Stand to Reason Blog

Emerging Church Poster Wars

Whether you're part of the movement or not, you've got to admit these posters parodying the Emerging Church are pretty funny.  Even a prominent EC blogger has applauded the posters.  They point to abuses and dangers within the movement and are therefore critical in nature.  Of course, I've expressed my concerns as well.

But then I saw these posters as a response.  And you know what, I like them.  Now, I would word a few captions differently (and certainly define postmodernism differently!) but what I like is how they communicate what this person is for and not just what she's against.  There's a different texture to them than the parody posters. 

Of course, I have no problem with critiques.  Indeed, I wouldn't be with STR if I did, as "destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God" is a vital part of what we do and what the Church needs.  But sometimes we (I mean those of us who are theologically or apologetically-minded) are so critical of the church and all of her weaknesses and failings that we forget to paint a picture of what she should look like.  We're good at telling people the "no" but never the "yes."  And in a public square where discourse is so often shrill and mean-spirited, a compelling vision of what the Church can be is profoundly refreshing. 

Not all Muslims are Mad (as in Crazy)

The stereotype of a Muslim terrorist does not include someone who is reasonable or rational. But this is far from the truth.

While speaking on Islam over the last few years, I’ve noticed that many people think terrorists are crazy or delusional Muslims, a rag-tag bunch of uneducated, poor, or unemployed youth with nothing to lose. Their willingness to blow themselves up is evidence of their insanity.

This is not necessarily the case. One article suggests some Muslim terrorists are educated, employed, and otherwise happy. Some of the "crazy" suicide bombers are doctors, bankers, engineers, and men with families and children. These people have a lot to lose.

It's becoming increasingly clear that "radical" Islam is not just for the radical Muslim. Muslim terrorists buy homes, raise families, and have professional careers. It may be more comforting to think terrorists are mindless fanatics that act like lunatics on CNN videos, but the unnerving truth is that some lead lives that--apart from their terrorism--are much like yours and mine.

They’re not all nuts. They’re following their core belief--which they argue is based on the Qur’an and other authoritative sources in Islam--to its logical conclusion.

Consistency is usually an intellectual virtue. But it becomes a vice if your foundational beliefs are not only false, but morally twisted. Never forget: Ideas have consequences.

You Are Awesome

At first, when I heard about the "Compliment Machine"--a piece of art on a corner in Washington D.C. that calls out random compliments (e.g., "You are awesome") to passersby--I thought, this really is our culture's narcissism gone too far. But it turns out this may have been the artist's point:

"It's a response to how on kids' soccer teams . . . win or lose, everyone gets a trophy," Greaves explains. Not soccer, specifically, but the saccharine culture in which everyone is special and unique, nobody can be criticized and everyone gets an award.

Some people can't stand that culture, others heartily embrace it, but if you're looking for a normative judgment from the creator of the Compliment Machine, you are looking in the wrong place. The machine is his entire comment.

He won't say if he approves or disapproves of what we've become, but it's hard not to see the meaninglessness of endless, unmerited compliments, randomly dished out, unconnected to any real truth about the recipients. But if this was the artist's point, none of the smiling, complimented people on the street seemed to get it...and what does that say about us?

Relativism is Alive and Well in Our Youth

If you've studied apologetics for any length of time, you've dealt with relativism.  Frankly, relativism is easily refuted.  That's why finding an opponent for a debate on the topic is virutally impossible in university philosophy departments.  Philosophers are (typically) too smart for relativism.  You have to rummage through the humanties or anthropology departments for an opponent (no offense intended to those smart humanities or anthropology students or profs!). 

And so, the temptation is to move quickly beyond relativism to more sophisticated challenges.  Howevever, we cannot underestimate the infection of relativism in our culture, particularly amongst our youth. 

Last night I spoke to a group of typical high schoolers from a typical youth group.  After distinguishing between subjective and objective truth, I asked students to identify whether the following statements were subjective or objective truth claims: 

1. That guy's shirt is red.
2. Red is the best color.
3. 2 + 2 = 4
4. Disneyland is better than Six Flags.
5. Brett can bench press 350 pounds. (On this one, I always have to remind students I'm not looking for a true/false answer!)
6. God exists.
7. Premarital sex is wrong.

Fairly simple.  But as typically happens, when we arrive at statements 6 and 7, confusion and disagreement ensue.  In fact, last night the majority of students (about 75%) argued statement 6 is subjective while every student but one argued statement 7 is subjective.  One girl's reasoning went like this:  "As a Christian I think premarital sex is wrong.  However, I could imagine that some weird cult thinks it's okay for children to 'get it on.'  Therefore, even though I think that's disgusting, they've got their own opinion about the matter and it's alright for them." 

The rampant relativism among Christian students is no longer a surprise to me.  Indeed, I have come to count on it.  And such anecdotal evidence is confirmed by the most comprehensive study of the religious lives of American teenagers to date:

"American youth, like American adults, are nearly without exception profoundly individualistic, instinctively presuming autonomous, individual self-direction to be a universal human norm and life goal.  Thoroughgoing individualism is not a contested orthodoxy for teenagers...'Whatever' is just fine, if that's what a person wants.  Consequently, certain traditional religious languages and vocabularies of commitment, duty, faithfulness, obedience, calling, obligation, accountability, and ties to the past are nearly completely absent from the discourse of U.S. teenagers...The typical bywords...are 'Who am I to judge?' 'If that's what they choose, whatever,' 'Each person decides for himself,' and 'If it works for them, fine'...Some teenagers champion this skeptic's view of individual, realtivistic truth with great relish...some version of this individualistic subjectivism and relativism is the dominant, assumed viewpoint about religion among most contemporary U.S. adolescents" (from the book Soul Searching, pp. 143-145).

We simply cannot take for granted our students have a handle on truth.  It may be obvious to you and I the claims "There is no truth" or "All truth is relative" are self-refuting but it is not obvious to the majority of our young people, despite the efforts of some people to persuade us of the absurdity that anyone could think otherwise (beside drunk college students).  Indeed, relativistic thinking is the greatest challenge we face in training our youth.  If they don't get truth right, they will succumb to all kind of error.  This Fall we will be releasing a new resource for students and youth leaders entitled, "Truth and the Real World," to address this challenge.  In the meantime, probe and question your students and those in your church's youth ministry to determine how much of the disease they've caught. 

Making an Impact Without Knowing Very Much

There are two valuable questions I like to ask Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses that come to my door. They're valuable because they require very little knowledge about their beliefs and yet they allow me to create a more meaningful conversation. Before I begin, however, I gently shift gears from answering all their questions to asking a few questions myself. You can ask these too (or some variation of them).

First, I ask them, "If you discovered you were mistaken about your faith, would you be willing to change your religion?" This question is critical because it exposes whether or not they're a genuine truth seeker. They are presumably there to show you're mistaken about your faith and should change it after they show you the truth. They should also be willing to extend you the same courtesy. If not, then I point out how their position is unreasonable and thank them for coming to visit. I try to avoid spending time with people who are not genuine truth seekers and are not willing to follow the evidence where it leads. You can waste a lot of time talking to people who are closed to the truth.

Second, I ask them, "Can you offer me three objective reasons or evidences for why you believe your religion is true?" Notice this question immediately shifts the burden of proof to them, where it belongs. It takes the pressure off you and gives you valuable insight into their rationale. Remember, they've come to you. You're under no obligation to jump through their hoops and answer their questions. Just be sure to keep them on track and not let them deviate from the question at hand. They're often hard pressed to offer you convincing objective reasons. Mormons often ask you to pray and ask God to reveal the truth to you. This is not an objective reason or evidence, however, so don't let them get away with offering it as an answer.

Notice my strategy. First, I avoid the trap of being dragged onto their turf with their questions and agenda. Second, I make them shoulder the burden of proof (for which they are responsible to do given the circumstances). Now that they are off their script, I'm more likely to have a meaningful conversation.

If You Can't Start an Abortion Discussion with This...Part II

To show just how easy it can be to start a conversation about abortion, in the course of jury duty on Thursday I was able to have three interactions referencing the LA Times article from that morning (about the shift Democrats are making toward an "antiabortion tone").

Here's how the first two interactions happened. Two prospective jurors were sitting behind me. Let's call them Jim and Dave. Dave was talking to Jim about global warming, expressing some skepticism. Jim was interested, but quiet. I offered a few comments and built some rapport with both men. Then Jim asked for my copy of the LA Times. I commented that there was a great article on abortion today, right there on the front page. I summarized the article briefly, and Dave blurts out that he is totally against abortion but his wife and daughter are pro-choice. Then he made a comment about "it's her body so what I can I say," referring to his wife. I intended to ask a question about this to challenge the notion, but we discussed another aspect for a moment, and then Dave got called to a jury. Sometimes environments like these should lead us to be a bit more efficient than I was...I'll never get the chance to help this man see the problem with the "it's her body" idea.

Jim then started asking me questions about how important abortion is to me, compared to the "war against Muslim terror." I clarified that I am equally concerned about any human being who is unjustly killed regardless of size or religion or location. It turned out that Jim was a long-time listener to STR's radio program (what a coincidence!), but he just thought the importance of the abortion issue was dwarfed by the importance of the war on terror.

At lunch, I went to Persian restaurant and sat outside at an open table. A man (who later said he was a gay Muslim), helped me navigate the menu. Let's call him Wallace. Wallace asked me some question, probably about what I was doing. I said I was on jury duty but that I was pretty sure I wouldn't get on a jury. Wallace asked, "Are you an attorney?". (Note how my statement created a bit of mystery and elicited this next question and interest in the conversation.)

I said no...that I am a speaker on bioethics...on abortion. He asked why I chose that line of work. I made a case similar to my "One-Minute Pro-Life Apologist" article. If the only sufficient ground for human rights is the thing we all have equally -- our human nature -- and if the unborn share that human nature (which they do), then we have to protect them the way we do adults.

He seemed to agree, but proceeded to talk about how intractable the conflict seems to be. I pulled out the Times article and pointed out the attempts to build common ground that were there (like Hillary Clinton's comment). I asked him if he wished there were fewer abortions...he said, "Of course!" as if "everybody believes that."

We continued to talk, and I even was able to bring out a Justice For All brochure (you need one of these - call 800-281-6426) and showed him a few in-utero pictures (he didn't want to see the graphic pictures, so I respected his wishes and didn't open those pages of the brochure. I mentioned that many students we talk to don't even realize a four-week embryo has a heartbeat and a seven-week embryo has arms and fingers...

In hopes of using his concern about gay rights as a lead-in to discuss whether he would grant the same rights to the unborn, I asked if he had felt treated well in his 27 years in the States. His answer surprised me. (Indeed, one of the most important reasons to build common ground is to listen long enough to prevent misunderstanding). He said he has been fine, and what frustrates him are homosexuals who create discrimination for themselves by making themselves conspicuous (his idea, not mine). Interesting discussion. I had to get back to jury duty and he wished me well. It seemed we parted on good terms.

There are many lessons here. First, starting conversations is not hard, if we are purposeful to do it. The fact that I posted a blog encouraging others, actually encouraged me to practice what I preach. So accountability, or bringing others into your decision to try to have conversations, helps.

Also, I learned that I should be purposeful about sharing the most important information or asking provocative questions early in the conversation, just in case the conversation has to end abruptly. Notice the difference between my conversations with Dave and Wallace. In the latter, I placed my case up front and got more accomplished.

Finally, the value of building common ground is obvious from these interactions. Because throughout the conversations I used common media products (newspaper article about Democratic politicians, photograph of an embryo) and common concerns (my profession, jury duty, politicians in the news, making abortion rare, treatment of homosexuals, human rights, global warming, etc.), the dialogue was civil and the participants engaged.

Children Treated as Property

Yes, I'm referring to blastocysts, embryos less than two weeks old from conception, as children.  I'm not begging the question asserting them to be children because we're argued extensively for their humanity before.  So I'm starting from that point.  Let's "trot out the toddler," as our friend Scott Klusendorf has taught us.

Is a two-year-old child the property of her parents, such that the parent can hand her over for experimentation for the "greater good"?  Most sane people will answer immediately and intuitively "No!" 

Then why, if we simply move back in time two years and almost nine months, that same being can be treated as property by its parents?

A new poll of parents with unused frozen embryos shows that a majority are willing to donate their embryos for scientific experimentation, specifically to develop new stem cell lines.  One parents put a nice moral veneer on this decision as doing "the greater good" of developing cures for ailing people.  As a proponent of this moral theory given moral dilemmas, let me clarify what is accept under "the greater good."  There's no moral dilemma involved in frozen embryos.  You're not being forced to choose between two unavoidable, conflicting options.  Someone might see the dilemma as keeping them frozen or donating them.  There's a third alternative:  Allow them to be carried and hopefully born.  Adopt them out if necessary.  Better yet, let's use some wisdom and not create them in the first place without the sole intention of giving them the opportunity to be live.  The "greater good" doesn't apply because there's no moral dilemma.

Would this same mom offer up the children born from that same batch of embryos for "the greater good"?  Of course not.  Her children are not her property to do with as she wishes.

Unfortunately, the head of a bioethics institute says that "These embryos have very special and moral meaning for the people who create them."  Umm, they don't have meaning just "for" the parents.  That's relativism.  These beings have objective, intrinsic value and meaning in virtue of what they are:  human beings.  When she places the value in subjective terms, the people who hold that value then have the power to devalue it and treat them like property.  Her moral formulation puts all the moral meaning to the parents.  The parents may value them, but that's not why they have value.  She continues, "...we need to know their preferences."  See, the moral value and decision making is centered in their personal preferences. 

Another parent believes that it's better for her frozen embryos to be used for the good of others rather than terminating them.  But terminating them is exactly what will happen to them as their parts are dissembled for stem cells.  It doesn't make it morally acceptable because they'll be used for the good of others.  Again, she would never use that justification for her toddler.  Indeed, she would justifiably recoil at the thought.

Even one woman who recognizes that she's created human life uses the relativistic language:  "For me, it would be destroying my children," she says. "That's a human life that we created."  Even if the embryos is valued by the parent as a human life, the embryos aren't value in virtue of the parent's value.

The entire idea of donating embryos for experimentation originates with the assumption that the value is relative to the parents and they are property.  We don't treat toddlers that way; we shouldn't treat children at their earliest stage of development that way.

Explore Evolution

A new science textbook, Explore Evolution, is available for public schools to help teachers teach the controversy, the full body of evidence about evolution.  It doesn't teach Intelligent Design because that has been ruled controversial by courts.  Instead, this text introduces students to the whole scope of evidence, guiding them to critical thinking to evaluate that evidence and make up their own minds.  A number of states have adopted science curriculum standards that encourage critical analysis of Darwinism so this book can fit into that curriculum.

He Saved a Billion People

Isn't it amazing that someone who has impacted pretty much every person on the planet and significantly reduced the scourge of starvation isn't known to most of us?  Here he is, Norman Borlaug:

Born poor in Iowa and turned down at first by the University of Minnesota, Borlaug brought his fingertips and mind together in rural Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s to develop a hybrid called "dwarf wheat" that tripled grain production there. Then, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, he brought agronomists from around the world to northwest Mexico to learn his planting and soil conservation techniques. "They [academic and U.S. government critics] said I was nutty to think that it would work in different soil," Borlaug told me last week. The resulting "nuttiness" led to what was arguably the greatest humanitarian accomplishment of the 20th century, the so-called Green Revolution. By 1965 he was dodging artillery shells in the Indo-Pakistan War but still managed to increase Indian output sevenfold.

The experts who said peasants would never change their centuries-old ways were wrong. In the mid-1970s, Nobel in hand, Borlaug brought his approach to Communist China, where he arguably had his greatest success. In only a few years, his ideas—which go far beyond seed varieties—had spread around the world and disproved Malthusian doomsday scenarios like Paul Ehrlich's 1968 best seller "The Population Bomb." Now the Gates Foundation is helping extend his innovations to the one continent where famine remains a serious threat—Africa.

If You Can't Start an Abortion Discussion With This...

...it may not be possible.

Today, the LA Times has an article entitled "Democrats Shift Approach on Abortion." In the continuation on A16 of the print version, the title reads "Democratic tone has antiabortion ring."

The article discusses the "new" move of Democrats to talk in terms more friendly to those who are pro-life. They are discussing bills that support pregnant women in various ways; they are discussing ways to reduce abortions.

As is common with the media, the value of this article on abortion is not so much to illuminate whom one should vote for, but the value is to help us start discussions. In this case they're also offering an easy opportunity to build common ground early in the conversation (since the article features attempts Democrats are making to sound antiabortion and support women who choose NOT to abort).

Challenge: Use the questions below to start a discussion and keep it going. Then return and post how the conversation went.

Conversation starters:

"I saw an interesting article in the LA Times. It makes the case that..."
Or
"Did you see this article in the LA Times? It's about..."
Or
"Do you read the LA Times? It has an interesting article today."

Then, once the conversation is started, try these questions:

"The article quotes Hillary Clinton as saying she wants abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. Then she clarifies, 'And by rare, I mean rare.' Why do you think she wants abortion to be rare?"

"Do you believe there are areas we can agree on with abortion, like promoting adoption or pregnancy resource centers?"

"Do you believe there are areas we can agree on with abortion, like the fact that we should work together to reduce the numbers of abortions?"

"Do you agree with Serrin Foster that supporting women who choose not to abort is 'not as exciting as arguing' but that it is 'the best possible thing for women'? What about the unborn women? While I applaud the efforts to support women, and will happily join them, if we focus on helping born women but ignore our fundamental argument about the fetus, aren't we missing something?"

Read the article, start a conversation, and let us know how it goes!