Humanism and the Terrible Twos

Christianity is more intellectually mature than humanism. Most humanists espouse a system which rejects the notion of an extrinsically existent God, and focuses on self-realization rather than obedience. When God-language is retained, God becomes not a person, but a shorthand for the most desirable good for ourselves. He does not exist in any meaningful sense except as a symbol for what we are not, but are trying to become. But of course, were we ever to become perfectly good, we should be deserving of worship and obedience, and then the whole process of denying our existence in order to achieve our autonomy would have to begin over again. It is really a matter of convenience that we retain just a bit of injustice. This is really the basis of the humanist system: to hold onto our own autonomy. We cannot bear to think that another Person may know better than us what our own good is. But this simply reveals our own immaturity. It is the two-year-old who always demands his own way. It is the adult who knows when to be silent and obey. The greatest lie that our society has engendered is that unquestioning obedience is always an evil. For if God is perfectly good and wise, and He tells us to do something, then by definition disobedience is error, and the only person who actually wants to be in error is the person who is too prideful to admit that he isn’t God.

The Silence of Jesus

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
--Isaiah 53:7

There is an account of Jesus' examination by Pontius Pilate in all four gospels, but only two of them, Matthew and Mark, make mention of the fact that Jesus stands silent before His accusers. He speaks with Pilate, and confirms that He is the King of the Jews, but "He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed" (Mt 27:14). Why is this? Partially, I think, it is an identification with the oppressed and the voiceless. Jesus, our great High Priest, knows our sorrows. So He stands, just like some of us, without a voice to demand justice. The politically, racially, culturally, and ideologically downtrodden have in Jesus a Savior who can truly say, "I know what it is like to be you, and to have to bear the insults and false labels thrown onto you by those in power. And I have been righteous when you have not. Trust in Me." Jesus' silence is a silence of solidarity, a silence which bears the suffering of His sheep.

Christ and Caesar

19 The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. 20 So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. 21 So they asked him, "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. 22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" 23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, 24 "Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?" They said, "Caesar’s." 25 He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s."

I was listening to Michael Ramsden today and he had some nice analysis of this passage. What struck me, however, is the use of the word "likeness." I'm no Greek scholar, but could Jesus be reminding us that we are created in the likeness of God? Or in other words, demanding that just as the likenesses of Caesar must be given back to Caeasar, so the likenesses of God (ourselves) must be given back to God. He sees beyond the false sincerity of the Pharisees and Herodians and seeks to penetrate their heart with an appeal to give their lives to God. A simple point, but one worth considering.

The Idolatry of Biblical Criticism

It has often been stated that we project our desires onto the text. As is evident in the “carnivalesque” interpretations of Theodore Jennings and others, what we find is in large part dictated by what we look for. But what about, rather than conforming the Bible to our desires, conforming our desires to the Bible? This is of course a somewhat silly question in modern academia. But it is worth asking ourselves why that is. I believe that the Bible has been discounted as authoritative or normative in large part because higher biblical criticism and postmodernism have rendered the text’s plain sense untrustworthy in our eyes. But we continue to read and value it. So we must now make it trustworthy, by creating interpretations that we place (or in some cases, force) onto the text. And this is, essentially, the same as making ourselves trustworthy. But this of course means that it is no longer the Bible, but we who are responsible for the construction and propagation of moral and spiritual norms and/or truths. It is our interpretations of the text that become valid, meaningful, or normative, and so ultimately ourselves. We become our own Gods.

So by accepting the text as intrinsically untrustworthy, we come to a dilemma: either we continue to hold to a religion which we will call Christianity, but which is in reality self-worship, or we discard the Bible as anything other than a historical-cultural document, interesting as such but not spiritually significant. The problem with modern biblical criticism is this: we are dancing around an equivocation. Let us either be bold and discard the trappings of the community of faith which we continually attempt to redefine or undermine, or let us be courageous and hold to the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible, but most of all let us be honest, and not claim to be doing one when we are clearly doing the other.