The Kingdom Perspective

 

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What effect does belief in life-after-death have on life in the here-and-now?  Listen to

Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and an avowed atheist, as he weighs in on the subject:

[T]he doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11. (Time Magazine 9/29/2007)

Now, Mr. Pinker, citing the 9/11 hijackers, suggests that belief in the life-to-come is dangerous because it “necessarily devalues life on earth”. However, experience shows that not every belief in the life-hereafter necessarily devalues life in the here-and-now Think Mother Teresa. Likewise, not every doubt in life-after-death necessarily causes one to value the lives of others on earth. Think Stalin or the notorious North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.  As a matter of fact, in the 20^th century alone more people were killed by governments committed to expunging belief in the life-to-come than in all wars throughout all history.  Considering this, it seems Mr. Pinker has a very selective “recent memory”.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil. Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and may lengthen his life, still I know that it will be well for those who fear God, who fear Him openly.

~Ecclesiastes 8:11-13 NASB

 

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I have noticed that people tend to like listening to a sermon when it agrees with what they think others should be doing, especially when they are confident that they, themselves, are doing it right. In other words, we tend to hear sermons through the window of our own prejudice.  Said another way, people tend to dislike sermons that point out areas in which they are falling short, especially if the sermon does not likewise make a spectacle of those areas in which they are confident of their own performance. But according to Jesus, such listening is not true listening.  Listening to sermons in order to confirm your own prejudice—to think well of yourself while looking down on others—is putting yourself above the Gospel.

You see, we love to point the finger at the failings of others and enjoy it when the preacher joins in. We say, “See, I knew I was right. Those people are wrong.” However, when the finger is pointed back at us—when we are on the hot seat—we quickly become upset, even sometimes accusing the preacher of “not being tough on sin”, which, of course, means, “not being tough on the sin of others”.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

After that He went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me.” And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him.

And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

~Luke 5:27-32 NASB

 

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History shows us that people are especially dangerous when they have dismissed the thought of divine accountability for their actions.

Listen to the British historian Paul Johnson:

What is so notable about the twentieth century and a principal cause of its horrors is that great physical power has been acquired by men who have no fear of God and who believe themselves restrained by no absolute code of conduct. (quoted in Green, Is Christianity For Real p. 13)

Of course, great evil has also been committed by the religiously motivated, but such atrocities are dwarfed when compared to the atheistic regimes of the 20^th century.

What must we conclude then? Not merely that atheism causes people to do evil (as some of my religious friends would want to argue), nor that religion causes people to do evil (as some of my atheist friends would want to argue), but that mankind has a tendency towards evil. And when this tendency is not restrained by some sense of cosmic accountability (i.e. the fear of God and the conviction of the sanctity of human life), you had better look out! 

Something to think about from the “Kingdom Perspective”.

…as it is written,

“There is none righteous, not even one;
    There is none who understands,
        There is none who seeks God;
    All have turned aside,
      Together they have become useless;
      There is none who does good,
      There is not even one.”
    ”Their throat is an open grave,
        With their tongues they keep deceiving,”
        ”The poisoin of asps is under their lips”;
    ”Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;
    ”Their feet are swift to shed blood,
    Destruction and misery are in their paths,
    And the path of peace they have not known.”
    ”There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

 Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God

~Romans 3:10-20 NASB

 

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Religion can be deadly. There have been those that have done great harm because they feel that God has mandated them to do so. Some have even done great evil in the name of Christ, the Crusades of the Middle Ages perhaps being a chief example.

But history shows us that there is something much more dangerous than people acting in the name of God. It is people acting in the name of the absence of God. The evil committed by those who boast that they are under no cosmic accountability dwarfs the evil committed by the religiously motivated. Consider just the 20^th century:

• Soviet Russia, particularly under Stalin (30 million peasants killed in the Ukraine)
• Nazi Germany (6 million Jews exterminated and millions more killed as a result of their military aggression)
• Communist China (the fullness of which we are yet to see)
• The list could go on…

People are dangerous, but all the more so when they have dismissed the thought of divine accountability.

Something to think about from the “Kingdom Perspective”.

You felt secure in your wickedness and said,
    ’No one sees me,’
  Your wisdom and your knowledge,
    they have deluded you;
  For you have said in your heart,
    ’I am, and there is no one besides me.’

~Isaiah 47:10 NASB

 

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In Western society, the source of stability for the tension between order and freedom has traditionally been found in the ballast of the Christian religion. The Founding Fathers understood the danger of the experiment that they started. Wisdom told them that if they took the power from the king and gave it to the people, there would be a real risk of anarchy. What would bring order if there were no king imposing force from the top down?

James Madison the guiding force behind the language of the Constitution, co-author of the Federalist Papers, and our fourth President answers: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments.”

And now listen to John Adams, one of the most influential of the Founding Fathers and the second President of the United States: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

But if according to our Founding Fathers the government cannot produce this morality and religious sentiment that is the necessary ground of liberty, what can?

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

~2 Corinthians 3:17-18 NASB

 

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In our society there is a tension between freedom and order. As order goes up there is a tendency for freedom to go down. As freedom goes up there is a tendency for order to go down. In the words of the late popular philosopher Eric Hoffer, “When the yearning for freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.”

At least part of the reason for this instability is a rather impoverished notion of freedom. What’s that? The late historian Jacques Barzun summarized it well: “the right to do one’s own thing.” This definition, bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment, is the prevailing idea of freedom in our society. But notice how narrow this notion is. It leaves no room for social cohesion; it’s purely individualistic and narcissistic. Now, considering the limits of the state, this definition may be the best any government can do. But, for any society to survive it needs something more than this to give it cohesion and order.

What we need is a principled freedom, a freedom that grows out of desire to do more than satisfy one’s own “instincts or whims” (Solzhenitsyn). As Benjamin Franklin said, “[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

But if this “virtue” cannot come from the government, where does it come from?

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.”

Righteousness exalts a nation,
But sin is a disgrace to any people.

~Proverbs 14:34 NASB

 

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the influential Soviet dissident and arguably the greatest writer of the 20^th century, died recently.  It is worth remembering this impressive thinker.

Prior to being exiled from the East, he had looked to the Western World as a place of spiritual vitality. But arriving in America in 1974 he was sorely disappointed by the West’s unbridled individualism, rampant consumerism and inability to sacrifice for anything of ultimate value.

In his Harvard commencement address of 1978 he takes aim at the “state of spiritual exhaustion” crippling our culture by challenging our impoverished notion of “freedom”:

…in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility…. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims.

Solzhenitsyn is right. There is no true freedom without requisite responsibility. True liberty doesn’t alleviate us from fulfilling our responsibilities but rather enables us to fulfill them.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

~Galatians 5:13-15 NASB

 

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This past week Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died.  Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer and arguably the most significant and influential of the Soviet dissidents. Many feel that his books exposing life in the prison camps laid the groundwork for the Soviet Empire’s eventual internal collapse (all apologies to those who think it was Ronald Reagan’s asking Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”).

He himself had been a resident in one of the Soviet prison camps. What was his crime? Being critical of the then Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, referring to him as “the man with the mustache” (okay, Stalin was a fairly sensitive individual!).

Anyways, in 1974 he was exiled from the Soviet Union and eventually made his home in Cavendish, VT, where he resided until his return to Russia in 1994.  I remember the first time I drove through Cavendish, VT—I felt a sense of awe that for two decades one of the greatest writers of 20^th century called Cavendish, VT home.  Call me weird…

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker magazine says of him: “In terms of the effect he has had on history, Solzhenitsyn is the dominant writer of the 20th century. Who else compares?”

But Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also had a problem. The problem with Solzhenitsyn was that he was the darling of the Western intelligentsia, until he actually came to the West.  He left the East with certain expectations as to the vitality of the Western world. But to his amazement he found the West to be more spiritually hollow and off-course than the East.

His Harvard commencement address of 1978 lays out his assessment fairly clearly and succinctly. I recommend it. Whether you agree with his assessment or not, you’ll find it very thought-provoking regarding the state of the modern world.

So he was one who found himself to be largely out of step of the rest of the world. This caused many not only in the East but also in the West to back away from him.  Many in the West were skeptical of His critique of the West’s unbridled individualism and consumerism. And worse, in his critique he often came across as a wild-eyed nut, complete with patriarchal beard and austere demeanor.

Upon his return to Russia He tried to do a talk show—I suppose partly to improve his public image—but the program didn’t quite catch on. He was just not the TV-type. Here’s the New York Times’ take on it:

Mr. Solzhenitsyn started appearing on television twice a week as the host of a 15-minute show called “A Meeting With Solzhenitsyn.” Most times he veered into condemnatory monologues that left his less outspoken guests with little to do but look on…. Mr. Solzhenitsyn came across “as a combination of Charlie Rose and Moses.” After receiving poor ratings, the program was canceled a year after it was started. (NY Times 8-4-2008)

I find this description rather humorous.

Now, why is Solzhenitsyn pertinent to us as we consider the difficult work of thinking and living Christianly?  One of the things that Solzhenitsyn lamented about the West is its lack of discipline and self-constraint.  He was critical of the fragmented and narcissistic tendencies of Western individualism. In his view, if the West had any native spirituality, it was very lop-sided on the private, inner, freewheeling and self-aggrandizing side of the equation. It left very little room for discipline, suffering and sacrifice.

Indeed, the religion that you find in modern America is a religion of unbridled self-expression and self-help, instead of self-denial. Only in the West could “having your best life now” be considered a Christian spiritual goal. Only in modern Western civilization could “self-esteem” be confused with a “New Reformation”. 

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.

~2 Timothy 3:1-5 NASB