THE FEAR OF THE LORD – EXAMINING OUR PRESUPPOSITIONS

Our presuppositions are our most basic beliefs. They serve like a lens that colors everything else we see and believe. They also color our interpretation of Scripture. For example, I came to the Lord 40 years ago as a washed-out radical leftist. I had hated the police. Why? I had been a pot-smoker and knew that if the police caught me, I’d have to suffer the consequences. Therefore, they represented a threat to me. Besides, leftists hate authority unless it’s their own authority.

Consequently, when I, as a fledgling Christian, encountered the verse that instructed me to submit to all the authorities, since they are from God (Romans 13:1-4), everything within me rose in revolt. I was sure that there had to be another interpretation besides the obvious one. Fortunately for me, there weren’t any other ex-hippy leftists around to offer me any appealing alternatives. Instead, I gradually had to bite the bullet, and this biting – the believing of things I didn’t want to believe - has been my companion for the 40 years of my life in the Lord.

In fact, my powerful needs affected my presuppositions so profoundly that I read Scripture in an entirely distorted manner, selecting only those verses that allowed me to feel good about myself.

Surprisingly, I just couldn’t get my mind around the idea of grace. Another one of my presuppositions informed me that there were no free lunches. Instead, I had to earn God’s “grace.” However, this presupposition contained the seeds of its own destruction. Over the years, the Spirit made it apparent to me that I couldn’t even earn a smile from God, let alone salvation. Consequently, I felt so self-condemned, I was sure that God also condemned me.

If I was going to survive, there had to be something else in God’s promises against which my presuppositions had blinded me. Utterly broken, my Savior opened my eyes to a mercy which I had seen before:

·       For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

My old dysfunctional lens had to first be removed through suffering before I could see through the new presupposition that God truly loved me.  

This illustrates something very important about doing theology and understanding Scripture. Understanding is more than mental activity. Primarily, it is a matter of the Holy Spirit emptying us in order to fill us. With paradoxical wisdom, Paul wrote:

·       You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:2-3)

On the one hand, our spiritual growth is the result of the ministry of the Word of God (1 Peter 2:2; 2 Peter 1:2-3) along with our diligence to understand it, meditating on the Word both day and night (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1). On the other hand, even after all of our diligent labors, we are the product of the Spirit:

·       But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

The fruit that comes forth from our lives is actually the fruit of the Spirit, and so He must get all of the credit, even for our understanding.

Of what does His work consist? Exposing our blindness, our presuppositions and attitudes – the fruit of our darkness! As Jesus taught, in the natural, we are lovers of the darkness:

·       And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

Ordinarily, we are such lovers of the darkness, that we have trained ourselves to see ourselves as creatures of the light. There are so many evidences of this that I hope it is sufficient to only cite one:

·       All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit. (Proverbs 16:2)

It is so painful to see that we are wrong and at fault. we have convinced ourselves that the fault lies within the other person. Similarly, I had been so blinded that, even after coming to Christ, I had assured myself that He had chosen me because I was more worthy than others. This addictive presupposition had to first be burned out of me before I would be in any position to adore God for His mercy towards this entirely unworthy vessel. He first has to humble us to exalt us.

I know that there remain in me areas of blindness. I am always discovering logs in my eyes, which obscure my sight (Matthew 7:1-5). Consequently, I am ever-dependent upon my Savior to reveal to me my faulty presuppositions – my basic foundational beliefs that color everything else that I see and believe. And this is an ongoing process.

If we are to understand Scripture, our eyes must first be cleansed of logs, but this is painful. Wisdom requires us to see that we are unworthy servants (Luke 17:10). Until we see the truth about ourselves, we are not going to see the truth in anything that matters. It is like trying to see the world through a filthy pair of lens. But who wants to remove their blinding lens? Proverbs reveals we reject wisdom because it rebukes our pride:

·       “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?  If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you. Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof… Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof. (Proverbs 1:22-30)

Acquiring wisdom and the understanding of Scripture, therefore, is not primarily a matter of mental activity or even of graduating from a good seminary. Instead, it begins with the “fear of the Lord.”

THE FAITH OF THE NATURALIST

Many atheists claim that they would gladly believe in God if the evidence pointed in His direction. Evolutionary Biologist Jerry Coyne makes this very claim in "Faith vs Fact." However, there's good reason to question his claim. For one thing, the evidence is already available, abundantly. Paul A. Nelson, PH.D asks rhetorically:

·       "So why isn't the mystery of life a reasonable candidate for challenging the validity of naturalism or atheism? In the words of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), philosopher of the Scientific Revolution, God's 'ordinary works' (such as organisms) are more than enough 'to convince [refute] atheism.' That bacterial cell under the microscope, loaded with molecular machinery of astounding complexity, represents a world of evidence for design-- all the evidence anyone should ever need."

What does Coyne make of this evidence? His answer betrays an unwavering faith and commitment to naturalism:

·       "Given the remarkable ability of science to solve problems once considered intractable, the number of scientific phenomena that weren't even known a hundred years ago, it's probably more judicious to admit ignorance than to tout divinity." (157)

Coyne erroneously assumes that science is in opposition to divinity and that the scientific findings support a naturalistic worldview as opposed to ID. However, as Nelson and many others observe, it is these very findings that point feverishly to their Author.

In fact, the Bible affirms that God governs His creation by His laws. By what reason or evidence then can Coyne claim that these laws, which make science possible, are natural and undesigned? There is none!

Therefore, rather than science as a naturalistic triumph, it is more likely a testimony to its Creator, who has given us a mind to know Him.

Is Coyne open to the evidence? Is seems that he has already invested his faith in the wrong horse.

THE BIBLE AND HUMAN THRIVING

In Christianity Verses Fatalism in the War against Poverty, Udo Middelmann writes that while religion has enslaved, Christianity has set humanity free to better their lives:

• "When biblical Christianity took a stand against the cacophony of other religions, it drove the accused imperialists to greater humanity. Whereas religions drug people into submission and, at times, stupidity, Christianity energizes mind and body to creative action. Religions still serve as the opiate of the people and contribute to human, intellectual, and economic poverty in many parts of the world. But the teachings of the Bible have contributed massively to positive cultural consequences, in a broad sense, in all Western countries and where they were carried abroad. Belief in the God of the Bible has led to significant—though never perfect—practices of biblical ethics, human rights, intellectual development, and individual and social responsibilities that have had visible consequences in the material realm."

In what ways has the God of the Bible produced positive change?

• "Biblically influenced societies, in general, have been able to more effectively fight disease, reduce hunger, and restrain human and natural evil."

How is it that the Bible has been able to produce positive change? Middelmann offers one example of how an errant belief can stifle the human instinct to improve their lives:

• "Abolition of slavery, defining women’s rights, making time for a real childhood, safer work conditions and precise norms, definitions of malpractice, and multiple other clarifications of right and wrong do not come from a cyclical attitude that every day repeats the day before." 

Many religions are entirely fatalistic, teaching that life is a matter of endless repeating cycles. Therefore, lives cannot change.

In contrast, the Bible teaches that God has a benign plan. Instead of time being cyclical, leading nowhere, it is linear, leading to a glorious future, where all the tears will be dried, at least for those who are willing to take hold of His program.

Many have similarly noted that Biblical teachings are conducive to doing science. Here are several of these essential teachings:

1. To a great extent, God rules through discoverable and predictable laws.

2. He is knowable and wants to be known.

3. Having correct knowledge of Him is what He esteems.

4. He is not a God of confusion but of order.

These truths have provided humanity with a signed invitation to seek out God's ways, and many Christians have taken this invitation seriously.

Is it chance that the Bible contains just the right presuppositions for human thriving, or are these teachings evidence of God's love for His human creations and the fact that we were created like Him and for Him?

Honest Interpretation, the Episcopal Church, and Apostasy

 

Often, when mainline church leaders are challenged about their liberal interpretation of the Scriptures, they defend themselves by saying:

• Well, we also believe that all Scripture is God-breathed. We just interpret it differently than you.

However, I wonder whether our differences are a matter of honest interpretation or our prior commitment to a particular philosophy, which we impose upon Scripture, coercing Scripture to agree with us. Here’s an interesting example. Luke wrote:

• One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. (Acts 16:16-19) 

Frankly, I can’t say with any assurance why Paul was “very much annoyed.” This spirit-possessed slave girl was evidently speaking Gospel-truth. Perhaps she said it in a disruptive or mocking manner? We don’t know. However, Paul reached a point where he had had enough and cast the spirit (demon) out of her. Consequently, she was no longer able to reveal hidden knowledge and make money for her owners.

However, according to BishopJefferts Schori, head of the Episcopal Church, USA, “Paul was guilty of failing to value diversity, to see the slave girl’s beautiful difference”:

• “Paul is annoyed at the slave girl…She’s telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves. But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it.”

However amusing Schori’s imaginative interpretation might be, it was clearly miles away from what Luke had intended to convey. Luke never gave his readers the slightest hint that Paul ever attempted to deprive anyone of God’s gift! Schori’s idea that Paul sought to deprive “her of her gift of spiritual awareness” flies in the face of everything we know about Paul – a man who consistently sacrificed his life to build up the church.

Furthermore, if a holy spirit from God had been cast out by Paul, there is absolutely no precedent for such a thing anywhere in Scripture. It would mean that God Himself was casting out His own servants – an unthinkable impossibility! Instead, Luke identifies the resulting problem for Paul as the fact that the owners were now deprived of their income, not that Paul had done anything unrighteous or that he didn’t “honor diversity.”

Why does Schori resort to such an impossible interpretation? Evidently, she has a commitment to an alternative philosophy of life – one that will not restrict her or others to certain sexual norms. How will such a pre-commitment affect interpretation? It will relativise it. In other words, Paul’s teachings and behavior are no longer the product of the Holy Spirit, but rather his own limitations – personal and societal. It also means that we are now free to take the teachings in any manner we so choose in order to justify our lifestyle!

Clearly, despite her protestations otherwise, Schori doesn’t believe that Scripture is God-breathed. How then do such people rise to the head of our churches? Can say for sure, but it certainly was prophesied. When Paul addressed his beloved Ephesian elders for the last time, he revealed his pain:

• I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears. Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” (Acts 20:29-32)

“Savage wolves” will arise from the midst of the church and tear it down by distorting the truth. His prime concern was never the plague, invading armies, or even the Romans, but the distortion of the Bible. What was Paul’s answer? Unwavering alertness and discernment! From where would this come? From God and the “word of his grace!” As the distortion would tear the church down, it is Scripture that would “build you up and give you an inheritance.”

It is therefore my prayer that my own agenda or philosophy will never interfere with my understanding or the teaching of His Word. Above all else, I want to honor Him! This is life and truth! This must also become the prayer of us all!

Doing Science: Are Christians too Locked into their own Beliefs?

A letter to a secularist/atheist:

First of all, let me respond to your charge that Christianity is a science-killer. On the contrary, it is Christianity that had provided the motivation and the presuppositions to investigate God’s creation. According to British scientist Robert Clark:

• “However we may interpret the fact, scientific development has only occurred in Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations—Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China and so on—science developed to a certain point and then stopped. It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact, it never did. And no wonder. For the non-Christian world believed that there was something ethically wrong about science. In Greece, this conviction was enshrined in the legend of Prometheus, the fire-bearer and prototype scientist who stole fire from heaven, thus incurring the wrath of the gods.” ("Christian Belief and Science," quoted by Henry F. Schaefer, 14)

Christianity had providentially provided just the right presuppositions for the investigation of this word:

1. A God who wants to be known and understood
2. A God who values order
3. A God who creates and operates by discoverable laws or principles
4. A God who doesn’t change and therefore laws that do not change
5. A God who encourages us to seek for wisdom and gives wisdom and knowledge to bless us
6. A world that is not illusory, but one that is “very good” and worth understanding rather than transcending
7. A world that was created by wisdom and not be chance – consequently, there are mysteries that are discoverable
8. A world that we are directed to care for by first understanding it

Interestingly, secularism profitably partakes of the Christian presuppositions although its worldview cannot affirm them:

1. Secularism has no rational foundation to believe in understanding and wisdom, just brain chemical reactions.
2. Secularism has no basis to believe in truth, order and continuity in a world of molecules-in-motion, but relies upon the unchanging nature of the laws of physics, even though it lacks the presuppositions to account for such things.
3. Secularism is committed to chance and non-design. Such presuppositions may prove highly unfruitful. It has committed much money and resources to the proposition that proteins and DNA self-assembled (along with the cell and life). However, there is not one stitch of evidence that a protein has ever self-assembled. However, their worldview requires them to go in this direction. One scientist put it this way: “The mathematical probability that the precisely designed molecules needed for the simplest bacteria could form by chance arrangements of amino acids is far less than 1 in 10 followed by 450 zeroes.” (Kleiss)
4. Secularism has no intrinsic reason to search out an unchanging truth. Its basic motivation is pragmatic. It wants results that will make people happy. However, in the short run, lies will also make people happy. It is only the Christian commitment to truth that keeps secularism honest, for the time being. The history of radical secular experiments shows that truth is no more than a commodity to achieve certain ends – propaganda and the manipulation.

In light of the above, many have argued that secularism is parasitic of its despised host – Christianity. Once the host succumbs – and history shows us that Christianity is the only fruitful host – the parasite languishes and then dies.

Instead of contempt, secularism should respect its host. John Steinrucken writes,

• The fact is, we secularists gain much from living in a world in which excesses are held in check by religion. Religion gives society a secure and orderly environment within which we secularists can safely play out our creativities. Free and creative secularism seems to me to function best when within the stable milieu provided by Christianity.     

These “excesses” are also displayed in the laboratory. Daniel James Devine reported:

• The British Medical Journal [BMJ] reported that 13 percent of UK scientists say they’ve seen colleagues “inappropriately adjusting, excluding, altering or fabricating data,” indicating widespread research fraud. “The BMJ has been told of junior academics being advised to keep concerns to themselves to protect their careers, being bullied into not publishing their findings, or having their contracts terminated when they spoke out,” said BMJ editor. (World, Feb 11, 2012, 64)

And how many more instances of fraud haven’t been seen or at least acknowledged in the survey? As secularism advances, we might be seeing epidemic levels of fraud. And why not if fraud is just a means to a greater ends?

Our Prior Commitments and Distaste for the Divine Foot

Our views are governed by our assumptions, and our assumptions are governed by the desires of our heart. Therefore, the Apostle Paul observed:

·        The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved…and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. (2 Thes. 2:9-12)

Why will people believe these Satanic “counterfeit miracles?” Because they want to! Paul asserts that “they refused to love the truth and so be saved,” but instead “delighted in wickedness.” Our desires – our loves – determine our thinking and believing, even if it costs us salvation.

We believe what we want to believe. The same principle pertains irrespective of educational attainments. It even pertains to the leading scientists of the West, according to evolutionist and geneticist Richard Lewontin:

   

·        We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism [that nothing exists apart from matter and energy]. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, …Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The “Divine Foot” opens the door to extra-material explanations – the very thing that many oppose. However, they can’t oppose it on the basis of science, but rather their almost-religious “commitment to materialism.”

Although our desires and commitments control us, this doesn’t rule out objective truths or answers. It should simply alert us to our powerful underlying motives and how they pervert our conclusions.

Of course, many will turn this around upon the Christian: “You believe because you need a crutch.” While this is true, Lewontin admits that he too has his crutch – materialism.

While the idea of God will comfort some, the idea of no-god (materialism) comforts others. One atheist friend admitted that he is an atheist because it helped him to deal with his guilt and shame. He understands that if there is no God, then there are no higher standards to which he is accountable. This thinking also gives the atheist some insulation against the fear of eternal judgment.

Even though what we believe is a very personal thing, they also might have an existence apart from what we think about them. I might believe in Christ for very personal reasons, but this doesn’t mean that I lack objective, evidential reasons for my belief.

However, as Lewontin seems to acknowledge, there is absolutely no evidential support for materialism. While we all believe that there are material explanations – there a the laws of physics that allow us to predict – this doesn’t mean that this is all that there is. In fact, these very laws point powerfully to the extra-material:

1. There are unchanging. They impact everything in the universe, but nothing seems to be able to impact them.

2. They are universal. They act uniformly throughout the universe.

3. They seem to arise from outside of the universe. All sources of power/energy are localized within the universe. Consequently, the closer to the source, the greater the force it exerts. Those closer we are to a bonfire or radio-station, the stronger the waves. The laws of physics do not loose their force. There is no issue of proximity. It’s not an issue. Instead, the laws seem to originate from outside of this created order.

4. They are elegant and can be described by simple formulae, suggesting that they were intelligently designed.

All of these considerations should argue persuasively against materialism. However, the “Divine Foot” is not in favor with our secular elites.

Presuppositions: Our Lens through which we See the World

If you wear a red-tinted lens, the world will appear red. If your lens is faith-in-Christ and in His Word, then, when confronted with an apparent contradiction, you are convinced that there is a resolution, and you seek it out. If your lens is atheism, then this apparent contradiction becomes your confirmation that the Bible is conflicted and not divine. This is called a “confirmation bias.”

One pastor and Oxford professor of New Testament preached that Jesus was only a man. His proof merely consisted in the Biblical “evidence” that Jesus had been mistaken and had changed His mind. The Prof cited the account of a Gentile woman who had asked Jesus to free her demon-possessed daughter. At first, Jesus seemingly refused but then changed His mind after He perceived the woman’s uncanny wisdom.

However, I approach the text with a different lens – one which perhaps elucidates what might have been made blurred to the Prof. After the woman had initially made her request, Jesus remained silent for while, giving His status-conscious disciples an opportunity to verbally hang themselves. Finally they did:

·        Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." (Matthew 15:23)

How callous! Even if they thought her beneath them, they could have, at least, asked Jesus to grant her request so that they could move on to other things. However, in their minds, she wasn’t worthy of anything from Jesus, while they certainly were!

Jesus, fully understanding his class-conscious disciples, acted out their presuppositions to show them how they would play out – if this presupposition represented wisdom or not:

·        He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." (Matthew 15:24-26)

His disciples regarded the Gentiles as dogs and refused to even eat with them. I can hear His disciples cheering, “Yes!” These words represented the Jewish understanding of the day, not Jesus’ understanding. He had reminded the Jewish leadership at Nazareth that the God of Israel had often been particularly gracious to Gentiles:

   

·        I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian." (Luke 4:25-27)

There was nothing prohibiting Jesus from doing likewise, apart from Jewish censure. Interestingly, Jesus’ seeming denial of the woman’s request elicited a revelation of her surpassing wisdom and humility:

·        "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." (Matthew 15:27)

Jesus received the response that He knew He would get – a response that would contradict the class-ism of His arrogant disciples.

·        Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour. (Matthew 15:28)

Jesus used this as an object lesson to teach His disciples that their faith, wisdom, and humility couldn’t match that of this lowly Gentile woman. Jesus hadn’t at all changed His mind. Instead, this account serves as a revelation of Jesus’ profound wisdom, according to my lens.

Additionally, this interpretation accords with the rest of the Gospels’ portraits of Jesus and not with a confused Jesus who was struggling, like we do, to learn some of God’s lessons.

Our lens is everything. It constitutes such a coercive force that we are unable to merely lay it aside. In most cases, we are even unaware of its presence. No wonder Jesus taught His disciples one step at a time! And no wonder we must be born again with a new lens.

(I am now prevented by Facebook from posting my essays on other groups. If you will miss this, please register on this blog as a "follower.")