Raging Against the Machine?

I posed this question on (inyour)Facebook the other day.

“Obama professes to be a born again believer. Giving him the benefit of the doubt that this is true, how should that affect our attitudes and actions towards him and what he does as a fellow believer? Or to pose it another way, is it possible to rage against the machine without raging against the Creator who placed the machine there?”

Unsurprisingly, I have an opinion on the matter. We first know from Romans 13:1-7 that God has divinely appointed governments and rulers for His purpose and that we are to obey them (Here are the first two verses)

“1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

That is a fairly significant warning in verse 2. The one who resists the will of the authorities is actually resiting God! Consider the context of the people Paul was writing to in Romans, the Jewish people were dispersed from their home land with a foreign power in charge, Paul had recently gone on his mission to kill all the believers, and every time Paul turned around he was being violently attacked by the religious leaders of the day; both pagan and Jewish.

God was certainly not blind to these facts nor was He forgetful of them when He, working through Paul, penned these words for our benefit. This raises a whole host of questions worth considering such as “From a Religious perspective should the colonists rebelled?” or the question I seek to answer here, “Are we sinning when we attack Obama/Leaders in Congress?”

Long story short? It depends. See we have a unique situation in the way our government has been established. Our government revolves around the reality that “we the people” are in charge... more or less by proxy of the fact that we get to elect those who are in charge. One of the founding principals of our government is that we can call out the foibles of our leaders and indeed we are encouraged to do so! (which is a beef I have with Obama, the man believes himself to be foible-less a perfect man in all his does, but that's neither here nor there)

However, this is not some carte blanche invitation to rip into our leaders. I don't think it is appropriate to say any leader is in place as a punishment, nor do I think it's right to go around screaming hate at our leaders the way democrats did under Bush and now Republicans like Glen Beck and Mark Levin do under Obama. Scriptures give us instructions on how we are to deal with confronting someone in 1 Timothy 5:1&2

“1 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father. Treat younger men like brothers, 2 older women like mothers, younger women like sisters, in all purity.”

So yes, it is appropriate for us to call out our leaders when there is hypocrisy in their statements, it is appropriate to quote what they say and discuss the what the Bible has to say about those statements, it is even appropriate for us, working within the confines of the due process of our government, to remove a corrupt politician from office. What I fail to see, however, is scriptural support for tearing into a politician with no other purpose than to make them loose face or even for two politicians to engage in a smear campaign on each other. Where's the Christ like love in that?

Raging Against the Machine?

Belief - Faith

   Sorry this one took so long, I was having a hard time really explaining what I wanted to say without making this ridiculously long. 

   Last time I stated that Faith is not an end all reason.  Faith cannot be the “why” of any question.  It is merely a layover on a flight to a reason.

Well, let’s see if I cannot quantify this belief of mine.  To begin let’s start with what faith is.  When I asked myself this question I came back with three answers.  The first is the dictionary answer, which (as I previously stated) is “something that is believed especially with strong conviction” (Merriam-Webster).  The second is the Biblical answer which is found in Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Both of these definition are fine, but they are both lacking to my mind and it’s hard to really explain why.  If I was pressed for a reason, I would have to say that both those definitions seem like “how” answers.  They explain how faith is played out but don’t do well with the what faith is.  This is especially true for the verse in Hebrews as the context it is in is the “Hall of Faith” chapter that describes how Old Testament figures of yester-year acted out their faith.

After thinking about it for a long time, I would use this definition to define the “what” of faith.  “Faith is the acceptance of unknown variables as facts based upon proven assurances; proven at least so far as the individual possessing the faith is concerned.” Faith is to life what postulates are to Mathematics.

For those who aren’t familiar with postulates, here’s what they basically are.  Postulates are things that cannot be proven true for every situation (proven with a nice, neat, mathematical equation that is), but are accepted as true anyways.  This acceptance is based on the fact that it’s we can demonstrate it works for a given equation.  Because it’s true for a finite set of equations we go ahead and assume it’s true for any given equation.

Let’s see if I can’t reword that for those who don’t like math.  With a postulate we can prove it’s true on a small thing, so we accept it as truth for the large thing.  This is the essence of what I believe faith to be.  Faith is not blind.  Someone who blindly accepts a teaching as being true is in violation of scriptures (1 John 4:1-4 tells us to test even angels to make certain they are from God, Acts 17:11 demonstrates that the appropriate response to a new teaching is to examine the scriptures to see if these things are true or not).

I guess I’m gonna put a stop to my explanation there.  I cannot more fully quantify what belief is without talking in circles at this point.  So instead, I’ll wrap it up by giving a quick bullet point list of what I’m really trying to drive home about faith.

• Faith is not blind.  There may be times when we have to go out on the limb, but we do so because we have firm knowledge that the tree is alive and sturdy.
• Faith is an extension of a deeper foundation with God.  The greater the foundation, the greater our faith.
• The above is true because as we understand more about God, the more we trust in Him, the greater our faith will be.

And that my friends, is what I believe about faith.  Next time I’ll take a bit of a closer look into what I believe about the Bible (I’ve already stated WHY it’s the basis of my belief, but now I’d like to take the opportunity to further look into what I believe about the Bible itself.)

Belief - Faith

Belief - What's the Standard for My Beliefs

Belief, it’s defines the way we perceive reality without actually affecting reality. Yet, we all seek to mold the world into the image of our beliefs regardless of the validity of said beliefs. I believe that it is important for an individual to understand their beliefs be they religious in nature or otherwise. Interestingly, I have always felt this way and seem unable to do any task without first hearing the why of the issue (much the annoyance of teachers, parents, and 3rd grade soccer coaches alike). So, I decided to go ahead and write down these beliefs of mine and see if I still believe them in the years to come.

To that end, I figured the best place to start with beliefs is the foundation of my beliefs. In so far as religious beliefs are concerned, my basis is founded on the scriptures (aka, the Bible), and SOLELY on the Bible. It is, in fact, a part of my beliefs that any extra-scriptural source which trys to dictate my spiritual beliefs and which contradicts the Bible is in error.

But why this belief? Well, some of it is faith. Faith is defined as “something that is believed especially with strong conviction” (Merriam-Webster). It is, to me, the top layer of belief, it is the result of something but not the source. If someone were to tell me they had faith in something I would ask why. Faith is not an end all reason (I’ll quantify this more fully some other time, so if this statement offends, confuses, or concerns you, I promise to explain it next time). So when I say some of it is faith, understand that there is a deeper foundation under that faith. Faith will allow me to leap from mountains, but it cannot coerce me to climb it in the first place.

So while faith motivates me to believe the Bible, the underlying foundation under that is logic. (Which I present to you as follows)

1. The Bible was written by many different authors over the course of more than a thousand of years. Yet the authors do not conflict with one another

2. The Old Testament and New Testament flawlessly presents the truth of God redeeming His Creation without any contradiction (though many people fail to study the Old Testament and are left believe that God was petty and cruel in the O.T. and suddenly changed His tune in the N.T.)

3. Apart from Genesis, the accounts recorded in the Bible were eye-witness accounts. In a hundred years when historians want to know about 9-11 or the Clinton Scandal they are going to use eye witness accounts as their sources. So why would I trust some guy from today to tell me that the Bible is incorrect when it says x about y subject? That makes as much sense as denying the holocaust or saying all those people who suffered in the camps didn’t really have to endure the things they lived through. I trust the eye-witness.

4. Archeological evidence and extra-biblical accounts confirm the locations of the cities within the Bible as well as the events that the Bible records.

5. I believe that the “God inspired” in 1 Timothy 3:16 (All scripture is inspired by God” is not the same as me seeing a picture and feeling inspired to write a short story about it. I believe that God used men as a musical composer chooses an instrument to play a specific part. It is the composer who writes down each and every note to be played and chooses an instrument to convey the mood he’s desires. God gave the words to each writer and allowed them to flavor the words with their particular style. But EACH and EVERY word is 100% accurate and fully as God intended as it to be shown.

6. If any part of the Bible were to be incorrect or outdated, EVERYTHING within the Bible must be rejected equally as none of it can be trusted to be accurate any longer.

Under these 6 beliefs I can do nothing but reject the notion that a person alive today could write ANYTHING truly from God that contradicts with what He’s already revealed. To do so would deny His unchanging nature (Hebrews 13:8) and present Him as a liar.

To that end, either the things written within the Bible are the 100% accurate, God-inspired words that exist as our ultimate standard for Christians, or NOTHING within the Bible can be trusted as there can be no measure for discerning which parts are true and which parts are in need of updating.

And that’s what I believe.

Belief - What's the Standard for My Beliefs