It seems to me that too many discussions about God revolve around the question of whether or not someone or some group is "saved." Obviously, this is an all important question, but it can take us off track for two reasons:
1) We cannot know that. God alone is the judge. We do know from the Bible that one non-negotiable point of Christian belief is that there is no means of salvation apart from Christ, but we cannot know how Christ will apply or make available his saving power to every person. There is no way we can know the countless factors at play in someone's heart and mind by which God will judge the person. God decides who is saved and who is not, and he doesn't make known to us the salvation status of other people ahead of time. There's only one person whose salvation status he makes clear to me, and that is me.
Though it seems tragically clear in the Bible that there will be a number of people who reject God and so are forever separated from Him, I have no way to (and no business in) presuming to know who those people are. This doesn't mean, of course, that we're not called to discern between truth and lies, but we cannot say when someone believes a lie that we know the person will go to Hell. We can say that Hell is a reality and that it is a real possibility, but as far as identifying particular people, only God knows.
2) Centering everything on the question of who is and isn't saved fosters a lazy and shallow way of thinking and living. If the question is "Can I believe something that's not true and still be saved?" or "Can I behave badly and still be saved?" Then it's easy to discuss important issues as a means to finding the lowest possible standard: "If believing a lie is easier or more comfortable than believing the truth, but I can still be saved, I'll just keep believing the lie." or "If I can be saved and still gratify myself by behaving this way even though it’s contrary to God's will for my life, I'll keep doing it."
Ironically, "saved" people wouldn't think like this anyway.
The real question around which all theological discussion should be centered is what is true about God?
Have you ever been troubled by how quick some people are to assume knowledge of someone else's eternal state? On the other hand, have you ever been troubled by someone who takes the idea of Hell too lightly?
MM
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Letter To A Mormon Friend: What Must One Believe?
Recently I've been in conversation with an LDS friend. We talked about the differences in essential and nonessential beliefs and the question of what someone must do or believe to be a Christian.
I wrote a letter to him in response to this question. I thought the points that came up are important for all Christians to think about, so I'm posting the full text of the letter, though I don't use his real name:
Joe,
As for your question:
"The question I was asking about what makes someone Christian was more around the concept of unessential doctrines/beliefs like baptism, speaking in tongues, etc that we discussed. If I asked most Christians what you have to do to be saved and be a Christian, what would they say?”
You raise the question that is at the heart of it all: What makes someone a Christian, or what do you have to do to be saved?
As we talked about before, I think we should always make a distinction between those who are level headed, circumspect, and genuinely interested in the Truth, with those who base their beliefs completely on what is familiar and comfortable. I often think of this as the difference between those who seek Truth before comfort and those who seek comfort before Truth. But this is not a dynamic unique to Christians. It’s true about the differences in the way different people think in most areas of life.
Anyway, if you asked a Christian of the first type this question: "What do you have to do to be saved and be a Christian?" many would likely quote Jesus in John 6 when he responds to those who had sought him after the miracle of the loaves and fish:
"Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the works God requires?' Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.' ” (John 6:28-29).
As you have often rightly pointed out, many take this in isolation from the rest of Scripture and hold a lazy and, I think, heartless view of Christianity expressed in the phrase "all you have to do is believe." This is the mindset that takes grace as a license for indolence; it is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was killed for standing up to the Nazis, called "cheap grace."
But the essence of the belief Jesus requires--the kind that makes someone a Christian--is made very clear throughout the Bible. Real belief is that which affects the heart and inevitably shows in one's behavior in all aspects of life. This is explained in the book of James: "But someone will say, 'You have faith; I have deeds.' Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." (James 2:18-19). To me it is an eye-opener that James is basically saying that believing correct doctrine doesn't keep demons from being demons. But real belief in Christ is that which manifests in action. The same point is made throughout the gospels, in the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19, in Jesus' parable of the two sons in Matthew 21, and very explicitly by Jesus in Matthew 7:13-29. I should add to this that the other essential part of genuine Christian belief, the part which you might say is the act of opening the door to God, is confession of sin. Christian faith requires that we admit to God that, on our own, we have not and cannot live the way we should, and are in desperate need of his forgiveness.
Of course, you will find some people who will say one must receive and demonstrate certain spiritual gifts, like speaking in tongues, to have salvation. Others might say that the act of baptism is essential. Other, more legalistic-minded people might measure everything in the negative and say you cannot be a Christian if you drink wine or beer (regardless the motive or context) or if you enjoy secular music, etc. But, almost always, these are the second type of people described above.
More specifically to your question (and our arguments) about doctrine, I think Christian doctrine places on us what we could call incremental accountability, similar to the way a child's accountability with money grows incrementally. An eight-year-old can't be judged too harshly if he spends fifty dollars on a candy bar. He would be wrong for doing so, but he can't be expected to understand the extent to which he is wrong. On the other hand, a mentally healthy thirty-eight-year-old would be judged horribly irresponsible for doing the same thing. So, those Christians who lived in the second half of the first century who wrongly believed that only Jewish people could be Christians or that Christians were required to adhere to Old Testament laws were wrong. It's clear from Paul's letters to the Galatians and Colossians that they were very wrong. But I think we would be even more wrong than they were if we believed this. We are more accountable than they were for the doctrine we believe and teach because we have been given more resources (like Galatians and Colossians, and the rest of the NT) for understanding what is true about God.
When we stand before God one day I don't believe he will judge us by giving us a theology exam. He will judge our heart. He will judge us on the basis of whether or not we trusted him and surrendered ourselves to him as shown by our actions and the motives behind them. But a sure sign of a bad heart is someone who chooses to believe and teach false doctrines even after the opportunities and resources to know the truth have been made available to him.
I'm not just aiming this point at you personally, but, as you know, this is my general thought about most modern, educated Mormons:
For a literate, well-educated person who has seemingly limitless access, not only to the Bible and LDS Scriptures, but also to the tools, the evidence, and the freedom to study them--for such a person to continue to believe that God is an evolved human being, that blacks and Native Americans are not white because they are the cursed descendants of Cain and Laman, that a large-scale civilization with huge cities and elaborate infrastructure existed somewhere in North or Central America less than two millennia ago without leaving a shred of archaeological evidence, and that a man who married over thirty women and passed off as Scripture a document (The Book of Abraham) that is a proven forgery was a prophet of God--to continue to believe these things, even if they were taught from birth, is to be shamefully irresponsible. I believe this is ultimately a matter of the heart. It is evidence that one has placed other things--family relations, culture, etc.--above a concern for the Truth.
So, in other words, what ultimately makes someone right before God is his or her heart condition, not doctrinal precision. But believing clearly false doctrines when one should know better is a sign of a bad heart condition. It is a sign that a person is not fully surrendered to God.
I hope this was in the ball park of your question. Hopefully we can get together again some time and talk face to face. Email is great but not sufficient for conversations as important as these.
Thanks for always discussing,
Mike
I wrote a letter to him in response to this question. I thought the points that came up are important for all Christians to think about, so I'm posting the full text of the letter, though I don't use his real name:
Joe,
As for your question:
"The question I was asking about what makes someone Christian was more around the concept of unessential doctrines/beliefs like baptism, speaking in tongues, etc that we discussed. If I asked most Christians what you have to do to be saved and be a Christian, what would they say?”
You raise the question that is at the heart of it all: What makes someone a Christian, or what do you have to do to be saved?
As we talked about before, I think we should always make a distinction between those who are level headed, circumspect, and genuinely interested in the Truth, with those who base their beliefs completely on what is familiar and comfortable. I often think of this as the difference between those who seek Truth before comfort and those who seek comfort before Truth. But this is not a dynamic unique to Christians. It’s true about the differences in the way different people think in most areas of life.
Anyway, if you asked a Christian of the first type this question: "What do you have to do to be saved and be a Christian?" many would likely quote Jesus in John 6 when he responds to those who had sought him after the miracle of the loaves and fish:
"Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the works God requires?' Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.' ” (John 6:28-29).
As you have often rightly pointed out, many take this in isolation from the rest of Scripture and hold a lazy and, I think, heartless view of Christianity expressed in the phrase "all you have to do is believe." This is the mindset that takes grace as a license for indolence; it is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was killed for standing up to the Nazis, called "cheap grace."
But the essence of the belief Jesus requires--the kind that makes someone a Christian--is made very clear throughout the Bible. Real belief is that which affects the heart and inevitably shows in one's behavior in all aspects of life. This is explained in the book of James: "But someone will say, 'You have faith; I have deeds.' Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." (James 2:18-19). To me it is an eye-opener that James is basically saying that believing correct doctrine doesn't keep demons from being demons. But real belief in Christ is that which manifests in action. The same point is made throughout the gospels, in the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19, in Jesus' parable of the two sons in Matthew 21, and very explicitly by Jesus in Matthew 7:13-29. I should add to this that the other essential part of genuine Christian belief, the part which you might say is the act of opening the door to God, is confession of sin. Christian faith requires that we admit to God that, on our own, we have not and cannot live the way we should, and are in desperate need of his forgiveness.
Of course, you will find some people who will say one must receive and demonstrate certain spiritual gifts, like speaking in tongues, to have salvation. Others might say that the act of baptism is essential. Other, more legalistic-minded people might measure everything in the negative and say you cannot be a Christian if you drink wine or beer (regardless the motive or context) or if you enjoy secular music, etc. But, almost always, these are the second type of people described above.
More specifically to your question (and our arguments) about doctrine, I think Christian doctrine places on us what we could call incremental accountability, similar to the way a child's accountability with money grows incrementally. An eight-year-old can't be judged too harshly if he spends fifty dollars on a candy bar. He would be wrong for doing so, but he can't be expected to understand the extent to which he is wrong. On the other hand, a mentally healthy thirty-eight-year-old would be judged horribly irresponsible for doing the same thing. So, those Christians who lived in the second half of the first century who wrongly believed that only Jewish people could be Christians or that Christians were required to adhere to Old Testament laws were wrong. It's clear from Paul's letters to the Galatians and Colossians that they were very wrong. But I think we would be even more wrong than they were if we believed this. We are more accountable than they were for the doctrine we believe and teach because we have been given more resources (like Galatians and Colossians, and the rest of the NT) for understanding what is true about God.
When we stand before God one day I don't believe he will judge us by giving us a theology exam. He will judge our heart. He will judge us on the basis of whether or not we trusted him and surrendered ourselves to him as shown by our actions and the motives behind them. But a sure sign of a bad heart is someone who chooses to believe and teach false doctrines even after the opportunities and resources to know the truth have been made available to him.
I'm not just aiming this point at you personally, but, as you know, this is my general thought about most modern, educated Mormons:
For a literate, well-educated person who has seemingly limitless access, not only to the Bible and LDS Scriptures, but also to the tools, the evidence, and the freedom to study them--for such a person to continue to believe that God is an evolved human being, that blacks and Native Americans are not white because they are the cursed descendants of Cain and Laman, that a large-scale civilization with huge cities and elaborate infrastructure existed somewhere in North or Central America less than two millennia ago without leaving a shred of archaeological evidence, and that a man who married over thirty women and passed off as Scripture a document (The Book of Abraham) that is a proven forgery was a prophet of God--to continue to believe these things, even if they were taught from birth, is to be shamefully irresponsible. I believe this is ultimately a matter of the heart. It is evidence that one has placed other things--family relations, culture, etc.--above a concern for the Truth.
So, in other words, what ultimately makes someone right before God is his or her heart condition, not doctrinal precision. But believing clearly false doctrines when one should know better is a sign of a bad heart condition. It is a sign that a person is not fully surrendered to God.
I hope this was in the ball park of your question. Hopefully we can get together again some time and talk face to face. Email is great but not sufficient for conversations as important as these.
Thanks for always discussing,
Mike
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