“It seems that for many of our readers, my own experience of life and my friendship with and compassion for gay and lesbian persons should play no role in the formation of my opinion regarding their rights.” (emphasis mine)
What am I to make of that italicized part? It sounds like he’s saying that his love for gays and lesbians steered him in the direction of affirming their lifestyle. I wonder if he will acknowledge that for some people in my camp, their compassion for gays and lesbians has steered them in the exact opposite direction when it comes to approval of the homosexual lifestyle.
My question to Tony is: why should compassion for gays and lesbians mean acquiescence to their lifestyle? Many times, love requires a strong moral stance. After all, my parents love me, and I’m glad that whenever they knew I was doing something destructive, they stood against it, not in spite of their love, but because of it.
Ichabod at Plain View recently wrote a post about faith responding to one of my comments. In the comment, I basically asked him what he meant by “faith is within.”
I *think* he said that he trusts in the thing inside him (what it is he doesn’t define) that pushes him to do the right thing.
If I’m still missing him on this, I hope he corrects me.
Here’s my take on what he wrote about:
First, what’s our nature? We human beings are caught coming both directions. We bear God’s image and are therefore capable of great things. At the same time, though, we have decided to be kings unto ourselves and rebel against our Creator. This is called sin, and it has horrible consequences on our nature. We are capable of so much good, but we are so twisted by sin.
Second, what does “faith” mean? That word is kinda vague in the 21st century. Very few people who wield it have a clear idea what it means. Usually its just a word that, when uttered, brings about warm fuzzies.
I’m not saying that Ichabod uses the word in this way, but many people out there use it like that.
Due to the vagueness, I prefer to say “trust.” I think that word captures what the biblical writers meant when they talked of faith. Trust, at bottom, has three components: knowledge, assent, and trust. This is somewhat redundant, but all it means is that in an act of trust, someone knows something (or at least they think they know something), they assent to that knowledge, and they act on it like its true.
Let me illustrate: say I go hunting in Minnesota in the dead of winter. I come to a frozen lake. I have to cross it. I examine the ice and see that it is quite thick–at least 4 feet thick (its cold in Minnesota), so I carefully walk across the ice. After testing the ice, I had certain knowledge about its sturdiness, I gave assent to that knowledge, and I put my trust in it *only when I actually walked across it.* If I said, “I have faith that this ice can hold me up,” but I never walked across it, that’s just talk, not faith.
To use another illustration, you can talk all you want about how you believe in marriage, but it means nothing until you actually walk down the isle.
Why does all this matter? Two things.
First, it matters because it helps us see that what matters is not “faith” itself, but the *object* of faith. Faith is only as strong as its object. To go back to the illustration, if I had to cross the lake in May, I can have all the faith in the world that a 1 inch-thick sheet of ice will hold me up, but I will end up miserable and my hunting buddies will get a good laugh. Conversely, I can have just a smidgeon of faith that the 4 feet thick block can hold me up, but I will get across safely.
The same goes in spiritual matters: faith or trust in a weak object does no good.
Secondly, it matters because it shows that there is an active element to faith/trust. Intellectual assent is meaningless. Does your life show that you have trust in X?
What’s the object of my trust? Jesus. He’s pretty sturdy.
Does it show? I will leave it up to those that know me to say.
What are you trusting in? Is it solid? Does it show in your life?
Check out the following videos from Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason on Faith:
Mark Driscoll vs. Ditka and the Chicago Bears travel bus.
Hmmmm…close one. I’m gonna give the edge to Driscoll.
Here’s a link to Mars Hill’s audio content (including Driscoll’s sermons). That is the real occasion for this post anyway. Sometimes Driscoll is a bit crass, but I love the guy’s sermons.
I am tempted to wax eloquent about depravity, but I instead I’m going to highlight another type of insanity. In the comments section, someone said,
“If folks got no money because of the lousy economy under BUSH then that’s why they have to run and grab and hurry to get their stuff!! If we had a descent economy this would NOT HAVE HAPPENED!! It all goes back to BUSH!!”
It was written many moons ago, but boy does it apply to today! It’s eerie how Eliot is prophetic like that. Here are some excerpts:
“O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust…
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil….
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be….
But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before
That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic….
What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?”
–Our yearning for man-made Utopia is prominently displayed on the evening news every day.
What connections to modern life do you see in this poem?
A few days ago, Tony Jones continued his blogologue with Rod Dreher on Same-sex Marriage. In it, he says:
“Many of my commenters have expressed frustration over my initial post in which I narrated my story on this issue. It seems that for many of our readers, my own experience of life and my friendship with and compassion for gay and lesbian persons should play no role in the formation of my opinion regarding their rights. Many of these commenters, for instance, feel that posting a Bible verse, or telling me that God never changes is sufficient to show how faulty is my thinking. (If it’s okay with you, Rod, I’d like to finish up with government action this week, get into issues philosophical next week, and then tackle the theological/biblical messages after that. (Not to tip my hand, but I will be asking why they are so impressed with Leviticus 18:22 but not 19:27 or 20:9, 10, and 18!))”
I am one of those that’s concerned about the role you are giving experience in this debate. However, I never claimed that experience should have *no* role. I clearly think that experience does and should influence human beings. My only question is: “how much of a role should we give it?” My concern with Jones is that he *seems* to be giving it a primary role. I see signs that he made up his mind before coming to the Scriptures. Of course I could be wrong in that last judgment; all I’m saying is that I see signs of that right now.
Experience and emotions, as JP Moreland puts it, are wonderful slaves but terrible masters. If you give experience the reigns, it leads you in all sorts of wacky directions. Does this mean that we should just disregard it? No, please don’t pidgeonhole me in that corner. All it means is that we’ve gotta have the horse of Scripture and reason before the cart of experience and emotions.
Jones does say that he values reason/Scripture and experience, but as of now, I don’t see much evidence of that. If he did value reason/Scripture, I think he would have at least mentioned it in his initial post about how he came to his beliefs….but its nowhere to be found.
