The Problems of Christian Witness

The Problems of Christian Witness

I have a membership to the local YMCA, though I don't take advantage of it as often as I should.  In the cardio room, there are two of the machine that I tend to prefer, one of them I choose if it happens to be open.  There are times when it is in use by a particular man, whom I do not know in any way other than in this capacity, who clearly shares my preference for that machine over the other (though I don't mind using the other one).  The way the machines are angled in the room, the preferred machine is in "front" which means, when I am on the other machine, whoever is using the first machine is clearly visible to me.
Now, this man who I have referred to has something about him that sets him apart as unique among the people I see during my workouts.  He seems to always have a Bible with him, open, on his machine.  Presumably, he does this so that, while he is working out, he can read from it.  It is a good way to redeem the time when you would otherwise be doing nothing.  Speaking personally, I tend to prefer to listen to books (even the Bible) on my iPod, but more power to him, right?
And yet, there is something odd about the situation.  He tends to do longer workouts than I do, so there may be times when this is not the case, but I have noticed the last several times that he never once turns a page.  That means, as is often the case, he has his Bible open to a page when I come in and then I complete my workout (over a half an hour later) and, at the end of my workout, as I leave, he is still on the same page.  Also, the Bible is absolutely immaculate.  The pages are unruffled and perfect, the cover is pristine, and there is nary a mark on a page from a pen or a highlighter.
I have been absolutely baffled by this.  Why would someone bring a Bible, place it on their machine, clearly in their line of sight, and then not read it?  Perhaps I am being too hard on him.  Maybe he does not read well and it takes him well over a half hour to read two pages (one on the left-hand side and one on the right).  However, I have met people who are particularly bad at reading (by their own admission) and, if they were in a situation like this, would simply never bring a book in the first place, rather than try to multitask.
So what is the story?  I do not know and so I am in no position to judge, but I have spent a fair amount of time reflecting on what my actions may communicate to an outside observer, so here are some thoughts, regardless of whether they are right, wrong or indifferent.
It might be that this man sincerely wants to spend his workout time reading his Bible.  Surely this is not a bad goal.  However, how many times does one need to take their Bible with the intention to read it and not doing so before they change their mind about it being a good plan?
How about this?  Not everyone in the world, when they are reading a book in public, reads the Bible and many who do are not particularly open about it.  I have seen people who have Bibles on their tables in coffee shops or places like Panera who carefully place their Bible under other books.  Perhaps this man is using his time at the Y to be a kind of witness, where he boldly and unashamedly places his Bible in public view, declaring to all, "I am a Christian, I care about God's word!"
I do not know this man at all.  I do not know his name, I do not know his church, I know nothing about him other than he likes the same machine at the Y as I do.  I cannot judge his heart, but this is what I infer from his behavior.  I own it may be unjust, but it is a reminder to me about how little things speak loudly, whether we want them to or not.
Here are my conclusion based nothing but observation.  I could probably get more information by talking to him and, if he were a member of my church I would do so.   However, the point is that most people do not do the courtesy to investigate beyond appearances.  Here is a man who cares more about appearing to be Christian than being Christian.  He wants people to think that he is committed to studying the scripture, so committed that he can't even break away from it for an hour or so in order to do his workout.  However, the context stands against this intended appearance.  His Bible is not worn (and is not brand new, as it has been the same Bible for months), which means that it does not accompany him throughout his life.  Even a Bible that leaves home only weekly Bible studies shows signs of wear fairly quickly, much more a Bible that is handled daily.
He wears headphones while he works out and reads.  This, again, is not conclusive, since I would find it easier to read if I were listening to (instrumental) music than just listening to the sounds of the machines (or the TVs when people do not adhere to the requirement to keep the sound off).  However, the strongest evidence is that, in spite of the fact that the Bible is on his machine where it is right in front of his eyes; in spite of the fact that he has to look under it to see the machine's feedback, his eyes seldom land on the pages.  They are glued to the television.  In spite of any intention or even any real priority in his heart, his behavior communicates to me that football, basketball and Fox News are more important to this man.
The irony is that, if he never brought the Bible out, I would have had absolutely none of these thoughts.  If someone simply comes in and works out and watches TV with headphones on, I would not give it a second thought.  It is because he goes out of his way to place his ostentatious Bible on display (even drawing attention to it by thumping it down on his gym bag when he is finished with his workout), because he is making it clear to all in the room that he is a Christian (the Bible is invariably opened to the New Testament) that I pay attention to him.
It raises the question of our witness as Christians.  I am reminded of a gas station where one could nearly always find a Chick tract in the men's bathroom.  No name, no church information, just a tract that can, in all honesty, come across as quite heavy handed.  Do we conceive our witness as nothing more than making an appearance, as nothing more than showing off?  Does Paul mean nothing more when he says, "I am not ashamed of the gospel" than "I am willing to be seen in public with my Bible?"
Like the well-meaning person who puts a Jesus fish on their car but then forgets about it when they cut people off or are otherwise discourteous; like the student who wears his Christian themed T-shirt to school and then bullies others; like, the public figure who claims to take a stand for God and then finds themselves guilty of what they crusade against, our attempts to witness in these ways often do more harm than good.
What is a real Christian witness?  A life of service, of going out of our way to treat others as human beings rather than as mere objects, a life of listening more than speaking, and a life lived, trusting that our deeds of Christian love to the least of these will not go unnoticed by the One who matters.  If we are careless or we focus more on being seen and recognized for our faith than living it, we are no better off than the one who proclaimed loudly in the streets of Philippi, "These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation."

The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

        In 1988, a book by Alasdair MacIntyre was published under the title, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  Without attempting to summarize the argument of its 400 pages, suffice it to say that MacIntyre demonstrates admirably that Justice (and, by extension, morality) is a word or concept that means different things to different cultures and times.  He traces, as a paradigm case, the change from what people meant by "justice" and "rationality" (two ideas MacIntyre claims are always deeply intertwined) from presocratic Greek thought, through Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, through the Middle Ages to Hume and his heirs.  The change, even within Western history, striking.

         Some would argue that this means that there is no such thing as "absolute" justice, morality, rationality and the rest.  The argument being, if so many different cultures disagree on what these terms mean, how can we possibly say that one of them is right and the rest of them are wrong?  This is amplified when we consider that we have a tendency to assume that the rationality, etc. that we are immersed (or grew up) in is "right."  In such a case, how can a claim to be committed to an "absolute" truth of any kind be anything other than a new form of imperialism, where we go into new cultures and, under the guise of spreading "rationality" or "truth," in fact end up spreading nothing more than our own forms of thought and life?

        I am not entirely convinced that arguments like MacIntyre's (and also, in their own way, of Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others within the philosophy and history of science) lead us to conclude that there is and can be no such thing as absolute truth.  Rather, it means that, if there is such a thing as absolute truth, which is not just a characteristic of Christian faith but also is true of philosophical systems like Plato's (as well, incidentally, of Eastern philosophies which do not so much emphasize what is, but what is not which, ultimately, presuppose their own metaphysical convictions), we do not have access to it in any way that somehow manages to bypass a particular language and conceptual framework.

        There has been a longstanding strategy in modern Christian apologetics which gets an awful lot of mileage out of the idea (which, in my opinion, is suspect if not entirely false) that, because all human beings are created in the image of God, we all share a kind of common moral awareness.  By building on that, along with other related claims to commonality, apologists often try to reason that the "whence" of that moral awareness is God, and therefore, since everyone already believes in moral standards, everyone already believes in God.  It should be noted that, while many contemporary apologists for Christian faith would identify as being theologically (if not politically) conservative, this idea has far more in common with the theology of Schleiermacher, the father of Liberal theology, than the example of Paul the apostle and the other Biblical authors.  It should also be noted that, even if this line of reasoning were valid, it would not be a victory for Christian faith but for classical theism.  Any train of thought that simply does not take the actual life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ is not a distinctly "Christian" argument.

        What is interesting is that, in addition to the fact that this line of argument is not good theology, nor is it good apologetics, it is also fundamentally flawed from a philosophical and sociological point of view.  The irony of this is that anyone who is involved in missionary work can see the flaws.  It does not matter into what culture you enter, there are interesting differences as to what is "just" or "moral" that belie any real confidence in the standard apologetic argument from morality.  The best one could say is that, because every culture has moral standards (though they are often very different from one another), the source of the existence of standards in general (not the standards themselves) is God.  If this line of reasoning is sound, it is no more helpful than the other.  There have been several missionaries in the last twenty years or so who have shared how their experiences in other cultures have called into question their conviction that their own culture was the standard by which to judge the values of others, but this has challenged them to reflect all the more deeply about the nature of justice, morality and truth, rather than abandon them.

        All of this is to say that this line of reasoning (that truth and faith are bound up with moral standards) has become so deeply engrained into our culture that both the theological (and political) left and right believe it.  In fact, it has become something of a basic axiom which people have turned into a means to critique Christian faith from a new angle.  The argument goes something like this.  You are correct that I have a deep moral sense.  It is part of my very identity and I believe it, even when other things seem uncertain.  When I take this moral sense and I read parts of the Bible (or, as often as not, when I hear others tell me what is in the Bible), I find things there that violate my sense of right and wrong and so, therefore, I stand in judgment over what I find there.

        It is significant that, in many ways, this is nothing more than a contemporary, non-Christian (not to say atheistic) appropriation of the apologetical argument from morality.  While Christian apologists attempted to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is true," these new non-Christian apologists are attempting to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is ridiculous, as well as the Bible in which we read about it."  It is deeply ironic that this way or arguing has demonstrated that the apologists have actually won, even if their victory doesn't look like they wanted.  They have finally convinced the American people of their major premise, that our moral sense ought to be judge of everything else.  The only problem is that people took that major premise and concluded, not that they were immoral, but that the gospel is immoral.  If we combine this with a decreased sense of the majesty of the Christian tradition (which may or may not be too bad a thing), we find that people are unwilling to give the gospel the benefit of the doubt and, when their first encounter is bad, simply dismiss the rest.

        The problem with this is that, in the attempt to reveal Christians as naïve and non-Christians as enlightened, the secular world has joined large portions of the church in their naïveté by becoming every bit as imperialistic and paternalistic as the views they condemn.  We don't say that sex-slavery is wrong because it violates our own, culturally conditioned notion of how we ought to treat other people; it is wrong because it violates universal human rights.  In many ways, this is a more arrogant position than a Christian position that says that, because sex-slavery is clearly against what God would will, as revealed in Christ, it is against God and therefore is wrong, which at least recognizes that we need to be informed by God what really is right and wrong and that we cannot trust our feelings to always be right on the topic of morality, because it presupposes that there is something about humanity that should make it clear what is right and wrong and that people who do otherwise are not just in communities that have not yet been shaped by the gospel but are fundamentally evil and must be restrained from maintaining their tradition.

        If we cannot understand that other people have different points of view from ourselves and that we will need to translate and, at a more basic level, learn to listen, we will never rise above name-calling.  Baptizing our own point of view and using it as the standard by which to judge others does not become magically noble when separated from Christian faith.  Secular culture is every bit as biased and full of agenda as religious culture.  What we must do is learn how to work together and acknowledge the fact that, if indeed there is such a thing as absolute truth (which, as a Christian, I believe in wholeheartedly) it very well may stand in every bit as much judgment over me as it does over you.