Purify Your Bride

Children have a way of making things simple. From today’s gospel, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” (Matthew 11:25).

I had the chance to listen to Greg and Lisa Popcak last weekend. He talked about eroticism and the Theology of the Body. People think Catholics are upset whenever someone is having fun, especially sexual fun. But the issue is not that pleasure is there. The issue is that pleasure has become central. What needs to be central is the spiritual dimension of sex which is huge. These Christian versions of eroticism consider the spiritual dimension when answering the question of who one should have sex with. They clearly say you should only have sex within marriage. But after that the secular thinking comes back. All we need to think about is the fun.

Catholic thinking focuses on the marriage covenant not just to determine who but also what and how and every other question. The fun comes as a byproduct of a deeply spiritual union that goes way beyond the physical act. Thrill seekers often end up with fewer thrills than those who pursue unity and procreation. But that is not the center. So if the physical pleasure is not happening for a while or even if it never happens you can still have a deeply satisfying way of living out your sexuality. The religious life offers us an excellent illustration of how that works. You may or may not want to pursue that vocation but it will show you how to be very masculine or very feminine without becoming erotic. The thrills are no longer there but there is the deeper sense of peace and joy that comes from living out the life God created you to live.

What about those who don’t really see the possibility of a hot married sex life as worth waiting for? The same sex attracted person who feels he will never marry? The teen who feels marriage is a million years away? The person whose marriage is hopelessly broken? They are not left behind with the Theology of the Body like they are with Christian eroticism.

Of course what causes protestant thinking to come off the rails is the unquestioning acceptance of contraception. Once you go there then marriage might be just about thrills. So what is the advantage of Christian marriage? More thrills. So what sounds more like God? Calling us to a total gift of self so He can work His will in us and create the miracle of another human person? Or more thrills? Well if you are protestant and the first answer sounds too Catholic then you are left with the second.

What has happened is that Henry Morgentaler has received the Order of Canada. Dr Morgentaler is the name most strongly associated with the pro abortion movement in Canada. He used to do abortions when they were illegal and went to jail a few times for it. Now it is no surprise to see such an individual get applauded in liberal circles. But what shocks me is that right now our Prime Minister, Steven Harper, is from the Conservative party. That is the party that almost all pro life people vote for because it is seen as the most sympathetic to the social conservatives. In other words it would be the closest thing Canada has to the Republican party.

So here we have the social conservatives working hard to get their party elected and when they win they end up with the government paying homage to abortion activists in a way the previous Liberal government never did. There is an assumption that a party calling itself Conservative would at least be somewhat more friendly to the pro life cause. Maybe it is just based on the alliances that have been forged in the US around abortion. I know I have always been more skeptical than most about how deep their commitment to the pro life cause runs. Still I was shocked at the depth of deception and betrayal Steven Harper has now shown. I don’t like him but if someone would have predicted this I would have said they were crazy to expect such despicable behavior even from the worst of politicians. I mean even immoral people don’t spit in the face of thousands of people who have worked hard to get him elected. At the very least they only do it when they have something else to gain. This is a case where Harper seems to have no other obvious self interest at stake. I just don’t get it.

It was good to see Archbishop Tom Collins speak up on this issue. In fact, he seems to have started a trend with a large number of Catholic organizations speak out. I can’t say I am optimistic.

Where does that good come from? It comes from God. We are inherently incapable of being at peace with falsehood because we are image bearers of God. So when people find it impossible to live with this contradictory embrace of both Christ and culture that is a very good thing. It is like Elijah said on Mt Carmel:

Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”
But the people said nothing. 1 Kings 18:21

It is very simple. Decide what is true and live according to that truth. What do you believe? Is atheism true? If you really believe that then live it completely and consistently. But if Catholicsm is true, then you need to live that completely and consistently.

It is kind of like a spiritual reductio ad absurdum. That is when you assume something to be true and push that assumption to it’s logical conclusion. If you end up in an absurd spot then the logician would say the original assumption has been proven false. They key is to think about the problems in embracing either theism or atheism. To many people waver between the two opinions and never really subject either of them to scrutiny.

Of course both theism and atheism have real difficulties. I think it was Baise Pascal who said it was impossible to believe that we were created on purpose and it was just as impossible to believe this world was a product of chance. Ultimately we need an act of faith to believe in either. In the end God will win the same way He did on Mt Carmel. Because He is real and He will make Himself known either through public miracles like the one at Mt Carmel or through many private miracles.

Then he talks about the relationship between religion, morality, and politics. The idea that one needs to give some sort of moral reasoning that is not totally dependent on scripture. He fails to say that on the major issues of abortion and gay marriage there are such arguments. It is called natural law. It is the reason why we can outlaw murder and theft without having this problem. The reality is you can make a very strong argument in the same way that abortion and gay marriage should be illegal. That is a very important point he fails to make. There are cases where minorities must be protected from abuse by a majority group. Why doesn’t abortion and gay marriage fall into that category? We need to explain why because many don’t get it. Just calling it a fruitcake reading of the constitution is not going to get it done. Obama is an expert on constitutional law and Dobson is not so the charge is unlikely to work.

To tell you the truth, I would expect both Obama and Dobson to know what natural law is. Maybe they do and they are just not going there. But Obama specifically referred to finding reasons for laws that don’t come from one church. Is it to much to expect him to read St Thomas Aquinas? What do they teach guys in Harvard anyway?

Devin thinks it will be a disaster of Obama gets elected. He personalizes his objections but he really does not object to the man but rather to the party. If Clintion or Edwards or Kerry or Gore were the nominee he would write the same reply. What he really wants is for no Democrat to ever win. But would that not make the US a one party state? Is that a good thing? We need to get to a place where we can change parties in Washington and not have a disaster on the pro life front.

The pro life cause does not seem to understand that it needs to be bigger than the Republican cause. In fact, many seem like they care more about the Republican party. Everything you win through partisan means will be reversed when the other party gets power. That is a given. So when you choose a strategy of hitching your issue to one party you have to expect that to happen. That is not acceptable on issues of life so we need to be effective in both major parties.

The thing I worry about more is the connection in people’s minds between what is Christian and what is Republican. I think it is just tragic but people do believe that to be Christian is to be politically conservative. That is to not care about immigrants, to not care about health care for the poor, to not care about the environment, etc. It is a basic fact that the church cannot avoid making what will be seen as infallible statements about the nature of God as revealed to us by Jesus. People see Christians leaders flocking to one side of an issue and they assume that is where Christian thought leads. The trouble is that on many issues they have gotten it wrong. They have not thought with the mind of Christ but simply bought into the tweedle-dee vs tweedle-dum partisanship. They have just picked one side and accepted everything that comes with it. It has seriously damaged the cause of Christ.

Just look at how many more people self identify as atheists than when Bush took office. They associate Christianity with war. Why? They look at Bush. They associate it with torture. Same reason. Is it fair? Not at all. There are many Christians who have spoken out against war and against torture. Many of them are Catholic. Still Bush is visible and he is understandably associated with the Christian Right. So Dawkins and Hitchens have an easy time because they are just putting an intellectual veneer on what people already think.

Anyway, politics is interesting. It is hard when you see very major problems on both sides. On a human level Obama stikes me as the most impressive leader I have seen in a while. I wonder what it will all mean. I don’t have trouble seeing positives in it. I am hoping the social conservatives in the Democratic party start making some noise. There are a lot of church-going blacks and Catholics in there. They are not happy about abortion or gay marriage. They have been pretty quiet about it so far. I am hopeful that could change. One thing that could help would be for prominent pro life Catholics to become less partisan so people on the other side of the aisle can listen.

They really are capable of understanding the moral arguments. It is just that nobody from their tribe is making them. They are not even required to respond to them because the Republicans don’t make them in public debates. Like the SLED argument found here. I have never seen a Democrat have to debate this in depth. We need to make them do it.

“Shouldn’t the United Church Just Throw in the Towel?” is the opening event of a four-day Church-sponsored conference that will look at the future of the country’s largest Protestant denomination.

“If the people who are allegedly in a position of leadership, vision and inspiration for your organization are having that question, it tells you there is something very disturbing at the heart of the Church,” said Rev. denBok, who is a pastor at a Toronto parish.

“By even asking that question, we are acting as if we are a human organization rather than a God organization. It is a [national leadership] that is profoundly flawed with no strong sense of purpose or direction or destiny.”

It is an interesting thought about a human organization vs a God organization. What is the basis for beleiving that the United Church of Canada is a God organization? I can’t think of one. So why have it? Why have a church at all? These are pretty bold questions. If it is just about community you don’t need a formal organization for that. They don’t want to enforce any doctrinal standards because they can not be sure they are right. That makes sense.

These are the kinds of questions that Newman was talking about when he said a protestant could think himself into atheism or Catholicism. These half and half concepts don’t stand up to scrutiny. Either the church can teach with the authority of Christ or every believer can make up his own version of Christianity. Anything in between is illogical.

In the case of the United church, many are already very close to atheism. They are not likely to jump all the way to Catholicism. Some might move to a more conservative protestant church. Closer to Catholicism but not yet there. A tradition that has a lot in common with Catholic tradition and because of that is right a lot. Of course they would never describe themselves that way but that is what the appeal would be. The desire for a spritiual rock. The true rock is a bit to radical so they might go for something that feels solid but is more comfortable.

I do think the game of politics has to be changed. It seems to be stifling rational thought. One party comes to the conclusion that proposition A is good and the other immediately jumps to the other side saying A is bad. Then the first party find every reason to embrace A and dismisses every reason to reject A. The other party finds every reason to destroy A and dismisses any reason why A might be good. This is done with backwards reasoning. That is when you start with your conclusion and then try and create an argument that gets you there.

This sort of thing is what you would expect from the less intelligent participants of the debate. The really smart guys would be the ones who could rise above that. But that isn’t so. Even the most brilliant conservatives and the most brilliant liberals fall into this trap. They argue very intelligently but only within the box of their ideology. They see nothing but evil and stupidity on the other side.

The trouble comes when the issues that get caught up in this debate are very important. Abortion is one such issue. From the conservative side it is often used to write people off as simply evil. Not because the person is evil but because they are liberal (a distinction few conservatives make). Not because they care about the unborn but because they care about the Republican party. So the goal is not to convince but to demonize.

From the liberal side there is no openness to the prolife arguments. Why? Because they are conservative arguments. They just want to turn back the clock on the sexual revolution. Why is that bad? It is a question that need not be addressed. Few conservatives and no liberals ask it. It is a closed question because all questions are closed. You don’t question your school of thought. It is just not done.

Americans change religions more frequently than they change political parties. They see the irrational clinging to tradition in the other party but they cannot see it in their own. They see their own position as being totally based on reason. Neither side changes very often. When an issue like abortion gets into the liberal/conservative dynamic then it becomes almost impossible to discuss. The politics overpowers the voice of reason every time.

The goal is to convince both sides that abortion is wrong. How do you get there? Just winning the political battles is not good enough. Republicans have won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections and that has accomplished exactly zero in terms of legally recognizing the life of the unborn. Is it realistic to think one party is going to win a lot more than 70% of the time? I don’t think so. So we need to get to a point where the Democrats don’t automatically just undo the little bit of progress a Republican may have made. They need to buy into the prolife arguments as well. But how do we get there?

I think part of the answer is to not demonize the other side. Catholics believe in invincible ignorance when it come to dealing with protestants. We need to believe in it when dealing with Democrats. We need to charitably assume they are trying to do the right thing. That was hard to do with Clinton because he was such a sleaze bucket. It should be easier with Obama. He does have a fairly Christian mindset. He reminds me of my way of thinking before I came to fully experience Christ. I was a liberal evangelical. I was comfortable thinking like a Christian. Still I didn’t really understand the depth of my sin and the power of God to change my heart and make me holy. Obama seems to me like he is in that space. He is comfortable in church and believes it is true but he does not really understand the gospel.

I do think the vast majority of the stuff you read about him is crap. He is either the messiah or the antichrist. Christians have fallen mostly in the ladder camp. Mostly we have failed to speak the truth in love. Often we have disregarded both truth and love in order to try and win. That is problematic when you win and it is even more problematic when you lose. It gives Democrats absolutely zero reason to take what we say seriously. We have called them every nasty thing we can think of and have assured them that we are speaking with the mind of Christ.

What we need to do is rise above politics. This is easier said than done. The Catholic church has always been very strong on the idea of not associating the church with a political cause. They have made that mistake many times so they know the dangers very well. You can see it quite clearly now. There is so much confusion between what is Christian and what is conservative. The abortion issue is just one more issue thrown into the mess. We need to separate it out and talk about it in a way all political camps can understand.

I can’t help but wonder if that does not effect his thinking on abortion. When does a person become a US citizen? When they are born. If that is what determines rights then an unborn child does not have them. As long as the question is “Is a fetus human?” then the pro life side is going to win the debate. If one can make a legal argument that being human does not always imply the right to life then it becomes harder.

Of course, legal arguments don’t always matter. Roe v Wade would never have happened if it depended on sound legal reasoning. It happened because of a general cultural shift towards less sexual morality. Somehow that became seen as a good end in itself. If anything, that shift has grown stronger over the years since Roe. That is why I am not so optimistic about it being overturned. Because of the inherent assumptions that morals should be discarded not just by government but by all of us. Those assumptions are being challenged less and less in western society. Judicial activism does not just happen. It is born in the circles of the intellectual elite. Those circles have shown no sign of rethinking their permissive sexual morality. Like the pope said:

We witness an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. And particularly disturbing is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of ‘risk,’ bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love.

He is right. As long as the intellectual elite think this way then the media and the courts will reflect it. He wants that to change. He figures the US is the most likely place for that change to start. He thinks within the US the Catholic universities and colleges are the best bet. I have my doubts about that. Still he understands you need to take the problem by the root. The problem is not liberalism. Benedict is a liberal at heart. The problem is somehow liberalism has lost some important pieces of its moral framework. It still seeks justice and human dignity. It has just lost track of where those ideas come from. He is an academic. He thinks academics can give right answers if done right.

This policy ran for over 100 years and was pretty much a complete disaster. It turns out governments and churches are not as good at raising children as the child’s own mother and father. Some people were even smart enough to know that but it was even worse than their worst fears. Abuse was so common in those schools it makes you truly wonder how these churches could have done so badly. It is one reason why I have never seen the US priest sex abuse scandal as being a big deal. This case is so much worse. The numbers are scary. To make matters worse the government forced these children to live with their abusers. Even survivors of the abuse who later had families of their own had those kids taken away and sent back to those same schools.

The government has apologized and that is right. The Anglican, United, and Presbyterian churches have done so as well. The CBC reported last night that the Catholic church has not. There are some legal issues around apologies. So that may have to wait until the matter is no longer before the courts. Cardinal Ouellet from Quebec did apologize more broadly for the sins of the church including saying “youngsters were subject to sexual aggression by priests and religious figures.” Still a specific apology about this scandal would be a good idea.

On reflecting on this it is important to make some distinctions. It takes me back to Pope Benedict’s doctrinal note that I comment on here. What he talks about is how to interact with other faiths. He sees two dangers. One is conversions that are in some way forced or coerced. That is part of what the residential schools were about. They were trying to make them Christians but they were going about it the wrong way. We need to respect human freedom and dignity when we evangelize. We must not prevent them from being exposed to people of other faiths. We must show the Catholic faith and allow it’s beauty and the Holy Spirit to draw them to it. Here we showed them the ugliness of sexual abuse and associated it with the gospel of Christ. Not surprisingly, many natives were repulsed by the idea of becoming Christian. It was the very opposite of evangelism. There was plenty of coercion so they looked like good Catholics. But it only lasted as long as the teachers had power over these kids. Most left the faith shortly after.

The other danger Pope Benedict point out is the one we seem to be falling into now. That is the danger of doctrinal indifferentism. The notion that one spirituality is as good as another. You hear this a lot from government and native sources. The idea that the Indian spirituality is just as valid and good as Christian spirituality. That does not follow. There is truth and goodness in all faiths but the Catholic faith has the fullness of truth. It is better because it recognizes Jesus, it has the scriptures, it has sacred tradition, and it has true sacraments. These are things that are missing in native spirituality and because of that it is inherently inferior.

The point is we need to let people figure this out for themselves. We need to respect a marketplace of ideas when it comes to religions. We can make the truth claims of Catholicism and logically show how they are superior to the truth claims of other belief systems. We cannot shut out or misrepresent other faiths. We need to expect that not everyone will be Catholic. We need to interact with other faiths, listen to them and learn from them. Then we need to let the Holy Spirit draw them towards the fullness of truth. Always being as positive and charitable towards the other faiths as we can.

In a sound-bite, McCarthy said that today’s young Catholic is looking to “invite back in our own version of Archie Bunker” – the cantankerous authority figure so thoroughly lampooned and dethroned in American culture in the 1970s and afterwards.

That instinct, which McCarthy defined as an “awkward, inarticulate, but overwhelming desire for home,” helps explain the attraction of many young Catholics to John Paul II’s theology of the body, McCarthy said. In reality, he said, many of these young Catholics have never actually read John Paul’s writings on the subject, but they’ve picked up two points from it:
• Sexual intimacy is wonderful
• Sexuality “gives us rules and duties,” meaning that it’s “the context of a vocation.”

He is right that many young Catholics have not read much of John Paul’s actual writings. They typically read guys like Christopher West, Steve Kellmeyer, Dawn Eden, Fr Roger Landry, Jason Evert, Mary Beth Bonacci, Janet Smith, etc. But that is just because people like that have made the theology more accessible. But to imply that everything they have learned can be summed up in 18 words is beyond silly. Liberal theologians seem to only understand eachother. They don’t seem to understand God and they don’t seem to understand why people want God.

The reference the Archie Bunker is quite revealing. It reveals much about McCarthy’s idea of what authority is all about. Society is where you find holiness and Rome is where you find bigotry and an irrational clinging to outdated ideas. He can’t understand why anyone would see John Paul and Benedict as holy men and see gay marriage, abortion and pornography as something to rebel against. He can’t seem to get his mind around that. So he assumes it is because they are just stupid.

It is interesting to me how you can have two vastly different traditions both calling themselves Catholic. The same principle for determining truth applies. Follow the pope and the bishops. It does not matter if the other contenders are protestant or Catholic. It does not matter how big their church is or how many letters they have behind their name. Where is the successor of Peter? Where are the successors of the apostles? That is how to find truth.

What I see more these days is that people make different assumptions. Many assume that Christianity itself it somehow irrational. Many times they were raised Christian but they have been so exposed to the subtle ways society calls faith irrational they start with the assumption that there are huge logical problems with the Christian faith. This can take a very long time to get them to question this. They don’t even realize that is there.

So the protestant and the atheist have a lot in common again. They both expect the Catholic faith to be irrational without even knowing what Catholic thinking is all about. They are both completely unaware that this bias exists and is causing them to be hypercritical of Catholic reasoning. They don’t give protestantism or atheism the same scrutiny. Serious problems with their default belief system are pretty much ignored.

I wonder, how did we get this way? I can see how protestantism became the default for so many. There are historical reasons for that. But what about atheism? That seems to have grown up from nowhere. Many still don’t even know they are atheists. They just call themselves nominal Christians. They can be Catholic or protestant. But why doesn’t the faith of their youth become the default?

Part of it has to do with the speed of technology change. Every generation is becoming very different from the previous one so it creates a generation gap. The radio and the car changed a lot so young people were the most knowledgeable about many questions. Then the TV and birth control came along. So another generation learns that their elders are not the place to go for many important questions. Many of these questions have moral implications. Many of these inventions allow young people to get guidance from the radio, TV, music, internet, etc. So you have mass media influencing people more and more and families influencing people less and less.

Part of the problem is that Catholics had forgotten how to pass on and defend the faith. Protestants largely are doing it but their system does not really stand up to scrutiny. When modern communication allows people to meet other protestants with different views the problems with that system become obvious. So that just reinforces the idea that in matter of faith you should not expect rational coherence.

But the catholic faith should be immune from this, right? Sort of. Many people inside the catholic faith had drifted into a protestant way of thinking. That is the temptation to customize the faith to your own tastes had crept into the Catholic church big time. The church didn’t pass on the faith very well. The reason it didn’t was because they found it so oppressive and dogmatic. They had lost the sense of the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith. They saw it as something they did not want to pass on to the next generation. Mostly that was because they didn’t get it. To many people didn’t really believe the faith was teaching us how to choose life, choose love, and choose Christ. Yet they remained in positions of power in the church.

1. They are apostate. They simply have rejected biblical Christianity. This was the position the early reformers took with everyone who disagreed with them. The trouble is it becomes more and more untenable as time goes on. As generation after generation goes by it just becomes impossible to believe that those who disagree with you are not serious about their faith and not saved. Some people still teach this but it really relies on not interacting with those on the other side of the controversy.

2. The bible is unclear on this point. The problem is this is the very opposite of what they say. They say the only way they know their position is right is because the bible is clear. Often they try and have it both ways on this issue. So they will acknowledge a controversy until you scratch them. How do you know the other side of this controversy is not right? Then they retreat to the “bible is clear” line.

3. The Holy Spirit has blessed us and made scripture clearer to us than to them. This is always good because they can always say this is just a mystery of God as to why He did this. This is convenient because there is absolutely no imaginable reason why this should be true. It is good to have a way out of a rational argument when your position is irrational. The trouble is anyone can make this claim. Jehovah’s Witnesses make it. Why is your claim better then theirs? It also starts to sound like a claim to have a special authority to interpret scripture. Really a violation of Sola Scriptura.

Of course the Catholic church does make pretty much that same claim. But the church has a reason why we should take it seriously. It can maintain that all these groups are sincere and doing the best they can by the lights they have. They just have inferior lighting because Sola Scriptura is a flawed rule of faith.

The point is that from the protestant point of view all 3 of these positions are problematic. But there are no others. Either sincere Christians can legitimately disagree about this or they can’t. If they can then the bible is unclear. There is something more than the bible required. There is just no other place to go.

The bottom line is protestants want to teach with authority. People are looking to faith to provide a firm foundation and that is exactly what Jesus claims the church should give us. But the protestant idea of making the scriptures rather than the church the firm foundation just does not hold up. It collapses when exposed to scrutiny.

Now radio preachers are worse than most in this area. A typical brick and mortar church will not have to make so many explicit claims to be telling you what the bible says. Normally they will use emotional appeals to gain credibility. Moving music and friendly fellowship allow the church to establish a trust relationship week after week. Radio programs need to make the claim more explicit because they don’t have time to build up that trust. But the fact is there is no logical reason to accept their reading of scripture in either case.

The problem is people believe things and refuse to question it. If Hitler was willing to consider he was wrong, he might not have gone on the killing spree.

This comes from Samuel Skinner’s comment on the last post. It says in a few words what Steve Palvina says in many. That is that there is some sort of advantage to not holding to any particular belief system. That you can dismiss all religions without even asking if they are true. They are just inherently bad because they cause you to believe things. Here is Steve:

One of the worst mistakes you can make in life is to attach your identity to any particular religion or philosophy, such as by saying “I am a Christian” or “I am a Buddhist.” This forces your mind into a fixed perspective, robbing you of spiritual depth perception and savagely curtailing your ability to perceive reality accurately. If that sounds like a good idea to you, you’ll probably want to gouge out one of your eyeballs too. Surely you’ll be better off with a single, fixed perspective instead of having to consider two separate image streams… unless of course you’ve become attached to stereo vision.

Notice how Steve has not forced his mind into a fixed perspective at all. He is totally open to Buddhism or Christianity. It is the typical modern tendency to be skeptical of everything and think that somehow makes you intelligent. It is like looking for a wife. If you date one woman then you limit your perspective. You say “no” to everyone else so you can explore the one option. If you marry her you make that a permanent rejection of everyone else to pursue that one relationship. That allows you to have a family and experience a depth of love that would not be possible without making that commitment. Now if you marry the wrong person that can be a very bad thing. Steve and Samuel seem to think it is always a bad thing just because you have closed yourself off from so many other options. They can only see what you lose and nothing of what you gain.

With religion and marriage you only have really one chance. You are giving yourself totally and you can only do that to one religion and one spouse. So how do you choose which faith is true? Well, they seem to have a definite bias against comprehensive systems of thought. They seem to much prefer to create their own belief system. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to attack the Catholic church. Again they seem to want to dismiss it not based on a lack of truth but just on the very fact that you are accepting something from outside yourself.

But what are you looking for? Are we not seeking the meaning and purpose of life? Certainly we can’t find that in ourselves. We didn’t decide to come into existence. If we are here for a reason that reason must come from some intelligence beyond humans. That means God. So if there is a God and humans have been trying to connect with him and perhaps He has been trying to connect with us then it makes sense that those efforts might have produced some fruit. To think that there is nothing to learn from others who have contemplated God is quite strange. Why think you can succeed where others have failed?

Maybe they would say you can learn something from others but somehow accepting it as a true and complete belief system is going to far. But that introduces a fuzzy line of how much you can take from one faith before you have become a de facto adherent. There is just no logical reason to think one faith would not be basically right. Why rule that out before you start?

The other thing to consider is that God is trying to reveal Himself to us. If He is then we should see evidence of that. It might well take the form of a religion that goes back to antiquity and is based around certain supernatural events and revelations. Of course, this is the claim Christianity makes for itself. That is that God revealed Himself through Abraham and through Moses and most especially through Jesus. So how can a claim like that be tested? Well, you would expect a long and consistent revelation. You would expect signs and miracles. You would expect this teaching to change the world and change it for the better. The point is there can be and should be a way to think about claims that somebody is revealing God to us. We should not just accept it. Still, it could be true. There is no logical reason why it could not be. If it is true we need to respond. Can we explain to the God of the universe that we don’t want to force our lives into a fixed perspective? No. Once we have found the person who has created us and gives our lives meaning and purpose then we give ourselves to Him. If that means also giving ourselves to a religion than so be it.

Now atheists often misunderstand why we think their way of making moral choices is inferior to the Christian way of doing it. They complain that we think they have no morals at all. Some Christians think that but most know a few atheists and know they can be moral people. The problem is that a morality based on feelings is inherently inferior to a morality based on sound, immutable principles. Feelings are just too easy to manipulate. We get our emotions or our desires involved and we think we are the exception to the rule. Unless we trust our moral principles more than we trust our feelings we will make that exception.

The trouble atheists have is they cannot trust any moral principles more than their feelings. That is because such a trust can only be placed in a supernatural source. Any human source will only be able to generalize from limited human experience. There is always the chance they missed an exception. There is always a chance that principles that have long proven valid might need to be amended for modern times. Unless you have an infallible source for the principle you can’t know. By saying there is no God an atheist eliminates an infallible source for moral principles.

But the protestant is not much better off. He does not believe in infallibility either. He believes the scriptures are inerrant and that is good. But, as in the case of divorce, it is possible for principles taught in scripture to be questioned. So you end up back in the feeling world. You have a principle but you don’t know if it is immutable.

The overall world and life view of a protestant is much closer to the Catholic that that of an atheist. Both tend to borrow a lot from Catholicism without knowing it. Protestants leave more in place but they both tend to arbitrarily pick and choose which Catholic principles to accept. It is like the atheist has played the same game but taken it a lot further.