Categories
Ministry

The folly of repressing religious freedom

What follows is a line of logic that may come in useful some day if you are challenged as to why it is not wrong to “proselytize.”  

What is behind the prohibition of sharing one’s religious beliefs with another?  If you were to ask someone who holds this position that “proselytism” should be prohibited, I can only think of two different ways that they could logically respond.  1) “Your religious belief is invalid, wrong, misguided, inaccurate (use whatever word you want) therefore it is unethical for you to share it with others since you are leading them astray.  They must be protected from your wrong belief.”  The other possibility would be, 2)  “All religious beliefs are valid and therefore it is unethical of you to try to destroy another person’s valid belief system through the imposition of your belief system.

The answer to the first objection is as follows:  If you see my religious beliefs as wrong and yours as right, then you have an ethical obligation to convince me and others of your beliefs.  Ethically, you MUST try to proselytize me.  If you are going to hold to a position that not all religious beliefs are valid, but some are, or maybe even only one is, then you must admit the ethical necessity of each religious system being allowed to present its claims.  Freedom to “proselytize” is demanded by the position that there is only one or even a few belief systems that are valid.

Unrelated to this line of logic, but also a valid response to the first objection is the idea that what is true will ultimately prevail.  This is Gamaliel’s argument in the book of Acts.  “If this teaching is not of God, it will fail anyway, so let them “proselytize”.  If it IS of God, then you will only find yourselves resisting God.”

In my thinking, the reponse to the second objection is even easier and much more obvious.  If all religious beliefs are valid, then there should be absolutely no ethical objection to allowing each individual to choose whatever valid religious belief he so chooses.  Obviously this would not include a coerced change of beliefs, but although often accused of coercion, no truly Christian evangelism even comes close to this.

I realize that pure logic will never lead to religious freedom to share one’s religious beliefs because there is an active spiritual resistance to God’s rule behind all prohibitions of religious freedom, but the above arguments might be useful at some point.

Categories
Books Theology

The Christmas Box

The Christmas Box

I read this book because my teenage son and his friends had read it, liked it, and wanted me to tell them what I thought of it. The story is touching (almost too touching), and delivers a moral lesson about the importance of fathers spending time with their children.  But there are some problems in the book, as we shall see.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the story: An elderly lady, Mary, takes in a young family of three to live with her. By the end of the book, the young family has grown to love Mary and discovers just before she dies, that as a young woman herself, Mary’s only child, a little girl, had died. Before Mary passes away, she succeeds in communicating to the young father the importance of spending time with his own daughter.

Richard Paul Evans, the author, is a mormon. However, I do not think that the book was written with the intention of “pushing” mormon theology on the reader. Any influence of his mormon theology is more accidental than anything else. You can see it in a couple of places in the book.

First of all, mormons have quite a fascination with angels and believe that humans can actually become angels. This might be the reason that Mary refers to her little girl as “her angel”. When Mary is about to die, her daughter Andrea “comes for her” and is spoken of as if she were in the room. There is nothing in the Bible about our departed loved ones coming to take us to heaven, and certainly nothing about them becoming angels!

At another point in the book, the young father has “angel dreams” in which an angel descends from the sky and becomes a stone angel. This is just foreshadowing of the stone angel that is at Mary’s daughter’s grave, but Mormon doctrine is based on information that was supposedly revealed to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni. So I suppose that all the talk of angels might make the reader more sympathetic with the mormon story of Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith.

As far as the things that are mentioned about Christ, there are about three brief references that I found. None of these push any particular mormon doctrine, but since Mormons have an unorthodox view of the nature and person of Christ, we need to take a closer look at them:

1) On p. 18 it says that Jesus “ransomed our sins with his blood.” This doesn’t really make any sense. Sins aren’t ransomed, people are ransomed.

2) Like many evangelical Christian books these days, the implication of the “cross” statements in the book is that Christ’s suffering on the cross was for every human being, whether they repent of their sins or not. Again, this isn’t really mormon, but when Christ’s work of atoning for sins is made to sound like it is done for everyone, it changes the message of the gospel.

While this book doesn’t really have any mormon doctrine in it, I don’t know what mormon teachings are finding their way into Evans’ other books. I would not recommend the book to people simply for this reason.

If you are a mormon reading this review, I encourage you to take a fresh look at the doctrines of the Mormon church. I am not pushing any other church on you, just encouraging you to look to the Bible where you will discover Jesus Christ, eternal God in human flesh, who died for the sins of all those who will repent of their rebellion and follow him in faith.

Categories
Theology

A Christian View of Academic Freedom

Christian colleges and universities face the challenge of being, at the same time, both academic institutions and Christian communities.  Due to this duality, the necessity arises for a distinctively Christian view of the concept of academic freedom.

Academic freedom, as commonly understood in secular institutions can be expressed by the following statement of two primary principles from the AFAF (Academics for Academic Freedom)

“We, the undersigned, believe the following two principles to be the foundation of academic freedom: 

  1. that academics, both inside and outside the classroom, have unrestricted liberty to question and test received wisdom and to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions, whether or not these are deemed offensive, and
  2. that academic institutions have no right to curb the exercise of this freedom by members of their staff, or to use it as grounds for disciplinary action or dismissal.”

Notice that the stated foundation of academic freedom isn’t really a foundation at all.  A careful reading of the two items shows that there is no real basis given for academic freedom, simply a bare assertion of its existence.

That freedom is understood as a right that the individual academic retains to be the ultimate authority to evaluate (“question and test”) the “received wisdom,” passing judgement on whether this wisdom is truly “wise” or not.  Should he choose to reject that wisdom, he is free to do so, in favor of any other “wisdom claim” that he should choose to adopt.

It is instructive that the statement does not explicitly mention “truth”, and here is where the Christian institution diverges from the secular academic institution.  Within the Christian faith, we believe in absolute truth that is knowable through the revelation that we have received from the Creator.  Furthermore, we believe that this truth is embodied in the One who declared himself to be “The Truth,” our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6)

The ultimate authority within the Christian community is not the individual, no matter what his academic qualifications or role, but rather the revealed truth that we have from God in the Bible.  Thus we have a firm foundation for freedom, but not the freedom that is described by the AFAF above.

Christian freedom is not the freedom to believe and teach whatever we want, rather it is the freedom to know Jesus Christ as he is revealed in inspired Scripture.  Jesus himself said in John 8:32,

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

For Christian academics, academic freedom is the freedom that we find in our communal submission to the Lord Jesus Christ and his Word.  Together we commit ourselves to bringing every opinion and every “wisdom claim” or “truth claim” to the bar of Scripture.  We are thus free from the limitations that arise from making each individual an arbiter of absolute truth.  We are free from the tyranny of conventional wisdom or understanding of truth that goes against the authority of God’s Word.  

It was such freedom that allowed, even required, Martin Luther to take his famous stand:  “Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen,” even when he was alone in his conviction and labeled a heretic.

But how do we reconcile the apparent contradiction between denying the autonomy that the secular academic takes for himself, and the autonomy that Luther appears to take for himself when taking his stand against the established church?  How do we allow ourselves as Christian academics Luther’s freedom while denying the “unrestricted liberty” that the AFAF proposes?

The answer is that we mutually commit ourselves to submit our ideas and opinions, our instruction and our teaching, to the Word of God.  Luther was forced to take his stand because the community of which he was a part did not grant him the liberty of submission to the Word of God.

To experience this liberty within the Christian institution, there must be a mutual commitment to the Bible’s authority by every individual within the community.  This is a mutual commitment to foundational scriptural truths that are stated in the institution’s statement of faith.  The statement of faith represents the common agreement of the essentials upon which we base our unity.  Hopefully, the statement of faith reflects not only the agreement of those within the institution, but also an agreement with our spiritual fathers, who have gone before us, clarifying for us the  content of the orthodox Christian faith.

When an individual joins the Christian academic community operating under this view of academic freedom, he agrees not to violate the freedom of the community by teaching or espousing any truth claim that violates the common understanding of what is the orthodox Christian faith.  Notice that in this view of academic freedom, any divergence from the statement of faith is a violation of the freedom that the community has found together in mutual submission to the Word of God.

When an individual member of the community finds himself with a view of truth that falls outside the statement of faith, the community grants that individual the freedom to leave his position with the institution in order to pursue a community with like convictions.

Summarizing, the Christian view of academic freedom may be stated like this,

We, the undersigned, believe the following two principles to be the foundation of Christian academic freedom: 

  1. that Christian academics find true freedom in a mutual submission to the absolute truth given to us in God’s self-revelation in the Bible.
  2. that Christian academic institutions, as Christian communities, have no right to curb the exercise of this freedom by allowing individual members of their faculty to teach in such a manner that mutually agreed upon foundational Christian truths are denied.

Practical steps

Should a Christian academic institution wish to implement fully the preceding understanding of academic freedom, I would suggest the following.

Establishing and maintaining a statement of faith that expresses the community’s understanding of orthodox Christian faith.  This statement of faith should, of course, be open to challenge and revision as individual members bring to the community clear Biblical rationale for such changes.

Defining spiritual authority structures within the institution.  Christian colleges and universities should have not only an academic structure, but also a spiritual structure that is based on the Bible’s clear teachings on elder authority that is given to the church to protect it from error.  There should be a clear definition of where the “elder authority” lies within the Christian institution.  Such authority should meet the Biblical qualifications for spiritual authorities as mutually understood within the community.  This may be defined in various ways, but it is essential that it be defined, so that there are those within the institution with the responsibility to guard and defend the community’s freedom found in its mutual submission to foundational Christian truths.

Clear, community-wide understanding of the differences between a secular view of academic freedom and the Christian view.  Such understanding is the goal of this post, and should be pursued by the institution’s leadership through constant reminder to existing members of the community and clear presentation to new members of the community.

In closing, it should be stated that the freedom I have been describing springs from a mutual commitment to foundational Scriptural truths about Jesus Christ and his Word.  The above is not a warrant to try to bring about uniformity of thought in all areas on the Christian college campus.  In the words of an unknown Christian academic, “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.”