Today I conducted my final Sunday services under full-time appointment. The first was at Gideon UMC, the second at Greenbrier UMC, both in Greenbrier, Tennessee. After 23 years of full-time pastoring in the UMC, preceded by retiring as an artillery officer from the US Army, plus two years of employment in a BTB Information Technology compay, I will enter retired status for good this coming Wednesday. Here are some photos from this morning.
Serving Communion at Gideon. We used prepackaged, individual cups with the wafer and the wine (grape juice) wrapped together in one unit. I served with tongs so no one's hands ever touched the cups but the communicant's.
My final benediction at Gideon UMC.
When Cathy and I arrived at Greenbrier UMC, this sign awaited us near the front entrance.
Beginning my final service at Greenbrier UMC.
Consecrating the Communion elements.
My successor pastor, beginning there July 1, is the Rev. Jason Wilkerson, whom I have known since I moved to Robertson County three years ago. He is a very fine Christian gentleman and minister. I invited him and his family to attend today to introduce him to the congregation. I also asked him to assist in serving Communion.
Our Communion steward, the wonderful Donna Watkins, prepared Communion with the bread (the "chiclet" style) in trays of cups and the wine in other trays. She prepared these entirely in keeping with proper C19 protocols so that neither the bread, the liquid, nor the cups were ever touched by anyone but the recipients.
Rev. Wilkerson and I were both masked while serving and we donned new sterile nitrile gloves first. We removed each cup from the tray and handed it to the communicant so that no unprotected hands ever touched anything but their own serving.
In the photo above, I am serving Rev. Wilkerson at the end, just after he served me. This was one part of our ritual of me passing the pastoral care of the congregation to him - leaving him with the place of honor in the Methodist tradition: last. Hopefully, this helped the people understand that there is an orderly, grace-filled and indeed sacramental continuity of pastoral care of the people of God.
Then we proceeded with a litany of passing of the pastoral ministry from myself to Jason. We each led the congregation is responses and prayers for one another and the church itself.
Our closing hymn was, "Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore," number 344 in the UM Hymnal. This hymn was requested by a church member but coincidentally (or not!) it was also the thematic hymn of the service of Annual Conference in which I was ordained. So the hymn has always been deeply meaningful to both Cathy and me.
My final benediction to the people of Greenbrier UMC, which I basically ripped off from Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth, chapter 4. But I meant every word as if I had written them myself, although I could not have done so nearly as well as Paul did.
To the church of
God that is Greenbrier UMC, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called
to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
I give thanks to
God for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ
Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge
of every kind just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you.
He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day
of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the
fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
The church hosted a "walk-thru" reception for Cathy and me after the service. It would have been outside had weather permitted.
A wonderful lady of the church made this for me - Wake Forest was my undergrad school. I already had a Vandy bottle. I earned my M.Div. there.
That Cathy was also in ministry with me at the churches was a real fact and the people said so! This was given to her because everyone knows (I mean really knows!) that Cathy loves to cheer for Duke basketball.
This fine family of four are special to me for two reasons. One is that I baptized all four of them when they joined the church. The other is that he is also retired from the Army and is the only other person in the church who speaks the language of acronym as I do. So we could have whole conversations without anyone else understanding a word (except probably our wives)!
The church gave us this laser-etched crystal plaque as a gift. We are deeply moved by this thoughtfulness!
The people of Greenbrier UMC very kindly made this video for Cathy and me.
Cathy and I are thankful beyond description to all the people of Greenbrier and Gideon UMCs for the past three years. A finer and more wonderful group of people with whom to come to the finish line neither of us can imagine! What is next for us? Love God, love neighbor, and leave the rest up to the Lord.
May the love of God, the mercy of Jesus Christ our Lord, and the strengthening presence of the Holy Spirit be with us all, now and always. Amen.
And a reminder, if I may: While our church can practice social distancing, we cannot practice financial distancing! The missions, ministries, and financial obligations of the church continue!
Please mail your regular tithe or offering to the church!
Greenbrier UMC only - online and smartphone giving can also be done.
There is an old Army saying we would joke with one another in times of stress or danger, “When everyone around you is losing their heads, and you’ve kept yours – well, then, you simply do not understand the situation!”
Perhaps the most stressful word in our language today is “Coronavirus,” also called Covid-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019). It seems to have come out of China so suddenly, and so apparently lethally, that we can almost understand how the ancient Egyptians might have felt coping with the plagues because they would not let the children of Israel go.
Fear or faith? Or fear with faith?
There are many admonishments and teachings about fear in the Bible. Some examples:
•Isaiah 41:10 – Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
•2 Timothy 1:7 – For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
•Psalm 34:4 – I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
So, is fear a reasonable response by Christian people to the onset of this virus? Is fear of this virus something Christian people may experience while remaining faithful to God?
I say the answer to both questions is yes.
Fear is an emotional response to uncertainty or threat. And the virus is a threat, though to what degree is still uncertain. The cautions against fear in Scripture do not tell us never to experience such reactions. They do tell us not to be governed by fear but to be self-controlled and reliant on God to sustain us mentally and emotionally. “Perfect love,” says 1 John 4.18, “drives out fear.” That does not mean that because we love God and one another, we are magically immunized from the virus. It means that through love we will govern what we do far better than through fear. After all, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1.7).
But let me be clear about this, too: this virus has the real potential to be very serious in the United States. I will not repeat the estimates of possible infections that we have heard. They vary wildly and I have no credentials either to rebut or affirm them.
Instead, I want to say what I will do as your pastor regarding our life together, particularly when we gather for weekly worship.
We Gather Together - wait, can we still do that?
First, whether there is coronavirus or not, persons who are ill for any reason should stay home and tend to themselves. In the present day, though, being ill from any cause heightens vulnerability to the virus.
The virus attacks the elderly more harshly than the young and is more serious for anyone already dealing with other conditions, such as heart issues, diabetes, and medical (not physical) disorders. So, if such persons elect to suspend attending worship for awhile, I cannot argue with them.
That said, I hope everyone will understand that there is no special threat from going to church that is not found anywhere else. So, suspending church attendance for a time will do no good if one keeps a full schedule of activities the rest of the week!
At the church
Starting this Sunday, I will not shake hands with anyone at church (or, well, anywhere else). I will instead greet you with the centuries-old hand sign of Christian benediction, with the thumb and two fingers representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Second, I will try to minimize us handling hymnals and other objects in the sanctuary as much as we have done until now. This will likely cause abbreviated congregational singing for a time. We may simply sing hymns by request – at least the first verse or so! But weekly cleansing of hymnals is not practical.
This Saturday, I will personally go to both sanctuaries and sanitize pew backs, doorknobs, and other surfaces that are “common touch” by worshipers. I will not refuse volunteers to help for the long term!
We will stop passing the offering plates and instead place them at both ends of the sanctuary so you may leave your offering there when you enter or exit.
We will use online media such as YouTube and our Facebook page to worship "virtually," though simulcasting is probably not in the cards.
What about Communion?
We will continue to serve Communion exclusively with individual pieces of bread and separate cups, as is our usual practice. But no one will make physical contact with either the bread or the wine except you, when you consume them. Servers will use small tongs to place a Communion wafer in your hands and we will take similar precautions with the cups.
What can we all do now?
Pray.
Serve one another in love. Persons who are in the elevated risk by age or condition – please call me if you do not want to take the risk of going to the store for groceries or other essentials and I will go for you.
Take precautions to protect yourself.
Rely on God for strength not to be governed by fear.
Worship in Spirit and in truth.
Sorry, but this needs to be said, also
As I said, I will take no issue with persons not attending worship because of concerns over the virus. But there is no delicate way to put this: even if you stay home, your tithe or offering should not.
The missions, ministries, and financial obligations of the church are ongoing. You may mail your offerings to the church or use our online giving service at https://get.tithe.ly/, or just scan this QR Code on your smart phone:
I close with a note from my colleague and friend, the Rev. Jeremy Squires:
Jesus’ message is unique because of its excessive amount of concern for the vulnerable. At its best, the Church has championed the cause of the “least of these”, as Matthew 25 has it. Christians are rarely more incarnational than when they say: society may consider you expendable, but we won’t.
No matter what the future brings, God is already there. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ!
The story is told of Sean O'Flannery, a lad who moved to Boston from Dublin. Coming home from school one day he went into an ice cream shop and told the jerk behind the counter (the soda jerk) "One scoop of yer best chocolate ice cream in four dishes!"
Soda jerks get strange requests, so he set four dishes with one scoop each in front of Sean. Sean took a spoon of one, held it before his face and loudly announced, "This is me beloved cousin eating ice cream back in the old country!" He ate the ice cream and took a spoonful from another scoop, "This is me dear friend Kelly eating ice cream back in me homeland!" The third dish he said was his favorite uncle, Finian, eating ice cream back home.
Sean raised the last scoop and said, "And this dish is for me!"
This practice went on for several months until one evening as the soda jerk was filling the four dishes Sean stopped him and said quietly, "Only three dishes today, please."
The soda jerk asked, "Did you suffer a loss and that is why you only want three scoops?"
"Heaven's no!" protested Sean O'Flannery. "It's Lent now, and I've given up ice cream!"
The word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, “lencten,” meaning Spring, the season in which Easter occurs. The forty days before Easter constitute the Lenten season, but the forty-day count does not include Sundays. All Sundays celebrate the resurrection, and so are excluded from the forty days count. The forty days duration is drawn from the length of time Jesus spent in prayer and fasting in the wilderness before he set out on his three-year ministry.
Matthew 4.1-4:
1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
As originally conceived by the church long ago, the Lenten sacrifice was instituted as a “means of penitential preparation and preparation for baptism, which in the early church customarily took place on Easter Sunday.”
The tradition of fasting during Lent is an early one, originally done between Good Friday and Easter morning, the forty hours that Jesus was in the tomb. Christians would partake of no food or drink at all during that time. The fast was extended to the forty days before Easter sometime between 300 and 325, and changed so that food could be eaten only when evening had come.
The idea behind the fast was to imitate Christ. In addition to fasting, Christians would devote themselves to making prayer a faithful habit. So “prayer and fasting” have been closely linked for a long time.
And that brings me, by a rather circuitous route, to chocolate.
Chocolate is an absolutely unessential food, nutritionally speaking. We eat chocolate for no reason other than it is pleasurable. Since denial of the flesh is a prominent theme of Lent, rejection of chocolate in Lent is often offered as the Lenten sacrifice, particularly by people who wish to diet anyway.
But the Lenten season is also a time we ponder and wonder about the love of God. God’s love knows no bounds or limits and was so strong that not even the prospect of cruel death could deter Jesus from his redemptive mission. While we deny the pleasures of life during Lent, Jesus denied his life itself for the sake of his love for us.
Perhaps that fact could put a different spin on our concepts of giving something up for Lent. The Lenten sacrifice is best oriented toward that which most blocks our spiritual growth. It is each to ask ourselves, “What is it that most keeps me from Christ-likeness?” If that thing is chocolate, then it is appropriate to give up chocolate for Lent. But if something else is your greatest obstacle in being more Christlike, then giving up chocolate is a spiritually pointless exercise.
The question is this: “What is the one thing that most hinders my Christian growth into the person whom God wants me to be?” The answer may not be easy, but it will always involve self-denial. We think that following Christ is hard because to obey Christ we must first disobey ourselves, and it is disobeying ourselves that makes us think following Christ is hard.
But Jesus said his yoke is easy, his burden is light. We just have to get over ourselves to do it.
As Robert Mulholland put it, “Jesus is not talking about giving up candy for Lent. He is calling for the abandonment of our entire, pervasive, deeply entrenched matrix of self-referenced being.”
If we focus on that between now and Easter Day, then we have a chance to become more mature in Christian faith and practice. It may be a habit that is out of true with Christian character that needs to be overcome for further growth. Or it may be a thing undone which must be done for deeper development to occur. The Lenten idea is for our habits to change enough in the next few weeks so that we can continue at a higher level of discipleship after Easter. The Lenten season and the Lenten sacrifice are not the points in and of themselves, the whole life of discipleship is.
Focusing on the one big thing is not the only Lenten discipline that would be helpful for spiritual development. Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, insisted that the only thing that distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian are how we use our time and money. So, for the period of Lent I would suggest focusing on those two things in addition to whatever one big spiritual obstacle you might have. Some suggestions:
Tithe all your income until Easter.
Devote yourself to prayer daily and attending worship every Sunday. If you are traveling, say on business or spring break, then worship wherever you are.
Read the Bible each day.
Call someone you love and let them know.
Ask people who live alone to join you for lunch or whether you can visit them.
Become involved in Christian ministries.
Re-establish or reinforce important relationships in your life.
Spiritually speaking, it is not enough to simply excise sin or personal vices from our lives. We have to replace vice with virtue. Thus, simply giving up something like chocolate for Lent is simply silly if we are only counting the days when we can start doing it again. That’s a game, not a spiritual discipline.
Lent should be a period of joyful, God-directed introspection into how we may be further united with Christ in godly love. If we make Lent into a severe, joyless, self-justifying exercise in self-denial, we have missed the point. Jesus sternly admonished teachers of the religious law and the Pharisees not to practice the letter of the law while neglecting “the more important matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt 23:23).
When a lawyer asked Jesus, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
That is the whole point of spiritual growth and spiritual discipline, and hence the whole point of Lent: love. We are to be living ambassadors from God to one another and the world at large in Christ’s name. Christ was crucified, buried and raised from the dead for our sake and the sake of the whole world. Let us rededicate ourselves to being Christ’s ambassadors. It’s Lent, after all; it’s all about love, you see, Lent is all about love.
I came across this post from 2017 by accident and am re-dating it to today. Today was the day that the US House of Representatives voted along strictly party lines to proceed with impeachment proceedings against the president. I make no comment here as to the merits or not of the proceedings. But as much as my colleague's words rang true two years ago, how much more compelling are they today. From July 2017:
From former district superintendent in the Memphis Conference of the United Methodist Church, Sky McCracken:
In my opinion, the most powerful force in Christianity - if it wants to be - is a local church who decides to be a community of faith and discipleship in the manner of Jesus for its neighborhood, instead of a chapel for members who like things "just the way they are." No law, no entity, no politician has any power against such a force. Regardless of the happenings, fear mongering, and media hype of the last few weeks, they pale against the total history of God's presence with His people - which has always been unrelenting and ever-pursuing. I'll quote Bill Hybels:
"For eight years...I went to Washington, D.C., every month to meet in the foremost centers of power with some of the highest elected officials in our country. What I discovered was not how powerful those people are, but how limited their power really is. All they can actually do is rearrange the yard markers on the playing field of life. They can't change a human heart. They can't heal a wounded soul. They can't turn hatred into love. They can't bring about repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace. They can't get to the core problem....I believe that only one power exists on this sorry planet that can do that. It's the power of the love of Jesus Christ, the love that conquers sin and wipes out shame and heals wounds and reconciles enemies and patches broken dreams and ultimately changes the world, one life at a time. And what grips my heart is the knowledge that the radical message of that transforming love has been given to the church. That means that in a very real way the future of the world rests in the hands of local congregations like yours and mine." - In his book, Courageous Leadership.
There is no political solution to the severe dysfunctions of America today because our national illness is not really political. It is spiritual. There will not be a better America until there are better Americans. That is the task for the Church today: to bring more and more people into the fullness of reconciliation to God through Christ so that we can be reconciled to one another. Absent that, our congregations are just religious clubs.
The National Study on Youth and Religion found a factor that is “nearly deterministic” in turning this around. Eight out of ten (82%) young adults ages 24-29 who were still participating in their faith after being active in high school, had one thing in common.
The secret? Their parents.
Youth leaders agree. “Parents are the critical discipler, period,” said Seth Martin, former Lead Student Pastor and now Lead Director of The Road at Faithbridge United Methodist Church in Spring, Texas. “Student ministries aren't (or shouldn't be, rather) the primary spiritual mentors of students, but should instead subsidize the discipleship already taking place in the home.”
Well, not so fast. Is this claim actually supported by Scripture?
Immediately
after the Day of Pentecost and its empowerment of the church by the Holy Spirit,
Peter and the other disciples began preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ in
Jerusalem. Acts records that "great numbers of both men and women"
were converted to faith in Christ by their preaching. As a result, the Jewish
high priest and some allies on the Jewish high council had the apostles
arrested and locked in prison.
But
during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them
out, and said, 20 'Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole
message about this life.' 21When they heard this, they entered the temple at
daybreak and went on with their teaching" (Acts 5:19-21).
When the
council discovered it, they had the Temple police bring Peter and the others to
stand before them.
Acts
5:27-32:
27 When they had brought them, they had them
stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We gave
you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem
with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.”
29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We
must obey God rather than any human authority. 30 The God of our ancestors
raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted
him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to
Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses to these things,
and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”
“We must
obey God,” the apostles said. I have to tell you, I am not impressed by those
words. God commands it! That was what Osama bin Laden declared before 9/11, when
he said that it is the duty of every Muslim to kill infidels wherever they are
found. Since then al Qaeda, ISIS, and other such groups have made grisly work
of what they insist is divine duty, most recently a week ago in Sri Lanka.
Now, it's
easy to point fingers at Muslim terrorists. In fact, it's required, but it
doesn't get us Christians off the hook. When I was a boy, I worked a couple of
summers in the now-gone Woodlawn Market in Nashville. The owner was the
staunchest racist I ever met in person. He was absolutely ironclad in his
belief that God's will was that black people be oppressed. He was convinced
beyond persuasion otherwise that black skin was the mark of Cain. Cain was the
first murderer in the Bible, whom God sent to exile with every hand against
him. Racism was to Pappy literally a holy duty.
I am
guessing that most of us can think of someone who was convinced he or she was obeying
God in things we thought were disturbing, even shocking. So I read Peter's
retort to the high priest as potentially troubling. "There's what you want
and there's what God wants," Peter is saying. "And we obey God, not
you."
That's
real in-your-face stuff, and following verses explain that the officials there
were so vexed at Peter's defiance they wanted to kill the apostles.
I am
going to take the high priest's side here, at least for a moment. I don't
defend his desire to have Peter killed. But the high priest and I have
something in common. We're both clergy of well-established religions. When
something upsets the apple cart of proper religious order, we get our hackles
up and immediately set about trying to bring it under our control.
Of
course, this makes us no different from business managers or most parents. But
what makes the issue especially nettlesome for clergy is that we formally
recognize that the Holy Spirit is supposed to be breaking in and
upsetting our apple cart. In fact, I often think that one on the main reasons
the Holy Spirit came to enliven the church on the Day of Pentecost was to stir
things up and keep believers on their toes.
Nonetheless,
there are some issues for all of us, the church assembled, to consider.
One is
that if it is unacceptable to excuse sin by saying like Flip Wilson's character
Geraldine, "The devil made me do it," then it is equally unacceptable
to use a claim of divine mandate as an excuse for doing what oneself wants to
do. Cathy and I knew a woman in Virginia who told us that she knew it was God's
will for her to win the lottery because she would give more than a tithe of the jackpot to the church. True story.
"God
requires it" has been used to justify everything from simple murder to
mass murder to tyranny and oppression. So the claim that one is acting from
divine authority deserves to be regarded with deep suspicion at least at first.
On the
other hand there is a real chance that someone really might be acting under
God's command, and therefore we must leave the possibility open.
So how
to tell?
I think a
crucial key is found in what Peter went on to say: “We are witnesses,” he said,
to what we testify. Which is to say, God did not reveal Christ to me privately,
but publicly, with others, all of whom attest to this truth.
This is
important because the unambiguous testimony of the apostles in the New
Testament is that Christian faith and practice are not solitary ventures.
Everywhere the apostles went they did two things, never separated from one
another: they brought people to confess faith in Christ as risen Lord and
organized the new believers into churches.
The
apostle Paul explained more than once that the body of Christ present in the
world today is the aggregation of Christ's present disciples organized as the
church. I have found no evidence in the New Testament that people can live Christian
lives apart from the church belonging to Jesus Christ.
More
than thirty years ago my pastor in North Carolina put it this way: "I
won't tell you that you can't be a good Christian outside the church. I'll tell
you that you can't be any kind of Christian outside the church."
That statement struck me as pretty stark at the time. We Americans are
stiff-necked individualists. We pretty much think that whatever we want to do
we should be able to do on our own, but that's not how the New Testament sees
it.
Anyone
can be religious outside the church, but Jesus did not minister, teach,
suffer, die and rise just to make us religious. Religions are a dime a dozen.
Founding another one sure didn't require God's incarnation, or Christ's
passion, death and resurrection. We are not called to be merely religious, but
to be transformed and made anew in Christ's likeness – to be a new people, a
new kind of community. So when we think God has some special demand for us, or
someone makes that claim to us, we need to discern whether its context is
related to the present body of Christ. Whom does the command serve, Christ or
self?
And that
leads to the second way to assess a claim that “God commands it.” It is the
famous lawyers’ question, “Who benefits?” The apostles gained nothing from
preaching Christ but severe tests of their character, their faithfulness,
perseverance, and fortitude. All were killed but one for insisting that they
had to obey God rather than human authority. They might have been killed the
day of this passage had not a wise rabbi spoken against it. So, who benefited?
By the standards of the world, none of the apostles did.
The
experiences of the apostles and other devoted Christians through the centuries is
that God play his cards pretty close to the vest. God’s commands often do not
make sense to us or do not appeal to us. God generally leads us only one step
at a time. So, I am leery of visionaries with grand plans, all filled in from
start to finish, because I don't see in the Bible where God explains that he
has
God did not give Moses a plan. He gave him a command.
a plan. He gives commands, such as telling Moses, "Go tell
Pharaoh to let my people go," and that was that. When the Lord spoke to
Paul on the Damascus road, he did not lay out Paul's apostolic mission to him,
culminating in being crucified in Rome. Christ simply told him, "Now get
up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do" (Acts
9:6). Even Peter, in today's passage, had no sense of grand mission. He didn't
tell the high priest, "God wants me to be the foremost of all his apostles
and become the first bishop of Rome, founder of what will become the worldwide
Roman Catholic Church." All he understood God wanted him to do was preach
the Gospel. He started out a street-corner preacher and there is no evidence
that on his own account that he thought God wanted him to be anything else.
God's
commands are pretty simple, at least at first. Sometimes they may not make a
lot of sense and leave one wanting to ask him, Why? But enlightenment is not
the point; we leave that to the eastern mystics. Obeying God is the point.
Speaking
of obedience, there are some basic commandments of Christ that are obligatory
of all Christian people and churches wherever found. These commandments are not
mysterious; they are clearly stated in the Scriptures: pray, give, love,
forgive, help, worship. Bear one another's burdens, esteem others more highly
than oneself. Love God, love neighbor. Be baptized. Consider our lives lost to
the world and gained in Christ. Use all that we have to the glory of God and
the building up of the kingdom of Heaven. These are the foundational commands
God give us.
The
story is told of a star college football player named Eddie. Almost every week
the school paper had a photograph of Eddie leaping across the goal line for a
touchdown or jumping high into the air catching an impossible pass. Oh, Eddie
was good! The cheerleaders loved him. Eddie loved them back. One day,
Eddie went to the coach and said, “Coach I’m not coming to practice anymore.”
The coach said, “Eddie, are you quitting?” Eddie replied, “Oh, no, I’m not
quitting. I’ll still dress for the games on Saturdays. But you know Mondays?
Mondays you make us to do wind sprints. And Tuesdays is grass drills and
strength training. Wednesdays is full contact practice. Thursdays is special
team drills. I don’t like all that. I’m not going to do any of that anymore.
But come game time, Coach, you can count on me. I’ll catch those passes, I’ll
make those touchdowns, I’ll get my picture in the paper. And after the game
I’ll go out with the prettiest cheerleader. I like all that! But man, I’m not
going to suffer through your practices anymore.”
Now ask
yourself whether come Saturday the coach sent Eddie into the game.
So,
another test of discerning whether we are given a particular command
from God is to ponder whether we have been faithful in carrying out God's general
commands. If God cannot trust me do the basics, why would he command me to
accomplish the special?
Jesus said,
"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much,
and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with
much" (Luke 16:10).
But
suppose you work through all those things and conclude that God indeed is
giving you a special command or laying upon you a special obligation. What
then? Then Peter's courage is a model. Peter had to know the tempers flaring at
him and his fellow disciples. Before the council, recognizing the danger, Peter
and the disciples stood their ground precisely because they were under God's
mandate.
The
pressures and excuses the world lures us to turn from following Christ are
innumerable. They are also hard to resist because to say yes to Christ we must
say no to something, or someone, else – for example, Sunday morning league
sports (but now I’m meddling). But to obey God, staying on course is the only
faithful option. Only coincidentally will the world at large approve of our faithful
service, but that's okay. The world's applause is far more spiritually
dangerous than its jeers.
New
Testament scholar Robert Wall wrote (NIB) that Peter’s “heroic retort to the
high priest" served “missionary ends.” Peter was a “witness to God’s
salvation of Israel. He [was] not the leader of a movement of protest but a
movement of God."
And that
is what we are under God's command to do: proclaim salvation through Jesus
Christ our Lord. May we be satisfied with God's direction for each day, not for our sake, but for
the sake of those who know him not.
Three in four worshippers say sermons a major factor in why they go
Youth programs, outreach and volunteer opportunities also important
Preferring to worship solo is main reason non-attenders eschew services
Belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque provides people with important social benefits that Gallup research shows improve personal well-being. While social benefits are clearly important to majorities of those who worship regularly, what most motivates them to attend is learning more about the tenets of their faith, as well as connecting that faith to their lives. Protestants, who have more control over their church leadership and flexibility in where they worship, place even greater emphasis on the quality of sermons than do Catholics, although both groups rate sermons highly.
Fulfilling these expectations could be critical in order for religious organizations to survive. But to expand their ranks, reigniting the interest of lapsed members should be a priority. Converting those who say they aren't very religious or who don't like organized religion may be futile. But churches and others may find some success with the message that worshipping in communion with others has benefits that can't be achieved worshipping alone -- addressing the No. 1 reason non-attendees give for not attending.
Much more at the link.
There is growing realization today that "attractional" church worship is not working in drawing people wither to long-term attendance or to personal commitment to Christ. "Worshiptainment," as we call it, is a failure in leading people to discipleship.
The poll made me wonder: When and why did music became such a prominent part of evangelical services? And are these churches missing out by focusing on music at the expense of other aspects of church life?
I suspect the former question might be linked to the increasing need for people in our culture to be entertained.
“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other," Neil Postman famously wrote in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. "They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images.”
I’m not suggesting churches need to stop playing music. I’m merely wondering if dedicating nearly half of a church service to musical performances is the most efficient use of time.
One wonders if people in pews would not receive more spiritual nourishment from other church-led activities: An extended reading of scripture? Silent prayer? A longer sermon?
The Gallup survey corresponds to other research I have seen that reports that the fabled and much-derided Millennials are drawn to traditional or orthodox services far more than "contemporary" or attractional services.
I think the real bottom line is this: What are people finding, experiencing, and learning in a church that they cannot find in secular culture?
I do not remember signing up for a retirement newsletter via email, since I am not retiring any time
soon. I was about to hit the spam button but decided at least to look at the story index first. As it turns out, it's not bad.
As I am told that at least two dozen of my colleagues will retire this summer, here are three retirement-related links that may be of interest - not only to my ministerial colleagues, but to every other working stiff.
Second, for those trying to figure out what financial goal to set for retirement, there are 8 Levels Of Financial Freedom you can choose from both in retirement and en route. I would say that getting to level 4 is the minimum to achieve while still working.
Level 4: Freedom of Time
What many people desire is more flexibility with their schedules. Freedom of time and financial independence go hand in hand. Together, they are about leaving the rat race to follow your passion, or spend more time with family, and not going completely broke doing it. It could come in the form of more paid time off, flex time or perhaps working remotely on occasion. Not having to take a day off from work just so you can visit the dentist or take your kid to the doctor could be a huge benefit for some.
In retirement? Get at least to level 6. (Frankly, Level 8: More Money Than You Could Ever Spend, does not really appeal to me because, what's the point?)
By actuarial tables, my life expectancy is to age 92, and my wife's is to age 100! So in my retirement planning, I have to plan for her expectancy, not mine. Furthermore:
As you age, your actuarial life expectancy rises because the tables "life expectancy" for a man or woman of any given age simply means that half the men or women who are, say, 63 years old, will die before they reach age 92. But that means that half live longer - and as years pass, you are steadily sliding into the half that lives longer as others, but not you, die.
Ignore the old canard that retired people can live on 70 percent or so of their last working-year income. Expenses do not magically drop simply because you retire, especially if you still have to pay rent or mortgage, and as the article explains, medical costs rise, probably sharply. Plan to match or exceed your working income in retirement.
Along the same line, married couples should structure their retirement income so that the surviving spouse continues to receive income equal to that received while the deceased spouse was still living. In retirement-account parlance, this is known as "Life Plus 100" retirement, meaning that your personal retirement account will continue to pay 100 percent of your retirement pay to your spouse after you die. If both spouses are covered by a pension, they should each select this when they retire. (Other typical options are Life Plus 70, which pays more while you are living but only 70 percent after you die, or Life Only, which means your spouse receives nothing after you die.) It will not be cheaper for a surviving spouse to live than both of you because fixed expenses stay fixed, and at about age 85 or older, fixed expenses dominate retirees' expenditures.
A word about inflation. Let us suppose that you retire this year with a retirement income of, say, $75,000. Since 1913, inflation, which simply means the rate at which a dollar decreases in value over time, has had a yearly average of 3.22 percent. As Inflation Data points out, "That doesn't sound too bad until we realize that at that rate prices will double every 20 years."
Here is the chart by decade.
So if you retire comfortably this year on a level income of $75,000 per year, in 2039 it will be worth just under $39,000. Pension fund managers know this risk, of course, so typically, pension funds offer a payout plan that annually accounts for inflation, at least to some degree.
But overspending is just as damaging as inflation or recessive returns on your funds.
The next risk identified by the panel was the expense risk, or the risk of a change in value caused by the fact that the amount of expenses incurred over the course of retirement outpace expectations.
"If you have expenses early on in retirement, large expenses, then your portfolio balance goes down just as fast as if you had a really bad sequence of returns," Dirk Cotton, a retired executive, and a retirement adviser and author of The Retirement Cafe blog.
That is why it is imperative to have a plan for retirement. When I was a student pilot, my flight instructor told me, "Plan your flight and fly your plan." Of course it is unreasonable to think you can plan expenditures all the way from, say, age 66 or 68 or so to your mid-90s. But if you have a plan to start, then you will assess the necessity of changes much better, the extent of needed changes more comprehensively, and the recovery from changes more thoroughly.
So, here are Don's Official Retirement Planning Tips:
Plan for a specified constant-dollar income all the way to the end of your life, or if married, to the end of the surviving spouse's life.
Save as much as possible as early as possible. Playing catch-up is a poor way to retirement security.
Trying to get rich quick will result in getting poor even quicker.
Follow Jesus and tithe and you will almost automatically stop worrying about money.
And finally, from day one, get as much of your retirement investments and savings into tax-free accounts. Here is why:
America will face "serious economic, security, and social challenges" if the national debt keeps growing at this rate. ...
Just hours after Congress postponed a budget vote because lawmakers wanted even more spending, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a 67-page report warning of the "serious economic, security, and social challenges" that will face this country unless immediate action is taken to bring the national debt under control.
The share of debt held by the public currently stands at about 78 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a shorthand measure of a country's economic output in a single year. The GAO estimates that it is on track to surpass the all-time high of 106 percent of GDP within the next 13 to 20 years. (The numbers are actually worse than that, because "debt held by the public" accounts for only $15.8 trillion of the $21 trillion national debt. The rest is held by parts of the federal government, such as the Social Security trust fund.)
How long can this continue? No one knows. But as Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and economics professor at the University of Virginia, put it, "When something can't go on forever, it won't."
Last week I explained five
historical facts that must be accounted for either to affirm or deny that
Jesus rose from the dead. These facts do not rely on supernatural authority or
a claim that they must be believed because the Bible is inspired Scripture.
Historians,
and not just Christian ones, are in broad consensus that these were factual
events, not claims invented by the church, especially since absent these facts
there is no reason to assume there would have been a church to invent them in
the first place.
Thus,
seriously grappling with the claim that Jesus rose from the dead must include
these facts in the explanation. Explanations must explain. Simply to deny these
facts does not explain them. One might as well try to explain how the Civil War
started while denying that South Carolina ever bombarded Fort Sumter.
Skeptics
of the historical fact of Jesus's resurrection offer explanations that fall
into four main categories:
1. The key actors on Good Friday and Sunday morning
botched what they were doing.
2. Science proves Jesus’s resurrection is impossible.
3. The accounts of Jesus’s resurrection are mythical of
a kind common in the ancient world.
4. The apostles were either deluded or they mounted a
deliberate conspiracy of falsehoods.
The "they botched
it" theories
The "Swoon
Theory"
The first
allegedly-botched job was the crucifixion, in which the Romans incompetently
took Jesus down from the cross unconscious rather than dead. Joseph and the
women entombed Jesus still alive. This is called the “Swoon” theory; it dates to the 1780s.
The swoon
theory says that the coolness of the tomb and Friday’s partial application of
funereal spices made Jesus come to his senses. Before dawn Sunday he rolled
away the stone, and found some workman’s clothes, causing Mary Magdalene to
mistake him for a gardener. So, the swoon theory does explain why the women
found the tomb empty and why the presumed gardener claimed he was Jesus.
But it
assumes that
the brutal flogging that Jesus received from the Romans,
the shredding of his head by a wreath of thorns,
hanging on the cross with nailed hands and feet (with severe physical effects, including dislocation of the shoulders),
and the deep piercing of his chest by a Roman spear,
were all
relatively minor injuries that
left Jesus mentally fully competent,
were not severe enough and evoked too little bleeding to kill or even much weaken him,
insufficiently injured his hands and feet to degrade either his
dexterity or mobility,
left him with enough physical strength to single-handedly roll
away a one-ton stone from the tomb, in the dark.
did not hinder his ability to sneak past an armed guard standing only a few feet from the tomb,
had healed enough so that Mary did not recognize him as the
recently-crucified Jesus.
The swoon
theory also ignores the fact that Jesus would have consumed neither food nor
drink since Thursday evening but apparently suffered no ill effects from 84
hours or so without nourishment or water.
The
theory assumes that Roman soldiers, of all people, did not know how to kill a
defenseless man and ignores that their motivation to make sure Jesus was dead
very great: under Roman military law, Roman soldiers who failed to carry out a sentence properly could be punished by receiving the same sentence to serve instead, meaning the soldiers at the cross were highly motivated to be positive that Jesus and the two thieves crucified with him were dead for sure.
The swoon theory also requires that Joseph and the women who partially prepared
Jesus for burial on Friday did not detect that he still breathed and had a
heartbeat, however weak it may have been. People in ancient times were very
familiar with corpses. There were no funeral homes. Families did that work on
their own. The women friends of Jesus, like any women of the day, knew very
well about –
·livor mortis, the collection of blood
in the lowest parts of a corpse after the heart ceases beating, due to gravity.
Livor mortis causes marked purpling of the body where it occurs and is usually
noticeable starting about 20-30 minutes after death (though full discoloration takes somewhat longer). A man dead on a cross would
have been so colored at around the ankles and shoulders. If Jesus was not dead when
he was removed, livor mortis would not have occurred, and the
women would certainly have noticed.
·rigor mortis, the stiffening of the
limbs of a corpse caused by chemical changes in the muscles. A corpse is highly
resistant to manipulation because of this. To be fair to the swoon theory,
though, it takes between 4-6 hours after death for rigor mortis to
set in. Jesus was entombed by then.
The swoon
theory, then, requires not only that the Roman soldiers blundered the
crucifixion but that the women were blind to the lack of empirical evidence
that Jesus was dead, evidence which was common knowledge in their day.
The swoon
theory does not explain
·why Mary
said Jesus was risen rather than that he survived.
·why Jesus
apparently needed no medical care or convalescence.
·with whom
Jesus lodged after his botched crucifixion, because he is nowhere presented as
hanging out with the disciples.[1]
·why Paul
and James, who had not followed Jesus, said they knew Jesus risen (and Paul
first persecuted Christians).
·why the
Church would begin with such energy and devotion
·why the
apostles suffered hard lives and cruel deaths to insist that Jesus was a risen
Savior rather than merely a lucky convict.
·why the
Romans did not mount a manhunt for the surviving Jesus when we know that when
the Romans wanted you dead, they meant it. (The Romans didn't hunt for Jesus
after the actual resurrection, either, when Peter et. al. were proclaiming him
risen. Why? Because the Romans knew darn good and well they had killed him on
the cross.)
An
explanation, actually to explain, cannot create more unresolved issues than it
tries to solve. The swoon theory thus fails.
The “wrong-tomb” theory
This
theory simply says that on Sunday morning the women mistakenly went to an
unused, open tomb, talked with a gardener whom they mistook for Jesus, then
excitedly told the disciples that Jesus’s tomb was empty and Jesus was risen.
However,
·The women were not looking for an open, empty tomb. They had asked
themselves en route how they would get the stone rolled away. So, when coming
to an open, unused tomb, why didn't they keep going? Wrong-tomb
theorists do not say, except to claim that the women were confused. ("They
went to the wrong tomb because they were confused. How do we know they were
confused? Because they went to the wrong tomb." A bit circular, eh?)
·Having already been to Jesus's tomb on Friday, they knew which
tomb to go to.
The wrong
tomb theory does not explain:
·why the gardener Mary conversed with claimed he was Jesus
·why Mary called him Lord when he knew and she thought that Jesus
was dead elsewhere.
·why the gardener told Mary to tell the disciples he would meet
them in Galilee.
The
wrong-tomb theory also echoes the ancient belief that women could not be
trusted to relate facts rather than addle-headed nonsense. Its unspoken precept
is, “Let me tell you what those idiot women did.”
No
historian concerned about his reputation promotes either the swoon theory or
the wrong-tomb theory any more, but many people still argue them.
"Scientific" objections to
the resurrection
Many
people you will witness to will reply that science shows it to be impossible.
In fact, science shows no such thing. There are some scientists who say the
resurrection is scientifically impossible. But there are many other scientists
who profess religious faith. For example:
“A
scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict
between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every
discovery we make about the world.” - Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., who
received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the first known
binary pulsar, and for his work which supported the Big Bang theory of the
creation of the universe.
“Astronomers
… have proven … that the world began abruptly in an act of creation… . And they
have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to
discover… . That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at
work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact”. – Robert Jastrow ,
Astronomer, physicist and founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.
“The
common belief that… the actual relations between religion and science over the
last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility… is not only
historically inaccurate, but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needs
to be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of
respectability.” – Colin Russell, Cambridge University historian of
science.
“Both
religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the
beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the
former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every
generalized world view.” – Max Planck, Nobel Prize physicist, founder
of quantum theory, one of the most important physicists of the 20th century).[2]
Two other
examples are Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health
and former head of the human genome project, and Dr. John Lennox, professor and
Fellow in Mathematics at Oxford University. There are many others.
Sociologist
Elaine Ecklund surveyed 1,700 scientists and conducted personal interviews with
275 of them at elite American universities, seeking to find out what their
views on religion were. She writes:
Professor Ecklund's book is called Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. A long review with excerpts is here. Most of
the non-religious scientists Ecklund interviewed said that they just were not
interested in religion questions, any more than a Methodist preacher would be
much interested in how to mass produce elemental isotopes. And unlike the rest
of America, younger scientists are more religious than older ones.
So, it is
important to understand the difference between what science, as a discipline,
can do and what scientists may personally believe.
Scientists may deny or affirm the resurrection, but science as a discipline can
neither rebut nor confirm it. Every discipline, science included, is bounded by "limit questions," which are inquiries that the discipline itself cannot answer. For example, science does not and cannot tell you where to take your next vacation. Science is unsuited definitively to answer historical questions. You would think I was joking if I asked for scientific proof that George Washington crossed the Delaware River to fight Hessian forces at Trenton on Christmas 1776, though science may help answer many historical details. The resurrection of Jesus is an historical question that science as a discipline cannot answer. It's not a
scientific question. Every profession or skill or knowledge set is faced with limit questions. Imagine that someone at the end of a concert, you heard the man beside you say, “Speaking as a cardiologist, I have determined that this orchestra’s first violinist is the finest in North America.” Now that may be true, but it’s not a medical question. Similarly, science investigates the natural world and so cannot speak definitively about supernatural events, which is what the resurrection is. One big
reason is that the scientific method can't adequately address miracles. The
error some scientists make is in therefore saying that there are no such things
as miracles.
Scientific
integrity requires that scientists and non-scientists alike recognize that
there are limits to scientific knowledge. Failing this is the main error of the
so-called New Atheist movement, whose advocates insist that
·only science reveals the Real,
·only science can discover truth
·scientific knowledge is exhaustive and inherently unlimited.
But these
claims are themselves not testable with the scientific method. They are not
scientific claims, but claims of faith in science, or scientism. Richard
Lewontin, an evolutionary biologist and geneticist, explained in The
New York Review of Books in 1997 (link) that
scientism has a ...
... prior
commitment to materialism. 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, 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 ... . Moreover, that materialism is
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
But
nothing about Jesus' resurrection overturns science at all. Before he was Pope
Benedict, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that the resurrection is
... no
contradiction of clear scientific data. The Resurrection accounts … speak of
something new, something unprecedented -- a new dimension of reality that is
revealed. What already exists is not called into question. Rather we are told
that there is a further dimension, beyond what was previously
known.
Hypothesis
one: We’re not talking about a literal resurrection. Perhaps it is just an
inspiring myth that served to justify the propagation of Jesus’ exalted ethical
teachings. A literal resurrection contradicts the known laws of nature. Maybe
scientists can celebrate the idea of Jesus’s spirit living on, while his body
remained in the grave.
Hypothesis
two: We really believe in the bodily resurrection of the first century Jew
known as Jesus of Nazareth. My Christian colleagues at MIT – and millions of other
scientists worldwide – somehow think that a literal miracle like the
resurrection of Jesus is possible. And we are following a long tradition. The
founders of the scientific revolution and many of the greatest scientists of
the intervening centuries were serious Christian believers.
Hypothesis
3: I was brainwashed as a child. ... But no, I did not grow up in a home where
I was taught to believe in the resurrection. I came to faith in Jesus when I
was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and was baptized in the chapel of
Kings College on my 20th birthday.
Hypothesis two wins:
To
explain how a scientist can be a Christian is actually quite simple. Science
cannot and does not disprove the resurrection. Natural science describes the
normal reproducible working of the world of nature. Indeed, the key meaning of
“nature”, as Boyle emphasized, is “the normal course of events.” Miracles like
the resurrection are inherently abnormal. ...
Today’s
widespread materialist view that events contrary to the laws of science just
can’t happen is a metaphysical doctrine, not a scientific fact. What’s more,
the doctrine that the laws of nature are “inviolable” is not necessary for
science to function. Science offers natural explanations of natural events. It
has no power or need to assert that only natural events happen.
So if
science is not able to adjudicate whether Jesus’ resurrection happened or not,
are we completely unable to assess the plausibility of the claim? No. Contrary
to increasingly popular opinion, science is not our only means for accessing
truth. In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, we must consider the historical
evidence, and the historical evidence for the resurrection is as good as for
almost any event of ancient history.
Much more here:
The Mythical Story theory
The next
rebuttal of the resurrection is the claim that stories about a divine hero
dying and returning to life were a dime a dozen among ancient peoples and that
Jesus's resurrection is just another example. In this claim, “Jesus Christ is a
mythological character along the same lines as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian,
Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian or other godmen, who are all presently accepted as
myths rather than historical figures.” [4]
However,
experts in the field are not making this claim. Professor Norman Geisler of
Loyola University explains, “No Greek or Roman myth spoke of a literal
incarnation of a monotheistic God into human form by way of a literal virgin
birth, followed by his death and physical resurrection.”
Nor were
such stories very common at all. Only about fifteen such ancient stories are
identified by claimants. British scholar Norman Anderson argues,
The basic
difference between Christianity and the mysteries is the historic basis of one
and the mythological character of the others. The deities of the mysteries were
no more than ‘nebulous figures of an imaginary past,’ while the Christ whom the
[apostles] proclaimed had lived and died only a few years before the first New
Testament documents were written.
As Peter
told the people of Jerusalem on Pentecost, you know this Jesus of whom I speak.
Peter was not referring to a mythical figure of a hazy, distant past, but one
whom his hearers had known personally.
Furthermore,
“Most of the evidence for the alleged similarities from the pagan myths date
between the second to fourth centuries,” [5] long after the New Testament had
been written. If anything, most of those ancient myths are likely based on
Jesus rather than the other way around.
Also,
myth theorists must explain why the fiercely monogamous Jews would have adopted
pagan myths to promote the Jewish Jesus and why they would have falsely claimed
Jesus dead and risen when the existing, well-developed concept of the messiah
had never included such a concept.
Finally,
the pagan-myth hypothesis makes no attempt at all to grapple with the
historical facts that are, well, facts, not myth.
For a more scholarly presentation, here is Dr. William Lane Craig:
The apostles were deluded
or frauds
Last is
the claim that the apostles were either deluded or they mounted a deliberate
conspiracy of falsehoods. Almost no one claims any more that the apostles were
deliberately lying because, as J.P. Moreland put it,
The
disciples had nothing to gain by lying and starting a new religion. They faced
hardship, ridicule, hostility, and martyr's deaths. In light of this, they
could never have sustained such unwavering motivation if they knew what they
were preaching was a lie. The disciples were not fools and Paul was a
cool-headed intellectual of the first rank. There would have been several
opportunities over three to four decades of ministry to reconsider and renounce
a lie.
Charles
Colson served Richard Nixon as "Special Counsel to the President" and
was a key player in the Watergate conspiracy that finally led to Nixon's
resignation. Colson was in fact one of the "Watergate Seven," the
core conspirators, and he was the first Watergate conspirator
to be sent to federal prison. In prison, Colson became a devout Christian;
after release he spent the rest of his life in evangelism, especially prison
ministries.
Here is
what he once said about the idea that Jesus was not really raised from the dead,
that the whole resurrection story came from collusion by the disciples:
I know
the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men
testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that
truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured,
stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true.
Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world - and they
couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a
lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.
Let’s
look at the delusion angle. Today’s leading figure in promoting this
theory is German scholar and self-admitted atheist Gerd Ludemann, who says
in What
Really Happened to Jesus that the apostles
undeniably believed what they proclaimed, but were so psychologically
distraught from the cruel death of Jesus that they all suffered exactly the
same hallucination that Jesus was alive again. Ludemann says that the source of
the disciples’ visions were psychological processes which occurred “completely
without divine intervention.” Therefore, “A consistent modern view must say
farewell to the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event.”
(Ludemann
taught for several years at Vanderbilt Divinity School, the source of my own
M.Div. I began there just after he had returned to Germany so I did not study
under him. However, What Really Happened to Jesus was an
assigned book in my New Testament class.)
On its
face the delusion theory seems plausible. But I would submit that it fails for
these reasons:
·First, delusion theory presumes from the outset that the
resurrection is false. When its greatest proponent is a self-described atheist,
it sort of gives the game away. That is, its intention is to conclude what it begins
with.
·Second, the delusion theory does not explain why the tomb was
empty or why deluded apostles would admit that a woman first bore the Easter
message.
·Third, that the apostles’ delusion was caused by their
psychological need to regain company with Jesus is suspect because the
pre-resurrection disciples seem less devoted to Jesus than the theory demands.
John 11, for example, records that eleven of the twelve were so upset with
Jesus that they wanted to quit and go home, staying only because Thomas talked
them into it. Every disciple abandoned Jesus to his fate when he was arrested,
hardly evidence of such intense love and loyalty that they would later see
hallucinations of Jesus alive.
·Fourth, the theory does not explain why Paul and Jesus's brother
James became deluded as well. Neither man followed Jesus before his death; Paul
never even met him. Ludemann simply dodges this question altogether.
·Fifth, Ludeman assumes that the psychology of each of the disciples
was identical and that they each spontaneously reacted mentally to Jesus’ death
in exactly the same way. But this is a mere assumption necessary to make
delusion theory work. It also assumes that their delusion was contagious and
that Thomas could be “infected” by it when he had emphatically rejected the other disciples' testimonies and instead demanded literally tangible,
physical proof.
Finally,
such a delusion seems unique in the entire world, having never occurred
before or since. Ludemann attempts to show analogous delusions in other figures
or groups of people in other historical occasion, but the examples are present only
superficial similarities; most are actually more dissimilar than similar.
If the apostles were deluded, then I want that same delusion! It is a delusion
that inspires people to become the finest they can be, to exhibit and live the
highest virtues and to order their lives around love, integrity, faithfulness
and devotion to the good of all. Delusion? May we all hope to be equally
deluded.
Summary
I will
leave the summary to Dr. Holly Ordway, Ph.D. (U-Mass. Amherst), a professor of
literature in Texas. She grew up atheist, convinced that belief in a deity was
mere superstition. But in 2012, she was baptized into the Catholic Church and
since has written several works on Christian literature. In an interview,[2] she
said,
There
were many pieces of evidence that all fit together to make a convincing case
for the Resurrection [of Jesus]; I’ll mention just a couple here. One of them
is the behavior of the disciples before and after the Resurrection. The Gospel
accounts do not portray their behavior after the Crucifixion in a particularly
flattering light. Even though Jesus had predicted his own resurrection, the
disciples gave up and went away, assuming that Jesus was a failed messiah. If
the disciples had made up the Resurrection story afterwards, why would they
have included details that made them look disloyal and cowardly? My academic
studies in literature allowed me to recognize that the Gospels were written as
history, not myth or parable, and that there hadn’t been enough time for a
legend to form. It began to seem like the best explanation for all these events
being recounted this way, was that they really happened.
Then,
after the Resurrection, there’s a complete turn-around in their behavior, and
they become bold proclaimers of the Risen Lord. There were plenty of words that
people in ancient times could have used to describe visions or sightings of
ghosts, and indeed, such language would have gotten them in much less trouble!
But they spoke of a Jesus who was alive, bodily resurrected, and in short order
were willing to die for that claim.
Perhaps
the most convincing evidence for the Resurrection, though, was the Church
itself. If I supposed that the Church had invented the Resurrection to explain
its own worship of Jesus, I had to ask, how did that worship arise in the first
place? If the Church was not the result of a miracle, it was itself a miracle.
It’s
important to say that there was no single, knock-out piece of evidence that
convinced me; I was convinced by the cumulative claim, the way it all fit
together. Historical events can’t be proved like a math problem or tested like
a scientific hypothesis, and there’s always a way to form an alternate
explanation. But just because an alternative exists doesn’t mean it’s is
equally reasonable or likely. Speaking within my own field of literature, there
are people who claim that William Shakespeare didn’t really write his plays.
There are even a few legitimately fuzzy areas: for instance, a few of his plays
were co-authored, and it seems likely to me that at least one passage in
Macbeth (Hecate’s speech) was a later interpolation. Nonetheless, the evidence
taken as whole points to Shakespearean authorship!
