Rhymes with 'easy.'  My ongoing thoughts on culture, spirituality, and technology.

Sermon to Christ Our Savior on Mark 3:20-35

Roped Off


> **Mark 3:20-35 ESV**
> 
> 20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they
> could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out
> to seize him, for they were saying, "He is out of his mind."
> 
> 22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He
> is possessed by Beelzebul," and "by the prince of demons he casts out
> the demons." 23 And he called them to him and said to them in
> parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is
> divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a
> house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
> 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he
> cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a
> strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the
> strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
> 
> 28 "Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of
> man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever
> blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty
> of an eternal sin"--- 30 for they were saying, "He has an unclean
> spirit."
> 
> 31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they
> sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him,
> and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside,
> seeking you." 33 And he answered them, "Who are my mother and my
> brothers?" 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he
> said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the
> will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother."
> 

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord
Jesus Christ. Our text is the gospel that we read just a few moments
ago. It is a difficult text, and I'm going to apply it to a subject that
may be painful to some of you listening: the announcement that Pastor
Ely made this morning, that he will be accepting the call to be
Associate Dean at our St. Louis seminary. I know many of you are sad
about hearing of his impending departure. Some of you, too, may be
wondering what the path forward is for Christ Our Savior, a church that
has twelve years of Ely's fingerprints on it now.

You might be wondering how a text that talks about "unforgiveable sins"
might apply to how a little church can move forward when a beloved
pastor gets called. But it turns out that this text is very important,
in a number of ways, to Christ Our Savior's situation. Let's dive into
the text.

The events described in our text today -- Jesus healing a man possessed
by a demon, the pharisees' reaction, and Jesus' response to that,
followed by the appearance of Jesus' family at the door -- appear in
three of our Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in the same order with
roughly the same details. Just as families have stories that help make
sense of their lives together, memories that they repeat over and over,
kind of like lessons, our reading today is something like that for the
early church. Each of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are faithful to the story,
but just as different family members learn different kinds of things
from the same story, Mark has his own, unique way of looking at this one
and learning from it. If we are careful, we can figure out what lessons
he is drawing by looking at the details that he includes and leaves out.

Two details are unique to Mark in this text that give us a lot of
insight into how he sees main event. The first detail is the last
paragraph *right before* where our reading starts. Mark leaves out
events that both Matthew and Luke include, about Jesus sending out the
12, so that right before our text today, we have the list of the
apostles that Jesus chose. The first of these is Peter, who is the
authority behind Mark's gospel. It is the only place where Mark puts
Peter first. And last in the list, and so the last few words before our
text today are the words, "And Judas, who betrayed him." If there was
ever a believer of whom we can safely claim had committed the
unforgiveable sin, that of sinning against the Holy Spirit, it would be
Judas. I don't think it is insignificant that he gets mentioned here,
for the first time, right before our reading. The other detail that Mark
includes that is significant and missing from Matthew and Luke are the
conversations of Jesus family that occurs at the beginning of our
reading. The situation Jesus was in was beginning to look overwhelming,
with all of the crowds and craziness around him all the time -- to the
point that He and his disciples didn't even have time to eat. And the
response of Jesus' family is, in translation, "he is out of his mind."
The literal translation is, "he lost it."

There is one final detail that Mark includes, or rather, an explanation,
which helps tremendously in understanding how he views this event. These
are the words, "for they were saying, 'He has an unclean spirit.'" I
don't think, honestly, that I would ever have made the connection to
Jesus' warning about the unforgiveable sin to this accusation of the
Pharisees if Mark had not pointed this out. Matthew and Luke do not
provide this explanation. Yet, it is really a key to understand
everything here. So, let's review the pieces we have here so we can fit
them together a little better. We have, at the center, Jesus healing a
demon possessed man, then the Pharisees making the accusation that it is
by the power of the devil that Jesus drives out devils. Then, outside of
this, we have, like a wrapper, the appearance of Jesus' family, in a
very unusual role, wanting to take him out of His situation for His own
good. Then finally, over it all, we have Peter, the first of the
apostles, and Judas, the last, and the betrayer, watching all of this. I
think with these pieces in place, we can learn something.

The third person of the Trinity, as Pastor Ely talked about last week,
and I talked about on Pentecost, is the Holy Spirit: to believers, the
*comforter*, the one called alongside us, and to unbelievers, the one
who convicts, with regard to sin, and righteousness, and judgment. He
also could be called, the Trinity being what it is, the "Spirit of
Jesus" or "The Spirit of God." In theological terms, since God is love,
we could also say that the Holy Spirit is a spirit of pure love. Both
words "holy" and "spirit" are hard for us today. The word "spirit" is
hard because we live in times where many people want to believe that
human beings are just organic computers, and our thoughts or
consciousness, what many of us unthinkingly consider our very being, are
nothing more than the artifacts of a lot of calculations going on in
neural networks. To someone who believes this, the word "spirit" is just
a silly figure of speech, and this kind of thinking has affected even
us, who believe differently. What is a spirit? It seems that some of the
smartest among us deny it even exists, and the rest of us aren't sure
exactly how to define it or what to think. Our spirits are real, though,
even though they are encumbered by a body. My spirit can soar to heights
unknown, drawn perhaps by beauty perceived through my body like music or
a dream; but very often, that same spirit scrapes along, slave to the
same sinful body that contains it, and spends its time in the mud and
ashes. Not all spirits are encumbered by a body. The Spirit of Jesus
certainly is not. It moves in love, where it will, though many do not
understand its movements. One glory of Christianity is that God the Son,
who is a Spirit, would choose to take on one of these bodies, and be
encumbered, in order to raise us up. So "spirit" isn't really that hard
to understand, but emotionally, it can be difficult, in our age of
science and psychology.

The other word, we may have even more trouble with: "holy". When I
explain the word "holy" to my confirmands, which is where we get the
word "saint" as well, I always talk about furniture like our altar here.
It is a table. It is made out of wood. The same kind of wood, nice
hardwood, might make a great game table for my house. But even though it
is made of the same material, and made much the same way, once we make
it an altar, we never think, "hey, let's get a few beverages and some
chips, a deck of cards, and play some poker up here on the altar." No,
we would never do that. It is "holy---" not because of what it is made
of, or even how it was made, but because *we have set it apart.* It is
no longer something for common use. All of us show some extra respect
and reverence toward it. We put railings, or ropes, around it. The idea
of a holy altar recalls -- it's not the same, only similar in idea --
the holy places in the temple. If you were not a Levite, certified by
birth certificate, and you tried to enter the holy of holies, you would
not have made it. They would have killed you first. They would not
tolerate you physically desecrating their holy place. The idea of
"blasphemy" is the idea of desecrating a holy place in our minds, or
with our words. The ropes around holy things are not just physical, but
mental and spiritual as well.

Now, our trouble today with "holy" is *not* that our larger society
denies it exists, as many people do with "spirit." Our society today has
*all kinds of things* that are roped off, words you'd better not say,
thoughts you'd better not think. We just don't use the word "holy" for
them. Some of these things we would all agree are bad to say or think,
but people get fired, ostracized, driven out, and dehumanized for saying
things that most people 5 years ago would have considered common sense.
So, "holiness" as a concept is still very real. It's just that the
things that WE think are holy, we've lost interest in defending. In the
Catholic neighborhood where I was a young schoolboy, if a child
carelessly swore by God's name, some random adult would walk up and slap
him. That happened in *Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade*. But it's not
happening anymore. Oh, there are words we can't say, but every possible
profanity has been made out of things that Christians used to think were
holy. The central words of Jesus in our event today speak to this. I
won't say it is wise, but Jesus says, if you do happen to profane,
blaspheme, sin, against Him\--against the Son of Man, all can be
forgiven. But there are ropes, even for Jesus. Blaspheme against the
Spirit of God, the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of the Father, and you
will *not* be forgiven, ever. We like to think of Jesus as all sweetness
and light, but here, the Pharisees touched a nerve. He calls them out,
like someone in my old Catholic neighborhood, to verbally slap them and
to warn them in these crushing terms.

Another way I know things have changed is that Lutheran pastors, when
the subject of the unforgivable sin used to come up, used to always
assure worried listeners that if they were *worried* about having
committed this sin, then they had not committed it. Many words have been
written, printed, and taught concerning this sin, and every Lutheran
teaching I've read agrees that you can't trip over this sin by
accidentally telling the wrong joke, or saying something inappropriate.
In fact, all we can do is warn about this sin, because only God knows
who may have committed it. I say these things now, but I almost wondered
whether to spend the time, because it's been years since I heard anyone
actually worried about having committed this sin. In my grandparents'
generation, they worried about it frequently. So, what's changed? Do we
know more about the Bible than they did? I don't think so. I think,
rather, that we have refocused the commandments so they're all about
people and not about God.

Don't murder? Of course not; in fact, don't even make anyone feel
unsafe! But that's about *people*; that's about *us.* On the other hand,
"don't misuse God's name---" that doesn't get you a slap anymore; in
fact, many of us barely even frown when someone does it. We live in a
world with phones that throw at us words, words, words, vying for our
attention and getting it anyway they can---if blasphemy works, it's
another tool in the toolbox. There's no such thing as bad publicity. The
only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Make
a joke; no one can get mad at a joke. And whatever you do, don't get
*too serious* about anything. What are you anyway, some kind of fanatic?
We are surrounded by these attitudes, and we have succumbed to them and
in some ways even adopted them. The spirit of my grandparents rises up,
indignant, and warns us, that some words and attitudes sink in and
cannot be taken back. Some things wash off, but other things stain. We
hardly seem to care anymore.

You know, even Jesus' own family thought He was crazy. Peter, at the top
of the list of the apostles, denied Jesus, and called down curses on
himself to disavow knowledge, on the same night that Judas, the last on
this list, betrayed Him. Yet they were forgiven. I think this teaching
of Jesus was actually a *comfort* to Peter, rather than the scary thing
we think it is. You see, Peter didn't have thousands of years of
Christian culture emphasizing the love of God and the grace of God --
Peter saw, as a first-Century Jew, the judgment of God, and the wrath of
God. And what *he* heard in Jesus' teaching wasn't the scary part about
the unforgivable sin. The people who blaspheme the Holy Spirit don't
weep bitterly; they don't care. They are right -- they are always right
-- and they'll even throw God under the bus to suit their own needs.
Peter had done terrible things to Jesus on Good Friday dawn. But he
didn't refuse the conviction -- when the cock crowed, he remembered. And
all the sins against the Son of Man, as Jesus tells us here, will be
forgiven.

Jesus was ready to do this for Peter. He was ready to forgive his
family. Unlike the Pharisees, they may have been weak, but they never
actively rejected His Spirit. So we aren't in such bad company when we
realize how little we care sometimes. Ironically, it is our encumbered
spirits, dirty as my spirit is, and far as it seems from holy, I am a
saint. I am a holy one. There are ropes around me. Why? Not because I've
had such pure thoughts, surely. No, it's because the guy who said, "if
you profane me, if you commit blasphemy against me, if you call me the
devil, if you treat me as nothing, you can be forgiven." For He came to
forgive. He came to live the perfect, holy life I never could, and then,
when that was done, He took up my sins, my filth, my guilt, and he
carried it to a cross. They nailed Him to that cross, and my sins along
with it. He became filthy, forsaken by the Father, so I would never feel
that. In return, it seems, I make jokes. Hey God, can't you take a joke?
They Holy Spirit is grieved by me at times; but God forbid that I would
ever blaspheme against the one who convicts me in my guilt and comforts
me in my suffering. So yes, I am holy. I am set apart. It's up to me to
act that way. You are saints, too... never forget it. You may not even
always be comfortable with the thought, but there are ropes around you.
"Here is a holy one, be careful!" The spirits that surround us see this,
and the Holy Spirit is by our side.

It is this sense of the holy, as hard as it is to recall in our unholy
times, that must be our guide in everything we do as a church,
especially the matter of who plays this role, the role of pastor, and
how we treat each other during this crucial time.

I've known for months of the possibility of Ely leaving for St. Louis.
It felt, from the beginning, to be a different matter for me than the
recent call to the Boston area. As I reflected on what I could do for
you, whom I love so very much, there was a part of me that wanted to
just serve you full time. It would be a big hit to my retirement, I
thought, but I could quit my day job and do it, at much reduced pay,
until I retire, I thought. I kind of daydreamed about telling you about
this ... to let you know how much I was willing to put on the line for
you ... to share that possibility with you. I daydreamed this way, some
of the time, during the months while the Seminary went through their
exhausting process with Ely.

But, you know, that was *me* in my comfort spot. The Holy Spirit is in
charge of calls of pastors to churches, and there are ropes around that
process. My daydreams didn't really include that. I kind of forgot \--
the reason I'm here, and the only reason I came -- was because this man
sitting here asked me to come, back in December of 2015. No one from the
church ever called me, asked me, or approved of me. And now that this
man is leaving, should I just assume that *of* course you want me to
stay? This past April, I got an unpleasant reminder from God that I
can't make easy assumptions about what the congregation might want, or
how much, when push comes to shove, all of you even respect me in the
office of pastor. No, I'm here because of Ely -- we all need to remember
that, and as we let the Holy Spirit work in this situation, none of us
can make easy assumptions about where the Spirit might lead.

I'll have more to say about my role moving forward to the church council
moving forward, but it all should be part of a larger formal process.
Your church leaders need to get involved. You all need to be involved,
to one extent or another, because it is a holy process, one where the
Holy Spirit is intimately involved. Pastor Carlos Boerger, from St.
Paul's Lutheran Church downtown, is our "circuit visitor," and he will
help you understand the process that a church goes through when it needs
a pastor. I want everything here to be done where the Holy Spirit can
lead wherever He will.

Regardless of what happens, Ricki and I are both praying for all of you,
that you as a group make the relationships among the saints your highest
priority. I hope that, long after Ely and I are just pictures in a file
somewhere here, that someone remembers that a couple of guys used to
hammer on relationships. No, scratch that: I pray that even when you
don't remember us at all, that you still treat each other as flawed,
sometimes difficult, but holy, saints of God, and that your love for
each other is obvious to everyone, especially the Holy Spirit, the
spirit of love, that comforts you all. Put up some more ropes around
each other, and do it. You will do well, regardless of what happens! I
pray it in Jesus' name. Amen


I explore some ideas that are still partly formed about Obedience

The New Obedience

Just last year, we made _obedience_ a central theme of our preaching at Christ
Our Savior.  It wasn't exactly an ironic choice, but we realized that, as 
Lutherans, it was maybe a little unusual.  Because Lutherans are so worked up 
about making certain that salvation -- the teaching on which the church will
either stand or fall -- never includes the idea of us _earning_ anything to get 
it, oftentimes we avoid obedience in sermons because some worry it will leave 
the impression that, "you do must do this to be saved."

Yet, obedience is a central part of Lutheran teaching.  Article 6 of the 
_Augsburg Confession_, which is titled **The New Obedience**, states:

> It is also taught that such faith should yield good fruit and good works
> and that a person must do such good works as God has commanded for 
> God's sake but not place trust in them as if thereby to earn grace before
> God.

As I was preaching my way through the gospel of Matthew (those were most of) 
the texts last year, I began to get a sense that the obedience that Matthew 
felt strongly about is what I would call "healing obedience."  It is the 
obedience of the reformed sinner:  the alcoholic, the criminal, the outcast. 
A Christian saved from such a background clings to obedience as someone who 
escaped from drowning clings to a life preserver.

Not every Christian brings the experience of a past life of manifest sin to 
the walk of faith.  The gospel of Luke, written as it was under Paul's 
direction, seems to emphasize what I would call "striving obedience."  It is
the obedience of the person who was a rule follower, zealous to succeed, but
who discovered the emptiness (or wrongness) of his own path.  I'm not claiming 
that such a person did not sin, and doesn't regret past actions -- Paul 
certainly did! -- but that the personality that was used to striving before 
depends on obedience differently as part of the walk of faith.

This distinction between types of obedience may seem like a pointless, or
needlessly analytical, observation, but I feel that this distinction helps me
make sanse of Christian history. It also may help navigate the waters we find
ourselves in today. I've never heard anyone make this distinction, though
certainly someone else has seen it, even if it hasn't been expressed this way.
I am going to explore the area more fully, if for no other reason than the idea
of _the new obedience_ lets us know that the _old_ obedience was always lacking
somehow. There is something left in the gospels that I am not seeing. I'm going
to pray for guidance and inspiration to see it.

Some of the questions I want to answer with the Bible:
* What are some examples of the two kinds of obedience I mentioned?
* Are there other kinds worth mentioning?  What are they?
* Obedience is always good, but what about imperfect obedience?  Do the two 
  types of obedience fall short in different ways?
* Can the church, consciously or unconsciouly, favor one type of obedience,
  by, say, designing its doctrine around strivers or reformed sinners?  Do 
  different church bodies today "specialize" in different types of obedience?
* Is our current cultural moment, obsessed as it is with the unbridled freedom 
  of the individual, interacting with these types of obedience to deform them 
  and make our walk of faith less effective?  How?
  
I could think of more questions, but these are enough to go on for now.

Milk and Honey Blogging


One of the Old Testament's more famous expressions is "a land flowing with milk
and honey."  I remember hearing this expression as I was growing up, and while 
I certainly understood the reference to food, and perhaps the sweetness of 
honey, I don't think I understood the full significance of the description 
until years later.

We talk today with other expressions, such as "living off the fat of the land." 
The idea is of eating well every day: steak and cake, rather than celery and
cereal.  Old Testament diets certainly differed from ours today, but they still 
had different notions of "living off the fat of the land" than _milk_ and 
_honey_.  No, the significance of these terms was not that of never-ending
feasts, but of a land that _could sustain them during bad times_.  After an
army invades and takes your stored food, or in the year of a famine, there might 
be little enough to eat; but a land flowing with milk and honey (wild goat's 
milk) will keep you alive even when things are bad.

This concept of milk and honey applies to many things.  Do we want surroundings 
that can support "never ending feasts" or ones that will "keep us alive" during
lean times?  I think that this trade-off is one that we are called upon to make 
often.  It has happened in blogging.  Maybe not religious blogging -- yet -- but 
certainly in political blogging.

In the early days of blogging, people hosted small websites with thousands of
no-name hosting companies.  Many used Wordpress for their software, but many 
others had other solutions which have faded away.  As high-end bloggers started 
being able to support themselves simply by blogging, they started to gravitate 
toward platforms that would maximize their incomes.  For a number of years now,
that has meant the big social media companies.  There, a successful blogger can 
attract a large audience and easily generate high traffic to get paid.  More is
better.  People slowly forgot or simply neglected things like syndication, 
trackbacks, and other primitive mechanisms for building traffic.  Some of these 
became problematic because of spam and abuse, and once again, the big companies,
with their paternalistic moderation, allowed more growth and bigger.

What happens, though, when the hosting company suddenly decides that they don't 
like you or your message?  Traffic begins to dry up, because the platform, which 
makes millions of decisions every second about which content to feature, gets 
nudged, maybe only slightly, to disfavor you for some opinion you have expressed. 
You are, perhaps, using a "free" service, so what cause for complaint do you have?

The kind of blogging I'm experimenting with here is both scalable and also 
transportable.  Of course, I'm not looking to make my living doing it, so I 
don't worry about every bit of traffic.  Still, though, if I suddenly got big, 
I would have to worry about scaling a database, because my site doesn't use one.
Also, all of my content is stored in source files that use [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/),
which has the happy quality of being very readable even without anything more
than a printer to put it on paper.

I predict that in another 10 years, it will be much more common to consider
adaptability at both ends:  _scalability_, in case of unexpected popularity, 
and _portability_, which would allow quick movement to another platform, even 
one that offers minimal technology, in exchange for full independence.

I continue and hopefully finish a fictitious dialog about Church, State, and Christianity.

On State Religions and Christianity


This is a further continuation of [this dialog](https://goodlifeodyssey.com/why-not-make-america-christian)
concerning whether it is consistent of a Christian to want to make the
government Christian, if one had the power to do so.  It is based on an argument 
in Blooms _The Closing of the American Mind_, where Bloom avers that perhaps the 
rights in the bill of Rights inevitably led to the moral relativism that 
completely dominates the university today.

I wrote a
continuation [here](/2021-05-23-01-another-dialog-on-making-america-christian)
but there were some loose ends that seemed worth wrapping up. The overall
subject is huge and beyond the ability of a few fun little dialogs to cover
completely. Still, it is interesting and worthwhile to think some of it through.

**Aaron**: Hey Dijon, I was thinking about our conversation the other day and 
realized that we never quite finished everything up.  I told you I had a 
revelation, and I never did finish telling it all to you.

**Dijon**: The part of the revelation you gave me left me at most 
partially convinced.  I agree that perhaps forcing people to convert would be 
counterproductive, but why wouldn't a Christian want to ennoble the citizens of 
her own country to make them more _likely_ to become Christians, at least?

**Aaron**: You have a point. No Christian would want to do much less than give
everyone she knew the best chance of becoming a Christian. And, of course, not
all Christians agree that government forcing conversions or penalizing apostasy
and unbelief is bad. It has been common. To this day in Europe, some
countries force citizens to support the state church. I'll leave it to you to
compare the relative strength of Christianity between Europe and North America
to judge how effective a conversion strategy this is.

**Dijon**: Yes, I think I was the one that made the point that the Establishment 
clause was almost certainly designed to prevent strife between competing 
Christian groups, rather than, say, Muslims.

**Aaron**: Indeed, many early Americans thought even Roman Catholics were
outside the pale. But we're talking about _my_ beliefs as a Christian here, or
at least, what I think the most enlightened Christian views would be. And these,
as I said the other day, would be informed by the distinction between God's
revealed and hidden will.

**Dijon**: I remember you making this distinction, and I think it's intriguing,
but I'm not sure it makes your case. God may not have spoken directly to
Christain leaders in the New Testament, but surely they would all have the
attitude of Paul in Acts, "I would to God that not only you but also all who
hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains."  Paul was 
a prisoner, and still he was trying to convert people, even kings.  So why not 
a ruler doing the same?

**Aaron**: Yes, but Paul writes in Romans 9 that if he could save a few of his 
fellow Jews, he would allow himself to be cut off.  He doesn't say that falsely, 
but he also knows that it is ultimately up to God who believes and who doesn't. 
The language of earlier Acts, "and all who were appointed for eternal life..." 
It is a mystery who believes in the end, and why.  It is not a simple matter of 
having the correct public policy, whatever that might be.  All we have to go on 
are the very limited bits of advice that the New Testament _does_ give to 
rulers.

**Dijon**: But wait--you said in our previous conversation that the New 
Testament said _nothing_ to rulers.  I hadn't thought about that, and it was 
maybe one of the things you said that I agreed with and understood.  So what 
_does_ the New Testament say, after all, to rulers?

**Aaron**: I guess I misspoke.  Compared with, say the Koran, the New Testament 
says next to nothing.  But not nothing.  The kinds of "rulers" that Paul writes 
advice to are Christians who have some limited authority.  You may not like 
this, but one of the main examples are slave owners.  But also fathers and 
husbands.

**Dijon**: Yeah, the patriarchy, basically.

**Aaron**: That's not fair. Early Christianity was radical in its day, and
Paul's main concern was that it not be _so_ radical that it became a social
movement, destined to be a flash in the pan. Or at least, that was God's goal,
apparently, because Paul wrote in that fashion.  So, he didn't tell slave
owners, "you must free God's people."  Instead, he said to treat servants
(slaves) fairly, and not harshly.  Likewise, he told fathers not to
"exasperate" their children, and to love their wives as themselves.

**Dijon**: All that seems like common sense.

**Aaron**: A lot of what the Bible says could be called "common sense."  Look, I
don't want to do a Bible study with you. But if we did look around, I think you
could distill the teaching of the New Testament to those having authority, it
would be three simple principles. First, _laws are your tool._  Someone who has
control over the stars (as I was using an analogy last time) should, in fact,
move them to get the desired result -- which is people treating each other
fairly, wickedness being restrained, and safety and peace being ascendant.
Second, _reason is your guide._  The Roman church's philosophers would later
come to speak of "natural law," even though the Bible does not use this phrase.
Paul, though, does say (Romans 2) that even unbelievers have the requirements of
the law written on their hearts. So, following reason will be a good, if
imperfect, guide. Finally, _do your duty._ This seems trite, but compared with
considering oneself a god, looking at ruling as a calling or public service was
a huge step forward, and something we tend to take for granted today. These
three principles apply to everyone in authority, even authority over a family.

**Dijon**: People don't need religion if all they need to know they learn in
kindergarten. None of this has convinced me yet that a Christian shouldn't try
to make a nation Christian, if one is in charge.

**Aaron**: I seem to have failed to convince you that my restraint is for the 
best, or best in line with Christianity.  Let me try one final time, then I'm 
going to just wait until we both change our perspective a little, or something. 
You can agree with me that the third principle, _do your duty_, would mean 
something like, _be competent_?

**Dijon**: Yes, sure, competence seems like a good word for doing your duty.

**Aaron**: And what is competent?  Is harshness competent?  When the prisons 
are full, is that competent?  When people are walking on eggshells and afraid 
to say the wrong things, but harboring animosity inside, is that a sign that 
leaders are competent?

**Dijon**: No, obviously.  Please don't press like that.  I get it.  You don't 
need to convince me that, at least in some situations, less government is 
better.  Maybe not all the time, though.

**Aaron**: OK, sorry.  So we agree at least on the idea of _competence_, and
how it is more competent to use no more force than necessary.  But more force 
can become the way of things in tribal situations, where one side feuds with 
the other, and recriminations go in both directions.  When a country is evenly 
divided (as ours is today) and one side then the other gets into power, if both 
use their chances at power to settle scores and dominate, then things can spiral 
out of control.

**Dijon**: Sadly, this seems kind of familiar. I guess you're driving at how 
Christianity could be just another tribe, if they weren't careful, and so it is 
better to be less imposing.  That makes sense -- but what if you _know_ you are 
right?  I keep asking that.

**Aaron**: I think that is  kind of what I'm saying, but not all.  Just barely 
over a century before the Constitution was adopted, Europe settled the end of 
the Thirty Year's war, a devastating conflict involving politics and religion 
mixed together in the worst sort of way.  It was all of the badness of the
no-separation approach of Medieval times rolled into an ugly conflict that left 
over 8 million people dead.

**Dijon**: Yes, I'm familiar with this.  The Peace of Westphalia.  You like to 
talk about this.

**Aaron**: For good reason!  A lot of the great things about modern international 
relations got their start at Westphalia.  First and foremost was the idea of 
_national sovereignty._  Regardless of how convinced a national leader was that 
his religion was the correct one, even if he thought the other country was all 
going to hell, national sovereignty established a limit of what that king 
could reasonably do.

**Dijon**: I think I see where you're going with this.  So, a Christian, like
a country, needs to respect other people's boundaries, even if he thinks they 
are tragically, eternally wrong, or there will be endless war and death?

**Aaron**: Pretty much.

**Dijon**: OK, your last swing of the bat connected with the ball.  I'm not sure 
if it's a home run or a foul ball yet, I have to think about it.  It seems to 
me, based on the Bible, you _still_ could say that making them go to church, 
or at least having taxes to support churches, might be a good thing.  By the 
way, I think I'm still right--A Christian ought to pass laws, or want to, that 
make people more virtuous and more likely to become a Christian.

**Aaron**: Ha! So I'll agree with you on this with the tiny quibble that we 
cannot predict what will make them Christian.  More virtuous is certainly 
better.

**Dijon**: But some Christians may want to go further, and do things like have 
the taxes, right?  Would the Bible say no?

**Aaron**: All that has been tried.  And in some cases, maybe it was right.  I'm 
just going to say two things.  First, rather than the seeds of relativism, the 
idea of rights and restraint -- the things in the Constitutional Amendments -- 
were almost certainly more a matter of Westphalian avoidance of violence at 
the local and national level.  Second, the only way that those rights are going 
to be maintained, in my opinion, is if people feel _so strongly_ about things 
like faith and salvation, that they are _not_ matters of opinion, and that 
others are tragically wrong in matters of fact and reality.  Only those 
kinds of differences make the rights a matter of life and death.  To the 
relativist, a matter of personal verbal safety may be reason enough to 
jettison them.

**Dijon**: You seem to be shifting to politics now. Wow, that was some 
"revelation" you had. You almost sound like a different person talking.

**Aaron**: Haha, these things happen.  Enjoy your evening with your daughter.






My thoughts during Trinity Sunday Worship

Worship at COS

Most weeks for the past six years, I have been _at_ Christ Our Savior.  Today,
though, I am watching from home.  To keep myself from letting my mind wander,
I am keeping these notes.  I also am chatting with other worshipers.  It is true
that we can think about other things, and when we are not present in worship,
this is a stronger tendency.

### Announcements
Pastor Ely is doing the announcements.  He is recalling many of the veterans
who are and were members of Christ Our Savior.  Ely is asking for his prayers
on his call.

### Thoughts on Trinity Sunday

I've preached many Trinity Sundays. It is a celebration of a doctrine. The
Trinity is a self-defining teaching of the Christian church, and yet, the
Trinity is not ever spelled out in a single verse or passage of Scripture. So,
in a sense, this Sunday (and the Trinity) validates the interpretive principle
of looking at multiple passages and drawing conclusions from their logical
combination. This is perhaps not immediately obvious.

### The Athanasian Creed

I remember reading somewhere that some scholars believe that the earliest uses
of this creed were chanted or sung, rather than spoken. It is an interesting
reflection of Christianity's dependence on its doctrine that the church would
sing something like this.

Many people who read this creed look at the almost pedantic repetition of
"is" and "is not". For myself, though, the thing that stands out is that
the Athanasian, alone of the historic creeds, reviews and asserts the
conclusions from the Council of Chalcedon on the nature of Christ. Many people
say that they "believe in Jesus," but Christians have come to believe that you
must understand Him and who He is before that statement has much meaning.

### Children's Sermon:  Baptism
Pastor Ely went over the children he has baptized through the years and spoke
about how the Trinity is the central teaching of baptism as it is practiced.
It is a central part of the Lutheran life to remember baptism daily.

### Sermon
Ely begins by talking about how the Trinity cannot be explained. It is not a
matter of understanding, but faith. Indeed, while we use the word "trinity"
in popular culture as any group of three, the original word was _designed_ to be
nonsensical. It came from combining 3 and 1. And of course, two numbers were
different.

From this, Ely turns to the Gospel (John 3, the dialogue with Nicodemus) to
speak. He leads up to Nicodemus's question: "how can these things be?"  Ely then
turns to say that we, too, find things in Scripture that we find hard to
understand. In Nicodemus's case, Jesus is right there beside him physically, but
in our case, God is also with us, through His Spirit.

For myself, I wonder at Jesus' explanation to Nicodemus. Jesus points out that
the snake on the cross was a "type" of himself. We have learned, in the
succeeding centuries, that not everyone should just make types on their own.
There is no end of it. So I'll leave for another time the idea about how Jesus
can use something to explain Scripture that the church should now limit itself
to.

In John 3:16ff, Jesus shows not only _who God is_, but _what God does_. Pieces
of the Trinity are there, but also the action of the Father _loving_ the world,
and _giving_ His Son. Nicodemus responds to this doing. John shows Nicodemus
growing in faith. He does not appear in this chapter again, but he becomes a
special character later.

We do not need to understand God to have a relationship with Him. Like
Nicodemus, we do not need to "get" everything. This is an important point in
our "scientific" age, which refuses to accept anything without "proof". This
skepticism may serve us well sometimes, but it serves us well as we walk with
Him.


I explain what I see as two opposite dangers we can fall into when we pray.

The Two Ditches of Prayer


**_Note_: This post is one of a series of 'foundation' posts I hope to write,
where I share things I've learned through the years and have frequently repeated
to others.**

There are two dangers, like two ditches on either side of a narrow path, which
we encounter when we pray. The dangers both involve our expectation of how God
is going to respond to our prayer.

The first danger is **fatalism**. This is the danger of the person who will say,
"God answers every prayer, but with yes, no, or wait."  Those three responses
exhaust every _possible_ outcome. We may as well be praying to a rock, or a
statue. The same "answers" will always come from anything, or anyone, you might
pray to, because there are no other possible answers than "yes," "no," or "
wait."  This observation is thus meaningless. Not harmful, perhaps, but not
helpful, either.

Fatalism is also a danger for peoplw who emphasize strongly that every prayer
should end with the words, "Thy will be done."  This is obviously a petition in
the prayer Jesus taught us, and it is not meaningless (like the "yes, no, wait"
claim above). Many people, though, misunderstand Jesus' words. He is _not_
telling us that we ought to stop and remind ourselves before we finish praying
that the Father will not change His behavior because we asked Him to, or that He
is going to do whatever He does regardless of our prayer. No, Jesus is having us
ask that the Lord break down every barrier that does not want God's name to be
holy, or His name to be hallowed.

What fatalism does is get us to believe, before we even rise from our knees,
that God has many reasons to ignore us, and we should just buck up and prepare
to get an answer we don't like. Such prayer may seem "deep" and "spiritual,"
but it is so draining that eventually it will sap us of our energy.

The second danger is **manipulation**. This is the danger of people who pull out
verses such as, "in that day, you will ask the Father whatever you want in my
name, and the Father will hear you."  Even the holiest of our prayers can be
tainted with selfishness. The woman who prays that her husband will attend
church may spend more time thinking of how nice it would be to sit with him
there, and not so much how God is missing him if he stays home.

This ineradicable selfishness does not enter into the theology of the
manipulators. They claim, boldly and happily, that if one prays with sufficient
faith, one will receive the desire that one pours out to God. When
disappointments ineviatably come, the manipulator says, "you did not pray with
sufficient faith."  Here, unlike the fatalist, it is all up to us, rather than
being up to God. Many have lost their faith, or had it weakened to the vanishing
point, because they mistakenly believed that they could pray in faith an restore
sick children, or perform nearly miraculous deeds.

I think that the fatalist is not really different from the manipulator. Instead,
the fatalist _anticipates_ possible failure, and reinforces against the
disappointment with the arguments above. The manipulator is more innocent, but
also a bit more selfish. There is no reason to think one is better than the
other; but they do have differing opinions, and may not always get along.

The way to avoid these two ditches is to realize that God never really says "no"
to us, but rather that He has something _even better_ in mind. Jesus famously in
the garden of Gethsemane asked for a way out of the suffering and humiliation He
faced; there was no relief for Him there, but what He got was much better in the
end. Similarly, Paul says that God declined to remove his "thorn in the flesh,"
but it is noteworthy that Paul did not consider this an offense of God, but
rather something to brag about, because God told Him directly that weakness of
the infirmity was better than strength.

Every time you pray for someone or something, you should be positive that the
prayer will be answered. When you are disappointed, do not be shy about bringing
your complaint to God. He is faithful, and this expectation will lead -- after
some regrettable heartache in some cases -- to a greater awareness of How God
works, which is the mystery of the ages.



A continuation of a dialog from another blog on the question of Separation of Church and State and religious freedom

Another Dialog on Making America Christian


This is a continuation of 
[this dialog](https://goodlifeodyssey.com/why-not-make-america-christian)
concerning whether it is consistent of a Christian to want to make the 
government Christian, if one had the power.

**Aaron**:  I had a revelation after our discussion yesterday about
whether a Christian ought, if she had the power, to make the government
of the United States (or any other country) Christian.

**Dijon**: I'm interested to hear it.  I don't think you did much more than
bluster during our last coversation.  I'm still thinking it would be 
consistent for a Christian to want this, regardless of anyone's fondness
for the U.S. Constitution.

**Aaron**:  Well, it's hard.  I'd like just to quote the Bible, but  
the New Testament was completed while Christians had no political power
at all.  In fact, persecution was more common during the apostolic age
than anything like power.  So the Bible doesn't give advice to Christian
leaders at all.

**Dijon**: But we were not talking about _exercising_ power, but _gaining_
power.  The question is whether a Christian should try to control the
government and make it Christian.

**Aaron**: Yes, precisely.  Paul tells Christians to respect the governing
authorities in Romans 13 and to pray for those in power in 1 Timothy.  There
are other passages as well.  But none of them ever say to take over the
government.  From this, I'd say it is not recommended that a Christian
actively try to take over the government.

**Dijon**: Respect those in authority, sure.  But that doesn't mean 
one can't try to take over, right?

**Aaron**:  Come on.  Do you think you should pray for those in authority at
the same time you are trying to take their jobs from them?

**Dijon**: So then, George Washington was sinning when he rebelled against
the English authorities?

**Aaron**:  Some people thought so at the time.  But it is more subtle than
that.  I'm going to try to stop blustering, and explain it.  The best way
I can think to understand it is that Christians cannot change God's authority
or laws, any more than one could move a star in the sky.  What the Bible
told the early Christians was that the secular authorities were also agents
of God, so that their "stars" were also to be viewed as unchangeable.

**Dijon**:  That seems to make the Christians look like they _enjoyed_ being
powerless.  So, you seem to be trying to avoid my question simply by
saying that Christians should not seek authority.  OK, I'll do one better, 
then.  What if a Christian woke up and found herself in authority?  Like
when Constantine converted to Christianity? I mean, he was already the 
emperor, but now he was the emperor and a Christian.  So what was he 
supposed to do?

**Aaron**: As I said, the Bible did very little directly to guide someone
like Constantine.  But historically there have been three different solutions
that Christians have used to answer the question.

**Dijon**:  Now we're getting somewhere!  So what was the first solution?

**Aaron**:  Think of what I should do if _I could control one set of stars_
in the illustration I used above.  As an earthly ruler, I no longer live
under two sets of immovable stars, but I have one I can move and one I cannot
move.  The first solution might be called _aligning the stars._  In short,
it says that the Christian ruler's job is to make the earthly laws line
up as closely as possible with God's laws.

**Dijon**:  Aha!  I knew it!  That is pretty much to make the country Christian,
as I have been saying!  So, that brings our conversation to a close... oh,
but wait, you said there were two others.  And I suppose you prefer one of
them.  What was the second?

**Aaron**: The second is _abdication_.  It claims that if you found yourself
in a position of earthly authority, you should surrender it, because it is
only a matter of time before you were corrupted as the world is.

**Dijon**:  This is kind of cheating.  You can't say that the answer to 
taking over the government is not to take over the government.  Plus, I'm not
sure I agree that any real people would do this.  Weren't you saying just
yesterday that we have to be practical?  Which groups ever did this?  I'm 
assuming that the Roman church is an example of the first solution.

**Aaron**:  You are right about the Roman church, although you
could include Calvin's Geneva in this category.  And examples of the second
group can be found among the anabaptists and their heirs, like the Mennonites
and the Amish.

**Dijon**:  Hmmm.  Everyone has heard of these groups, but they are not
really that significant in numbers.  But I suppose this is who you are going
to say we should follow?

**Aaron**:  No, not actually.  Because, you see, if you think about it, there
is not really any difference between the Amish and the Catholics in this
matter of aligning the stars.

**Dijon**: Wait, I thought you said one group said align the stars, and the
other said to abdicate.

**Aaron**:  But the abdication meant to withdraw into small communities, 
separate from the world, almost like a monastery enlarged to a town.  Within
these communities, they thought they could do an even better job of
aligning the stars.  So, when you think about it, the abdicators
are just as enthusiastic about aligning stars, but just more
pessimistic about doing it for large groups of people.

**Dijon**:  You really did seem to have some revelation.  Just last night
you were saying all kinds of things about not wanting to force others into
your beliefs, and now it's all about lining up stars.
But I imagine you've saved the one you actually agree with to last.

**Aaron**:  Of course!  The last group of Christians said that God's will regarding
the running of the world is hidden, unlike His revealed will for the church,
and the two should not really mix.  The revealed will (His Word) is, in the end, 
all about grace and forgiveness, which makes a beautiful way of running
a church, but a pretty impractical way of running a country.

**Dijon**: You know I'm not a huge believer in grace even as a religion, but
OK.  So, this is a first-rate dodge.  You say you don't believe in 
abdication, but you also don't believe that Christians should presume to
run the world because God's will there is hidden.

**Aaron**:  But I didn't say that.  I said that you can't align the 
constellations if you are a Christian.  But if a Christian controls the laws,
then the goal shouldn't be to force everyone to believe, but rather to allow
Christians to live peaceful lives in "Godliness and holiness" as it says in
1 Timothy 2.

**Dijon**: I'm not sure I see how this is any different from what I am saying.
If a Christian is supposed to encourage, with laws, for people to live
in "Godliness" and "holiness" isn't that the same as making the country
Christian?

**Aaron**.  No.  I'm trying to speak precisely here, I'm sorry, let me clarify.
A Christian should govern to _allow Christians_ to live this way, not _force_
anyone else to.  It is the ultimate religious liberty.  And it is not about
faith, as good as this is, but rather competence.  A well ordered society is
the best for people to come to faith, not by compulsion, but by attraction.

**Dijon**: And which Christian group practiced this?

**Aaron**: Lutherans.

**Dijon**: I should have guessed.  You seem to idolize those guys.

**Aaron**: Haha, no I don't idolize them.  And they weren't always that great
about doing this, in fact.  They were always slipping into the trap of
telling Christians that even if the government was rapacious, capricious,
and unjust, they should pray for them and live by the laws anyway.

**Dijon**:  Hmmm... maybe it's better to do it the Catholic way.

**Aaron**:  I don't think so.  But I'm sure you're tired of me talking
about this.  Let's talk about another wrinkle in my revelation that
makes the subject even more interesting, but later.

**Dijon**:  Sure, I still want to hear about George Washington,
and how, according to your explanation, he wasn't sinning.  But
for now, I gotta go, too.  Later!



The Comforter


> 26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. ...
> 
> “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5 But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. ....
> 
> 12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
> 
> _The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Jn 15:26–16:16). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles._

_Note:  When I preached this sermon, I had as an illustration a birthday cake for the church with about 100 candles on -- 
a candle for 20 years._

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.  Our text is the gospel reading for today that we heard just
a few minutes ago, and I want to start by continuing, in a more grown-up way,
the children's sermon that you heard, too.  On the occasion of a birthday,
we who are a little older than those kids are might be inclined to look at
the candles, and look back over our lives, and reflect on how things have
gone, and ask what future candles will be representing.  Will they good years
or bad ones?

American Christians today could be forgiven for feeling that, perhaps, many of the
happier years are sitting there already as candles on the cake, and the candles
yet to be lit, in another year, will be representing sadder ones.  I was
talking to a friend this past week, and we both agreed that it seems that
_everyone_ appears to be grouchy, out of sorts, in a bad mood these days.  I
don't know for _certain_ if it's COVID hangover, or cultural uncertainty, 
or something else.  I have some strong suspicions though, which I'll share
in a bit.

The story is told of three friends who went to different colleges.  I'm going
to leave the names of the colleges out, so you can fill in blanks with your
own choices once you have heard the story:

> The three friends were on spring break, and
short on cash, and found themselves close to the water, but not able to afford
anywhere much fun or anything to do, so they were walking around in an
industrial area near the docks.  There was a sign on a door they walked by
saying, "Harbor tours, $5."
> 
> The first one said, "I don't know, it seems too good to be true."
> 
> The second one said, "don't be such a wet blanket, it's spring break, 
> maybe it's a volume discount sort of thing.  What do you
think," he asked the third one, who simply replied, "I'm not sure what to 
think."
> 
> So the second friend said, "I'm going in," and didn't come out.  The
first friend asked the third, "do you think we should follow?"  And he again
answered, "I'm not sure."  So the first friend went in.  
> 
> Finally, after a long pause, the third one also went through the door, where like the other two,
he was hit from behind and knocked out.  All three came to on a life raft,
without their money or much of anything, floating out in the bay.  
> 
> "I _knew_ this was a bad idea, the first one said."  
> 
> The second one said, "stop being such a downer, I'm sure they're going 
> to send someone out to pick us up."
> 
> The third one said, "No, they're not.  I did this last year."

It would be a great American sermon if I used this text to tell you,
somehow, that of course they were going to send a boat out to pick us up.
We Americans love a happy ending, and we're addicted to the idea, I'm not
sure where it came from, that with progress and human cleverness, things
will just keep getting better and better forever.  But we need to be realistic
about some of the candles on this cake here.

I did a little online research, and I discovered that many historians agree
that 536 was perhaps the worst year to be alive
in the northern hemisphere.  A volcanic eruption in 
Greenland or somewhere in North America put so much ash in the air that the
sun's rays were blocked.  Snow fell in June, and no crops survived for 
three years.  Many died of famine.  Just six years later, the Eastern Roman
empire, barely recovered from this awful weather event, was struck by the
first wave of a bubonic plague that killed about a third of the population.
The Roman empire was Christian at that point; in fact, the ruins remain today
of a huge church whose construction was halted by that plague and never
resumed.  I wonder what
those unhappy Christians thought as they were recovering from famine only
to face the plague.  No, things don't always just get better and better.

Our text says a lot about how we should look at the candles on the cake.
I think it is a great time, as we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit,
to think that this same Spirit is active in our own time.

Pastor Ely preached last week from the same portion of John's gospel as 
we read today.  Our readings don't always move forward; in fact, last week's
reading actually comes after today's.  But Pastor Ely spoke about how
John was remembering Jesus and writing his Gospel for people who felt that
the world was a hostile place for their beliefs.  By the time John was
writing this Gospel, even though the events he remembers and describes 
happened _before_ pentecost, the people who first heard his gospel regarded
that first day of the church as a distant memory, or perhaps had not even
been born when it happened.  The Holy Spirit came down with great power
and enthusiasm (if I may use that word) on that day of the first thousands
added to the church.  There were many days afterwards, though, that were just
ordinary days, both good and bad.

Jesus says, as part of this same talk he gives to His disciples, "In a
little while you will not see me, then a little longer, and you will."  When
we read this prediction of Jesus, from our vantage point, we assume that 
Jesus is talking about how he will be killed, and the disciples will not 
see Him until He comes again at Easter.  But many in the age of the apostles
could be forgiven for remembering these words of Jesus and thinking that He
would return very soon, perhaps any day.  I wouldn't be surprised if some of
those on the first Pentecost of the church weren't more expecting Jesus to 
return, rather than the Holy Spirit to come.

I think that many Christians in the age of the apostles would have been
horrified and disappointed if they realized that the Father intended to
put _so many candles_ on the cake.  Many of them would have acted very
differently, and perhaps the church would have have even survived.  The
apostles themselves, in that upper room, obviously had no idea what was 
going to happen at all, so it seems strange that Jesus would say they He 
had given them His Word.  There was a lot of the Word they didn't get.

And, in fact, it's well worth noticing that Jesus says that they are not 
meant to know everything all at once.  "I still have many things to say
to you, but you cannot bear them now."  It certainly doesn't make much sense
that things were going to get so incredibly happy for the church, that they
couldn't "bear them."  We don't use those words when we're talking about
good things.  It's something I've noticed years ago, that when a spouse or
a long friend or loved one dies, that people think they're over it when
they're not.  Suddenly a billboard, or a plate of food, or some other 
seemingly unrelated something brings back memories, and the grief is 
suddenly real again, tears and all.  Perhaps you've experienced this.  I
have.  What is going on, in my mind, is that God gives us grief on the
installment plan.  If we had to do all of our grieving for a very close
person all at once, it would kill us, as I have also witnessed.  So, Jesus knows of
what He speaks when he says, "you cannot bear them now," and He doesn't mean
it's because it's all so wonderful.

So, then, how did Jesus mean to continue to share?  Our Lord and Savior
talks to us through His Word most clearly, but also through things that
happen in our lives, and it is often here where it is so hard to bear.  But he does
not leave us alone.  The ESV translates the word Jesus uses for the Holy
Spirit as "Helper," but the most literal translation is "advocate," which word
itself comes from the Latin "ad" and "vocate", or "one called alongside."
In fact in the original language, the word, _paraclete_, means exactly this,
"one called along side."  The Holy Spirit is called to our side to make
the things Jesus says bearable -- to help us bear them.

Jesus says of the Helper, "he will declare the things that are to come."  This
sounds like predicting the future, or what we would call prophecy -- and 
surely the Holy Spirit has done this -- but another more common occurrence is 
another way to take those words, which is that the Holy Spirit helps us
understand those candles as they move from the future to the present, and
helps us bear them, especially when we need comfort or encouragement to do so.
Brothers and sisters, I submit to you that this is truly what empowers
the church and sets it apart from the world -- this Holy Spirit, this Helper,
this Advocate, who is called to our sides and makes the unbearable into
something bearable.

I don't want to go into detail about Jesus' words this morning about how
the Holy Spirit confronts the world.  To us, in the church, the Holy Spirit
is a beloved advocate, giving life and explaining God's work to us.  To the
world, however, the Holy Spirit shows a different face:  one that _convicts_.
The Holy Spirit convicts the world with regard to sin, and righteousness,
and judgment.  Occasionally -- for some of us, frequently -- we fall back
into the world's way of thinking about things, and when we do, we suddenly 
see this other side of the Holy Spirit.  It convicts _us_ when we are in 
the wrong.

We moan and complain to God about the bad things in our lives, despite the
overall evidence that we are wealthy, comfortable, and free from many of
the terrors that beset our ancestors and Christians of old.  When that happens,
we stop trusting in God and try to make the world in our own images, and it
never works.  We simply find ourselves separated from God.  But the Holy
Spirit convicts us with regard to righteousness, which is to say, He shows
us Jesus dying on the cross, and we see that God both loves us and wants
us to repent.  This is the source of all true life.  Put your faith in Jesus
and you will watch the Holy Spirit go from convictor to advocate.

Along with life, the Holy Spirit brings _hope_.  We are talking in our
midweek Bible studies about Peter's first letter, and that letter focuses
on _a living hope_ which we have in Jesus.  All of us "hope" that 2021 will
be better than 2020.  But we honestly have no guarantee that it will be.
Time will tell.  But the _living hope_ that the Holy Spirit gives us is 
sealed in heaven, where our Savior lives and sits who died for us.  This
isn't just some empty hope for a better tomorrow, but the certainty that
Jesus rose from the dead, and because of this, we are free from the 
sin and its attendant death that used to cloud around us like flies around
livestock.  Who wouldn't want that?

It must have been great to be there on the first day of Pentecost and
see the tongues of fire, like the little candles on the cake, on the
heads of the disciples.  It must have been amazing to see the well-known
phenomenon of ecstatic speech, as it existed in Jesus' day among many Greek
religions, turned into something beautiful as, instead of words no one
could understand, people of every language heard the truths and glories of
God told them in a way that tugged on their heart strings.  But, you know,
we don't have it so bad.  We have all those candles to look at, and while
those early Christians could not bear the knowledge of all that was to come,
the Holy Spirit has made it known and comforted the church for centuries.

We're not out of the woods.  If you want to think the way the world
thinks, there is always plenty to worry about.  For
my part, I worry a lot about these phones we all carry around.
I think that the technology is amazing, and I'm going to use it
as best I can to spread the Gospel even, but the technology is so
new that we don't understand yet how dangerous it might be.  Remember
how I said everyone is grouchy?  I think the phones may have as 
much to do with it as COVID.  We'll need to find out, and I pray to God
that the damage from overusing or misusing phones and their
technology isn't as great as a plague or a famine, but it could be,
it could be.

A few sentences after our
reading today, Jesus says to his disciples, "in this world you will have
trouble."  He surely spoke the truth.  But He immediately followed that 
by saying, "but take heart, for I have overcome the world."  Oppressed
Christians through the years have sung beautiful songs, like "we shall
overcome."  It is true, we "shall," by God's grace.  But with the Helper
at our side, it is also true that we _have_ overcome.  Your hope is
in front of you!  Let's march out with it in confidence.  Amen.


A long Response from an earlier post Recorded for later discussion

The Limitations of Blogs

I wrote a [post](/post/2020-11-27-01-facts-not-in-evidence) in response to [another post](http://goodlifeodyssey.com/faith-and-righteousness) I read on David's blog.  David responded with an email, and I [responded](/post/2020-12-01-01-christians-have-their-own-ethics) to the email "inline," as they say in emails -- that is, I duplicated his email and interrupted the flow with my own responses.  David replied with a yet longer email.

The "inline" format will not work for this longer email.  The problem with inline responses is that the organization of composition is dictated by the original email.  It also seems to encourage a kind of oppositional writing.  "You say this, but I say this," is an easy pattern to fall into.

I want to do justice to David's objections, but I cannot do it without writing way more than anyone is likely to read in one piece.  So, in order to be fair, I'm reproducing David's response below.  I'll link to it later, so that anyone can read his own words, but just as he did not reproduce my entire post in his email, I'm not going to do that again.

I thus cede the rest of this post to David without comment, except for the very general observation that even the organization of ideas affects them.  Do we communicate in emails, debates, blog posts, or essays?  Each would, I think, result in a different kind of reasoning.  Martin Luther was very proud of his work _The Bondage of the Will,_ which is a point-by-point refutation of a much shorter essay by Erasmus called simply _A Diatribe_.  Erasmus was stung by Luther's response and wrote a very lengthy book of his own to answer Luther.  Medieval convention, apparently, said that the best writing exhaustively refuted an opponent's work at every point.  It makes for very long reads.


> Thank you for including my thoughts in another blog post and for your detailed response. I’m sure this topic is difficult to discuss dispassionately for both of us. You’re frustrated that I say the question isn’t entirely rhetorical; I’m frustrated because I feel like you aren’t giving me the benefit of the doubt.
> 
> When I wrote the post, I had been exploring the relationship between faith and righteousness. As you know, I think God is unfair to judge people based on their faith. My question comparing the agnostic to the Christian came out of this exploration. In any event, I am sincerely interested in the question. As I admitted, it is _somewhat_ rhetorical because I do suspect I know the answer, but I am not entirely sure that I do, and I’m open to thoughtful counterarguments like the one you’ve made about unconscious actions. If you consider this “trying to have it both ways,” then I guess I am.
> 
> Let me clarify a few points in my last response: First, while this wasn’t obvious, I mentioned utilitarianism and intentionalism as examples of why the question is interesting. I wanted to demonstrate that you were too quick to turn the questions into assertions. I didn’t mean to imply that the questions were meant to ponder utilitarianism. As you said, it would have been odd if it had been. Second, you imply I am judging a “belief system by the weakness of its adherents,” but I’m not, and you should have given me the benefit of the doubt that I wouldn’t be so unfair. I know Christians who do good to go to heaven, but I’m not judging a belief system by its adherents. I’m judging Christianity because it prioritizes faith over works; these individuals are just examples of why the system feels inconsistent.
> 
> Your main point is that it is difficult to compare a Christian and an agnostic. I agree, but I don’t think it is impossible or meaningless. I’ll say more about this later, but this comparison isn’t my original interest in the questions. To illustrate this, consider a similar question:
> 
>> Two Christians live outwardly identical lives—the first has a strong faith, the second has a weak faith. Which Christian is more righteous?
> 
> I think the Christian with weaker faith is more righteous. If Abraham had known that Isaac would be saved before the knife struck, would his sacrificial journey have been credited to him as righteousness? If you knew without a doubt that Jesus, the creator of the universe, existed, loved you, and wanted a personal relationship with you, then should you get much credit for praying and reciprocating that relationship as you do now, being somewhat sure, but far from completely? These examples demonstrate that weaker faith allows someone to be more righteous. Furthermore, if faith didn’t matter, why does God hide from most of us?
> 
> My original question is the limiting case of this analysis. The agnostic has no faith. So what is it about a little faith that changes the comparison so much? It’s like an ethical state change. This is the issue I’m primarily interested in. I don’t understand why God emphasizes faith so much.
> 
> You may object that two outwardly identical lives are impossible; the difference in faith would alter their behavior somehow. I would be happy to explore this further, although clearly, two individual actions can be performed by people with different degrees of faith. Thus I suspect the entire life comparison isn’t impossible. It is only a thought experiment. Now I’ll return to the main point of your two posts.
> 
> It is a fact that Christians and non-Christians are operating under different ethical frameworks and that this needs to be accounted for. However I think they can be.
> 
> A little formalism may help me explain why. Imagine that each ethical system provides a righteousness function. This function takes a vector of a person’s contextualized choices as its input and returns a “righteousness value” as its output. Imagine the righteousness value ranges from 0 to 1. Let’s represent it using this equation: R = F(C). In reality, we can never know C, but that’s okay because this whole exercise is a thought experiment. There are similar functions for individual actions: r = f(c).
> 
> There are many ethical systems, each with its own function. God has one; the Old Testament is the story of the Israelites’ R values perpetually being too low. Each of us has one, be it vague and time-varying. Different religions and time-periods have them. Christians value their relationship with God and evangelism, while Buddhists value meditation and monastic donations. A Hindu ethic cares if you choose to eat beef, while a Christian’s doesn’t. Thus, some choices only matter for certain righteousness functions. Other choices matter for nearly all of them; most of us agree we should give the hungry food, cloth the naked, and visit the sick; thous shalt honor your mother and father; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not murder. These seem universal, and it is this universality that holds society together. I also think the overlap extends beyond consequentialism. Like you said: “No one likes that kind of kid.” Most people care about intentions a lot—just because we don’t always know what they are doesn’t mean we don’t care about them. If someone says something offensive, we care if it was intentional. I think the agnostic also has to struggle with motives. Certainly, we feel like a billionaire who publicly gives away a lot of money is less righteous than the one who anonymously does.
> 
> I recognized the difficulty of comparing a Christian and an agnostic when I wrote the post. That is why, in the first question, I said, “two people do the same good deed” and in the second question, I said, “two people live equally _charitable_ lives.” I used the term charitable to denote the righteousness-comparison was being made in the overlapping regions. I believe I even considered a few alternate words, before selecting charitable. (Note that I had not thought of this formalism at the time—this only occurred to me while writing my response.)
> 
> I suspect you will say that the non-overlapping portions matter so much that any comparison is meaningless. Perhaps you are right, but I don’t think it is so obvious that the question must be a rhetorical sleight of hand. If you say this, then I think it has to do with our differing understanding of Christianity’s righteousness function. Maybe I think it is more similar to the typical agnostics than you think it is. For example, I’m still surprised that your function excludes any deeds that were consciously done. I thought God wanted us to have free will. Otherwise, why create the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? If only the unconscious deeds count in the final judgment, couldn’t God have made us robots? (By the way, I think you’re right that one can pray and fast without being conscious of the motives. This is also a good point.) 
> 
> The only response I could think of is that, although unconscious deeds are all that matter in the last analysis, they do so not for themselves but because they are the only true reflection of our internal moral state. If you think this moral state is fixed, then we don’t have free will. But if it is not fixed, then how would we change it? It seems that it must be changed by conscious deeds. Thus, conscious deeds lead to unconscious habits. If this is the case, then it seems like the conscious deeds are still the ones being judged. One could then compare the Christian who, desiring heaven, formed righteous habits to the agnostic who, wanting to have a good self-image, formed righteous habits.
> 
> Thank you for pointing me to Matthew 25. I read it a couple of times, and while I see the point you are making about sheep vs. goats (and I recall you making this in sermons past), it is subtle. I’ll have to take your word on the theology—I shouldn’t have questioned you on this in the first place.

I left out some personal remarks.  There was also this from a later email:

> I was a bit surprised by you reasoning here:
> 
>> The fact is, everyone knows this story, even millions of unbelievers. How many people took every opportunity to visit a stranger? And, conversely, how many were so callous that they never took a single opportunity to do so? A simple reading of this situation leads to a ludicrous result.
> 
> In particular, when Jesus said the story, it wasn’t the case that everyone had heard the story. Why do you think it’s appropriate to reason from how we would interpret how the story sounds to us today back onto its original meaning?
> 
> It seems to me that if the God wanted us to be unconsciously good, the sermon on the mount could have made this much more explicit. E.g., instead of:
> 
>> “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
> 
> It could be
> 
>> “Beware of practicing your piety before yourself in order to improve your self image; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So give alms often and earnestly enough so that you no longer consciously consider your motives, do not give to charity as the anonymous agnostic philanthropists do, so that they may feel good about themselves as they approach their old age. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do it without thought of an outer physical reward of eternal heaven, nor of the outer reward of other people seeing you do good, nor even the inner reward of a positive self-image, so that your alms may be done in secret even from your own mind; and your Father who sees what you do unconsciously will reward you."
> 
> Does this second version reflect what you think is meant by the passage? If not, what would you change about it to make it align with your thinking?

Emails have their own limitations.  The above actually condenses an edit from a later edition of an email.  In emails, one cannot revise easily.  Perhaps there is some variation of a source code control system that could serve better the needs of these kinds of idea discussions.  In the mean time, I'll just make do with this post and move on later to comment as I have time.


I clarify an earlier post about ethics of Christians and non-Christians

Christians Have their own Ethics


David responded to my [earlier post](https://edgiese.com/post/2020-11-27-01-facts-not-in-evidence) by raising some questions and objections.  I'll try to answer these point-by-point.

To make reading this easier, here is David's original, short, post in full:

> Two people do the same good deed—the first believes they will be rewarded, while the second is unsure. Which deed is more righteous?
> 
> Two people live equally charitable lives—the first is a Christian with a strong faith, the second is an agnostic. Which person is more righteous?

To summarize my original response, linked above, I assert as a _fact_ that Christians and non-Christians are operating under different ethical frameworks, and so comparisons between them must take that into account.

Here is David's response to my post, with inline responses:

> I don’t think the Christian is necessarily less righteous than the agnostic; I only think they are at most equally righteous. I think some believers are like “rascally children.” I know some who are explicit about this. There are also many believers who are utterly sincere in their motives. I would say these Christians are equally righteous. Thus, your assumption is mostly correct, but not [quite].
> 
> Furthermore, at least to some degree, the question really is posed as a question. I’m not pretending that the implication isn’t there, but I think you jumped past the question too quickly. A utilitarian would say the two acts and the two people are equally righteous. The two acts are no longer equal if you say the intentions matter too. Would you agree with this: If you are an atheist but an intentionalist, and if two people do the same good deed—the first believing they will be rewarded while the second is unsure, then the second person is more righteous? If not, why?

These paragraphs are a little frustrating.  My first impression here was that you want to have it both ways -- to deny that you are claiming moral superiority for an agnostic, and then to assert it anyway.  When you say you personally know Christians who are "rascally children," (a reference to a hypothetical in my earlier post) you are implying that at least some Christians have self-interested motives.  Leaving aside the unfairness of judging a belief system by the weaknesses of some of its adherents, you seem to be saying that a Christian has an obligation to rid herself of such impure motives, while an agnostic need never wrestle with motive at all.  How else do you conclude that "they are at most equally righteous?"  For I can see no possibility in either your original questions or your argument above that the agnostic is ever _less_ righteous than the Christian, given equal utilitarian outcomes.

When you write, "at least to some degree, the question really is posed as a question," then you _definitely_ are trying to have it both ways.  Your original questions posit as a given (which I did not challenge) that the actions of two people are equally good.  Who decides that?  I was granting that perhaps in some utilitarian way, they were the same.  What other standard could there be between a believer and an unbeliever?  Without granting this, the questions as posed are meaningless.  What is left is motive.  It is the whole reason for the questions.  You have just confirmed in your response that the inferior motives of Christians are your concern here, so how can you possibly claim, then, that your questions are not rhetorical?  Unless this is some strange way to tip your hat to utilitarianism.

If, in fact, you are really curious whether a simple utilitarian calculus is a sufficient basis for morality, you chose a very odd set of questions to pose it.  And to say that the overtone of curiosity is there seems odd.

> I think you make an interesting point when you say _righteousness_ can be decreased by purely mental motivations. I certainly agree that doing good works publicly is less righteous than doing them privately. 

Wasn't this the entire point of your questions?  It is confusing here, because you appear to be switching between two different worldviews without always recognizing it.  If there is no God, then I would assert far lower importance to motive, and quite possibly there is none at all.  I don't know anyone's motives but my own, and so how am I to judge a person by them?  I can certainly judge motives in the abstract.  It isn't hard to think of cases where knowing someone's motive may put their seemingly virtuous acts in a worse light.  Still, it is impossible to judge a _person_ on that basis because motives are never truly known, even to the person who holds them.

On the other hand, if there is a God who has revealed a preference for actions and attitudes, and who _can see_ the motivations, then this becomes the basis for all righteousness.  

> It seems that you are generalizing this even further so that only someone who is doing good works unconsciously is fully righteous. I agree that if this is how you define righteousness, than an agnostic may be less righteous than a Christian. I’d like to think more about the implications of such a definition, since I hadn’t heard it before.
> 
> Perhaps to begin with, what makes you think that this is what Jesus meant in Matthew 6:3? It seems to me that verse 1 is providing a general principle—don’t do righteous acts in front of others. Then there are a few examples. The other examples involve praying in front of others and fasting in front of others. It seems unlikely that prayer or fasting could be unconscious deeds, thus it feels like you are reading more into the text than is there. Are there other verses that make similar claims?

You are correct in your conclusion about my argument, and I'm very pleased that you saw it!  My point was primarily based on Matthew 25, and not Matthew 6, because the account of the final judgment specifically excludes all deeds that were consciously done.  How else could the believers be surprised that they had done them?  It is what we do without thinking, I would argue, that shows what we really are -- as horrible as that thought is.  Otherwise, Matthew 25 leaves us with a question, "how many good deeds must a goat perform to turn itself into a sheep?"  One doesn't need modern biology to know the answer.

Regarding your objection, even prayer and fasting can be done unconsciously, at least with regard to motive.  The repeated refrain in the Sermon on the Mount, "you have received your reward," ought to lend clarity to that.  My point from before stands: even an agnostic can receive his reward, if the deed is done for the sake of conscience or self-image.  Take away all of _those_ deeds, for both Christian and non-Christian alike, and you have a very different picture.  It is these ethics that matter to a Christian, I would argue, because they are based on relationship, and not some abstract deontology.  One might reject the entire framework and still do some good things -- even unconsciously -- but something done outside of that framework will always remain outside of it.



In response to a Rod Dreher essay, I rant for a while about the 5 Factor Model

The Evil of the Five Factor Model


Rod Dreher has a great article in [The American Conservative](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/hillbilly-elegy-class-conflict-mercy/).  It is good enough that I'm going to forward links to several friends who rarely receive links from me.  It is especially poignant for anyone like J.D. Vance, and Rod Dreher himself, who has struggled with his roots while crossing class boundaries.  That hasn't been my experience by and large, but in my case, I think a kind of cluelessness saved me from painful situations.

Dreher makes the point well, similarly to [Glenn Reynolds](https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/416763) -- who has written similar claims many times -- that current issues with race are really about class:

> Put more bluntly, I think the “privilege” discourse among middle class educated white liberals is mostly about rearranging prejudices to make lower class white people deserving of the scorn of the uppers.

Read Dreher to see the point made, illustrated with a review of Netflix's "A Hillbilly Elegy," and also some powerful comments about balancing mercy and accountability, as well as the baleful effects of reverse snobbery.  Enough good writing that I'm going to be checking in there more often.  I'm not going to try to summarize Dreher here -- as they like to say, "read the whole thing."

Instead, I'd like to respond to something that Dreher discusses in passing, which is the correlation of a personality trait called "low openness" with conservatism. This "trait" comes from the so-called [Five-Factor Model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits).  Dreher appears, on a certain level, to accept that much conservatism in middle America arises from this personality trait, although he claims that he is still a conservative even though he is quite open to new experiences and things.

Consider for a moment the stunning condescension implicit in defining a term like "low openness" in a personality.  While the term can be defined neutrally, and it appears to be in the 5-factor model -- inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious -- it rarely stays that way.  It isn't that there aren't variations in curiosity or caution, or that some people may be more inclined to be one way than the other.  Rather, it is that there is a subtle value judgment even in the terms themselves.  No one writes stories or makes movies about consistent, cautious people.  In fact, in stories and movies, it is the cautious who act as foils for the curious.  The hero, in other words, is _always_ open.  A person may be relatively incurious or cautious, but few people would admit this.

Some people see the glass half full, and others half empty, the saying goes, and while this is undeniable, I've never met a person who willing calls herself a pessimist.  That is a label others may use, but the term has negative connotations.  The analogy is exact.  The "openness" trait in the five-factor model is value-laden and judgmental.  Its uses are often evil, a way to dismiss people.

I recall one protagonist whom one would describe as incurious:  the copyist Akakiy Akakievitch in Gogol's "The Overcoat."  This description of him has stuck with me:

> One director being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for his long service, ordered him [Akakievitch] to be given something more important than mere copying. So he was ordered to make a report of an already concluded affair to another department: the duty consisting simply in changing the heading and altering a few words from the first to the third person. This caused him so much toil that he broke into a perspiration, rubbed his forehead, and finally said, "No, give me rather something to copy." After that they let him copy on forever.

"The Overcoat" is dark comedy, and while the story itself is [immensely influential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overcoat), its protagonist was anything but.  No one would aspire to be _this_ protagonist, even in an age of anti-heros.  This despite the character's positive qualities, which were definitely there.  But Akakievitch's picture could be next to the definition of "consistent/cautious" in the 5-factor model.

Given its post-culture-war progeny, the entire 5-factor model appears to be a weaponization of anodyne observations about personalities into a cudgel.  No one starting in the 1980s could credibly claim to be neutrally improving on a [mother-daughter application of Jungian theories](https://eu.themyersbriggs.com/en/tools/MBTI/Myers-Briggs-history) with the same naive innocence.  No one today could try seriously to discuss intelligence differences between "races" without being -- rightly, in my opinion -- booed out of the public square.  Whether one can write down the numbers of individual tests and categorize them to draw conclusions is irrelevant, since it has evil results.  It leads to individuals being dismissed by facile and deceptive generalizations.  It is apparently just fine, though, to do similar "innocent" groupings of people by their response to questions such as, "I prefer to do things the same way as my father did," and imply that they are hapless losers whose highest life aspirations could be fulfilled by a photocopier. 

It is certainly convenient for supercilious mediocrities hanging on the ever-growing edges of a bloated academia to say that it has been "scientifically proven" that people who disagree with them politically are more likely to be prejudiced and bigoted, and that the root cause is their oppenents' own inherent inferiority in a changing world.  Left unasked in such rushes to judgment are questions like, how does someone who is "closed to new experiences" ever gain a tradition to prefer?  Also unasked is, how quickly should a huge group of people adopt a new approach or value system without trying it, given the stakes of failure?  Far easier it is simply to say, "closed to experience" and stuff the pigeonhole with something close to half the population.

Doubtless the purveyors and supporters of the 5-factor model would say that they imply no value judgments.  I'm not buying it -- and even were they to prove their own neutrality in the matter, they cannot control the endless stream of pseudo-scientific pontification from left-leaning publications celebrating conclusions that are unwarranted.  It is a nearly exact parallel to talking about race and intelligence, but it will never be treated that way.  It is just too convenient.




Response to a question about good works and righteousness

Facts not in Evidence


David has a provocative little entry in his blog
titled [Faith and Righteousness](http://goodlifeodyssey.com/faith-and-righteousness)
. It is so short that I can quote it in full:

> Two people do the same good deed—the first believes they will be rewarded, 
> while the second is unsure. Which deed is more righteous?
> 
> Two people live equally charitable lives—the first is a Christian with a 
> strong faith, the second is an agnostic. Which person is more righteous?

I ran these questions by a friend, and he didn't have an immediate answer, even
though this friend is a knowledgable Christian. So my first reaction is, "good
job, you found a difficult point."  On second thought, my response to these two
questions is, "you are assuming facts not in evidence."

First, for my own assumption:  since the two questions are posed by themselves,
with parallel construction, I _assume_ that David means to assert an equivalence
between the first question and the second one. In other words, his implication
is that Christians are less righteous than agnostics even when they do good
things, because Christians believe that their acts of righteousness will be
rewarded. This is what I'm _assuming_ the argument is here.

Second, let me give this argument its due. It's a strong emotional argument. It
captures the situation -- played out in countless dramas real and imagined -- of
someone who has figured out a hidden evaluation and games it. Mom and Dad are
looking to see who will spontaneously clean their room to find out who gets to
choose where they go out for dinner. So one child, overhearing the conversation,
and knowing that the command to clean the room is not far behind, gets the jump
and gets the choice. The whole situation seems unfair -- the one child knew
something the others did not and was acting not virtuously, but in
self-interest. No one likes that kind of kid.

Emotional -- yes. Powerful -- maybe. Valid -- no. The argument assumes that a "
righteous act" is the same thing for a believer and unbeliever. This is simply
not true. It assumes a fact that is not in evidence. It is beyond a simple
preliminary answer like this one to explore the definition of a righteous act in
full. It is complicated enough, though, that this emotional argument -- implying
that believers are rasacally children who have overheard some secret to finding
divine favor -- simply does not hold water.

We just read an appointed Gospel lesson in church that relates directly to this
claim and situation. In Matthew 25, Jesus is describing judgment day, as the
people of the world are separated into two groups. The king's interaction with
the righteous includes this portion:

> Matthew 25:
> 
> 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed 
> by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
> world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave 
> me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you 
> clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 
> 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you 
> hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see 
> you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we 
> see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
> 
> The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016).

If, in fact, life is some kind of trial where people are to be evaluated on the
ethics they achieved and rewarded with eternal pleasure or punished forever,
then this passage is a giant joke. When it happens, what is the Christian going
to be thinking?  "Ah, here is the King, just like the story, and now I'm
supposed to pretend I didn't know I was doing good things to Him while I did
them for some hapless unfortunate"? The fact is, _everyone_ knows this story,
even millions of unbelievers. How many people took every opportunity to visit a
stranger? And, conversely, how many were so callous that they _never_ took a
single opportunity to do so? A simple reading of this situation leads to a
ludicrous result. It's as if all of heaven is to be populated
by [Eddy Haskells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Haskell).

In reality, Christianity is a _relationship_, not merely an ethical standard.
Ethics are certainly a part of faith, but faith transcends ethics. There are
plenty of reasons to be good, and plenty of reasons to encourage others to be
good. If, however, the agnostic is to be considered more virtuous than the
Christian because of these encouragements (both human and divine), then one must
assume that the agnostic herself is not merely acting to mollify her own
conscience and achieve some inner self acceptance. How is this any more virtuous
than trying to please a god?

The account of the sheep and the goats, if anything, shows how _little_ these
acts of righteousness mean to God, when they get noticed on earth. To quote from
the other end of Matthew, "when doing your acts of righteousness, do not let
your left hand know what the right hand is doing."  The only way to keep a
secret from oneself is to do it so naturally that it is unconscious.

My buddy Ely preached on this text just last Sunday, and if you are willing to
hear the whole thing, I think he makes this point pretty well:

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CzQvvFr1qo8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

So, in summary, I'd say that this argument sounds compelling emotionally, but
founders on assumptions of facts not in evidence.






How I learned to embrace integrated development environments

In Praise of IDEs


At one time, I was not a believer in IDEs or "Integrated Development Environments."  I learned how to use [vim](http://www.vim.org), which I still love, and my early work was on [PHP](http://php.net).  There were web developers back in the day that bragged that all they needed was notepad.  Now, _that's_ extreme, but isn't it better use open source software to develop open source software?  A great friend tried to sell me on PHPStorm, but even when I got a free copy at a meetup, I didn't use it.

It was Java that taught me to use IDEs.  I told my co-workers, where I was tasked to start doing some Java dev, that I would continue to use vim by itself, and one of them said, "If you do that, you will be very sad."  It _is_ true, that Java is just one of those languages that just seems to be made for an IDE.  An editor by itself can be powerful, but it is unlikely to be able to scan libraries and automatically populate import statements for you.  So your choices are to learn where things are so well that you don't even think about import statements, or to think about them ... ugh.  I reluctantly started using an IDE for Java.

Something happened, then, as I went on.  Java is [strongly typed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_and_weak_typing), and so there were many, many errors that the IDE was catching for me that used to slip by my editing.  I found that debugging got quicker, and it was more often that deploying code, it just "worked" the first time.

Now, even when working on a loosely typed language like [Python](http://python.org) or [Javascript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript), I find that my code is cleaner.  Where the IDE shines, though, is in a highly structured language like [Scala](https://scala-lang.org).  I have lost count of the number of times that the IDE nudged me to a better way of doing something, just by doing [inspections](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/code-inspection.html) on my code.  Just the act of developing in the IDE has improved my Scala coding.

My personality is one that doesn't like to ask for help.  Maybe that's why I resisted the IDE for so long.  I'm sold now, though.  And I don't mind paying, either.  My auto mechanic uses great tools, and he pays for them.  Why shouldn't I?


Thankful to Get Started


I just started setting up this blog yesterday, and I've made good progress so far.  There is some learning curve for me because Javascript is definitely not my strongest language right now, and there are some confusing concepts in [next.js](https://nextjs.org/).  Still, I finished working yesterday at noon and got a few hours in the evening to start a tutorial, and having finished that, I started polishing the code I wound up with.

The tutorial I used did not show the "recent posts" on the home page, but rather an index of them.  (Imagine that: an _index_ in `index.js`.)  I strongly prefer the "latest posts."  I also want an rss feed, which was not part of the tutorial, so I needed to learn how to do that.  After fooling around with this, off and on, all day, I am in pretty good shape for the evening.  Tomorrow I have to dive in and consider sorting by date, limiting post counts, and re-adding the "index" but this time for older posts.

God has been gracious, and things fell my way.
