Series: The Reason for God Title: Christianity is a Straitjacket

Transcription

1 1: Series: The Reason for God Title: Christianity is a Straitjacket I. INTRO Quid Est Veritas (What is Truth?) II. Christianity is a Straitjacket a. Christianity looks like the enemy of social cohesion, cultural adaptability and authentic personhood. What does Christianity say about truth? Do you have to stop thinking and being creative to bow to dogmas? Why are there so many rules and why can you tell others what to do? III. GET BEHIND THE QUESTION What culture thinks of Christianity Freedom is the ability to do what you want when you want how you want and Christianity takes that away a. Cultural Presuppositions: To be really free means to be selfdetermined, to think for yourself and make your own morality. b. Christianity is Straitjacket Quote Christians don t have freedom to make their own moral and ethical decisions. They have to follow everything the Bible says and church dictates which makes sheep out people. It is weak, boring, and too constraining. WHAT IS FREEDOM? c. How free are we? How does this connect to pursuing Truth? d. Culture from pop to academic says there is no overall design and purpose to life, you must create it. Stephen J. Gould: We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because comets struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs, thereby giving mammals a chance We may yearn for higher answers but none exists.

2 2: This explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating & exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively in the facts of nature. WE MUST CONSTRUCT THESE ANSWERS FOR OURSELVES SO IS TRUTH 1. out there to be discovered myself, 2. is it to be revealed by Someone, 3. is it to be found within me, 4. is it something I can t find because it doesn t exist so I Must MAKE IT FOR MYSELF 5. Is it dangerous? Confining? Or Liberating? IV. 4 THINGS to LOOK AT a. TRUTH IS UNAVOIDABLE b. COMMUNITY IS EXCLUSIVE c. CHRISTIANITY ISN T RIGID BUT CULTURALLY FLEXIBLE d. FREEDOM ISN T SO SIMPLE V. TRUTH IS UNAVOIDABLE a. Foucault & Nietzsche hermeneutics of suspicion (philosophical squinting). They believe that power struggles are at the center of history but no longer believe that these power struggles will end in an ideal classless society-marxism failed in the Gulag. b. Every truth claim is a power play. c. Everyone is making truth claims and power plays they are unavoidable the real questions is which truth claims set you free? d. Detached Truth The popular concept that we should each determine our own morality and truth is based on the belief that the spiritual world is nothing at all like the rest of the world that truth will conform to me once I declare a belief. In the words of the poem last week: We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him. Reality will adapt accordingly. The universe will readjust. (does this really work?) e. The real test are all of my truths cohesive and connected? "THE new rebel is a Skeptic, And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of

3 some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a police man for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls the flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to the political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were animals; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves they people are animals.. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore, the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything." ~G.K. Chesterton: 'Orthodoxy.' 3: VI. ALL COMMUNITY IS EXCLUSIVE a. Christianity requires particular beliefs in order to be a member of its community. It is not open to all. Critics say this is socially divisive. Communities should instead be completely inclusive based on our common humanity. b. Critics point to neighborhoods with people of different races and religions that live in harmony and say see liberal democracy does not require common moral beliefs and truth claims. c. But liberal democracy IS based on a set of truth claims that are necessary for everyone to buy into in order to function i. Preference of individual to community rights ii. Division between private and public morality iii. Sanctity of personal choice iv. Religious freedom & freedom of speech These are foreign to many other cultures v. The idea of totally inclusive community is an illusion. EVERY HUMAN COMMUNITY HOLDS SOME COMMON BELIEFS THAT NECESSARILY CREATE BOUNDARIES including some people and excluding others.

4 vi. We cannot consider a group exclusive simply because it has standards for its members. How do we judge then if a certain community is abusive, narrow, and oppressive? By asking: Which community has beliefs that lead its members to treat persons in othercommunities with love and respect to serve them and meet their needs no matterwhat they believe. 4: VII. CHRISTIANITY ISN T CULTURALLY RIGID a. The center and majority of the Islamic world is still where it has had a demographic center. Same for Hinduism and Buddhism. (though of course there has been expansion in missionary and imperial endeavors). b. Christianity though started with Jews, spread to Hellenist Gentiles in the Mediterranean (and not by military conquest) and then the center moved to Western and Eastern Europe and then North America. c. Today most Christians live in the southern and eastern hemispheres Africa, Latin America, and Asia we are seeing an explosion of scholarship coming out of South Korea which is also the 2 nd largest missionary-sending country. d. In China this growth is explosive and if projections are correct that soon it will be 30% of the country, this will dramatically change the demographic of Christianity. Why? e. Christianity has completed and resolved cultures not replaced them with European-ness. Africans for example read in the Bible of Jesus power of supernatural and spiritual evil and find the answer they ve been looking for. f. EX. Acts 15 Gentile believers working out culture and faith g. REV 7:9 - every tongue, tribe, people, nation also Isaiah 60 and Revelation depict a renewed perfect future world in which we retain out cultural differences it reads we re not all the same even in Heaven even as we re completely conformed to Christ. VIII. FREEDOM ISN T SO SIMPLE

5 a. Christianity supposedly limits personal growth and potential because it constrains our freedom to choose our own beliefs and practices. b. Freedom to determine our own moral standards our own truths is considered a necessity for being fully human. c. This defines freedom only in negatives the absence of restraints. But is that true freedom? 5: d. CONSTRAINTS LEAD TO FLOURISHING Love is the most freeing experience to be in love, to be completely loved yet it involved the most loss of freedom, of even your you-ness. We only become ourselves in love and yet healthy love relationships involve mutual, unselfish service, a mutual loss of independence. Freedom is not the absence of limitations, and constraints but finding the right ones those that fit our nature and liberate us like the fish in water. e. SIN is anti-freedom SIN restricts freedom it binds, enslaves because it is not merely bad but counter to your very nature design, purpose, destiny, origin and true flourishing. f. YOU WERE DESIGNED TO BE FREE IN CHRIST i. Genesis freeing Adam and Eve from sin ii. Moses and Israel freed from Egypt so they could be free to worship, to be with God, that is definition of freedom to be who you were created to be. iii. Jesus came to set us free from sin. iv. God adapts to you 2 way street God has all the divine power but you aren t the only one conforming as it is in some other views. v. In the most radical way God adjusted to us! in the incarnation and atonement. In Christ Jesus God became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering, and rejection, humiliation, abuse and death to die in our place to forgive us. God came down and said, I will adjust to you-i will serve you though it means a sacrifice to me.

6 vi. 2 Corinthians 5:14 the Love of Christ constrains us it makes me want to do what He did, be constrained for flourishing, true freedom. vii. Pleasing God, obeying His rules, it is never easy in the sense that there is no cost grace and life with God are not cheap but for a Christian, once we know how Jesus changed for us, gave all of Himself for us, we are constrained by that love, rooted in that love to do the same giving up my freedom to find true freedom in Him. 6: