Pastors' Blog

“The Church of the Non-Believers.”  The title would catch anybody’s eye.  A few months ago Janine Lim, our webmaster, sent me an issue of Wiredmagazine carrying this cover story (11-06). Tagline:   “No heaven.  No hell.  Just science.  A band of intellectual brothers is mounting a crusade against belief in God.  Are they winning converts, or merely preaching to the choir?”   My curiosity piqued, I read contributing editor Gary Wolf’s ten pages of interviews with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett—among the most prominent and articulate advocates of the “The New Atheism.”  Along with his analysis of their fledgling movement, Wolf intriguingly weaves into the piece his own faith (or lack thereof) journey and confession.  

Near the end of the article, he writes:  “Where does this leave us, we who have been called upon to join this uncompromising war against faith?  What shall we do, we potential enlistees?  Myself, I’ve decided  to refuse the call.  The irony of the New Atheism—this prophetic attack on prophecy, this extremism in opposition to extremism—is too much for me” (p 193).  

For close to twenty million Americans, however, it is not too much.  At least not yet. 

Into this climate of open questions and multiple-choice answers, we begin a new year series this weekend that unabashedly examines the alternative to the New Atheism.  Richard Dawkins’ newest book, The God Delusion, introduces this six-part exploration.  But a solitary line from the ancient Scriptures will be the foundation for our exploration. 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). 

I invite you to join me in this journey back to the beginning.  For in the dimmed past of our ancestral roots, there may yet be found the forgotten gift of our abandoned heritage.  Please click here and subscribe to this important podcast:  “The Refreshing ‘Delusion’” (1), “The Three Act Play” (2), “The Legacy of ‘the Bastard Science’” (3), “The Invasion” (4), “The Case of Dr. Eck” (5), and “The Very Simple and Highly Visible Test” (6). 

According to the CIA World Factbook (proof, I suppose, that spy agencies have a positive role to play on earth), around 27% of the world’s population is under 15 years of age.  And according to the constantly escalating World Population Clock, at the time of this writing earth had 6,638,512,622 inhabitants.  Which means that approximately 1.7 billion residents of this planet are under 15.  Twenty percent of them live in China, 17 % in India, and 4.6% of them are here in the United States. What’s that have to do with Christmas and the approaching of a new year?  Beyond the obvious—that this holiday season is always the season of children (a reality not missed by Madison Avenue with its relentless marketing blitz for toys and video games and other childhood accoutrements)—this 27% demographic slice of humanity is surely a silent cry for the world of adults to invest its best energies in saving our children.  Not just spiritually, but also physically and emotionally. A new study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health and released this past Tuesday, has found that the simple matter of sex education for our children dramatically reduces (71% for males, 59% for females) the likelihood of their becoming sexually active before the age of fifteen.  While the study does not research or report abstinence beyond the age of fifteen, those who care for children certainly can celebrate these results as an incremental victory in the war to protect our young.  (http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/536167/) The matter of childhood poverty concerns us all, too, doesn’t it?  Hershel Sarbin quotes “Voices for America’s Children” with this somber observation:  “As a society we pay a steep price for allowing one in five of our nation’s children to live in poverty. Economists estimate the annual national cost of persistent childhood poverty due to lost adult productivity and wages, increased crime, and higher health expenditures is massive: approximately $500 billion or four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.”  (http://www.connectforkids.org/node/5761)  One in five children living in poverty?  Shouldn’t Benton Harbor’s proportion of that statistic be of deep concern to us at this university? Christmas is the season of children.  After all the Hero of his-story and our story came to us as the Child.  And because he did, heaven’s agenda to save all earth children (young and aged) was both ratified and secured.  Knowing that the Christ Child is the lover of all children, why not look for an opportunity every week of the new year to make a difference in the life of one child (a smile, a note, a word of affirmation and encouragement, a listening ear, an offering to a children’s fund, a contribution to a church school or a public school, a gift of volunteer service at school or at church—God’s list of opportunities must be endless)?  Thus in our own “adultish” sort of way, we can make the new year be for us what it already is for God—the Year of the Child. 

It’s like the Grinch who stole Christmas.  That was the observation of Sheriff Kent Harris in explaining the actions of a thief who struck Danny Tipton’s Christmas tree farm in eastern Tennessee a few days ago.  Tipton specializes in taller Fraser firs preferred by businesses and churches and homes with higher ceilings, Christmas trees usually ten to twelve feet tall.  Tipton sells his firs for $100 each.  But a thief or band of thieves raided the Tipton farm sometime between Thanksgiving and last week and lopped off the top six feet of two dozen of his prize Fraser firs,  leaving behind rows of “beheaded” evergreens.   No doubt the new “six footers” were hauled away to be sold to customers shopping for a shorter Christmas tree.  Remarked deputy sheriff Ronnie Adkins, “It’s a very low person who commits a crime like this at Christmastime.”  (SBT 12-05-07) So much for “peace on earth, good will to all.”  But then again hasn’t that “Christmastime crime” been on the police books for decades, even centuries now?  Not the misdemeanor of pilfered firs.   But the lopping off the top of the towering tree planted on that Bethlehem midnight long ago. Somebody in that dark and starry night resolved to hack off the top of God’s planted tree, so that whenever the birth of the Christ Child would be celebrated, it would be forgotten or neglected, the tree Christmas really is all about.  Oh it’s true—over the two millennia since there have been ornamental trees aplenty—decked with blinking lights and spinning baubles and twisting ribbon.  But who remembers any more that old rugged tree that was first planted at Bethlehem but that grew up to Calvary?  In the midst of Santa Clauses and reindeer and stockings and presents, how many of earth’s children remember the cross at Christmas any more? “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many . . . and a sword will pierce your own soul” (Luke 2:24, 25).  The Christ Child is not only about the birthing of Heaven’s Baby; he is also the truth about the piercing of God’s heart.  Born so that he might die—a manger for the sake of a cross.  When the twin realities of God’s sacrificial Gift are separated, their union is sundered.  And we forget.  In the midst of all the gaiety and tinsel, we forget. This year, this time, shall we not guard against that “Christmastime crime” and protect the top of Calvary’s tree from being lopped off and stolen away . . . by remembering Christ’s death that remains Love’s most resplendent reason for his birth long, long ago?

I'm reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s award-winning new book, Mayflower, an “electrifying new history” of America’s “most sacred national myth”—the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of the Plymouth Colony. Blending the dispassion of an historian with the dramatic flair of a story-teller, this account is the most detailed and gripping Pilgrim chronicle I have read. After their torturous voyage across the gale-whipped Atlantic on the “tween” deck (the space between the topside deck above and the cargo hold below), the Mayflower’s human cargo of 102 passengers, half of them Puritan the other half adventurers and crew, landed on Cape Cod in frigid November weather (the “small ice age” of North America still gripping the continent). Philbrick’s account of their ill-prepared splashing ashore the mainland in wet and frozen clothing on December 23, the subsequent two harrowing weeks to construct their first building (a twenty-foot square “common house),” the deadly onslaught of a winter even more bitter with so many falling ill or dying that only six of the decimated colony were strong enough to care for the sick, the late night and unmarked burials to hide from any native spies the dwindling of the Pilgrim band—you cannot help but read this narrative with an almost sacred awe. By spring fifty-two of the 102 Mayflower passengers were dead. “We think of the Pilgrims as resilient adventurers upheld by unwavering religious faith, but they were also human beings in the midst of what was, and continues to be, one of the most difficult emotional challenges a person can face: immigration and exile” (p 76). Three hundred eighty-seven years later, here we are, sons and daughters of immigrants from the world-over, ourselves on a voyage this Thanksgiving weekend, occupying the “tween” deck between the past and the future, exiles in a foreign land, “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). And what shall be our spirit? Gratitude and thanksgiving have been the lessons perennially drawn from the Pilgrim story (even though, in fact, the “first” harvest celebration the autumn of 1621 was more akin to an English fall festival than an Anglican or Separatist worship service). But as I read their story again what strikes me most is the dogged determination to be faithful to the vision that launched their movement. No matter the contrary odds, the devastating price, these were a people not unlike the heroes of Hebrews 11, who “having seen [the promises] from afar off were assured of them.” They did not turn back. And neither must we. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1 NIV). For in Christ the Promised Land is assured. The Pilgrims lived with that sense of “the chosen.” Three hundred eighty-seven years later, so must we. After all, it may not be long now to “crossing over.”