A while back the issue of predestination crossed my deep thought process. It was not I who thought of predestination, I must admit, but rather a friend of mine who mentioned the concept. But his mentioning got me thinking about how absorbed we human Christians get with this idea that is never explicitly mentioned in the Bible. What ended up happening in my thought process was that I connected predestination with evangelism, as is sometimes brought up.
I do recall that in high school the Brotherhood (the tight group of 5 young men I was friends with) discussed predestination once. The suggestion was brought up by Joel that if predestination is Truth, if God has destined some to be saved no matter what, "Then what is the point of mission work; preaching the gospel; in summary -- Evangelism?" I recalled my friend's question to my mind when recently pondering predestination, and this, now, is how I would answer him.
For the purpose of this entry, predestination must be thought of as John Calvin wrote about it. The doctrine of predestination holds that some are selected by God to be saved and the rest are selected to be damned. How God makes his selections is another topic. For the general purpose of this discussion, only the major concept above need be assumed.
Whether or not predestination is Truth is not my question here. My real concern is the motivation for evangelism, as pressed upon by Joel. If predestination is true -- if God selects some to be saved no matter what -- then Joel has a fine point: Why evangelize? Whether by general revelation through Creation or specific revelation thru the scriptures, those destined for salvation will be saved. Therefore it seems unnecessary to spend money on mission work. Yea, it even seems a waste. The church could instead turn to its local community and get people off the street. **Not a bad idea, by the way.** Yet, I have two problems with such a mentality as this.
The first issue is that of the Great Commission commanded by Jesus to his immediate and dare I say) eventual disciples before his departure from this world. Here Jesus commands us to preach the gospel unto the ends of the earth. That right there is enough to continue mission work and evangelism. But since predestination is a construction by man and not God (remember, it is not explicitly biblical), I must approach the subject from a more rational and less faith-based approach.
If predestination is a true doctrine, if there is any reality to it, then yes, rationally evangelism for the sake of salvation seems purposeless. But evangelism for the sake of the gospel, on the other hand, is full of purpose and (I hope) appeal. The gospel message is so wonderful, so radical, so life-changing, that it must be shared. In the book of John, Jesus tells the apostles that he came so that their joy may be complete. That is how I see evangelism, regardless of predestination. The story of Jesus is too good to keep to ourselves. Yes, if God has predestined some for salvation, they will be saved. I trust that God will see to it no matter what I do. But when I think about what the Father and the Son accomplished in and thru the Spirit, it overwhelms me. To quote David, "My cup overfloweth;" my cup, of course, being my own spirit being overfilled with joy. I can't keep this to myself. I have to share it in order that my joy may be made complete.
Personally, I do not hold to the doctrine of predestination because it makes things complicated. To many questions arise from the word itself. Also, it is not biblically sound. The Great Commission is explicitly biblically sound. It is right there. Words from the Living Word. I would rather "cover all my bases" by following the Great Commission and make my joy complete than take the off chance that my neighbor will be saved even if I do not tell her my personal joy that I have in the story of the Trinity.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Sunday, January 08, 2006
An economic discrepancy
I must preface this entry with an apology: this is merely one small matter of economical importance. There is more to this issue than what I bring up here. This is simply something that has been on my mind for a while.
I support the military, I do. My best friend from childhood is serving in the Army, and I personally can't get enough of the marvelous flying machines that the Air Force flies. I do not support war unless it is on defensive terms or for a righteous purpose (such as ousting Hitler because he was a megalomaniac who killed at will and was attempting extermination of a group of people). And if anyone cares to pay attention to President George W. Bush (which seems to be a declining number every day), one cannot help but notice that he, too, supports the military. I, however, am not in the same boat as President Bush in how much he supports the military.
The president in 2005, with the approval and support of Congress, gave $401.7 billion to the Defense Department. This was for general upkeep alone. Funding for the war came from elsewhere. That is a lot of money. This is a figure I cannot imagine (and for those who know me, you know I have a pretty good imagination). Now, I'm not necessarily demanding that spending be decreased by a lot (let's say $100 billion) because I think our current diplomatic relations require good defense upkeep. My theory behind that is another story, which maybe I will write sometime. What I would like to bring to attention here is the messed up priorities of the current administration.
In comparison to Defense spending, the president (again with the support and approval of Congress) alotted only $66.8 billion to be spend on Healthcare in 2005. It was not that long ago, if memory serves me correctly, that America was freaking out about Social Security becoming depleted. With the Baby Boomers rapidly approaching retirement, healthcare does concern me. I will begin my life career in about a year and a half, and my taxes will be used to care for those Boomers.
Let me quickly toss one more number at you before coming to my ultimate point. The total spending proposed by Bush for the 2005 budget totalled $2.4 trillion for the United States. This means that Defense spending was roughly 16.7% of America's spending versus Healthcare spending which was only roughly 2.8% of America's spending.
What I wish to bring to our attention is the complete distortion of priorities in the United States. What I propose is that we need to turn to the homefront and be concerned with internal matters of the nation. Education has been turn upside-down by No Child Left Behind (probably another blog entry someday). Healthcare is relatively non-existent compared to other industrialized countries of the world, and where it is existent, drug prices are incredibly high. Instead of policing the world, we need to police ourselves. I think America has the potential to be the premiere nation of promise that it used to be. Lady Liberty used to welcome droves of immigrants to our shores who where searching for something that their homelands could not give them. Currently Canada has a better health plan and lower drug costs than America, yet we have the larger economy. This is just a small example of a discrepancy that needs to be remedied. The answer, I know, is not easy or simple by any means. As I said in my opening apology, there is more to this matter than what little I point out.
America needs to redefine itself. We can still be the greatest, most powerful, and most promising land in the world. But if we do not re-evaluate our priorities quickly, that power will be harder and harder to come by.
I support the military, I do. My best friend from childhood is serving in the Army, and I personally can't get enough of the marvelous flying machines that the Air Force flies. I do not support war unless it is on defensive terms or for a righteous purpose (such as ousting Hitler because he was a megalomaniac who killed at will and was attempting extermination of a group of people). And if anyone cares to pay attention to President George W. Bush (which seems to be a declining number every day), one cannot help but notice that he, too, supports the military. I, however, am not in the same boat as President Bush in how much he supports the military.
The president in 2005, with the approval and support of Congress, gave $401.7 billion to the Defense Department. This was for general upkeep alone. Funding for the war came from elsewhere. That is a lot of money. This is a figure I cannot imagine (and for those who know me, you know I have a pretty good imagination). Now, I'm not necessarily demanding that spending be decreased by a lot (let's say $100 billion) because I think our current diplomatic relations require good defense upkeep. My theory behind that is another story, which maybe I will write sometime. What I would like to bring to attention here is the messed up priorities of the current administration.
In comparison to Defense spending, the president (again with the support and approval of Congress) alotted only $66.8 billion to be spend on Healthcare in 2005. It was not that long ago, if memory serves me correctly, that America was freaking out about Social Security becoming depleted. With the Baby Boomers rapidly approaching retirement, healthcare does concern me. I will begin my life career in about a year and a half, and my taxes will be used to care for those Boomers.
Let me quickly toss one more number at you before coming to my ultimate point. The total spending proposed by Bush for the 2005 budget totalled $2.4 trillion for the United States. This means that Defense spending was roughly 16.7% of America's spending versus Healthcare spending which was only roughly 2.8% of America's spending.
What I wish to bring to our attention is the complete distortion of priorities in the United States. What I propose is that we need to turn to the homefront and be concerned with internal matters of the nation. Education has been turn upside-down by No Child Left Behind (probably another blog entry someday). Healthcare is relatively non-existent compared to other industrialized countries of the world, and where it is existent, drug prices are incredibly high. Instead of policing the world, we need to police ourselves. I think America has the potential to be the premiere nation of promise that it used to be. Lady Liberty used to welcome droves of immigrants to our shores who where searching for something that their homelands could not give them. Currently Canada has a better health plan and lower drug costs than America, yet we have the larger economy. This is just a small example of a discrepancy that needs to be remedied. The answer, I know, is not easy or simple by any means. As I said in my opening apology, there is more to this matter than what little I point out.
America needs to redefine itself. We can still be the greatest, most powerful, and most promising land in the world. But if we do not re-evaluate our priorities quickly, that power will be harder and harder to come by.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
The Split Brain vs. Natural Law
C.S. Lewis once wrote about natural law (well, to be honest, I think he wrote about it on several occasions). For Lewis, natural law was the internal moral system that humans deal with every day in every decision they make. Freud liked to discuss it in terms of the id battling with the super ego and being arbitrated by the ego. Natural law accounts for the consistency of national and international law: murder is wrong, taking what is not yours is wrong, cheating is wrong. Humans know this internally, though some manage to suppress it (for them we have jail). Lewis, of course, believed just like me that this natural law is a gift from God so that we may know how to govern ourselves. I would argue that this natural law is ingrained in our brains, the organ that performs the process of rationalizing.
I just read an article about rationalization in the brain, specifically in split-brained persons. For those not aware of what I write, split-brain persons have had the connections of their two brain hemispheres severed for medical reasons. These folks can still function in the world, they just happen to have slightly different functions. This particular article talk about how the right hemisphere can recognize an object or command and perform it, but not verbally name it because the language properties are in the left hemisphere. However, this article went further to say that when a command or object presented to the right hemisphere was acted out or physically identified, the left hemisphere verbally compensated for the phenomena it was seeing. For example, if the subject's right hemisphere was given the command "Eat," the subject would begin eating the food in front of him. When asked why he was eating, the subject would verbally reply "Because I'm hungry." The truth of that statement is not relevant. The fact is, the body is responding to a command that the left brain is not aware of. However, the left brain does observe the activity and comes up with a way of rationalizing it when presented with a stimulus in the form of a verbal question.
All that background to present my thesis. The author of this article, Michael S. Gazzaniga, uses this data collected by himself and several colleagues to say that in every persons brain the right hemisphere stores information that it may not share with the left hemisphere. Then some phenomena may happen and the left brain must rationalize it. An example Gazzaniga gives is this: say one morning you wake up depressed. You don't know why. Yesterday was your birthday. You had a great night with friends and family. You know you are loved and yet you are depressed. The right brain is communicating something to you. Your left brain rationalizes it: "Well, I am another year older. I'm not getting any younger. I haven't accomplished everything I wished I had by this age. That's why I'm down in the dumps. Yeah!" You experience something you can't explain, so you explain it anyway. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. Good, let's move on.
Gazzaniga further makes the claim that our brains are in constant confliction and change. Two things cause this. Our beliefs battle with our actions. When our actions fail our beliefs, says Gazzaniga, most often it is our beliefs that change to accomodate our actions. He gives a great example. Sam (no one in particular) firmly believes in the sanctity of marriage and monogamy. However, one night he and his friends are partying at the pub, Sam has a bit too much to drink, finds a pretty lady particularly attractive, and wakes up next to her the next morning. He knows something is wrong because his actions have betrayed his beliefs. Sam's next step is to rationalize that maybe marriage isn't so sanctimonious. Maybe monogamy isn't all it is cracked up to be. Gazzaniga claims that this happens because our brains "need to maintain consistency for all our behavior." I agree with this statement in part. If our brains did not maintain consistency of behavior, I firmly believe we would go clinically insane.
However, this statement and example provided conflicts with the gracious gift of God that is Natural Law. When Sam wakes up next to not-his-wife, he knows something is wrong. Yes, he rationlizes it. However, Gazzaniga does not address that big ape called guilt. I guarrantee that unless Sam has some mental deficiency that has managed to push guilt away (which is possible, mind you), he is feeling some major guilt. That guilt may drive him mad crazy. I have experienced this personally. We all have. When we do something wrong, we feel bad about it. Why? Not because our brain cannot fully rationalize the event, as if we were mentally definicient. NO! Because as human beings we are instilled with what is right and what is wrong, thanks to that forbidden fruit of the tree.
I do not deny the power of the rationlizing brain. But I would like to see psychologists in the line of thinking of Gazzaniga embrace the fact that humans feel guilt. Not everything can be explained away and rationlized into "nothing happened" or even "well, maybe I was wrong in my belief." However, this sort of thinking and embracing would acknowledge ultimate truth and deny relativity, which may go against Gazzaniga's beliefs.
I just read an article about rationalization in the brain, specifically in split-brained persons. For those not aware of what I write, split-brain persons have had the connections of their two brain hemispheres severed for medical reasons. These folks can still function in the world, they just happen to have slightly different functions. This particular article talk about how the right hemisphere can recognize an object or command and perform it, but not verbally name it because the language properties are in the left hemisphere. However, this article went further to say that when a command or object presented to the right hemisphere was acted out or physically identified, the left hemisphere verbally compensated for the phenomena it was seeing. For example, if the subject's right hemisphere was given the command "Eat," the subject would begin eating the food in front of him. When asked why he was eating, the subject would verbally reply "Because I'm hungry." The truth of that statement is not relevant. The fact is, the body is responding to a command that the left brain is not aware of. However, the left brain does observe the activity and comes up with a way of rationalizing it when presented with a stimulus in the form of a verbal question.
All that background to present my thesis. The author of this article, Michael S. Gazzaniga, uses this data collected by himself and several colleagues to say that in every persons brain the right hemisphere stores information that it may not share with the left hemisphere. Then some phenomena may happen and the left brain must rationalize it. An example Gazzaniga gives is this: say one morning you wake up depressed. You don't know why. Yesterday was your birthday. You had a great night with friends and family. You know you are loved and yet you are depressed. The right brain is communicating something to you. Your left brain rationalizes it: "Well, I am another year older. I'm not getting any younger. I haven't accomplished everything I wished I had by this age. That's why I'm down in the dumps. Yeah!" You experience something you can't explain, so you explain it anyway. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. Good, let's move on.
Gazzaniga further makes the claim that our brains are in constant confliction and change. Two things cause this. Our beliefs battle with our actions. When our actions fail our beliefs, says Gazzaniga, most often it is our beliefs that change to accomodate our actions. He gives a great example. Sam (no one in particular) firmly believes in the sanctity of marriage and monogamy. However, one night he and his friends are partying at the pub, Sam has a bit too much to drink, finds a pretty lady particularly attractive, and wakes up next to her the next morning. He knows something is wrong because his actions have betrayed his beliefs. Sam's next step is to rationalize that maybe marriage isn't so sanctimonious. Maybe monogamy isn't all it is cracked up to be. Gazzaniga claims that this happens because our brains "need to maintain consistency for all our behavior." I agree with this statement in part. If our brains did not maintain consistency of behavior, I firmly believe we would go clinically insane.
However, this statement and example provided conflicts with the gracious gift of God that is Natural Law. When Sam wakes up next to not-his-wife, he knows something is wrong. Yes, he rationlizes it. However, Gazzaniga does not address that big ape called guilt. I guarrantee that unless Sam has some mental deficiency that has managed to push guilt away (which is possible, mind you), he is feeling some major guilt. That guilt may drive him mad crazy. I have experienced this personally. We all have. When we do something wrong, we feel bad about it. Why? Not because our brain cannot fully rationalize the event, as if we were mentally definicient. NO! Because as human beings we are instilled with what is right and what is wrong, thanks to that forbidden fruit of the tree.
I do not deny the power of the rationlizing brain. But I would like to see psychologists in the line of thinking of Gazzaniga embrace the fact that humans feel guilt. Not everything can be explained away and rationlized into "nothing happened" or even "well, maybe I was wrong in my belief." However, this sort of thinking and embracing would acknowledge ultimate truth and deny relativity, which may go against Gazzaniga's beliefs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)