism; every person doing whatever is right in their own eyes. As we consider this we should never forget that, as Martin Luther King Jr. exhorted, “everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal.’”
[4] Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015), 109.
[5] As Romans 1 says, “people suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”
Photo by Aaron Burden
Morality and Politics in America
John Adams said a long time ago, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” And the conservative Edmund Burke said, “What is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.” Here are some similar insights Alexis de Tocqueville shared in his book, Democracy in America*:
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
“When a nation[‘s] well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.”
“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”
“A nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak.”
“What one must fear, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immorality of the great as that of immorality leading to greatness.”
“So religion, which among the Americans never directly takes part in the government of society, must be considered as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not give them the taste for liberty, it singularly facilitates their use of it.”
“Religion is much more necessary in the republic.”
“In order that society should exist, and a fortiori, that a society should prosper, it is required that all the minds of the citizens should be rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas.”**
“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot… How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? and what can be done with a people which is its own master, if it be not submissive to the Divinity?”
No matter who ultimately gets elected, if what Adams and Tocqueville said were right, and I think they were, it’s only a matter of time before a pretty significant downfall of America. Many moral dominos have fallen, and I don’t so much mean abortion and gender confusion. I mean the more common and prevalent lack of virtue, which has precipitated more visible concerns. Now the only truth that is readily accepted is that there is no truth, only what is right for the autonomous self. Those were dominos. Those have been falling.
America needs: revival. Not of the Republican Party, but of people set on fire for the true Savior. Revival is what would make people “moral and religious,” as Adams spoke of and which our Nation rests or topples on.
Whatever happens, Christians trust the One who has the government on His shoulders. The One who is “called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The One of whom it can be said: “Of the greatness of His government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over His kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore” (Isaiah 9:6-7).
Whatever happens, Christians can trust that God is very adept at using a remnant for His good purposes to highlight His glory and goodness. Perhaps America won’t be saved, but perhaps millions of Americans will be?!
*As an aside, I think it is interesting to note what Tocqueville said about wealth in America remembering that Scripture says, that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10). Many have “noted the American obsession with work and the restless quest for the “almighty dollar” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America). Tocqueville also said, “The love of wealth is . . . to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do” (Ibid.). As well as, “One must go to America to understand what power material well-being exerts on political actions and even on opinions themselves, which ought to be subject only to reason” (Ibid.).
**Such as the reality of objective truth actually existing.
Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft
I recently read Peter Kreeft’s book Back to Virtue. Kreeft is a Roman Catholic philosopher, theologian, apologist, and a prolific author. He is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King’s College.
Here are some quotes from Back to Virtue that stuck out to me:
“We control nature, but we cannot or will not control ourselves. Self-control is ‘out’ exactly when nature control is ‘in’, that is, exactly when self-control is most needed” (Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue, 23).
“Nothing is so surely and quickly dated as the up-to-date” (Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue, 63).
“It is hard to be totally courageous without hope in Heaven. Why risk your life if there is no hope in Heaven. Why risk your life if there is no hope that your story ends in anything other than worms and decay” (Kreeft, Back to Virtue, 72).
“The only way to ‘the imitation of Christ’ is the incorporation into Christ” (Ibid., 84).
“There are only two kinds of people: fools, who think they are wise, and the wise, who know they are fools” (Ibid., 99).
“Humility is thinking less about yourself, not thinking less of yourself” (Ibid., 100).
“God has more power in one breath of his spirit than all the winds of war, all the nuclear bombs, all the energy of all the suns in all the galaxies, all the fury of Hell itself” (Ibid., 105).
“We can possess only what is less than ourselves, things, objects… We are possessed by what is greater than ourselves—God and his attributes, Truth, Goodness, Beauty. This alone can make us happy, can satisfy the restless heart, can fill the infinite, God-shaped hole at the center of our being” (Ibid., 112).
“The beatitude does not say merely: ‘Blessed are the peace-lovers,’ but something rarer: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’” (Ibid., 146).
“There is only one thing that never gets boring: God… Modern man has… sorrow about God, because God is dead to him. He is the cosmic orphan. Nothing can take the place of his dead Father; all idols fail, and bore” (Ibid., 157).
“God’s single solution to all our problems is Jesus Christ” (Ibid., 172).
“An absolute being, an absolute motive, and an absolute hope can alone generate an absolute passion. God, love and Heaven are the three greatest sources of passion possible” (Ibid., 192).
Justice and the Just One
I was considering the word and concept of justice today so I looked up the definition of “justice.” The search returned a few definitions that stuck to me: “moral rightness,” “the quality of being just,” and “moral principle determining just conduct.” To understand or seek justice then, we need to have an idea of what it means to be “just” or “moral.” We have to have a “moral principle” whereby we can measure “just conduct.”
In America today we have calls for justice. Justice is right and good. Christians especially are called to do justice and love mercy (Micah 6:8). Do the majority of Americans, however, know what “moral principle” we are basing our measurements of “just conduct” on? Do most Americans believe that there is a “moral principle” that guides us? If so, can most Americans articulate where our “moral principle” comes from?
It seems to me if the foundation for “moral principle” has eroded then justice does not have a foundation upon which to stand. Thus, I say this not because I am not for justice, I say this because I am for justice.
Perhaps with our calls for justice in America, we should also consider the foundation of justice: moral principle. Perhaps we should consider if justice can have a steady place on which to perch.
Perhaps we should also hear calls to return to moral principle and the bedrock of truth. Without truth, calls for justice ring empty.
I believe there is a basis for justice. Because I believe there is truth.
Jesus Himself actually said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus is truth made tangible. He lived and walked justice. He is in reality what everyone should be and live.
I believe in justice and that we have a “moral principle determining just conduct” because the LORD has given it to us. Because He is righteous and “He loves righteous deeds” (Psalm 11:7) and “hates the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Psalm 11:5).
“O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted; You will strengthen their heart; You will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.”(Psalm 10:17-18).
Why do Black Lives & LGBTQ+ Lives Matter?
Why do black lives and LGBTQ+ lives matter? This is an important question because some people have views that don’t support the idea of lives mattering. For example, Charles Darwin, the most famous proponent of evolution titled his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle of Life. And in his book, The Decent of Man, he says,
“The Western nations of Europe… now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors [that they] stand at the summit of civilization…. The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races through the world.”
Does a strict Darwinian view of the world lead to all lives mattering? It does not appear so. That’s why this question is important. Why do black lives and LGTBQ+ lives matter?
If we cut off our objective moral legs, we have no way to stand. If we say morality doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t matter. We can’t pick and choose. We can’t both say people are the way they are and have the desires they have and it’s fine and say it’s not okay for people to be certain ways and do certain things. That’s the crucial thing we need to consider.
Black lives matter. LGBTQ+ lives matter. White lives matter. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. But why?
That is a super important question and one that sadly isn’t receiving a lot of sustained thought. Why do black lives matter? Why do lives matter at all? Where do we get this concept? Is it true?
Jesus said, black lives matter.[1] Jesus said, LGBTQ+ lives matter. Jesus said, all lives matter.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-38).
But does Jesus matter? And if He doesn’t on what basis then are we saying all these lives matter? This may seem like a stupid question. We just know all types of lives matter, right? But do we?
The common view that many have is Darwinian evolution, that we came from nothing and we are going to nothing; from purposelessness to purposelessness. Where is meaning, morality, and lives mattering to be found?[2] Is there a basis for human rights?
Also, did the Roman culture, in whose hands Jesus was murdered say, all lives matter?[3] Did Joseph Stalin say all lives matter? Did Friedrich Nietzsche? Did Adolf Hitler? Did Mao Zedong? Is it even possible to say all lives matter or any lives matter when the highest maximum is have it your way and do what’s right for you? Could it be that “just as long as no one gets hurt” has been trampled upon and obliterated by “you can do whatever you want”? 
If God is dead, and we killed him, as Nietzsche said, what follows? Perhaps Nietzsche was right, perhaps that makes all things permissible? Each person doing what is right in their own eyes, whatever that might be. Who is anyone, who or what is God, to restrain? …We are who we are and we want what we want and that’s nobodies business, right?
How or where, then, do we get the concept of lives, any lives, ultimately mattering? The concept of lives mattering would be merely imaginary (a social construct). Perhaps good for America right now but not for all people at all times and places.
We can’t deconstruct everything and still have a basis which to say lives matter or to say that we must love others. We can’t both say we can do whatever we want and you can’t do certain things (like be racist or homophobic).
Moral Order
The world has a moral order. Many are unwilling to concede that truth, however. But the world functions as if that is the case. Let’s take my kid’s classroom as an example.
In my kid’s classroom there is a telos, or goal for which the students gather. There are also specific means that are employed to reach that end.
The whole education system is predicated upon the goals of teaching things that are deemed important for the betterment and healthy functioning of the individual student and society. Various means are employed to best meet those goals. There are subtle disagreements of course. For example, people have disagreements over the best forms of discipline. But there is overarching agreement across America.
Think of the quintessential school. Perhaps for you it’s John Adams High from Boy Meets World or maybe Bayside High School from Saved by the Bell. Regardless, there is a quintessential school. There is something that is aimed for, something that is ideal. Read More…
Is there a basis for Human Rights?
“The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe. When a man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil, there is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, ‘There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.’ I heard one torturer say, ‘I thank God, in whom I do not believe, that I lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.’ He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners.”[3]
Is abortion morally justifiable?
Here are a few things I left out of the video…
Thinking and talking about abortion is very difficult but also important. I, therefore, ask that you consider what I say before discounting it. I have strived to consider the subject with compassion and candor. So, out front, I want to say two things: First, I believe abortion is clearly wrong and cannot be morally justified in any circumstance. Second, and very important, there is grace, forgiveness, and hope for those who have had an abortion.
We all do wrong. The Bible says everyone is a sinner. But it also thankfully says that whosoever—liar, thief, cheat—goes to Jesus in faith and repentance can receive new life and be saved by the grace of God. All our sins can be washed away. First John 1:9 gives us all hope: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” It is vital that we all remember that there is grace, forgiveness, and hope for all!
And here are some statistics about abortion in America that I left out too…
- Since 1973, there have been 59,000,000 reported and legal abortions. That’s more than the total population of California and Virginia.
- There were 908,000 abortions in 2015.
- 1/4 of American women will have an abortion by the time they are forty-five.
- Reasons why women have an abortion:
- 1% listed rape or incest
- 6% listed potential health problems
- 93% listed social reasons:
- Abortion brings several health risks:
- Breast cancer
- Ectopic (tubal) pregnancy
- Bad effects on future pregnancies
- Becoming sterile
- Sexual dysfunction
- Mental health risks
in X 