I suspect we all have reacted at some time or another to our culture’s obsession with bodily appetites: sex, food, drink, pleasure, and so forth. I know I have. That reaction got me thinking about the role of appetites and temperance. Lady Temperance has been given a bad rap. We think she’s old-fashioned, passé. We picture a severe, turn-of-the-twentieth-century farmer’s wife or a prohibitionist, one of those muddle-headed, do-gooding zealots who in their ignorance did more harm than good. If those images were the extent of our negative feelings toward poor old Temperance, we might just pat her on the head and leave her be. But we no longer smile patiently on Temperance as if she were a senile relative whom we’re fond of but don’t take seriously. Rather, Lady Temperance has become the antithesis of personal freedom and self-expression, and we no longer tolerate her. We must stamp her out, obliterate her. She no longer stands on the sidelines; she is enemy number one. Because she has been relegated to the dust bin of history, perhaps it would be useful to remind ourselves of who she is. Lady Temperance is the champion of moderation in the satisfaction of the physical appetites. She does not forbid the satisfaction of those appetites. She does not label them as foul, evil, or sinful. She recognizes them as a part of our humanity, a part that, in the proper context, can be used for the noble and the good. Temperance does not demean bodily appetites, but she does encourage us to weigh those appetites against other important values and activities. Temperance encourages us most of all to exercise self-control and to prioritize the importance of the physical against the social, mental, and spiritual. Seen in this light, Lady Temperance appears reasonable, even noble. Surely our culture has not spurned her. After all, we still try to teach our children self-control. Temperance may not be venerated anymore, but is she not still respected? Where might we look in our culture to find evidence that our venerable guide still has something to say to us? Let us look first to her much maligned but traditional role as a leader of the prohibition movement. Our culture still calls on us to avoid drunkenness. But is Lady Temperance the reason for abstaining from alcohol or drinking in moderation? Do we, as a culture, emphasize internal self-control and restraint? Not really. Or not much, anyway. We have MADD and Alcoholics Anonymous. We have large universities trying to curb alcohol-related assault. Drunk driving, alcohol addiction, and date rape are social behaviors that lead to negative consequences , and so the culture fights against drunkenness. It is good and right for the culture to attempt to mitigate the negative consequences, but the path that our culture follows is to control external factors. Stiffer penalties might solve drunk driving. Zero tolerance policies on campus might get through to thick-headed frat boys. Self-esteem building in school might prevent kids from turning to alcohol. What is missing in the rhetoric? Our Lady Temperance. It’s just not cool to tell people that self-control is a key aspect to being good and doing right, or that the practice of self-discipline should be honored over self-indulgence. We don’t just ignore Temperance; we don’t even invite her to the table. Are there other areas where we employ Temperance as our guide? Another natural passion in which Temperance has traditionally encouraged restraint is sexual appetite. One might think that Temperance is behind our culture declaiming against sexual misconduct such as rape, adultery, and pedophilia or, even more reprehensible, sex trafficking. It appears as if Temperance is alive and well and doing her job by holding the line in these areas. The culture may have shifted the line beyond where Temperance would approve, but at least it seems as if she has kept us from the worst excesses. In this area, though, Temperance has even less of an influence on the culture than she does with regard to alcohol. Sexuality and sensuality are not areas in which our culture encourages us to exercise self-control; rather sexuality is lauded as the pinnacle of human experience. One cannot live life to the fullest without having had amazing sex with an attractive partner. It is almost considered one of our civil rights. For example, if a partner in a marriage or relationship does not sexually satisfy the other, then a break-up is justified or even praised. We are encouraged to explore new and more exciting tastes, so long as no one gets hurt, of course. Our culture resists the idea of personal restraint in this realm and focuses instead on the negative social consequences. We focus on the external repercussions rather than the internal character of the wrongdoer. We praise sexual satisfaction and open doors to it socially. It is tragically ironic that we vilify those who succumb to behaviors we as a society glorify. Also striking to note is where we place blame when it comes to some forms of sexual misconduct. Sex traffickers and pornographers are objects of disgust, and rightly so. What one rarely hears about is the guilt of the purchasers. The culture turns a blind eye to the “peccadilloes” of those who frequent prostitutes or pornography sites. We implicitly assume that expecting men to exert self-control is simply asking too much. The solution is always to look without, at the providers, never within, at the users, as Temperance would invite us to do. Our attitude toward drug use is nearly identical to that of alcohol and sexuality. Poor Lady Temperance never had a chance with this extreme version of self-gratification with its intense physical sensation and chemical addiction. With the help of science, we have figured out how to maximally enhance physical pleasure with drugs like methamphetamines. What chance does Temperance have? When legalization of marijuana was being debated in Oregon, the most common argument for legalization was that marijuana is less addictive and damaging than alcohol, which is legal. What was not part of the conversation was whether or not we want to encourage people to engage in an activity whose primary goal is to gain pleasure through modifying their experience of reality and, in the process, lose some control over movement, memory, and the ability to think. Essentially we were prioritizing bodily appetite over and above control of one’s mind and body, a prioritization Lady Temperance would undoubtedly bewail. As with sex and alcohol, the source of the problem with drugs is misidentified. In dealing with the inevitable fallout of drugs, society is happy to wage a war on the providers such as drug cartels in Columbia and Mexico but less inclined to encourage us to look inward, to encourage potential users to exercise self-control. To the extent that we allow or condone drug use as a society, we should admit a share of the blame for the carnage in Mexico. Alcohol, sex, and drugs, are perhaps the three most prominent fronts where Lady Temperance has lost ground recently. But in a society of wealth and leisure, she has been challenged along many other lines as well. Traditionally, food has been within Temperance’s purview. Lady Temperance has always supported eating, and it is obvious that the physical satisfaction associated with food is important to insure we eat. Where she would raise an eyebrow is at our culture’s tendency to over-indulge in food while disregarding other factors such as health or financial responsibility. I realize that there are many complicated reasons for the surge in weight gain in America, but the intemperate desire for satisfying our bodily appetite perhaps plays a role. The emotional thrill provided by the entertainment industry is also an area where our appetites are constantly aroused. The appetites here are not directly physical, but work through feelings we obtain from emotional stimulation. Whether it be feelings of love, fear, happiness, or sadness, we are invited to indulge ourselves on a regular basis. The source of that emotional thrill is not limited to TV and movies but also extends to video games, sporting events, and, increasingly, news. So given our culture’s current state, why should dowdy old Temperance regain our allegiance? What does she have to offer that could possibly outshine the newfound freedoms of our overindulgent ethos? I suggest that what Temperance wants for us—indeed, what she offers us—is the very freedom that her demise has presumably secured. We rarely ask this question regarding freedom: What do we want to be free from? Some possibilities include freedom from authority, freedom from restriction, freedom from coercion, or freedom from pain. Anything that we see as negative, restricting, or bad is something that we want to be free from. But these particular freedoms need to be carefully examined for two reasons. First, freedom from restriction regarding a particular bodily appetite often sets us on a path of slavery to our bodily desires. Second, what we need most is freedom from that which robs us of our humanity and goodness and salvation—namely, sin. Lady Temperance was clearly a common visitor at the hearth of the Apostle Paul. Paul speaks eloquently and at length about our need to be free from our slavery to sin. Some of the sins he was referring to were overindulging and wrongly prioritizing our bodily appetites. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:16-23) In addition to the authority of the Bible, we have our own experience to teach us about slavery to sin. We are a culture of various addictions: TV, internet, social media, video games, shopping, exercise, new technology, watching sports, porn, alcohol, drugs, and even work. We are enslaved to these activities, and our enslavement takes away time, energy, and desire from our pursuit of what is good and truly valuable. We believe that indulging these appetites will satisfy us because doing so feels so good. But we all know, at least intellectually, that those feelings are not ultimately satisfying. In fact, often the exact opposite is true; indulging these appetites actually causes both ourselves and those around us significant pain. An untold number of lives and marriages are ravaged every year by alcohol, drugs, and pornography, for example. Slaves are not their own masters. They have given up their ability to seek after what is truly satisfying. They are forced to succumb to the lies of an uncaring, unholy master. Slaves are not free, and the tragic irony is this: our culture tells us that by enslaving ourselves we are expressing the greatest of all freedoms. Lady Temperance prizes self-control. She encourages us to judge and value rightly. She does not deny the bodily appetites but asks us to put them in perspective and weigh them against other priorities. Thus, Lady Temperance is not a cruel, exacting, down-in-the-mouth disciplinarian. She is soft-hearted. She yearns for us not to be caught up in the lies and snares of the slave master, Sin. She mourns for those who have found themselves enslaved. She calls to us to live freely and morally, to achieve what we were created for. The lies of the Enemy have tarnished her image and recast her as the enemy. But she is not the enemy; she is a friend in time of need. And we are in need. Let us call on her and restore her to her rightful place.

This article is adapted from a longer paper titled “ How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall: A Skill-Based Life ,” presented on February 21, 2014, by Gutenberg tutor Chris Swanson at the Gutenberg education conference, “ Mastery Not Factory: How We Learn What Matters .” *** We all recognize that wisdom is a desirable prize. We admire those who are wise. The Bible praises the wise and chides the foolish. What is less clear, however, is how wisdom is gained. Perhaps it is a gift of God; perhaps the intelligent are wise; perhaps it is the blessing of age. These all touch upon gaining wisdom, but I propose that, in its essence, wisdom (and thus wise living) is a skill that must be learned and developed. Like other skills, it must be gained through a sort of apprenticeship. It is not something that can be memorized or learned from a book. In order to make my case, I need to talk about skills in general—their nature and how they are imparted. How Skills are Developed Consider the skill of handwriting. In first grade, writing letters was a difficult task. I recall that my lines never seemed to go in just the right place. At first, I did not even know where to put the pencil down to start a letter. As I practiced and compared my letters to the accepted letters, I improved. I got faster. I became more skilled. Now consider the skill of playing soccer, which, like any other sport, takes a lot of practice to be able to play well. I have played soccer since I was quite young, but in the last five years I have thought more about how to develop skill at soccer and the best approaches to achieve success. I have identified the following three essentials: mastery of fundamentals, training, and self-evaluation. While these may seem like obvious aspects of learning soccer, they are also common to developing all skills, not just soccer. Before discussing these three aspects of skill development, however, I must mention a prior factor essential to developing any skill: the desire to improve. The importance of desire, or will, cannot be underestimated. No one can be forced to become skilled. Whether the skill is handwriting, soccer, or some other more important skill, like wisdom, each learner must decide to take on the training. At some point when I was learning to handwrite, for example, I quit improving; I was more interested in getting the words down quickly than legibly. In short, I did not desire to improve. Teachers or coaches can give incentives, both carrots and sticks. They can model the skill. They can provide powerful arguments for the benefits of developing the skill. But they cannot force someone to take on the task of developing a skill—including wisdom. But assuming a person has the desire to improve, mastery of fundamentals, training, and self-evaluation will enable him to do so. Mastery of Fundamentals. In all skills, fundamentals must become mastered and ingrained. In soccer, these fundamentals are the acts of stopping and controlling a ball and passing. Being able to do these things without thinking is one of the keys to playing well. The best players are not great because they are concentrating on ball control more than others. In fact, they seem to be concentrating less. Their muscles know what to do from long training. Like learning letters, ball-control actions need to develop to the point where attention can be focused on something else. When I am practicing ball control, I am self-conscious about it, trying to improve. But in a game, I can focus my attention elsewhere because the skill has become ingrained. The fact that the skill is ingrained in me and does not require my focus is a feature of all skills. Training. Practicing a lot is not sufficient; one must practice in the right ways. Simply making a thousand passes does not necessarily make me a good passer if my technique is poor; poor technique results in poor passing. In my early years, I developed some bad habits in my game. To retrain myself, I have had to self-consciously practice the better technique. To the extent that I have not thoroughly trained myself out of the bad habits, they come back. I tell myself over and over, “Don’t do that,” but I do it. If I have learned to do something poorly, that poor practice will become ingrained, just as a good technique becomes ingrained. I always unconsciously act in accordance with how I have trained. In most cases, this sort of training occurs in an apprentice-style relationship. An individual will rarely just happen upon good techniques and good methods of practice. It is much better to find a good coach who has learned the best methods and best training. Under the tutelage of a good coach, players learn only good techniques. That way they do not need retraining later. The other key feature of coaching is the constant correction. A coach can watch and see problems in my technique and correct them before they become ingrained. The more complex the skill, the longer the apprenticeship must last. Self-Evaluation. Finding others to coach me, however, is not enough. If I want to improve, I must become my own coach to correct mistakes. During training, every time I stop the ball or make a pass, I am judging my performance. I am making adjustments to what I am doing, trying to get a good result. I cannot rely solely on someone else to tell me what to do because ultimately I have to make the skill my own. No one can do it for me. Those who desire to excel tend to achieve success because they are constantly self-evaluating. Thus gaining skill in soccer requires (1) developing and practicing good habits, (2) getting input from a good coach, and (3) constant self-evaluation. And although I have been talking about soccer, these same aspects of skill development are true for other skills. Intellectual Skills. Most of what I have been discussing so far has been related to developing physical motor skills, specifically those necessary for playing soccer. But because soccer is complex, an intellectual aspect is important to the game as well. Let me explain. If you have ever watched kindergarteners or first graders playing soccer, you will have seen them move around as a great clump of bodies: herd ball. They are all just trying to kick the ball toward their opponents’ goal. To them, that seems to be the obvious thing to do no matter what their coach may be telling them to the contrary. As the kids age, more tactical issues come into play, mostly because the kids now have the necessary fundamentals to actually control the ball and pass successfully. Nevertheless, young or inexperienced players are still tempted to make poor decisions on the field. This skill of making good decisions on the field is a skill just like the motor skills of ball control. A player must be able to take into account a broad range of information and judge what is the best move. A player with a poor understanding of successful strategy, tactics, and the layout of the players on the field will not make good judgments. Like ball control skills, the intellectual side of the game can be learned through practice and training. It must become ingrained in the thinking of the player through long exposure. Head knowledge is insufficient since no one has time to pause and recollect diagrams the coach drew before the game. Proper training by a knowledgeable coach is required as well. Even the professional players improve substantially under the leadership of a great coach. Finally, the players need to self-correct their mistakes. Consider the player who always tries to dribble around defenders. If the player does not recognize, or worse, is unwilling to recognize the deficiency of this move, he will not improve. So then, mastery of fundamentals, training, and self-evaluation are important to developing both motor and mental skills. Let me give another example of a purely intellectual skill—speaking—which will help us to see more clearly the way in which wisdom is a skill. By “speaking,” I am not referring to public oratory or some other specialized, professional speech but rather to the act of talking that we all learn as toddlers. I have watched all three of my children learn to talk. I myself learned to talk as a child. However, the process of learning language is, at least to me, a bit mysterious. I don’t recall giving my children much instruction, but they still learned how to talk. We did not have our toddlers attend “Baby Language Acquisition 101.” There was no formal training at all. Learning to speak was an informal, organic part of growing up. How do kids acquire language? I would suggest that learning language is a skill acquired in much the same way as other skills are acquired—through practice (mastery of fundamentals), coaching (training), and self-correction (self-evaluation). Babies and children certainly get lots of practice. They want to communicate and are constantly figuring out how to do that. As they continue to practice, they improve. As they improve, their words are internalized. The words are no longer sounds used by others that need to be mastered; they become tools through which the children communicate and think. Speech is so much a part of children, so ingrained, that they are unconscious of their use of it. They have achieved mastery. Children also have live-in coaches who are able to properly train the child. And usually the training is just the right kind for skill acquisition. It is corrective, but there are no memory cards or quizzes. Parents are modeling the proper use of words and the proper pronunciation. If a child makes a mistake, typically a parent will say back the correct word. Eventually it sinks in. I believed that long skinny noodles were called “pasketti” for many years until my siblings got on my case. But parents are not the only ones correcting. The child self-corrects. Most babies say “mik” instead of “milk.” I have yet to hear an adult call it that. Learning to speak is a subtle, long process. Without that self-evaluation, children would never improve. Speaking, then, is a skill acquired in the same manner as other skills. How We “Know” Skills An important feature about skills has thus far been implied but not made explicit. It is not about how skills are gained but about the way in which we “know” skills. Skills cannot be articulated; they are known tacitly. Allow me to elaborate. By “articulated knowledge” I mean knowledge that I can explain and describe to another person or that I can write down in a book. I am making an attempt to articulate my ideas about skills right now. “Tacit” or “ingrained” knowledge is knowledge that I cannot explain or describe, but it directs our actions and thoughts. A nice example of the difference between the two is the knowledge you have about directions to your house. Most of us have both articulated knowledge and tacit knowledge of how to get to our house. You have articulated knowledge if you can give directions to a friend: go down such and such street and turn right, etc. However, when you go home, you do not replay those directions in your head. You just know where to turn. You use lots of little hints: a bush here, a store there, a sense that you have driven the right distance. Lots of times kids will have tacit knowledge of directions home but not articulated knowledge. They have never been asked to articulate their tacit knowledge. They know how to get home but would be hard-pressed to explain to someone else how they do it. Skills are all tacitly known. I cannot give you information that will enable you to handwrite or control a soccer ball. I cannot describe to you how to choose the right words to use when you speak. I just “know” these things. They are tacit knowledge. The Skill of Wisdom I have now laid out what I see to be the features common to all skills, so it is time to turn the discussion to wisdom. How is wisdom—which I will assume is understanding and living in accordance with the truth—a skill? Consider first the nature of wisdom. An understanding of the truth about God, about ourselves, and about the world around us is not something we can pick up in a textbook. How many children have been raised in Christian homes and gone to Sunday school or catechism, only later to reject the faith? How many people may be able to give academically satisfactory answers to various moral, personal, or theological questions but do not make those ideas a part of their deepest beliefs and instincts? The understanding necessary for wisdom is the tacit knowledge that becomes ingrained in us, the sort of understanding that we do not have to think about or ponder in our day-to-day lives. Whether we are wise or not wise is based on an understanding deeply ingrained in our psyche. The next step in our process is to consider how wisdom is acquired. I think it must be gained much like any skill, mastering an understanding of truth through practice under the tutelage of a coach, or coaches, with a healthy dose of self-evaluation until it becomes ingrained in us. In the case of wisdom, the type of “practice” needed is not like soccer or handwriting practice where a student focuses on a skill for a set amount of time. The practice of wisdom is more like the way a baby learns language. It is part of the routine of our life, something we spend our entire lives practicing and honing—but especially during our youth. An example of practicing wisdom would be a young adult trying to come to an understanding of the truth about sinful human nature. Consider a young man who has been instructed and nurtured to seek goodness and kindness. As he matures, he begins to become conscious of the fact that he is not always kind and good. His actions are not in keeping with his understanding of what he believes about himself. He begins the process of self-evaluation. These realizations are then brought to bear on his beliefs about what people in general are like. His beliefs are most likely going to come from the culture around him. There will be differing perspectives, some explicit and others implied. He may choose one doctrine over another. Or he may simply imbibe the culturally popular outlook. But how that plays out in his life will depend on whether that doctrine or outlook becomes ingrained. He will continue to have experiences and receive teaching about his nature. If he is fortunate, he will have good coaches and teachers to guide him toward what is true instead of what is false. If he begins to take on beliefs which are wide of the mark, then those beliefs will be hard to reverse, much like poor technique on the soccer field. Perhaps most important of all, the young adult needs to constantly self-evaluate. If he comes to a conclusion and dogmatizes it, he has little chance of making improvements in his understanding. To self-evaluate, he needs to develop other important skills to allow his evaluation to be accurate and just. He needs to be able to weigh the information he receives from his teachers and from his culture. He needs to begin to build a coherent view of himself that explains not only his own experience but also the experiences of others, whether those others are from his present or from the past. He needs to develop critical thinking skills to compare differing claims to each other and to experience. In short, he needs to develop the tools of learning. To the extent that the young adult understands in his heart what is true about himself, he will gain wisdom. As he lives and grows, God, the best of all coaches, continues to show him his shortcomings and failings, and he will become even more wise. I hope you can see how this example can be applied to other aspects of understanding the truth about the world around us. We learn to understand how God looks at us and what He values. We gain an understanding of compassion and mercy. We understand better what drives other people in their choices and what satisfies us. This is the wisdom that the Bible refers to. But the same process is true about more mundane wisdom, wisdom about the truth of nature and society. We can gain an understanding of plants and animals as well as the media or bureaucracy. We can take classes and read books on these things, but a more personal understanding must come from interaction with these things over time. The more we understand them, the more that understanding becomes ingrained in our thinking; the more that understanding is a part of our everyday responses to life, the wiser we become. This sort of understanding is not something that can be taught in a book. It is a skill. Clearly, everyone’s path to wisdom will be different. For some, the process is more difficult and painful. Some have had horrific coaches that have taught them terrible habits. Some may have been injured either intellectually or emotionally, thus putting another stumbling block in their path. Some have more or less talent in the development of wisdom, just as some are more or less athletically or intellectually talented. Most often these obstacles are not from our own choices; they are foisted upon us. Coming to grips with them may even play a role in our developing wisdom. I mention these obstacles because I do not wish to downplay the difficulty of the task. In the end, we must trust that God is merciful and loving and will grant us the wisdom we desire. But working to develop the skill of wisdom is a worthy task, one to which we are called and one we can improve on our whole lives. It is certainly a worthy goal of education.

Some time ago I was asked to speak to a group of students. My usual approach on such an occasion would be to pick a biblical passage to explain. But not knowing the interest level of the group, I chose not to teach from any specific passage. Instead, I presented them with four analogies, four pictures that I find helpful in explaining what it means to be a Christian believer. First analogy: Mankind has often looked up at the sky, and our universal experience seems to suggest that everything revolves around us. The sun, moon, and stars appear at one horizon, travel in an arc overhead, and disappear at the opposite horizon. They never stop doing this. But among this completely uniform motion we see some erratic movement that needs explaining. Puzzling balls of light, which we call planets, slowly wander back and forth among the stars.Why do they do this? A man named Copernicus proposed a satisfying but counterintuitive solution. The sun is at the center of our solar system, and we are on one planet circling that sun just as the other planets do. With this new understanding, the strange dance of the planets is explained in a simple and satisfying way. Although our experience still seems to tell us that the sun and the planets revolve around us, we now understand that the sun is at the center, and we are just one of a number of planets circling it together. The Copernican revolution is striking in the way that one simple change of perspective can so completely change the way we think of the relationship between the heavenly bodies and ourselves. Whereas our common sense experience tell us that everything revolves around us, Copernicus tells us that in fact not we but the sun is at the center, and we are in fact one of those planets, one of those wandering balls of light, orbiting around that sun. Likewise, our relationship to God and our fellow human beings can be seen as strikingly Copernican. We all by nature think of ourselves as of central importance; our interests, our needs, our desires have an obvious priority over anyone else. Other people—even God (if we allow for His existence)—are secondary, serving as the support team that helps me get what I want. Becoming a believer, then, is as profound a shift in perspective as that proposed by Copernicus: I am not at the center of the universe. My Creator is at the center, and I am just one of the planets, one of His creatures, no more or less important than any other human being. Thus Jesus tells us that the two greatest commandments are “love God” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” When I shift the center of the universe back to God, two truths emerge: God has priority over all His creation, and my fellow human beings are just as important as I am. This shift in perspective is central to becoming a believer in the God of the Bible. Second analogy: Sam’s friends are concerned. Sam has gotten into a very bad relationship. His girlfriend, Sandy, is into drugs, criminal activity, and rampant promiscuity, much more than Sam realizes, and she is slowly leading Sam down the same path. His friends patiently try to explain to Sam why Sandy is bad for him, but he won’t listen. When they talk about her extensive drug use, Sam says, “Oh, she is just trying it out. Why are you so judgmental?” When Sandy steals a watch from a friend of Sam, and that friend tries to tell Sam, Sam angrily refuses to believe it and stops talking to him. Finally Sandy, who wants to separate Sam from his old friends, makes a grave accusation against Sam’s best friend, Tom. She says that Tom came to her house, insulted and ridiculed Sam behind his back, and tried to force himself on Sandy. Tom, a friend who has stood by Sam through thick and thin for many years, tells Sam, “I would never do such a thing. You have got to believe me.” Sam looks him in the eye and says, “You are not my friend anymore.” This rather melodramatic story reminds us that what we believe is influenced by what we want; we only believe what we are willing to believe. Sam has many very good reasons to believe his friends, especially his best friend, Tom. But the bottom line is that he doesn’t want to; he wants Sandy more than he wants the truth. This is what the Bible means when it says that mankind unrighteously suppresses the truth about God (see Romans 1:18-23). This is why “faith” is such a big deal. There are good and sufficient reasons to believe in God, to believe the gospel. But such belief requires a willingness to believe, and we don’t want to. We don’t want to give the center of the universe back to God; we don’t want to admit we have been wrong. Ignorance about God is a moral issue, and so accepting the truth about God requires a moral revolution. The Bible tells us we can be reconciled with God and find life if we believe—that is, if we are willing to admit we were wrong and embrace the knowledge of God. Third analogy: Joan’s father has retired to the south of France and left her in charge of the family business. Before he left, he gave Joan a finished copy of the book that he had been writing for many years. In this book he tried to distill all the wisdom and business acumen he had gained through experience. Principles, rules, stories—all these things her father gathered together in a very large and complex book. But Joan is impatient; she thinks that her father is old-fashioned and that his advice will not allow her to make money fast enough. So although she occasionally looks at the book, she really doesn’t care much about what it says and ends up misunderstanding much of it. Years of following her own stubborn ideas lead the business to the brink of ruin. Finally, Joan admits to herself that she is lost and starts reading her father’s book carefully and in earnest. Some of the ideas in the book are immediately understandable and helpful. Much of it, however, is still difficult to understand, and Joan’s attempts to apply it are confused and make things even worse. The business is still in pretty sad shape. She dreads contacting her father and telling him how little she understands of his wise advice. Her father, however, tells her that he is quite pleased because at last she is willing to listen to him. She may misunderstand parts of what he is saying, but she wants to understand it, and that matters most to him. Believers have the same sort of complicated relationship with the doctrines of the Bible that Joan had with her father’s book. The Bible presents us with truths about God, the gospel, ourselves, and the world we live in. But how important is it that we understand and believe each and every doctrinal truth contained in the Bible? The Bible answers that question in a rich and nuanced way. On the one hand, the Bible clearly shows us that wrong beliefs can arise from an unwillingness to know the truth. (See, for example, the book of Galatians.) Like Joan in her early days, we may be ignorant because we really don’t want to know what our Father is saying. On the other hand, the Bible shows us that the process of growing in understanding of God is a messy one and that we need to be patient with ourselves and with each other. (See, for example, Romans 14.) Like Joan, we may want to understand our Father but still be confused about what He is saying. So we cannot say that doctrine doesn’t matter, but we cannot say that doctrine is the most important thing, either. Bad doctrine can at times be a forgivable human failing, and yet at other times it can serve as an alarm signaling that the person is in great spiritual danger. What is central is a willingness to bow the knee to the God who has revealed His truths in the Bible. Fourth analogy: Tim is a wild and rebellious street kid who has been adopted by a compassionate family. The father tells him, “You are going to need a lot of help; I am prepared to help you get the education you need, break free of destructive habits, and in general learn a new way of living. If you want my help, just ask.” But Tim is not interested in his new father’s kind of help, and he doesn’t really trust him anyway. Every now and again he will hit the old man up for some cash, but since Tim will probably end up wasting the money anyway, the father rarely says yes. Tim continues to take care of himself the way he learned on the street, using manipulation, lies, seduction, and any other tool at hand. But at last Tim comes to the end of his rope, realizing that he has gone the wrong way. He comes to his adopted father and says, “You said if I needed help I could come to you. Well, I have gotten myself in a lot of trouble; please help me.” And so Tim starts coming to his father with his troubles. Sometimes the father says yes to Tim’s request. Often times he says no because he has a different idea of what Tim needs. But Tim always comes back. The fact that Tim keeps coming back, whether the answer is yes or no, says something important about his relationship with his father: at last Tim has come to believe that his father has Tim’s ultimate good in mind. Sometimes people think of prayer as a religious discipline that we engage in out of obedience. Other people think of prayer as a technique for getting what we want from God. But I would argue that Tim’s story is a model of how we should think about prayer. The most significant thing about our prayers as believers is that we see God as the one to turn to. We pray because we are now willing to believe that God is our Creator, and He has promised to rescue us, and we trust Him, so we pray. Prayer is a way of living out our belief that God is a real being who is trustworthy and loving. It is not a technique for getting what we want. It is not a religious ritual that God requires of us. It is our recognition that we are children who have a wise and loving father. Sometimes He says yes because He loves us. Sometimes He says no and claims that He does so also out of love. But whether He says yes or no, we continue to believe that He is trustworthy; He is the one to go to. Ultimately, our perseverance in prayer reflects our trust that one day God’s answer to our cries will be an unqualified “yes.” All the hurts and needs that drive us to God will be healed. Conclusion So in the end, what do these four analogies add up to? None of them deal with the specifics of the Christian faith. Becoming a Christian means believing that Jesus is the Messiah, that God raised Him from the dead, that He is returning to judge unrighteousness and establish the eternal kingdom of God. These little analogies don’t speak to any of that. But I think they speak to the deep issues underneath the gospel story. Why does it matter whether I believe that Jesus is the Messiah? What effect does it have on my life to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead? What does it mean to be a person of “faith”? The answer that I see in the Bible, from beginning to end, is this: faith is significant because it is rooted in a deep-seated willingness to transform the way we look at God and ourselves. To believe in Jesus, we have to have undergone the Copernican revolution of seeing God, not ourselves, at the center of the universe. Then the tragic truth emerges that we have not lived as if God were at the center; we have not loved God, and we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We need to be forgiven, and we need to be rescued from our own selfishness. And so we personally come to see the gospel as the good news it is. But such a change of perspective can only arise out of a change of will. What we believe arises from what we are willing to believe. The doctrines we learn from the Bible are influenced by what we are willing for the Bible to tell us. Our lives of prayer before God are reflections of whether we are willing to trust Him and whether we will continue to do so. What I like about these little analogies is that they highlight the revolution that faith must be. To live a genuine Christian life, we must revolutionize our view of God and ourselves, which means we must be willing to revolutionize our view of God and ourselves. This is not some strange, esoteric religious mystery. We see this reflected in our everyday experience; we see it in the little stories we just read. A change in our beliefs can often only arise from a change in our wills, in our hearts; and such a change in beliefs will ultimately change the way we live. This is often true in everyday life; it is certainly true in the Christian faith. These little stories are about fundamental change, and how such change is tied to a willingness to change. Faith is a big deal because faith is a change in what we want as much as in what we believe. I should not neglect to point out that, ultimately, such a change can come about because God Himself is working in our lives. Frankly, we are not good enough to effect such a profound moral revolution in our own thinking. But even though God is the ultimate author of such change, it is a change that each individual believer must undergo. As Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” And such faith only belongs to those who are willing to admit they have been wrong.

This article is adapted from a longer paper, “Holding the Line Against Evil,” written for Gutenberg College’s 2013 Summer Institute. Several times Jesus intimates that few will keep the faith when the curtain closes on history. The faith Jesus is talking about is substantive. It is not Disney faith—that is, belief that the miraculous can happen. Nor is it mere belief that God exists. Rather, it is the profound conviction that the God who made us is both just and righteous and is willing to save any and all who will embrace Him as Lord and Master. God is a good and loving God. If we value Him, then we will value what He stands for—that is, we will value goodness. So the question I want to address is this: In a society that has turned its back on what is good, how do we keep from being swept along? How do we hold the line? We could talk at two levels about holding the line. We could talk about how to keep society as a whole from becoming more wayward, but I am pessimistic we can stem the tide. The other level at which we can talk about holding the line is at the individual level: How do I keep myself anchored in what is good and true? I find this issue personally challenging. I think often of the experience of Lot as described in Genesis. He chose to move to the well-watered plain. At first he was camped outside of Sodom, but later we discover that he and his family have moved into Sodom itself, where the Apostle Peter says that Lot was “oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds)” (II Peter 2:7-8). But whereas Lot was tormented by the surrounding culture, his wife and daughters were seduced by it. Having been warned not to look back as they fled Sodom just before it was destroyed, Lot’s wife could not restrain herself and was reduced to a pillar of salt. Lot’s daughters resorted to incest as a solution to their childlessness. So Lot paid a high cost for living in a society with no regard for God and His moral principles. How do we keep from being carried along with our culture? I have witnessed stunning cultural change over the course of my life. First-hand experience is particularly important. A few years ago our family decided, for reasons that now escape me, to start raising sheep. Neither my wife nor I had any experience raising sheep, so we bought books to educate ourselves. I read in one book that sheep do not eat at night. A few weeks later I went out into our pasture in the middle of the night to check something. It was very dark and still. When I got out in the pasture, I heard a sound and pointed my flashlight in that direction. A half dozen sheep were staring at me and chewing grass. The sound I had heard was the sound of sheep grazing. So I know that at least some sheep eat at night. You could show me a whole stack of books that say that sheep don’t eat at night, and that would not shake my certainty. I know what cultural change I have witnessed over the years. Some of you may be old enough to have witnessed that same change; some of you are not that old. My experience cannot replace first-hand experience for you who did not experience it, except to the extent that you deem my recollections reliable and trustworthy. I was born in 1953 in Stayton, Oregon, a small town of about 2,000 residents. Throughout my childhood I felt safe and secure in a very stable environment. My parents were loving and happily married, and I knew they would stay that way. I was living in the town where they and many of my relatives had grown up. When I was seven, my family moved to another community where I had no relatives, but the environment was nevertheless stable and secure. This environment began to change quite suddenly and quite significantly, however. I remember sensing the change as it happened. Everybody sensed it. To some the change was unsettling; to others it was exciting; to most it was a little of both. I can even identify the event in my life that marked the beginning of the change. In 1964 one of my classmates let his hair grow out until it touched his collar. This was against the dress code. I can’t say for certain whether or not it was actually against the dress code because I don’t really know if there was a dress code. In the fifties and into the sixties, there were many things that people just didn’t do. Males never wore hats in a building. Children never addressed adults without saying “Mr.” or “Mrs.” People never failed to dress nicely before going into the city (for us that was Salem). This list could go on and on. One of those things that males just didn’t do was grow their hair long. So my long-haired classmate knew he was breaking a social taboo whether or not there was a dress code. This began a steady stream of increasingly frequent and bold challenges to the existing norms. Multiple challenges to the dress code were followed by issues of student government and the right to protest. Alongside this were challenges to the moral code. Drugs became common. Sexual promiscuity became common and socially acceptable, which became very evident in our sex education classes. My class was among the first in our school to have sex education as a part of the curriculum. The classes were not particularly objectionable, but the class was punctuated with side comments from some of the popular kids that the teacher was unable to control. Those comments communicated to all the students that sexual promiscuity was very cool and anyone who thought otherwise was a “prude.” To call someone a “prude” was one of the worst insults that could be uttered. Music played a huge role in the changes that happened in the sixties. The music was very attractive and strongly promoted the changes in morality that were underway. Drugs were promoted as a way to see the world through different and more beneficial eyes. Promiscuous sex was depicted as harmless fun, for example in these lyrics from a Steven Stills song: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” The propaganda value of music at that time should not be underestimated. The changes I witnessed were mirrored in communities all across the nation. The cumulative impact of all these changes was a huge cultural transformation, a revolution. The sixties revolution was a typical revolution. Revolutions are best at deconstructing; the thing they do worst is reconstructing. The sixties destroyed the culture that existed in the fifties. That was the goal. And Christianity was seen to be right at the heart of that culture. So the sixties had Christianity in its crosshairs. This is the origin of the antipathy towards Christianity that we still see in popular culture. While I would not argue that the fifties were perfect or even particularly good (they were brutal to anyone who did not rigidly adhere to the lengthy list of social norms), the environment of the fifties seems to have been more conducive to the development of psycho-emotional health. Today our children are growing up in an environment that has no shape, no structure. To steal a phrase from Karl Marx, “Everything solid melts into air.” Now very little is solid, and very little can be counted on. Broken families have become very common. The social norms of the fifties are gone, and in its place we have a “roll your own” culture. Everyone has to figure out what his or her role in society will be, what marriage is, what one’s gender is. You name it—we are on our own to figure it out. The sixties considered the culture and the structure of the previous generation as bad and sought to destroy it. We are now living in the ruble of the sixties. This is the environment in which we find ourselves. We live in a society of confused and troubled people, and this creates a confused and troubled culture. And, like it or not, unless we were to completely isolate ourselves from it, this culture influences us all to one degree or another. It is our job to keep our heads screwed on straight, and that is a difficult job. Living in this environment, we find our concept of right and wrong challenged at every turn. Every value we hold is raised up and examined from every angle by the issues posed in our culture. Friends and relatives, who are decent people and from whom we don’t want to be alienated, embrace contrary values. How do we deal with this? I can identify very well with Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof . He wants very much to maintain the traditions that were passed down to him, but his three daughters each force him to reexamine those traditions in the context of who they will marry. He reluctantly makes concessions for daughters one and two, only drawing a line when his third daughter asks the unthinkable—to marry a non-Jew. Tevya’s experience matches my own. Every concession to the culture is followed by the request to make a further concession. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, it forces us to clarify our values ever more precisely, and it helps us to see that we need to change our minds with respect to some of our views. On the other hand, it is very seductive. We find ourselves making a whole series of incremental concessions to the culture—changes that we would not make were it not for the intense cultural and interpersonal pressures applied. It can be hard to know for sure when we are making good and necessary adjustments to our understanding of God’s values and when we are being seduced by the culture. An example of one cultural issue that has seen dramatic change is homosexuality. When I was young, homosexuality was universally seen as wicked. Now in popular culture, homosexuality is not only seen as acceptable, but it is even seen as cool. Attitudes have changed so much that I expect that homosexual marriage will be the law of the land within the next few years. When I was young, homosexuality was not talked about. I don’t think I had even heard of such a thing until I was in high school. My understanding of homosexuality was primarily shaped by the teaching of the church and what I learned from my family, but the view that I formed was for the most part consistent with the views of the culture at large. I thought that homosexuality was one of the worst—if not the worst—possible sin and that homosexuals were monsters. I don’t think anyone said that homosexuals were monsters, but that is what I came to think. And so it made sense to me that society needed to be protected and isolated from such people. The changes in our culture caused me to reexamine these beliefs. It is now clear to me that homosexuals are not monsters; they are human beings worthy of my respect. And homosexuality is not the worst possible sin, but it is a sin, and it takes its place along with the myriad of other sins that people commit. This is not to say that it is trivial—no sin is trivial. This is just to say that it is not uniquely wicked. I used to think that Paul referred to homosexuality in chapter one of Romans because it is particularly evil. Now I do not think that is correct. Paul refers to it because it is such a clear example of how rebelliousness against God’s law results in confusion about who we are as human beings. Homosexual behavior is, from Paul’s perspective, an obvious example of confusion with respect to the created order and, therefore, a form of rebellion against the Creator himself. However, the biggest issue for me regarding homosexuality is how I ought to relate to homosexuals. I have taken the approach that I will relate to homosexuals as I would relate to anyone else, but I will not give approval of homosexual behavior. What that means in my day-to-day relationship with homosexuals is that I don’t go out of my way to bring up the topic. I don’t force a conversation about the morality of homosexuality, but if the topic does come up, then I do not hide my convictions. Is this the right balance? I think so, but I have to acknowledge that the evolution in my views has been due to the changes in our culture. I don’t know if I would have changed my thinking had the culture not prompted me to do so. The critical question is this: Did I change my views because the changes in culture moved me to reexamine my perspectives, or did I change my views because I was seduced to do so by the culture? That is a critical distinction. So what are we to do? How do we hold the line in a society that has turned its back on what is good? I don’t have any genius solutions to the problem. The most valuable thing is to be aware of dangers that we face. Beyond this I have three suggestions as to what we can do. My first suggestion is to become more aware of the ways in which our culture affects us. When anyone is immersed in a culture, its values and perspectives tend to seem self-evident. It can be very helpful to step outside our culture and look at those values and perspectives through different eyes. There are two ways to get outside our culture. One way is to go to another culture and become sufficiently familiar with that other culture to be able to see life through its people’s eyes. The second way is to experience another culture at a distance. The best way to do this is to read, either books from another contemporary culture or books that help one to understand how people in the past viewed life. C. S. Lewis wrote an essay, “On the Reading of Old Books,” that expounds upon the advantage of old books over new books. My second suggestion for how we can hold the line in our culture is to study the Bible. I am not recommending devotional reading or studying the Bible for inspiration. Such approaches are of minimal value—if they have any value at all. I have written and spoken elsewhere about the goal of studying the Bible, and so I will not go into great detail here. Suffice it to say that the sensible goal of studying the Bible is to gain greater clarity as to who God is and what He is up to. This is the most critical thing to understand; from this, answers to all other questions flow. This is especially true with respect to understanding God’s moral values. I liken this process of gaining clarity about God and His purposes to the process that a child uses to understand what he ought to do in every situation in order to be obedient to his parent. Every situation is complex and unique. A child must develop an understanding of his parent’s conception of right and wrong that can be applied to every situation. To achieve this, a child must create in his mind a model of how his parent sees the world. Having constructed such a model, the child can then look at any situation that arises through the eyes of the parent. Creating a model like this is also critical to the process of understanding God’s system of values; no shortcuts can be employed to truncate this process without negative impact. So Bible study must be for the purpose of getting to know God and what He is doing. Only from this broader perspective can God’s moral code be safely grasped. My third and final suggestion is to pray. The most appropriate prayer is very simple: “I believe; help me in my unbelief.” This prayer recognizes two very important facts. The first is that our faith is not perfected; it is always in need of becoming more solid and stable. The second fact is that we are dependent on God for developing that faith. It makes sense that if we want to be faithful to God, then we will do everything we can to bring this about; but it is very important to recognize that God is ultimately the author and finisher of our faith. Our efforts toward Him are feeble; His movement toward us is powerful. In our relationship with God, He is the one who does the heavy lifting. God is able and willing to pull us to Him. That is a fact in which we can take great comfort. My hope and prayer is that we will be able to hold the line against evil, that we will be granted the wisdom to determine when our understanding of good and evil needs to be changed and when we just need to stand strong against the siren song of the culture. Maranatha!

This talk was given to Gutenberg’s graduating class on June 14, 2013. Graduating class of 2013, thank you for asking me to speak to you today. As I thought about what I might say to you, I turned to the rest of the Gutenberg tutors for guidance. I asked them what message, what advice, would they give to this graduating class? As expected, they were no help at all. However, they all agreed on one important point: they were unanimous in praising YOU. All agreed that you were a great class that had done a wonderful job. So about the past there is no question: you should look back on your years at Gutenberg with great satisfaction. You have come a long way, and you have done a great job. That is the very sincere belief of all of your tutors. Congratulations. But a graduation speaker is supposed to speak not only of the past but the future. You graduates stand at the threshold of many changes and possibilities. What words of advice and encouragement are worthy of the occasion? What should I say to you? That was my quest: to find the message that would be most fitting and helpful for the days ahead. But in my search for a message, I ran into what we might call “the Gutenberg curse.” Let me tell you what I mean. This year has been the year of Kierkegaard for me. I have had the privilege of working together with the students through several of Kierkegaard’s important works. I believe I have come to a new appreciation and understanding of Kierkegaard’s thinking. And so my hope was to find something in Kierkegaard that would be suitable for a graduation speech. First, I found a text where Kierkegaard spoke about our human desire to have a huge impact and change the world—or as he would put it, a desire to become a “world-historical figure.” Now that is a great theme for a graduation. Graduation speakers are supposed to talk to students about going out and changing the world. Even better, Kierkegaard’s advice had a nice, contrarian flavor to it. Because rather than urging us to change the world, he speaks of it as a temptation to be avoided. The true business of the believer is to work on the inner person. Our business is to pursue what is good and true with inner passion and urgency. Our passion should be for what Kierkegaard calls “the ethical.” Whether we have any impact on the world is not our business; it is an accident of history—or put another way, it is God’s work, not ours. As Kierkegaard put it, A truly great ethical individuality would consummate his life as follows: he would develop himself to the utmost of his capability; in the process he perhaps would produce a great effect in the external world, but this would not occupy him at all, because he would know that the external is not in his power and therefore means nothing either pro or contra… He would, then, remain in ignorance about [his impact in the external world] through a resolution of the will, and even in death he would will not to know that his life had had any significance other than that of having ethically prepared the development of his soul. Then if the power governing all things would want to dispose circumstances so that he became a world-historical figure—well, that is something he would inquire about jestingly in eternity, for not until then is there time for the light-minded questions of carelessness. Kierkegaard urges us to have so little thought about our impact in the world that we don’t even think about it. We are too concerned with the development of our soul to worry about our impact on the world. We don’t even get around to asking about the impact we had on the world until after we die. In eternity we will have leisure time to discuss trivialities like whether we turned out to be world-historical figures. So that was my first thought: this profound warning from Kierkegaard with a slightly untypical graduation message: don’t worry about changing the world; worry about changing yourselves. True, in an earlier Gutenberg graduation speech Jack had sounded a similar theme. But hey, there is no shame in stealing from Jack and Kierkegaard. But here is where the Gutenberg curse comes in: a first thought is always followed by a second thought. I started thinking about YOU and the pressures you and your generation face. I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that most of the pressures on your generation are from the other direction. You are not tempted to make too much of yourselves, thinking you are going to change world. Instead, your culture pressures you to think that action is pointless, that you can have no meaningful effect on the world, that it is useless to try. So as profound as Kierkegaard’s warning is, there is a “yes, but” attached to it. On the one hand, it is profoundly true. But on the other hand, it could be misleading. It is a profound warning, but is it the warning YOU need to hear? I had fallen victim to the Gutenberg curse: the deadly danger that we will think ourselves into a corner. So next I turned my thoughts to the Bible. Kierkegaard warned against a rote biblical orthodoxy. In his culture everyone was a Christian. Everyone knew what the Bible said. Everyone knew the right answers to all the doctrinal questions. Instead, Kierkegaard urged that life is not about having all the right Bible answers; life is about making the personal, passionate, existential choice to follow God. This is so profoundly true that I don’t think it can be emphasized enough. But once again the Gutenberg curse came upon me, and second thoughts kicked in. I may be wrong, but once again it seems to me that the pressures on your generation are from the other direction. Your generation is less inclined to fall into a dead orthodoxy. But your culture seems to pressure you to doubt that the Bible can be understood at all. You are not pressured to think that being a Christian is about having the right doctrines; you are pressured to think that doctrine is irrelevant because we can’t possibly know. So once again, as profound as Kierkegaard’s warning is, there is a “yes, but” attached to it. On the one hand, it is profoundly true. But on the other hand, it could be misleading. It is a profound warning, but is it the warning YOU need to hear? So here I was, a poor struggling graduation speaker, left with fuzzy and conflicting ideas. On the one hand, maybe you need to hear X. But on the other hand, maybe you need to hear the opposite of X. The Gutenberg curse was upon me. As the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14:8, “if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle?” I wanted to sound a clear note for you. I wanted to say something decisive that would cut through the ambiguities, that would resolve the tensions between the “on the one hand” and “on the other hand.” Fortunately, Kierkegaard came to my rescue. As you graduates know, Kierkegaard was a fierce opponent of what he called “speculative thought.” For our purposes here, it doesn’t matter what he meant by that. But at one point in his work Concluding Unscientific Postscript , Kierkegaard points out that those who follow speculative thought are fooling themselves. For Kierkegaard, life is about decision. Each of us as individuals must make the personal, subjective decision as to how we are going to respond to God. However, those who pursue speculative thought only think they are making an important personal decision. But they are kidding themselves; it is only a fake, pretend decision they are making. And to Kierkegaard, this shows the absurdity of their position. Why? Because facing the true decisions concerning the faith requires that we stop kidding ourselves about things. The true decisions of the faith require that we abandon self-delusion. And so we come to the statement that I wanted to bring you today. Kierkegaard warns us against self-delusion by saying, “decision is the eternal protest against fictions.” Let me say that again: “decision is the eternal protest against fictions.” That is, making a deep and meaningful decision to follow God requires that we be ever vigilant to reject fictions, falsehoods, seductive lies. (At least, I think that is what Kierkegaard means by it; at any rate, that is what I mean by it.) And so this is my message, this is my clarion call to you today: commit your life to the eternal protest against fictions. Do not let your culture tell you false but comforting stories. Do not tell yourselves false but comforting stories. If we commit ourselves to the eternal protest against fictions, we can resolve the tensions I discussed earlier. We can find our way through the “yes, buts.” We can work our way out of the corner that the Gutenberg curse had put me in. We can confront the “on the one hands” and the “on the other hands” to find the truth contained in both hands. So concerning the issue of our impact on the world: on the one hand, it is a fiction to think that changing the world is more important than tending to our souls; and yet on the other hand, it is a fiction to think that we are not called to act, that there is no point in fighting back against the evil in the world. To cultivate love in our own souls goes hand in hand with acting lovingly in the world. It is a fiction to think that we can do without either one. Likewise concerning our relationship with the Bible: on the one hand, it is a fiction to think that life is merely about having the right doctrines, about having accurate knowledge of what the Bible teaches. It is a fiction to think that any of us has perfect doctrinal understanding. And yet on the other hand, it is a fiction to think that we cannot make progress in understanding the Bible. It is a fiction to think doctrine is unknowable and has no importance. A heart with a passion for God will not accept the fiction that it has all the right doctrinal answers, but neither will it accept the fiction that it can slack off and ignore the word of God. The eternal protest against fictions produces a humility in our knowledge but a hunger to know more. You and I studied through the Gospel of John together. Perhaps then you will understand me when I say that Jesus Himself portrayed faith as “the eternal protest against fictions.” In John we saw all the reasons why people refused to believe in Jesus. They clung to the fiction that physical bread, material wealth, was more important than eternal life. They clung to the fiction that they were good people, that they did not need to repent and be forgiven. They clung to the fiction that what other people thought of them was more important than what God thinks of them. And they clung to the fiction that their doctrinal understanding was so perfect that they had no need to reconsider it. What we saw in John was this: the ones who believed were the ones who abandoned these fictions, the ones who faced the truth about themselves and God. Graduates, here is what I believe about the lives you have ahead of you. The world is going to tell you some stories, some fictions, like these: Your choices don’t matter. Life has no ultimate point. There is no God. Or, we can’t really know anything about God. Or, there is a God but you don’t really need to do anything about Him. Life is about self-gratification rather than self-control. And so on. Even worse, you will be tempted to tell yourself some stories, some fictions, like these: It is always the other person’s fault, not mine. As long as I have a community of good friends, I have all that I need. My biggest problems can be solved through marriage and a good career. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with me. Or the worst fiction of all: I can live in limbo; I don’t have to finally and decisively choose whether to follow God or not. There is a road that leads to life, and every single person on that road is committed to the eternal protest against fictions. So I am asking you to join the crusade: commit yourselves to the eternal protest against fictions. Don’t listen to lies, even when you yourselves are the liars. Now, ultimately I am optimistic. I am deeply encouraged by the choices you graduates have made in your years at Gutenberg. Each of you have faced some hard truths and taken them on with integrity. I don’t think you want to let fictions rule your lives. I think that you will join the eternal protest against fictions. I hope you will.

Christians with a high view of the Bible have long recognized that much of the world disagrees with them. Opposition can be a healthy thing; having to defend one’s beliefs in the marketplace of ideas is good for the mind and the soul. More and more, however, the “conservative” Christian faces not so much disagreement but outright dismissal. Christianity is presented as so obviously irrational and bigoted that no one could take it seriously. Bible believing Christians are not just wrong, but shameful. Now, shame is a powerful weapon. Shaming is often much more effective than rational argument. To deliver the knockout blow, merely imply that your opponents are so obviously and stupendously wrong that they could not possibly be justified in their beliefs. They are either naïve or ignorant or self-righteous or bigoted; whatever the explanation might be, they ought to be ashamed of ever having thought...what they think. More and more, Bible believing Christians are finding themselves targeted in this way, their opinions portrayed as so obviously stupid and intolerant that every right thinking person is justified in dismissing them out of hand. It is only natural, then, that Christians find themselves feeling defensive and uncertain in response. These things came to mind when I read a recent blog post in the Huffington Post religion section (March 14, 2013), “6 Things Christians Should Just Stop Saying,” by Steve McSwain. The six things Christians should stop saying are: 1. The Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God. (Summary: No, the Bible is obviously filled with errors, and saying that the “original manuscripts” are error free is irrelevant, since we don’t have them.) 2. We just believe the Bible . (Summary: No, you just believe your interpretation of the Bible, and other equally sincere Christians disagree with you.) 3. Jesus is the only way to Heaven. (Summary: No, you interpret John 14:6 to mean that, but I interpret it differently, and you have no right to arrogantly assume your interpretation is correct.) 4. The rapture of Jesus is imminent. (Summary: The rest of us Christians are tired of apologizing for you wackos who keep predicting the end of the world. Shut up.) 5. Homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle and it is a sin against God. (Summary: Our culture is changing its mind about this, so move beyond the prejudice of the apostle Paul and get with it.) 6. The earth is less than 10,000 years old. (Summary: stop insisting these myths be taught in our schools, or that courts display the ten commandments, or that the founders of the U.S. were Christians; our democracy will not survive unless you stop.) This post was a classic example of the sort of argumentation that leaves many Christians feeling confused and insecure. From my perspective, however, the post is an appalling combination of bad argumentation and rhetorical bullying. I say this even though I agree with McSwain that three of the six statements are problematic—at least, I could agree with him if we meant the same thing by them, which I doubt. (I’ll leave you to guess which three.) And I know that McSwain says he is a Christian himself. But since he misrepresents and contemptuously dismisses the thinking of pretty much every Christian I’ve ever known, his post ends up being a great example of intellectual bullying. We won’t look at his entire argument, but I thought it would be worthwhile to examine some of the ways he makes his case. The unfortunate sorts of arguments he uses are all too common these days. Forewarned is forearmed. The Folly of Inerrancy To start with, let’s examine McSwain’s comments on the inerrancy of the Bible. It is not my purpose here to argue for inerrancy, but rather to note the way this author argues against it. Here is what he says to convince Christians they should stop saying, “The Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God”: It isn’t inerrant and not likely even in the “original manuscripts.” But then, I cannot say that with absolute certainty, anymore than anyone else can either. Why? Because no such “original” manuscripts even exists. That’s like saying, “We believe there are aliens on other planets!” Good for you. Now, prove it. As we have it, no matter what translation you favor, the Bible is replete with errors. To pretend otherwise is your right. To say otherwise is a lie. You are entitled to your opinions, your assumptions, even your beliefs. What you are not entitled to is a misrepresentation of the facts. He has basically two things to say: 1) We don’t have the original manuscripts, and 2) The Bible is obviously filled with errors. Both of these points, however, have the same fatal flaw: McSwain has not troubled to understand the position he is dismissing. Many Christians, I suspect, have not worked through for themselves the issues involved with the inerrancy of the Bible. In order, then, to make clear just how irrelevant and unfair McSwain’s comments are, I need to talk a bit about the way inerrantists think about the Bible. Imagine that you are on an expedition to find buried treasure deep in the heart of a deserted island. For a guide, you have a book written by the man who hid the treasure. At the beginning of the guide book, the man has written, “I am the one who buried the treasure, and I leave these instructions for my descendants. I have checked these instructions again and again; if you follow them faithfully, you will find the treasure you seek.” But the book is only a copy of the original, and it is old, sometimes cryptic, torn in spots, and written in an archaic dialect. What attitude do we, the treasure hunters, take to these instructions? We recognize that the copyist might have made mistakes; we know that we might be translating it wrong; we acknowledge that some of the cryptic language is hard to interpret. We do not have a perfect copy of the instructions, nor do we have perfect understanding of them. But what we do have is confidence that the old map-maker knew what he was talking about. He claims to have buried the treasure; he claims that he checked carefully to make sure he wrote the instructions accurately. We keep trying to perfect our understanding of the book because we have confidence that it is true. We may not understand the book fully yet, but one thing we do not do: we do not question whether the man who wrote the instructions knew what he was talking about. Those who believe in inerrancy see mankind as being in a similar position with the Bible. The Bible, they would argue, claims to be speaking nothing but truth. The inerrantist believes that claim to be a credible one, although there are problems to deal with. Some discrepancies seem possible. There are other places that we don’t understand. There are problems of textual transmission. We do not have perfect understanding by any means. But we believe that the Bible claims to speak only the truth and that it is rational and compelling to accept that claim. We question our translations; we question our manuscript copies; we question our interpretations. But one thing we do not question is the truth of the Bible’s message, to the extent that we have understood what that is . In the light of this, then, we can understand the unfairness of McSwain’s comments. First, he points out that we don’t have the original manuscripts. But no thoughtful proponent of inerrancy argues that we have the original manuscripts. Inerrantists acknowledge the imperfection of their understanding, the potential problems created by imperfect copies and imperfect interpretations. What they do argue is that it makes a difference whether we are striving to understand an accurate or an inaccurate text. Of course our striving will be incomplete and imperfect. We can question whether Paul wrote a particular word in our manuscripts. We can question whether we have accurately understood what Paul meant. But we do not question whether Paul knew what he was talking about. Paul claims to speak with the authority of Jesus because he was taught by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The inerrantist accepts that claim. We can see the difference this makes by looking at McSwain’s own words. When he says concerning homosexuality that we should “move beyond the prejudice of Paul,” he has gone way beyond the issue of whether we have the “original manuscripts”; he is saying that we have accurately understood what Paul taught, but Paul was wrong. Even more serious is the bullying way McSwain asserts that the Bible obviously has errors: As we have it, no matter what translation you favor, the Bible is replete with errors. To pretend otherwise is your right. To say otherwise is a lie. You are entitled to your opinions, your assumptions, even your beliefs. What you are not entitled to is a misrepresentation of the facts. This is the classic technique of the rhetorical bully: assume that your position is obviously true and then berate your opponents for their bad faith; the Bible’s errors are so obvious that the inerrantist must be pretending and lying. What this totally obscures is the fact that many thoughtful defenses of inerrancy have been written that deal with the phenomenon of potential errors—defenses that appeal to the nature of error, the philosophy of language, the principles of textual transmission, and much more. Now, maybe those arguments are wrong. I’m not objecting to the fact that McSwain doesn’t agree with those arguments; I’m objecting to the fact that he ignores those arguments and makes anyone who believes in inerrancy out to be a stupid liar. To my mind, this is slanderous and reprehensible. And yet it will serve its purpose. The readers of the Huffington Post can congratulate themselves for not being such dishonest fools, and those Christians who have a high view of Scripture can hang back, uncertain and ashamed to be thought of as deceivers who are afraid to face reality. McSwain uses this name-calling technique throughout. When dismissing the idea of the “rapture,” he says: So, please, please. If you want to believe in the charts that Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye and other “get-rich-off-the-stupidity-of-Christians” have duped scores into believing, then have at it. Now, as it happens, I don’t agree with Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye either. But this sort of name-calling is the exact opposite of the thoughtful sort of critiques that ultimately convinced me they were wrong. Only Your Interpretation The points made in this post often hinge on the “it’s only your interpretation” argument—that is, “You may think that the Bible teaches X, but I interpret it differently, and I have just as much right to my opinion as you do.” This is seen most clearly in the discussion of point 3, “Jesus is the only way to heaven.” McSwain says that this mistaken idea arises from misreading John 14:6: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. The typical Christian understands Jesus to be saying, “If you do not believe in Me, you won’t go to the Father when you die.” But McSwain has a different interpretation. As I understand McSwain’s argument, Jesus was only saying something positive to the disciples: when He goes away, He will continue to lead them to the Father. He was not making the negative statement that there is no other way to heaven. (I can’t say I entirely understand McSwain’s argument because he doesn’t explain the explicitly negative statement Jesus makes: “no one comes to the Father, but through me.”) At any rate, McSwain wants Christians to know that there are “equally sincere” Christians who have a different interpretation of John 14:6. He concludes: Again, it’s your right to “believe” or, more accurately, interpret Scripture as you wish. You do not, however, have permission to arrogantly assume your way of interpreting the words of Jesus are the only way to understand His words. This charge that Christians are “arrogant” is very common, but I confess it makes no sense to me. The author is arguing that Christians should stop saying that Jesus is the only way. Why? Because he has a different interpretation of John 14:6, and it is arrogant for them to think that their interpretation is right. But why isn’t it arrogant for McSwain to think his interpretation is right? If other Christians need to stop saying that Jesus is the only way (because it is only their interpretation), then why doesn’t McSwain need to stop saying that Jesus is not the only way (because it is only his interpretation)? If he is “equally sincere” in his interpretation, doesn’t that mean that Christians who think Jesus is the only way are “equally sincere” as well? If it is OK for McSwain to say they are wrong, isn’t it also OK for them to say he is wrong? My suspicion is that McSwain hasn’t accurately described his real objection. The reason that he is not arrogant for giving his interpretation of John 14:6 is that his interpretation supports a welcoming, non-exclusive theology. His interpretation does not insist that Jesus is the only way. Other Christians, though, are interpreting the passage in an exclusive way, and being exclusive is arrogant. In other words, McSwain has a prior belief that Jesus would never exclude anyone, and so Jesus couldn’t have meant that He is the only way. Only a bad, arrogant person would read John 14:6 as saying that Jesus is the only way. Again, McSwain doesn’t say that, but since the argument he gives doesn’t seem to make sense, perhaps this is his real objection. Conclusion Conservative Christians are facing a growing consensus that our views are obviously contemptible. We believe the Bible is infallible because we are hiding our heads in the sand. We believe that Jesus is the only way because we are elitist bigots. We believe homosexuality is a sin because we are scared to death of our own sexuality. We don’t believe in Darwinian evolution because we are ignorant and uneducated rubes who are afraid to look at the evidence. And so it is becoming more common for our opponents to abandon rational argument and resort to shaming techniques. Just stating what Christians believe is thought to be enough to show how ridiculous Christianity is. My only concern in this article is to remind Christians that name-calling is not an argument. Misrepresenting the other guy’s beliefs is not an argument. We do not need to be afraid of “arguments” like this. Of course, sometimes we deserve other people’s criticism. Sometimes we are hiding our heads in the sand, and we need to be called on it. If people are rightly accusing us of being irrational or elitist, then we need to cut it out. But we are not guilty just by virtue of having a strong view of the Bible or a high view of Jesus. What those who ridicule Christianity often don’t recognize is how much their own presuppositions determine what looks cool and what looks contemptible. The critics pat each other on the back every time they “score” a point against Christians, but self-congratulation is no substitute for reasoned argument.

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