The cowardly sophistry of Richard Dawkins

I was reading an article about the most famous atheist in the world, Richard Dawkins, in the Times and realized there are significant differences between Christian missionaries and Dawkins. Dawkins muses that he would like to "convert" Muslims to evolution, odd language to begin with, but his proposed methodology is to have his books translated into Arabic so he can sell them. He "wishes" someone would do it and then complains that his books have been censored so no one has ever been able to read them in the Middle East. If they were able, he believes they would immediately see his point and come round to his way of thinking.

There are several things that separate Dawkins in this proposed missionary endeavor or actually desire, from Christians. The first is that Christians haven't simply waited and wished for someone to translate the Bible so that others can read it, they have actually gone about the work of either translating it themselves or paying for the work to be done. They haven't complained about censorship of the Bible or it being banned in these countries, they have risked their lives smuggling it. They haven't sought to make the Bible a bestseller, they have given them away for nothing.

Another distinction is that Dawkins gives only a second hand account about what may have happened to his Turkish publisher. He "may have been arrested." It seems that Dawkins hasn't actually gone to try and convert anyone in person. Christians have risked their lives on their beliefs because they believe that it is eternally important to others that they take these risks in the belief God loves those other people. Dawkins rests easy, hires a publisher, stays home, gives lectures to fawning audiences, attempts to sell books and bemoans the failure of the enterprise.

The only risk Dawkins takes is that Christians will disapprove of his work and disagree with his writings. The price he pays for that risk is that his books sell well to those who agree with him and even more so because of the controversy. Christopher Hitchens, Dawkins fellow in arms against religion, characterizes Christianity and Islam as equally dangerous, but this article puts the lie to that false equivalency. Dawkins work isn't censored in the west, he is at no physical risk and he openly speaks his opinions. To do so in a Muslim country would require a greater level of courage of conviction. That courage takes a committed Christian, someone who truly believes that this life and the next are important, that other people truly matter, and that what they believe is worth dying for.

Parenting for/from relationship with the Father

I went to a funeral this past week and what I heard was something that always frightens me a little bit, the effect of parenting on children. I heard grown children reflecting on the shortcomings of their father and the lasting impact this had in their lives. I happen to know this father and understand the reality they were talking about but I also know my own shortcomings and imperfections. In my time in ministry I have counseled quite a few people whose lives and their walk with God are deeply affected by their relationship with their earthly fathers. I always wonder how my own failings as a father will keep my children from fully knowing God the Father.

The effects of sin in my life are such that I lash out in anger and withhold affection at times when I am upset with my children. I have a responsibility to raise my kids in a way that teaches right and wrong and so I know that sometimes that means we have difficulty with one another and yet other times my anger is for reasons other than that. One of my kids carelessly backed out of the driveway and in the process hit my car. He was certainly remorseful for what he had done but that wasn't good enough for me this time. I was tired and emotionally worn out and my reaction wasn't Godly to say the least.

It amazes me always to read in the Gospels when Jesus has gone through tough times and still has resources and reserves of compassion with which he continues to minister when the crowds come to Him. I believe that abiding is the secret to that and yet I allow other things to take away my focus on Him and communion is temporarily interrupted and then I am prone to sin against others. Abiding is work but the work has a gigantic pay off. Parenting requires more abiding than I ever realized.

Faith and fear

I had a friend whose biggest concern about heaven was that when she got there God would play a movie of all the horrible stuff she had done in her life and she would know the shame of it all. I told her two things, one was that if she had confessed and repented those things were forgiven and forgotten and the second thing was that God wouldn't be watching filth like that.

My greater fear was in the Gospel lesson for today, Mark 6.47-56, the disciples in the boat on the lake. Jesus comes walking to them on the water in the midst of a storm that has them scared out of their wits and now they don't know whether to be scared of the storm or what they take to be an apparition. In the end Jesus calms both the storm and the disciples. What we are also told is that they didn't understand because their hearts were hardened.

I am prepared to be embarrassed by looking back on those times in my life when I felt completely overwhelmed by life's difficulties and like Elijah decided I had had enough and was prepared to quit and it was fine with me if my life ended then. God sometimes allows us to be in the storm in order that He can come and prove Himself, hopefully strengthening our faith and trust so that the next time we will not react with the same fear. Somedays I wonder if I will ever get it right. As John Prine once wrote, "its a half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown."

Spiritual pandas

Because I have been teaching through John 6 the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about Jesus' statements that He is bread and water for life. As Christians we know the truth of those statements yet frequently we continue to live as though we were searching for sustenance elsewhere. Too often we are nothing more than spiritual pandas.

A panda is actually a carnivore and its digestive system is designed to eat a widely varied diet yet it more or less subsists on bamboo shoots, which have all the nutritional content of cardboard. The failure of bamboo to adequately provide for the nutritional needs of the panda requires it to consume great quantities of bamboo in order to provide what it needs for fuel. That need requires the panda to spend nearly all its waking hours finding and consuming bamboo which causes the animals to be ever more lethargic, conserving what little energy they derive from their food in order to find more of it.

A panda was made for more yet it has settled for less. Too often we live as Christians as spiritual pandas who relentlessly consume either spiritual junk food or no spiritual food at all in a fruitless search to fill our time and our souls with something. We are meant to feast on the richest fare and yet we fail to live into the new creation we are in Christ Jesus simply because we fail to take advantage of our new nature.

Hungry and thirsty?

Do we as Christians hunger and thirst after righteousness or do we satisfy our hunger and thirst in pretty much the same way the rest of the world does? More often than not it seems, we satisfy our hunger and thirst with that which is not bread and water. Oddly, that is the road to gluttony because those other things fail to satisfy the hunger and thirst and we simply need more and more.

I know that I am guilty of this very thing and I sense in myself the need to get away and spend time alone in what the Gospels refer to as a desolate place with the Lord. I can attempt to satisfy the thirst with people or books or other activities or things and what I really need is time alone in the Word and with the Word.

Summer is particularly difficult because we have so many other things going in our life and it seems that I lurch from one thing to another and all of them are good things (well, most of them), but they leave me with less and less time to spend just feasting on the Lord. When I examine the way I spend my time I realize that I am spending time and money on what the Lord says through Isaiah " that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

I thirst

I have been teaching through the book of John and last week was teaching particularly on chapter 6. It is an incredibly confrontational scene where Jesus makes extraordinary claims and eventually many who were following him turned back after hearing him on this occasion.

One of the things He says is that anyone who believes in Him will not thirst. All through the Bible we have images of hungering and thirsting that have to do with seeking God and His kingdom. We see it in the Psalms, in the prophetic writings (see Isaiah 55 for example), and in the teachings of Jesus. He has said something similar to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and she has proven the depth of her thirst by staying with Him in his metaphor, even after He has pointed out her relationship problems. The promise here is that the thirst we have for spiritual sustenance will be met in the presence of the Holy Spirit and the promise that Jesus will be with us always even to the end of the age (Matt 28).

At the cross, Jesus says, "I thirst." Does that have a double meaning beyond the obvious one that the soldiers attempt to meet? Does it also tell us something of the separation He experienced?

Long Time

It has been a long time since I have posted. Lots of stuff keeping me busy but I am going to try and keep this updated a few days a week.

I talked to a young woman named Holly yesterday who told me an incredible story and I want to share it with you. You will hear it again but I felt it was important to share with you now.

Ten years ago Holly was married and living in Atlanta. She and her husband had a trained German shepherd police dog and one day she was walking the dog along the Chattahoochee River when the dog saw something off the trail towards the river and decided to chase after it. Holly had the leash in her hand and also wrapped around her wrist. The area where they were had a steep embankment leading down to a cliff and a 30 foot drop down to the river. As the dog ran down the embankment she ran along behind it, pulled by the leash. The dog took a sudden turn to the right but her momentum carried her directly down the hill, causing both her and the dog to lose their balance and slide down the hill towards the cliff’s edge. Miraculously, there was a tree between her and the dog and the leash caught on the tree and she and the dog went over the edge of the cliff and were no hanging by the leash off the cliff.

Holly began to scream for help and the dog, hanging by its neck, began scrambling for a foothold. It was able to get its front paws on the ground atop the cliff when Holly realized that if the dog were able to pull itself onto the ground and safety, Holly’s weight would then pull the dog around the tree and they would both fall the 30 feet to the river. Holly gave the command to the dog to be still and the dog immediately obeyed the command. They hung there together, Holly by her hold on the leash, the dog by its neck, for 30 minutes until someone heard and responded to her cries for help and rescued them. Holly has rotator cuff problems to this day and the dog broke two vertebrae in its neck that were surgically repaired.

The dog was trained to obey the command of the master, the dog’s experience of its master was that the master loved the dog and therefore was to be trusted always. On this day, the dog trusted the command of its master in a life and death situation and obeyed at the cost of even trying to save its own life. Do we know and love the Lord who died for us in obedience to the Father's command enough to trust Him this completely? It makes me think back to Genesis and how everything was perfect until one of the created things decided to not act in obedience to the Lord's command. Until that moment in Genesis 3 the Lord spoke and it was so. Sometimes I think that giving us reasoning ability wasn't that great an idea.