7 Dumb definitions of success

Click here for this meditation by David Foster. It’s a worthwhile reminder. As they say, it’s a terrible thing to climb the ladder success and find the ladder was leaning on the wrong wall.

A moody God? An article by Steve Paulson interviewing Robert Wright on his book, The Evolution of God

“Jesus wasn’t the great guy we thought he was.” That’s a line that is going to get attention in the article, “God, He’s Moody” at salon.com today. In this article Steve Paulson interviews Robert Wright, author of the book, The Evolution of God.

Interestingly enough, and positively, Wright gets that religions do not share a certain core truth that makes them essentially just different roads to the same place. This is the prevalent view of the man-on-the-street. They might share roughly the same ethical codes, but that is a different matter. The core of religion is not its ethical teaching. It is its explanatory power, the power of its worldview. And different religions have different metanarratives for the world as we know it. Wright sees this.

I like it when people take on sacred cows, and Wright does just that when he takes on Jesus. No one gets by with speaking badly of Jesus, but that is a public relations gambit. If the truth be told, lots of people have lots of trouble with Jesus as he is presented in the Gospels. They just couldn’t get away with saying it. In this case Wright makes the Apostle Paul the hero (a different twist from the usual slant) and Jesus less of a Christian than Paul. Here are Wright’s words. “Paul says something like love your enemies, but he doesn’t say Jesus said it. It’s only in later gospels that this stuff gets attributed to Jesus. This will seem dispiriting to some people to hear that Jesus wasn’t the great guy we thought he was.“

If you are going to take on Christianity, you are going to have to take on Jesus. People keep trying to take on Christianity and give Jesus a free pass. Can’t be done. And Wright doesn’t do it. This reminds me of CS Lewis’ argument that you can’t hold Jesus to be a great moral teacher and at the same time deny that he was God. He is either who he said he was, God, or he was the very devil of hell. Wright does’t go that far, but he goes far enough to keep Jesus in the dock without immunity.

The bottom line is that Wright is a materialist with a materialistic explanation of religion. When a person honestly presents the alternatives so that the issues are out on the table and they are not trying to have their cake and eat it, too, then something good can happen. The choices get clearer and the horizon takes shape so that we know in what direction we are really traveling.

Needless to say, Wright is wrong. But honest atheism is always refreshing to me. Enough with the “Jesus was a good man” but not God. It’s philosophical drivel and unworthy of intelligent discussion. Maybe that is why Nietzche is still a favorite on the college campuses today. He takes no prisoners and sharpens the point. The middle of the road is no place for Nietzche or Wright.

Today’s Quote 6/24/09

“In answer to your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”

-General William Booth, Salvation Army

I knew there was something about teaching in college I liked

Thanks to Jesus Creed.

The prayer of one who would not be king

This is George Washington’s prayer for the country.

I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.