Critical Thinking and Christianity: A Case of Complement or Contradiction?

Everyone wants to be a skeptic these days it seems. There used to be a time when the term “skeptic” meant someone who opposed believers in everything from UFO’s to séances but as a recent series of articles in at the James Randi Educational Foundation noted, these very believers in the paranormal are now referring to themselves skeptics! I noticed the same thing on various internet discussion boards – everyone from Young Earth Creationists to a wide variety of conspiracy theorists are describing themselves as skeptics. What happened? It seems as if somewhere along the line being a skeptic became cool and now everyone wants to be one. Which leaves me with the question – what am I?

After all I call myself a skeptic yet most of the great skeptics (the real ones like James Randi and Phil Plait) would probably not agree with me. After all, though I may not believe in alternative “medicine” (like homeopathy, reflexology and acupuncture), astrology, numerology or the Loch Ness Monster but I am still a Christian. I do believe in strange and improbable/impossible things like the God and angels and the virgin birth and bodily resurrection, so really how much of a right do I have to call myself a skeptic? Should I not be applying the same rules to Christianity that I used to come to the conclusion that New Age “remedies” is total BS? I remember that in the opening chapter of his book “Tricks of the Mind”, the mentalist Derren Brown tells of his journey from Pentecostal Christian to Atheist and how it all started with him investigating various “demonic” New Age practices and how finding that it was all just smoke and mirrors and self delusion led him to the eventual conclusion that the same could be said of his Christian faith. Is this really the only destination that thinking critically can take me? Is it the eventual destiny of all who discard superstition to discard their faith as well?

To me the mark of a true skeptic is the ability to think critically and therein lies the rub does it not? After all in my own previous post I lamented the lack of critical thinking skills among Christians. Added to that, no matter how much I would like to, I cannot separate myself from that. Being a Christian and believing the things I do, requires me to take some things on faith after all. There is no way for me to use logic, evidence and critical thinking to vindicate my beliefs no matter how much I wish it could be so.

What then can I do? Should I reject critical thinking in order to be a better believer? That is not an option available to me. I cannot simply switch that part of myself off, especially not now. Should I try to be selective? Be critical of some things and blindly accepting of others? I honestly do not see how I can do that. How will I draw that line? I can’t look at some evidence and ignore others. I can’t open my eyes to the facts I like and close it to the facts I dislike. I cannot, like some of my brethren, act as if science and archeology proves the Bible as factual for I know it cannot. Finding the city of Jericho does not prove that the Israelites marched around it for seven days. Knowing that Pontius Pilate was a real person is not the same as having proof that he washed his hands in innocence. Finding an empty tomb or two does not prove that Jesus rose from it. Some things can be proven as fact and others cannot. Maybe it is in the acceptance of this fact that I must live then.

I was reading a great book called “Becoming a Critical Thinker” (well the free online first chapter which is all I can afford for now…) by noted skeptic Robert Todd Carroll and something struck me in its description of what the attitude of a critical thinker should be. In it he writes that: “A critical thinker is neither dogmatic nor gullible. The most distinctive features of the critical thinker’s attitude are open-mindedness and skepticism” (©2004 Robert Todd Carroll). When I read that I realized that maybe being a critical thinker and a Christian is not such a complete contradiction. It seems to me at least that a true critical thinker has to live in the balance.

On the one hand he should be skeptical without being dogmatic. I believe it is here that a lot of wanna-be internet skeptics fail. Being a skeptic doesn’t mean rejecting everything out of hand. A knee-jerk skeptic is not a skeptic. Simply disbelieving and dismissing everything out of hand doesn’t make you a skeptic, it makes you an ass. Skepticism should carry with it the willingness to evaluate and investigate. Skepticism isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the assumption that you already know all truth, rather it is the willingness to search for the truth – continually if you have to. Skepticism means you are willing to check and recheck any idea for truthfulness, even those ideas most dear to you. For this of course you need the other side of the balance, the ability to be open minded. Open mindedness is not the same as gullibility. Most people consider themselves open minded when all they really have is a hole in the head where their brains are leaking out! Open mindedness does not refer to believing everything you hear, it refers to the ability to give all ideas a fair chance. Now not all ideas are equal, but if someone tells you something you are skeptical about and they offer to prove it, the open minded thing would be to at least give their proof a chance. The moment you refuse to even hear what someone with an opposing viewpoint has to say you are closed minded. Open mindedness is nothing more than the willingness to listen, explore and give a fair hearing to different ideas.

Now granted this only scrapes the surface of critical thinking and deals with the attitude of the thinker, not with the various tools involved. I admit freely that I have a lot left to learn about skepticism and critical thinking and that I still have to undo years of uncritical thinking patterns. However the more I learn about critical thinking and skepticism the more hopeful I become that there is hope and room for me amongst the skeptics. All of us, even the best critical thinkers face innumerable hurdles to truly being a critical thinker about everything. Most, if not all of us, find it easy to be critical about some issues but hard regarding others. For instance one person may be extremely skeptical about politicians but really gullible when it comes to infomercials while another may analyze everything his preacher says, yet never ask for a second opinion on anything his doctor tells him! We all have our strengths and weaknesses in this way. In many ways, critical thinking is hard no matter who you are. So much of our very wiring seems to be set against it. We seem to be wired to seek out opinions that agree with ours and reject those who do not, sometimes without regard for their actual truthfulness. Following the trail of truth to wherever it may lead us is no easy task for a human. Its not a matter of intelligence either, the smartest people can be the worst and critical thinking and do the dumbest things sometimes! In fact, sometimes intelligence may be more of a handicap - the more intelligent a person is it seems the easier it is to rationalize away the things that prove them wrong!

The best any of us can do is to try to live with a continuous willingness to seek the truth and to examine what we find. We cannot possibly hope to know or understand everything yet that should not discourage us to try to know and understand as much as we can. It is in this balance we must all attempt to live. I have heard it said that poets don’t go mad, chess players do. Yet I can’t help but wonder how many chess players end up drowning themselves in large bodies of water like poets often do... I believe that balance is the key element. While there are things that we are certain about, that gives us no excuse never to re-examine and re-explore them, testing our own sacred certainties. At the same time there are some things which may always remain mysteries, things that may forever elude our understanding. Yet I don’t think this means we shouldn’t constantly try to get a better grasp on them, to try to further our insight into them.

I certainly believe that the church should be more welcoming of critical thinking. We allow so much nonsense into our midst, simply because no one ever thinks to question or think about it. Did the Old Testament not require prophets to be accurate on pain of death? Does the New Testament not say that we should "test the spirits" and that there is "no private interpretation" of the prophecies? Why then is there such an (unBiblical) unwillingness to be more skeptical in church? (I'm not suggestion we stone people for getting something wrong but really, would it kill us to admit when we made a mistake?)

As for my faith, I believe there is room for that right alongside my skepticism. After all, no amount of skepticism rules out the existence of God and any skeptic who claims that is not being true to the tenets of critical thinking. Even a devout atheist (in this case, Youtuber AronRa) stated that:

“Everything within the capacity of human understanding contains a degree of error, and everything men know to be true is only true to a degree. Everyone is inevitably wrong about something somewhere. We don’t know everything about everything. We don’t know everything about anything! And what we do know, we don’t know accurately on all points nor completely in every detail. Honest men admit this. “

This means you can’t rule out the existence of God using only critical thinking and logic. At the same time this also means you can’t claim with absolute certainty that God exists or that anything in the Bible happened the way it was described. I fully accept that. That is why God is a matter of faith to me, not knowledge. In fact I was hesitant to even bring this up because this happens to be my least favourite defense of the existence of God, the “Well you can’t prove He DOESN’T exist!!!” argument. I mention this only to say that I don’t think it is absolutely contrary to be a critical thinker and a man of faith. My faith is just that, faith. I don’t pretend it’s anything else. Terry Pratchett had a character in his Discworld novels named “Abraxas the Agnostic”. Now he was nicknamed “Charcoal” Abraxas because he had been struck by lightning fifteen times - which suggests that being an agnostic in the Discworld requires an enviable strength of mind, not to say thickness of skull. His own comment, just before the fifteenth stroke, was “They needn't think they can make me believe in them by smiting me the whole time”. In studying critical thinking and skepticism I often feel like a mirror version of Abraxas – I comprehend all the reasons for not believing in God, I understand the reasoning of Agnostics and Atheists and I see the sense and reason in their arguments. Yet for some reason I cannot stop having faith. God is real to me and I believe in Him, try as I might, God remains real to me whether I want Him to or not. Therefore, my life remains in this strange juxtaposition of faith and reason, skepticism and mysticism. It may all change one day, it may never change. Come what may I will continue to both explore and enjoy the mystery and question and probe the certainties of my life, wherever that may lead me in the end.

Brainwashing the flock

I recently read a brilliant article called "6 Brainwashing Techniques They're Using On You Right Now" by David Wong. Now usually I just hang out over at Cracked.com for the entertainment and fun articles but this one really stood out for me. It was interesting, well researched and presented in a great format. OK so there were some totally gratuitous shots of cleavage in there too, try to look past that and just read what he wrote if your sense of humour is broken! So please check out his article because I have no intention of passing someone else's hard work as my own here. I do however want to use his article as a framework for discussing another facet of these brainwashing methods he did not mention - the fact that the points he raised applies to the church so accurately it's more than a little scary! While Mr Wong was pointing out how politicians, advertisers and the media use simple, subtle techniques to brainwash you I realized that you could basically re-write the whole article as a bad comedy skit called "You may be a Pentecostal when..."

Of course there is no real need for me to try my hand at bad stand-up comedy since there are enough people out there making fun of Christians already. Sad thing is, a lot of it is totally deserved. This may come as a shock to a lot of Christians, but we are not known as paragons of analytical thinking and reason in this world. (Something that was brutally made fun of in season 3 of Weeds when one of the kids attended a fundamentalist Christian "Critical Thinking" class) I believe the 6 things listed here greatly contribute to shutting down critical thinking the lives of Christians. Still, I don't think anyone in the church would like the idea of being brainwashed. Just to be completely clear, I don't think this is done on purpose at all. I don't think the Christian leaders of the world had a secret meeting and decided on a 12 step plan (that all started with the same letter) to brainwash the faithful. I would even go out on a limb and say that 99.99% of the leaders that use these techniques are completely ignorant of their brainwashing potential, they simply use them because they work. Lets face it, most preachers/teachers/evangelists are nothing if not pragmatic. If something works they tend to use it without spending too much time pondering why it works. Many organisations all over the world are using these methods, it was really only a matter of time before they ended up being used from the pulpit. These techniques are pure elegance in their simplicity. They are:

Chanting
"But Christians don't chant!" you protest. Oh but we do! Ever notice how most of our Christian catchphrases are really easy to say and even rhyme a little? Ever notice how a lot of worship songs have simple repetitive lyrics? Ever heard lines like "Say it with me" or "Turn to the person next to you and say...." or "Repeat after me" from the pulpit? That all counts as chanting. These types of repetitive sayings tend to override the analytical part of your brain, which is why the nice folks over at the Cult Hotline and Clinic (go read that page for even scarier thoughts about some accepted church practices!) refer to them as "thought stopping techniques" - because that's exactly what they are. Now this isn't necessarily an evil thing. It can be used as a way to keep focus and to keep your mind from wandering. Just keep in mind that as a side effect it also tends to disrupt your ability to carefully consider the things you are told - which is why its so popular with cults. And the Army.

Slipping false information into your subconscious
You come across this in the media all the time - they lay a shocking headline on you, usually in question format about Product X maybe causing cancer (or something like that). Now its pure sensation and they know that and if you read the whole article you eventually come to the part where actual experts in the field debunk the claim, but the seed is sown. That's just how our brains work, we don't absorb massive chunks of information, we tend to remember tidbits. Problem is that we remember the sensation and the interesting tidbits, not necessarily the factual ones. That's why next time someone brings up "Product X" the first thing that pops into your head and out of your mouth is "I've heard that can cause cancer". Now this happens in the church a lot too but the main difference is that it is not planned at all as far as I can tell. Still there are so many false rumours running unchecked through the Christian faith due to this very fact. Little pseudo-facts get used in sermons and repeated in conversation and so lies just continue to circle through the church unfiltered for decades. From Chinese people eating babies to the gay Jesus movie to Noah's ark being found, there are tons of "facts" that Christians tell as if it was gospel truth even though a simple 2 minute fact check would prove it wrong! It was this gullible swallowing of total falsehoods spread by well meaning people that turned me to skepticism in the first place actually!

Control of what you watch and read
Now the church may be guilty on all of these points but it tends to be brutally guilty of this one! Communist countries can learn a lot about control through censorship from Christianity! Spend enough time in church and you will be warned in great detail of the evils of TV, movies, games, the media and music. Don't even get me started on books! From Harry Potter to the Origin of Species, its all from the Devil himself! Christians must be protected from all these poisonous influences for their own good!! Of course no one in the church likes to think of it as censorship. Again, I don't think this is a planned, deliberate attempt to stamp out dissent, I believe that those who are doing it to "protect others from the snares of Satan" truly believe they are protecting others. Now I understand that it certainly feels comfortable to surround yourself with sources that only agree with you (who simultaneously tell you how wrong all those who disagree with you are) but it's really not healthy! Also I am not blind to the fact that in some cases censorship really does protect people - I would for instance never suggest that parents let their kids be exposed to torture porn! I do however think that it is naive and dangerous to try to protect all people all over from ways of thinking different from yours. In other words, making sure that your small children stay away from age inappropriate movies is good parenting - controlling what your child gets to see at age 30 is not. At some stage you have to let people make their own informed decisions about what to believe and for that they need the freedom to truly look at all sides. Otherwise their beliefs will never carry weight. Any idea that can only survive by being protected from all criticism is hardly an idea worth holding on to. If we believe our faith is true and that it truly has merit we should not have to fear opposing opinions.

Keeping people in line through shame
This is one we are all intimately familiar with! I don't care where you are from, you have known about this method from your earliest years! Your mom probably used it on you to get you to do things, your peers at school did too, in fact its safe to say that you probably used shame and ridicule (even if only very subtle) to make other people do what you wanted them to do at some point in your life. Everyone does this at some point and while its not a healthy tool it certainly is an effective one! Using an appeal to ridicule is devilishly simple - no one likes to look like an idiot, so convince someone that all other options would make them look like an idiot and they will most likely go with your way. Of course in the Christian world we don't quite use coolness or looking like an idiot to control the way people think, but the results stay the same. Granted, those in the Creationism vs Evolution debates love to use straight up appeals to ridicule, using straw man arguments to make sure that everyone knows that accepting evolution is the most obviously dumb thing anyone could do (Check out anything by Kent Hovind for many, many examples). The rest of the church tends to rather use terms like "No true Christian would ever..." or "No one who is filled with the Holy Spirit would enjoy...." More subtle than most forms, but it still does exactly the same thing - it creates a subconscious equation in your mind which makes a certain way of thinking or behaving unacceptable for fear of being rejected by the group.

Black & White choices
Something I have often lamented in this blog is the way that Christians tend to avoid any and all shades of gray. True, this can be said of many groups, from sports to politics. However when it comes to black & white options only the church really has the upper hand because we are the authority on what is good and what is evil are we not? Compromise is the worst swear word in the Christian language and we tend to sharply divide everything into right and wrong, good and evil, God or the devil. Churches promote the simplest answers to even the most complex issues - which is why Christians in general tend to see no conflict with being both pro-life and pro-death. This habit of making all things either good or totally bad is a great way of controlling the thoughts and behaviors of other people. It taps into our most primitive "fight or flight" sides, making it all about life or death (or even damnation in some cases), effectively shutting down all critical or analytical thoughts which leads to blind obedience and following. After all you are not going to be weighing your options when you are already convinced that your side has it right and all others are horribly wrong and hell bound for it! Which leads to the final point.

Us vs them
The "us vs them" mindset is all around us and we all suffer from it to such an extent. Whether it is your faith, your race, your home town or your sports team, we all tend to find our identity in a group of some kind. Through the millennia, human beings have been hardwired to form tribes, to find a place they can belong. This is not something that is evil by its very nature. In fact this can be good and the church can provide such a place of belonging. At it's inception after all, Christianity was a haven for the outcasts, the marginalized and the downtrodden. As tribes went it was a very welcoming, inclusive one. Sadly, that is rarely true today. The church and the different denominations in it have become cliquish to the point of almost becoming cultish. This mindset totally convinces people that we are not just a good group to belong to, we are the ONLY group to belong to if you want to get it right. Those outside of "our" group are mocked and vilified, our group becomes the safe haven that protects you from "them". Of all the brainwashing techniques this is the big one - it's the culmination and end goal of all the others. As brainwashing tools go there is none more powerful. After all, what do we fear more in our deepest of hearts than being kicked from the tribe? We will bend over backwards, change the way we live and think and behave just to fit in, just to not be excluded. Hard to think for yourself when you live like that isn't it?

Of course that is kind of a worst case scenario. A lot - if not most - of the churches out there do not take these methods to extremes, but unfortunately there are those who do. The problem as I see it is that all of these techniques are used to some extent right throughout the church - again, I don't think this is because of premeditated malice - and all Christians would do well to be aware of them. After all these very same techniques are being used on you by motivational speakers, team leaders, CEO's, politicians and the media anyway and a little awareness can go a long way. When your preacher or youth group/worship/cell group leaders use these I don't think they plan to actually brainwash you nor do I think they plan to do any harm. In fact it's probably not planned at all. But that doesn't make it less dangerous. Not thinking about where you are headed or not thinking about why you are doing something is always at least a little dangerous and that is what these techniques all lead to - NOT THINKING. So be aware, don't let even the most well meaning people shut down your abilities to think critically and keep thinking. Questions will not damn you, unthinking obedience just might.

The Army of God?

A while back I came across a rather disturbing article about a new movement in Charismatic Christian circles called Joel's Army - basically a growing movement of young people " with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers" under the charismatic leadership of guys like Todd Bentley. According to the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada:

"An end-time army has one common purpose -- to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion," "The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel's Army. ... Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God's kingdom on earth."

Now normally I would pay guys like these little (if any) notice. The crackpots have always been among us after all. However this is bigger than just a few crazies dreaming about the coming apocalypse. This isn't really isolated in just one area either, since the media started poking into the background of Sarah Palin and her church ties, the The Christian Dominionism movement - in a nutshell, the idea that Christians ought to be in charge of the secular world - now receives more widespread attention. Now personally I still feel that a lot of the articles and media attention this gets is a little alarmist. The Dominionist message has been preached and promoted for almost a hundred years now and to date it hasn't really managed to stir up much besides feelings. I don't think we are in any danger of the Crusades being relaunched any time soon and I don't think America is about to be turned in to a military theocracy any time soon either. However this movement and its growing popularity should still give Christians pause since it represent a extremist form of a bad idea that is found all over the Christian church in general - the idea of the Church as an army.

Now the Bible gives many pictures of the church - that of a family, a building, a bride or a body for instance but more and more Christians prefer to think of the church as an army instead. But is this a Biblical model? Does God want His church to be an army? Well, the idea is certainly not that new. It certainly featured big in the Middle Ages and of course the Crusades. Young and old may remember songs like “Onward Christian Soldiers” or “God’s got an Army”. This model had a big boost through the works of people like Rick Joyner and a handful of others who use vivid battle images in their books on Christianity. I have to admit that the Army model sure is a romantic one and it stirs the blood like few others. But that doesn't make it a good model for the church by a long shot.

Firstly it is very important to note that the Bible never uses this as a model of the church. When the Word refers to the army of God it always refers to His angels, not His church. On a few (three if you want to nitpick) occasions the Word refers to the individual Christian as a soldier (Phil 2:25; 2 Tim 2:3; Philemon 1:2), but never to the church as an army. (The Bible refers as many times to Christians as athletes, why does no one ever refer to the church as a sports team?) Even though the army model has its merits it is still a deeply flawed model. Better ones are already given to us and they fit the role and function of the church a whole lot better.

The problem is that there are some aspects of an army that makes it completely unsuitable as a church model. An army destroys those who oppose them. As the church we are however instructed to win over those who oppose us by doing good, loving our enemies and not repaying evil with evil, not seek their annihilation. The church should seek the salvation of its enemies, not their destruction. Sadly, with the romanticism of the army way of thinking gaining ground the fundamental Christian ideal of turning the other cheek and seeking the blessing of those who curse you is being driven further and further into the background. There is a growing "us against them" mindset in the church with the "them" being everyone from Muslims to gays to liberals and the gist of the message is not reaching them so much as defeating them.

Now right about here, many supporters of the Army model would stop me and point out that according to the Bible the true enemy is Satan and his minions (Eph 6:12), but here again the army model proves dangerous, for it encourages tons of spiritual warfare. This is a big problem with the Army model - armies focus on battle. Similarly, once a church starts thinking of themselves as an army, it becomes all about fighting. I can't help but feel that most of the church are far more focused on the devil and evil spirits and spiritual warfare than they are on God. Now I don't want to digress into a discussion on "spiritual warfare" but I will say this - how much of it is drawn from the Bible? All these "prayer walks", deliverance ministries and endless lore on different spirits - from names to functions and even locations - where does it come from? How much of it is actually drawn from Scripture? If we needed such extensive knowledge of exorcism, deliverance, Jezebel spirits etc, why is there so little of it written in the Bible? While there is a time and place for this, I believe the focus of a Christian should be God and not the devil. One should never be tempted to forget that the Biblical order is firstly submission to God and secondly to resist the devil (Jam 4:7). When speaking of the armour of the believer the instruction is that we should use it to “stand our ground” - sounds like these things are more about "self defence" than attacking the devil day in and day out. Just a thought.

OK, back to the problems with running a church like an army. In an army the generals take no risks. Instead they send their troops to take the risks while they take the glory. Come to think of it that does sound a little bit like some of the congregations I have been part of and really, it sucked! In an army, the troops have little significance. Just watch the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan or read about life in the trenches of World War One. In an army a life is a statistic – the objective is more important. In the church everyone is significant. At least they are supposed to be. The people are as important as the objective because in a very real way people are the objective. In the church it is of no use to reach some arbitrary goal if most of the people are lost along the way.

I could list many reasons why I find the army church model to be fatally flawed. I did not go to the army myself (I missed forced conscription by about a year) but I did grow up in a very militarized society and school system and the one thing I remember hating most about it was the forced uniformity. Where as thinking about the church as a body makes it OK to be different and unique even, in an army everyone has to look the same and most importantly think the same. Sadly, this is another bad idea the church has grabbed hold of. This is a case where the favoured model actually clashes with the Biblical one! Paul teaches that we are all like different parts of a body - completely different yet all important and all part of something bigger than ourselves. He tells us to embrace the fact that we are different and to let others be different from us. The army idea of assimilation utterly goes against this. Other reasons include that in an army the obedience is based on fear and duty not love and respect. Also in the church we are to serve one another, not control one another (Mat 20:25-27). Armies also leave no place for dissent, you either agree or you are in trouble. Being right or wrong has no bearing here. Is that really how a church should be run?

Now I grew up in various churches with the dominionist bend and I get the allure. I can certainly see why the army model would seem so attractive. It represents power after all and power is always attractive. But the problem is that on the whole, Christians are spectacularly bad with power. They may have only the best intentions, but we all know what they say about good intentions. I think Christians should think long and hard about this image they have of themselves as God's mighty army. We need to look past the romance and see the dangers and the many pitfalls. Groups like Joel's Army should serve as a wake-up call regarding the path we are headed down and it is not a good one. Sure, very few groups take it as far as the extremists do but why choose an inherently un-biblical model with so many negatives in the first place?

I said at the beginning of this article that I don't think there is any reason to be alarmist about these groups but I am starting to wonder if that's true. After all you don't need large numbers to do large amounts of damage, small dedicated groups can cause immense harm (if terrorism taught us nothing else its this...) It takes only a few individuals to break down in moments what generations have painstakingly built. Years of good can be undone in moments. Sure, most Christians - even those in utterly dominionist charismatic churches - would never actually go beyond talking but they are not the danger. Its the handful of overzealous people out of the masses who decide to "help God out" that pose the danger. That is why the church at large needs to think long and hard about what message it is sending. Preach on what monsters abortion doctors are and sooner or later at least one guy will get it into his head to shoot one. Spend enough time building fear about how the Muslims are going to kill us all and eventually someone is going to harm Muslim children.

Again, I'm not saying this is going to lead to a bloodbath or anything truly tragic, but it still sounds like a recipe for a disaster waiting to happen. See these groups are militant, elitist and and worst of all anti-intellectual. While there is a lot of anti-science sentiment among many Christians today already but among some of these groups take it much further than that by embracing teachings like that of William Branham. In a nutshell these state that the "fruit" Eve ate was sexual congress with the serpent and that Cain was the son of the Serpent. Therefore there are literally sons of God and sons of the Devil on earth. It takes it even further, the "sons of God" are good simple folk while the "sons of the serpent" are the scientists and intellectuals and even the theologians (the complete sermon on "The Serpent's Seed" can be found here). So then, you have a group of zealous, passionate young people, you teach them that all who differ from them are not only wrong, they are evil (and therefore you shouldn't listen to a word they have to say). You then teach them that they are special and meant to be running everything, that they should be in charge of the world. You hammer home the idea that the world is coming to an end and they have a vital role to play in the victory of good over the forces of evil (which happen to be everywhere and controlling everything from governments to schools to the media). You tell them that they are not only right, they are absolutely right for God Himself is on their side and He supports and endorses their cause completely. How is this not a terrible idea?

Against Anti-Science

Abusive relationships. You don't have to spend much time on this planet to run into several. You know them when you see them, one moment they love one another the next they're trying to kill each other. They alternately use, abuse, love, hate, adore and despise one another. One (if not both) will usually swear that we just don't understand their relationship, really they love each other. Yet all anyone ever sees is how they damage one another though. Yes there are several bad relationships in this world but one stands out above the rest. It has been going on longer and been more abusive than any other you'd care to name. The relationship I'm referring to is the one between Science and Christianity.

Look, it sure started out great and the romance bloomed at first. Christianity gave Science a nurturing environment and Science was positively glowing. May seem hard to believe but back in the day, Christian worldviews that:

1) The world is real and not an illusion (as the eastern philosophy taught)
2) That God is separate and above nature (meaning you can dissect it without fear)
3) God is rational (and therefore His creation should be rational and behave rational too and can therefore be studied)

really helped Science come into its own. But of course that didn't last long... Before long Science started saying things that Christianity didn't like - for instance that the world was moving (around the Sun no less), and not fixed on pillars like the Bible said. Things soon turned abusive and despite a lot of counseling, things have never been real good since. In fact, they seem worse than ever. These days it's hard to tell who is abusing who since the fighting is constant and ugly.

Of course just like any other abusive relationship, there is at least one partner who swears that they still totally love each other. In this case the partner in question would have to be Christianity. Crack open a Christian book, magazine or website and before long Christianity will be telling you how much it loves Science. Science is great. Science is cool. We have no problem with Science. The things we fight about? That's not really part of Science. Science should just go back to agreeing with us and everything would be great again. Indeed if there is one thing that Christianity is adamant about, it's that it is not anti-Science. Sadly, that claim rings about as hollow as the platitudes of any other abusive spouse.

Truth is, Christianity (in general) is anti-science, there is no denying it. Of course this accusation has been leveled before and quite frankly I don't think it's possible to count all the arguments and counter-arguments currently raging between Christians and Science. Christians say they are for Science, (many) scientists say that Christianity is against Science and would like us all back in the Dark Ages. I don't have the space, the time or the energy to even attempt to list the history, the different arguments or any of the many different viewpoints here. I already posted my intellectual and moral objections to Creation Science in a previous post. Instead I choose to save time by cutting right down to the bone. To me at least the whole question on whether Christianity is anti-Science can be settled with just one question - how does Christianity treat Science and those who practice it?

First off, Christians love to imply that scientists are stupid or liars or incompetent or all of the above. Sure they don't (usually) just come right out and say it but that really is the implication here. For scientists to be as wrong as many Christians claim to be about things like the age of the Earth, evolution and now global warming, one or all of those things have to be true. For the Average Joe Christian to be able to so confidently claim Scientists wrong about everything they disagree on using just a dash of High School education and a lick of sense, Scientists would have to be the dumbest people on earth! Clearly all those long hours of study, the years of lab and field work was a total waste of time! Now I have only a limited tertiary education in the sciences but that was enough to give me the highest respect for people in academia, their levels of intelligence and the thoroughness of their work. To simply dismiss them with a wave of the hand and a derisive snort is downright vulgar! The only other explanation is that there is this massive global conspiracy - which basically means that all the Scientists of the world have collectively agreed to lie through their teeth in order to attempt to discredit Christianity. As far fetched as this may sound there are actually a lot of Christians who believe that. Again, I have to ask myself if they have even tried thinking about how impossible a conspiracy of such size and scope would be? Basically Scientists across (rival) nationalities and laboratories, working in countless fields and producing new work daily would have to be lying to the world in perfect harmony without anyone ever breaking ranks. Does that even sound possible to you? I actually know a few scientists who happen to be very devoted Christians and yet fully accept Scientific findings - I find it impossible to think of them as part of a global conspiracy of evil, hellbent on deceiving us all! Of course there is a milder version used by those who are intellectually honest enough to admit that Scientists are not a bunch of lying morons yet are not intellectually honest enough to admit that they may be wrong regarding their view of the Bible as Scientifically inerrant. These try to level the playing field by claiming that everyone has the same facts, they are just interpreting them different. See according to this view, Scientists aren't evil or stupid, they are just incompetent. In this case the idea is that scientists are using the wrong preconceived notions to start with, thereby ignoring all other possibilities, sheepishly staying in the fold of "Big Science". What we have here is a serious case of projection methinks... See there is not a real scientist in the world I think that doesn't dream of finding something fresh and new, some new way of looking at things that will render the old way obsolete. Conventions and assumptions are continuously challenged, debated and tested in Science. It is rather among the "Christian scientists" that preconceived starting assumptions are a problem. For instance when it comes to the age of the universe, science is free to look at light, measure distances and come up with any number - as long as they can back it up, because all other scientists in their field are going to spend a lot of energy trying to prove them wrong first in the brutal process known as peer review. Its people who know that they have to come to the conclusion somehow that the earth is 6000 years old on the other hand that are hindered by their starting assumptions. That is why you would get the time dilation model by a man as brilliant as Dr Russel Humphreys which allows the universe to be billions of years old while the earth is 6000 - clever, but pretty much the scientific equivalent of doing a triple backwards somersault with a twist instead of taking a step. I ask you, who is filtering their results through creative interpretation here?


See you can't have it both ways. You can't be pro-science but anti-scientist. Either you trust them or you don't. You can't trust forensic investigators to use small clues in order to find out exactly what happened in the past (at a murder or accident scene) and yet not trust the very same method to tell you what happened in the ancient past - honestly the "you weren't there" defense is beyond retarded. You can't trust nuclear physicists to know what they are doing when they use nuclear decay to build power plants while at the same time insisting that they don't know what they are talking about when they use nuclear decay to determine the age of the universe and the earth. For some reason the same people who trust biologist to keep us safe from newly formed bacterial lifeforms have no issue with calling those same biologists liars when it comes to evolution. If you trust DNA in court and in paternity tests, why would you reject it when applied to the ancestry and interrelatedness of species? You either reject all the work of a body of science or you trust the people who have dedicated their lives to that study. You can't just cherry pick the parts that you agree with.

The attitude of so much of Christianity against Scientists is enough to make the charge of being Anti-Science stick. But wait, there's more! There is also a clear disrespect for scientific advancement and study among so many Christians. Granted it can be rather subtle, at times it even sounds sensible and pragmatic. People (and granted this is not just among Christians but you tend to see it mostly among Christians) ask innocent seeming question like: "Why study human origins?" "Why travel to Mars?" "Why land on the moon?" followed by the inevitable "What is it good for anyway?" In recent times, nothing else has highlighted this attitude like the Large Hadron Collider. It never ceases to amaze me how people can call Scientific endeavor in effect a pointless waste of time and money and yet claim not to be anti-science in their very next breath! How incredibly ungrateful! The only reason we are where we are today and no longer living in caves and huts, foraging for berries and hunting with sharp sticks is because there have been people throughout history who chose to try to make sense of the world and expand their knowledge by doing "pointless" experiments instead of doing "useful" work! If we limit all science to what will be useful to us right this instant we effectively cut all progress off at the knees - how is that not anti-science?! Did you know that the previous research project of CERN (builders of the Large Hadron Collider) gave us the internet as a side effect?? Thats right, the freaking internet! We wouldn't have it right now if scientists didn't fool around with their "pointless" experiments. The most despicable part of this anti-science agenda is when Christians try to vilify scientists by bringing up the worst argument apart from "Where you there?" - the starving children! Like clockwork, whenever there is an expensive project like the LHC or even a field of study deemed "unworthy" by Christians they piously ponder how many poor starving children could have been fed by the money used for that. First of all as I just pointed out, advancing our knowledge is hardly wasteful. Secondly its unbelievably hypocritical! It is thanks to "wasteful" scientific experimentation that we aren't ALL starving after every hard winter. In fact it is only because of "frivolous" scientific spending that the man on the street is even aware of the starving children of the world, not to mention in a position to do something about it! Why is it that the "starving children" always pop up in conversation when other people are spending money? Do these people ever cut their spending habits to feed the poor children? But I digress. My point is that to call any form of scientific advancement a waste of time and money is utterly anti-science and to try to make Scientists look like bad people by throwing in the "starving children" is just despicable.

Clearly a substantial part of Christianity is very much anti-Science, despite their protestations to the contrary. This is a real tragic state of affairs and is damaging for us all. It really does make this an abusive relationship. In fact I think one of the biggest contributors to Atheists becoming Anti-theists is the apparent Christian Anti-Science Agenda. I think most atheists would have been far less vocal if they didn't have the very real (and realistic) fear that the Church would prefer to have us all back in the Dark Age - where the only science allowed is church approved science. Not to mention that most non-believers would probably have more time for the message the Christians have if they didn't see Christianity as so steadfastly opposed to observable reality and testable science! Instead of whining about how mean Doctors Dawkins and Myers are to us, why not take a moment to think about the message our attitude towards Science is sending? We are acting downright fearful! Scientists are not afraid, just look at the LHC - it could prove our standard model of particle physics wrong and that doesn't scare scientists, that excites them! They get that learning more will not destroy science, but rather that having a better understanding will make science even greater. We Christians on the other hand seem to be fighting the advancement of the light of Science because our God lives in the darkness of the unknown and once Science knows more, our God would have less room to hide. In fact from the way we act its as if we are afraid that once the darkness is lifted we will find He isn't there at all. So we fight tooth and nail and embrace increasingly outlandish ideas, just to make our faith work, just to keep enough darkness for God to hide in. Thing is, I don't think God lives in the dark. We have been claiming that He lives in the unknown for so long that we have forgotten that He never claimed to live there in the first place. The God of "scientific" Christianity seems like such a small god - he needs to be constantly defended, protected and taken care of. I believe God is SO much more than that. I believe that the God who lets Himself be know doesn't only mind us knowing His Universe, he encourages it! I believe that the God who so brilliantly uses chemistry, physics and biology to keep the universe running today is not threatened by the idea that He used those same tools to bring all things into existence. Flowers used to be a mystery to us, something only God could do but science could not explain. Now that Science can explain it, are flowers less beautiful? Does this mean there is one less dark corner for God to hide in or does this instead mean that we can now more fully appreciate His Works? In fact (shameless advertisement in 3,2,1), Ken Miller makes the case in his brilliant book Finding Darwin's God which I highly recommend to anyone even remotely interested in the subject . It is easy to read, easy to follow and makes a fantastic case for why Evolution does not rule out God that the universe we live in is exactly the type of universe one would expect to live in if we had a God who was interested in giving us free will to choose between good and evil. Sure, Science and Christianity may never be lovers again but I don't see why we can't still be friends. I think it is only right that we remove the unfair burden from Science of having to prove our faith true - it was never able to do that in the first place. Furthermore we as Christians should not fear the piercing searchlight of Science. Sure, it may force us to rethink some of our opinions, but is that such a bad thing? Genesis was given to ancient desert Nomads in order to teach them as much as they were able to grasp at that point. In the same way my parents did not begrudge me moving beyond Green Eggs & Ham, I don't think God is threatened by us moving into a more thorough understanding of the world than that given to us by the creation poem of Genesis.
This XKCD comic really shows that Science is not as dumb as some would like to think. The graph is data from the COBE mission, which looked at the background microwave glow of the universe and found that it fit perfectly with the idea that the universe used to be really hot everywhere. This strongly reinforced the Big Bang theory and was one of the most dramatic examples of an experiment agreeing with a theory in history - the data points fit perfectly, with error bars too small to draw on the graph. It's one of the most triumphant scientific results in history.

L.A.E: The wisdom of waiting rooms

It’s not hard to be a cynic. You need only spend some time with the news to realize that in our brief time here on earth, mankind has excelled at making life a living hell for pretty much every creature on the planet but especially for our other human beings. Cynicism and nihilism seems to be the only logical response to life on earth. Why would we possibly hope or be optimistic when we have been killing, robbing and oppressing each other in some way or another for as long as we have been here? Whether its nation against nation, ethnic group against ethnic group of person against person, we seem to be hurting each other from the highest offices of government right down to our livingrooms at home. Living without hope is not only logical, it’s easy. I get that, I really do. So why is it that we can’t stop hoping then?

Here is the thing, people still hope. You can go to the darkest most hellish places in the world and you will still find people hoping and planning for the future. If you ever get the chance, check out the deleted scenes in Love Actually (although the whole thing is pretty uplifting actually!) They have these two scenes where they zoom in on very depressing looking Oxfam posters but then the scene starts playing and the people in the poster aren’t talking about how miserable they are, they are talking about their families and about love and hope for the future. I realize it’s just a movie but they aren’t wrong. I was watching TV a few nights ago and the president was visiting a squatter camp – and these people are so poor they make people on the bread line look like jet setters – and yet in the midst of all that poverty and misery I couldn’t help but notice something peculiar. The people were still getting married, still having kids (not the best family planning under the circumstances but I digress), still hoping for a better future, still smiling! In squatter camps to prisons to war zones you will find the most unexpected thing – people who refuse to give up. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially not according to Fundamentalist Christianity. Spend some time in church and you will hear it preached again and again – those outside the church live hopeless, loveless and violent lives. Only they don’t. People the world over seem to just not care about making sense (or living up to Fundamentalist expectation) and they keep hoping, they love, they keep trying, they act noble and selfless.

I get why dogs (arguably the most optimistic beings on the planet) are always so tail-waggingly optimistic, it’s easy for them! They don’t have our brains, they have only the most basic concept of cause and effect (they never seem to put 2 and 2 together regarding having baths and not itching) and they certainly can’t foresee the future the way we can. Questions like: What if my health fails? What if I grow old alone? Who will take care of me? What if the Large Hadron Collider destroys the planet? never cross their happy doggy brains. It’s easy to be optimistic when you can’t even properly worry about where your next meal will come from! We humans on the other hand can worry. We do realize that we are going to die and suffer and be unhappy one day. For some reason we just don’t accept it!

It is as if hope is just built into us somehow. It’s in the stories we tell (with the exception of the French…), it is in our legends and mythology, it is in our religions, it is in the “happily ever after” of our fairy-tales (well maybe not so much in some of the originals but still…). Wherever you look you find that we have hope, we have this illogical expectation that things are going to be alright in the end, somehow. Even in our most unhappy moments we still hold on to it. Eve eats from the tree and gets cast out and cursed but at the same time receives the promise that the very serpent who tricked her would one day get his head crushed by one of her descendants. Pandora opens the box and unleashes all evil into the world but in the end one last thing comes out of the box – hope. The whole concept of hope seems to be a part of us and it keeps popping up even in the darkest places. A great place to see this is a hospital waiting room.

I've spent a lot of time in those this year and they are horrid places. They are unfriendly, depressing places were a whole lot of people are at the mercy of a few (there is a metaphor for life in there somewhere I'm sure...) No one is there because they want to be there, no one asked to be afflicted and for most of us there at least, we ended up there through no fault of our own. No, the waiting room at the surgery wing of a large African state hospital is not a happy place. You would absolutely expect everyone to be miserable, for there to be constant outburst of anger (time does not exist as far as the admin personnel are concerned) and considering that a lot of people there are actually in pain, you might even expect crying. You'd be wrong. Right there in a miserable place I saw something beautiful. The shared affliction brought out the best in people, not the worst. Across the lines of class, age and race, people were offering each other support, comfort and solidarity. People smile at one another, make silly jokes, discuss everything from knitting patterns to personal history with people they would have been friends with outside the hospital walls. Yes there was misery, but there was also kindness and hope. Waiting rooms showed me that the fundies are wrong about us.

To tell the truth though, I'm not so sure why the fundies are so sure of their version of the truth. I know the world looks bad when you watch the news but aren't these the same people who claim to live not according to perceived reality but according to the Word? When I read the Bible it doesn't so much talk of people as irrevocably evil - though it certainly does point out a lot of our evil - the big picture I get from the Bible is that mankind is lost. Lost is not the same as evil, lost means we've lost our way, that we are not where we are supposed to be. That doesn't sound the same as "evil" to me. Now I seem to say this in every one of the LAE posts, but I don't really think I could prove God. I really don't. But consider for a moment, if what the Bible teaches us has any truth, shouldn't we expect to see what I did in the 6th floor waiting room? If you say you believe that mankind bears the image of God, wouldn't you expect them to behave with kindness and nobility at least to some extent? Shouldn't the nature of man be closer to that of a dethroned monarch than that of a demon? If you think that there is any truth to what Paul wrote (in Romans 8) about all of creation anticipating a time of repair and restoration, shouldn't you expect to find the seeds of hope everywhere? Wasn't the whole idea that everything is going to turn out OK God's idea? If the Bible shows us one thing about God it's that He has not given up on the world. Why then are Christians so quick to?

Do people not realise how dangerous and wrong this "Christian" mindset of "the world and everyone in it is hopeless and evil" is? For one thing it's patently untrue and if it isn't true then it should have no part of the Gospel. For another thing it makes Christianity very unattractive and needlessly so. Peter tells Christians to "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" - now tell me, how many times do Christians actually get asked about the hope they have? It never seems to happen and I don't think we should be surprised! No one is going to ask you about something you don't seem to have! For a lot of Christians our only "hope" is for Jesus to come snatch us away so God can make everyone pay. The way some Christian communities huddle together and talk about the world makes it seems like the only thing they are hoping for is a chance to say "I told you so!" Is it really surprising that so few care about the hope we have? This dark and negative outlook also doesn't do us a lot of good. I always liked the way Jewel put it:

"If I could tell the world just one thing

It would be that we're all OK

And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful

And useless in times like these

I won't be made useless

I won't be idle with despair"

I love the way she puts that, despair and hopelessness makes us useless and idle. That's why you have groups of Christians (the fine folks at Rapture Ready are a great example) who do nothing but wait for rescue. Some do this to the point of no longer making repairs to their homes or investing their money wisely. They are just sitting around, waiting to be picked up and enjoying the misery in the world because they think it proves them right. Nevermind the fact that this is pretty much the opposite of how Jesus commanded His followers to live. We are supposed to be making a difference, bringing more hope and making the misery less. THAT is what the Kingdom of Heaven is all about!

Although I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people live like this. After all how you see the world has everything to do with you you live. If you truly believe the world to be hopeless and evil that is all you will expect and that is all you will see and that is why it will be the only way you live. If you don't think there is hope and goodness in this world, your life will show it and it will not be pretty.

I have decided to be different. I may be a cynic at times but my heart isn't really in it. I have seen the beauty and the hope in this world and it makes me want to be involved with it despite the ugliness. There is a lot we can learn from waiting rooms I think. It's true, this world can be a pretty miserable place and none of us asked to be here. For the most part the misery that befalls us happens to us rather than because of us, we certainly didn't ask for our unhappiness either. Yet here we are. If we can see that we are all in this together, all hoping to do better one day it can make things better. If we allow misery to isolate us in despair then that is all we will have. On the other hand if we start seeing the goodness and the nobility amongst the misery then everything changes. Once you let let hope in you start seeing that things can be better and before long you start being a part of making things better. Goodness is everywhere, the human race can be amazing. I can see why God would think we are worth saving. I believe that there will be a "one day" when God will give us the happily ever after we so long for. I also believe that God tasked us to bring goodness and hope to this world in the HERE and NOW. What our world looks like is to a large extent in our own hands despite the severity of our afflictions. This is what I learned from a waiting room. I choose hope.

A few good men

It’s easy to focus on the negative, especially when it comes to Christianity. The world would be excused for thinking of Christianity as a faulty product that fails to live up to its promises. Face facts, we fail a lot and we fail spectacularly sometimes. From the high profile failures that make all the papers to the grass roots pettiness in your local congregation there is a lot of things not to be proud of. However I don’t think those failures define us. Even though there are a lot of failures there is also a lot of success, people who do follow Jesus and who do it well. They aren’t always as vocal as the bad examples and they rarely make any sort of splash in the media but they are there and they are being the salt and light that Jesus commanded us to be. I know that I have focused on a lot of the ugliness of Christianity in this blog and I think it’s high time I look at some of the good.

There are a lot of people out there that prove that Christianity is not a failed product. There are people who follow the example and teachings of Jesus and in doing so make this world a more pleasant place to live in. These are the people who actually care for the poor, the hungry and the abandoned. These are the people who, when you spend time with them, make you realize that Jesus would have hung out with you and liked you too. These people are everywhere. They keep me from giving up on Christianity because their lives show practically that following Jesus can make a real difference for the better. Now most of these really great people aren’t well known, in fact you will never hear about the vast majority of them. (Thanks to the blogosphere however it has become possible to meet more really intelligent, cool and interesting people who are also Christians, people who can discuss their faith in a way that makes you want to be a part of it – Gumby, Plucky you guys are a credit to the faith!) As much as I would like to include every good Christian I have ever come across that would be virtually impossible so I have chosen just 3 people who have had an enormous positive influence on my faith. None of these guys are perfect and if you are looking for reasons to dislike them I’m sure you could find plenty. But that doesn’t change the fact that these guys have been a significant force for good not only in the world but also in my life.

Firstly there is Billy Graham. His life has made a significant impact on mine for the simple reason that he shows that it can be done, you can be a Christian without screwing it all up. A lot of high profile Christians has fallen from grace in spectacular ways but Billy Graham has never even been close to being one of those. Right at the start of his ministry he made some decisions to keep himself honest, for instance he made all the ministry finances completely transparent and he never let himself be alone in a room with a woman that he wasn’t related to. Now this may seem like overkill but it sure has been effective. I can’t help but respect his commitment to keeping himself and his ministry above reproach. That’s not the only reasons that I like him though. I like him because he includes people. Many have used the Gospel as a reason to exclude people but he was nothing like that, he used the Gospel to include and welcome people. He was against racial segregation and inter-denominational (and inter-faith) dialogue long before it was cool. He started removing the “whites only” and “blacks only” demarcations from his meetings back when the rest of the church was still giving vocal support to racial segregation. He has reached out to other denominations, Catholics and Jews despite the fact that other Church leaders labeled him the anti-Christ for doing it. I’m not so fond of his political side, he always seems to be hanging out with the president of the US and I’m not a big fan of Christianity mixing with politics. However there is one thing here that did greatly increase my respect for the man. When Richard Nixon fell from grace Billy Graham was shocked and hurt BUT he didn’t abandon the man. He was a friend to the president before the Watergate scandal and he remained friends with him afterward even though he could have gotten a lot of cheers for dumping Nixon in public. I may not be a great supporter of faith and politics mixing but I think that by refusing to abandon an unpopular friend, Billy Graham showed that he was nothing like a politician. Really the thing I like and respect most about this man is that he consistently chose doing what was right over doing what was popular.

Then there is Rob Bell. It is hard to put into words how much he has meant to me and how big an impact he has had on my faith. He pretty much saved my faith when I was ready to give up. His work reminded me that Christianity was real and good and true, despite all the damage that fundamentalism has done. Here was someone telling me to wrestle with the Scriptures, to question the Bible, to ask questions – things I’ve been dying to do for years but had been taught was wrong and evil. In doing this he reawakened my love for Jesus and the Scriptures. Now for saying things like “what would you do if you found out Jesus had an earthly father named Larry” the fundies hate Rob with a burning passion. Honestly I doubt if you could find any discussion of him without someone popping up to tell everyone what a heretic Rob Bell really is. Which is really sad because if these people ever bothered to actually listen to him they would have realized that he is far more serious about the Bible and the teachings in it than they are most of the time. I like Rob Bell because he is humble, because he loves God and it shows. His church is into doing real good in this world, making a real difference. I loved that he had a “doubt night” at his church where he just allowed everyone to voice their doubts about God and Christianity. I like that he is not afraid to question and to wrestle with his faith, I like that he is honest and I like that he is kind of a dork. I love the way he draws you in with love and goodness – he doesn’t scare people into believing by threatening them with hellfire, instead he makes you want to be a disciple of Jesus by showing you just how kind and good and welcoming Jesus really is.

Last but not least there is Donald Miller. I like him because he is a really good writer, because he is honest and real and doesn’t try to hide his flaws to make himself look good. I like that he sees the good and the interesting in people that most of us would probably avoid. I don’t know how well I would get along with him if I ever met him because I can’t help but get the impression that he can be kind of an ass at times. Then of course there is the fact that he is a smoker and I’m really not a fan of tobacco. Yet, of everyone mentioned here I can relate to him the most. We have so much in common – we both have a deep dislike for fundamentalist Christianity and the idea that gays, liberals and everyone different is “the enemy”. He freely admits to not being good at sharing his faith or making disciples and he is also candid about the fact that he doesn’t always find it easy to believe in God. He struggles with his self image and he is terrible at relationships and he likes beer. He grew up in the church, went through a lot of pendulum swings from rabid fundamentalism to near faithlessness. I can relate to all of that. When he talked about having a leadership position in the church and leading a regular Bible study and ending up feeling like a total phony I knew exactly what he was talking about. This is also why he gives me a lot of hope, because he ended up doing a lot of good and influencing a lot of people in a positive way. I can’t help but think that if someone that has so many of my faults can be a force for good then so can I. Obviously we are not the same person, we differ in a great many ways but I can’t help but be inspired by him. Maybe I won’t make a dent in a place like Reed University, but maybe I could still make a difference to someone, somewhere in my world. Just like Rob Bell he is often maligned for his views by the religious right but once again I can’t help but notice from his work that he takes the Bible a lot more seriously than most of them do.