An Offensive Apologetic

In a previous post I wrote about the importance of a Christian having sound reason behind faith; I urged that we be ready to defend our faith to those who would question it. This is true, certainly--one must never be caught “blindly believing” in anything--but it raises further questions yet.

I previously asked how one ought to respond to a question such as, “Why are you a Christian?”

Certainly one ought to have an answer, but then comes the question of how to respond? In what tone and with what purpose?

There is one area where I think Christian apologetics often has it very wrong--and that is in the the notion that to “apologize” for something (such as a belief) means to offer a defense. To be an apologist, it seems, might be comparable to allow oneself to be put perpetually on a witness stand and cross-examined like a common criminal.

To be fair, this is certainly very close to what apologetics is (the word apologia, quite literally, means “defense”), but I think there are nuances to the concept that mean all the difference in the world. More accurately, especially when it comes to Christianity, an apology is not meant to offer a defense, but to lay a groundwork upon which faith may rest. More importantly, it should not be focused inward, on the Christian who answers, but outward, toward the skeptic who asks.  

It is said time and again by Christians (and by me, particularly), that we need always to be ready with a defense of our faith. The idea is appropriated from 1 Peter 3:15: “...always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…” The translation may be accurate, but the idea is wrapped up, not in that one word--”defense”--but in the larger context. We are told to be prepared with an answer when someone asks for a reason for our hope. But here is the key: if someone is asking for a reason for our hope, we are not put in a defensive position. They are not asking about our sins or about our faults, but about our hope. They are asking about something that they desire for themselves! Our answer, therefore, is not defensive; our opponent has not dealt a blow, but has rather opened up their own defenses, and it is we who must strike!

This truth that is overshadowed by the word “defense” is that, truly, Christianity ought never be on the defensive. Christianity is really only effective when it is on the offensive; when it is eagerly and avidly moving forward. When it attempts a defensive posture, struggling to answer every foolish question and explain away every faulty premise devised by the logic of the world, it becomes gangly and awkward and truly difficult to manage.

When one is on the defensive, it means that he is being accused of something for which he ought to feel some shame. But Christianity is offering, not something shameful, but hope! It is offering grace and truth! Are these really things that need to be defended? Does a child have to be convinced to be excited about Christmas morning? Do the parents need to defend their decision to shower him with gifts? Of course not; the child, being wiser than many elderly skeptics, knows that a good thing may be either believed or disbelieved, but it need not be defended. Likewise, does the winner of the lottery have to be persuaded by the lottery commission to accept the prize?  Of course not; there is no hemming and hawing by the winner over whether or not this newfound wealth is really “right”. No time is taken for thinking or contemplating over whether or not the contest ever existed in the first place. The award is seen as good; it is simply claimed and spent. As Christians we often forget that this ought to hold true, as well, for a gift that is far greater than any lottery! Our posture should be that of conquerors who hold the secret that the world continually seeks! We have the answer, and we offer it freely to all--and yet, the world somehow succeeds, time and again, in putting us on the defensive.

When one responds to, “Why are you a Christian?” with a steady and rehearsed bundle of facts, it is a defensive response; it is the feeling that we are being told that we have done something wrong and feel, as a child being accused by a parent of breaking something valuable, as if we must explain ourselves for our own sake. But that is not how it ought to be.  Our response to “Why are you a Christian?” really has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with the one who asks the question. We are answering, not for our own sake (for that would be defensive), but for theirs!

Jesus, it should be remembered, was never--not once--put on the defensive, though he was attacked at every turn. Though he was asked to explain himself on every controversy. Here, in the gospels, we see a true master of apologetics in action: one who knew that an attack was not an opportunity to defend oneself, but to parry and strike. No wonder so many of His attackers left the encounter sulking in bitterness and anger, for their attempts had failed to elicit so much as hesitation, and instead forced them to question their own assumptions. When asked about the ethics of paying taxes, Christ did not turn to scriptures in order to offer up some complex theological or political response; he merely asked, “Whose picture is on the coin?” and so demonstrated the foolishness of the initial question.

If He had been asked, “Why are you a Christian?” how might Jesus have answered (setting aside, for a moment, the absurdity of asking this of He who put the “Christ” in Christian)? I cannot imagine Jesus attempting an answer founded on science, logic, or theology. I doubt that he would have attempted to bait his questioners into some philosophical trap. He would not have felt the need to defend himself--for He would know that the question was not being asked for His sake. I am convinced that He would have answered with a question of His own--perhaps something as simple as, “Why do you reject Christianity?” For the question may have been asked in order to force a defense; but it is really the questioner who ought to be put on the stand, to defend their refusal--for indeed one ought to have an answer for why they have refused such a  gift--and Jesus would have seen this as an opportunity to strike.

Faith and First Principles

“Why are you a Christian?”

“Because I believe in God, and…”

“Yes, of course, but why do I believe in God?”

“Because I have faith.”

“But why?”

This is a conversation for which most Christians are woefully unprepared. Christians long to be known by their works (though for many of us this is just as challenging), but dread the moment when they must offer a clear, convincing argument for their beliefs. As such, we really ought to take a moment every now and again to consider how the conversation ought to go.

It is worth considering, first of all, that whenever anyone asks a question like, “Why are you a Christian?” they are not looking for answers that only beg more questions. At least, they shouldn’t be. A person who asks, “Why are you a Christian?” should really be looking for something more fundamental. They should be looking for first principles; they should be looking for an answer that is irreducible and axiomatic. Something observable and undeniable. The same is true in science, for anyone who asks, in a science classroom, a question like “What are we made of?” is not looking for a stopgap answer, but for an answer founded on first principles. Anyone genuinely searching for an answer may be satisfied, at first, with something as superficial as, “We are made of atoms,” but it is only a matter of time before they recognize the obvious next question, “But what are atoms made of?” And, of course, the answer that follows (atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons), leads to yet another question, and another. An infinite regression.

A first principle is what we are left with in those unique moments when the last question has been answered. It is something that demands no further questioning; and it is something that is surprisingly rare, especially in science.  As C.S. Lewis observed, “The laws of physics decree that when one billiards ball (A) sets another billiards ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A Exactly equals the momentum gained by B.  This is a Law. That is, this is the pattern to which the movement of the two billiards balls must conform. Provided, of course, that something sets ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The law won’t set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue who does that.” This is a question of first principles. When we say that something is a law, the law is not a first principle--the first principle is whatever lies behind the law. A first principle is are what is left when every question has been answered--something basic enough to be readily accepted by all. As far as the question, “What are we made of?” the truth is that the first principle remains very much unknown. The first few questions in the series can be answered, but the first principle still eludes us, if, indeed, there is a first principle to be found.

But the question “Why are you a Christian?” is infinitely more important than the question of matter (I would much rather be certain about Christianity than about atoms), and as such we really should be searching for first principles. The genuine seeker who asks “Why are you a Christian?” will only be satisfied for so long (if at all) with any non-absolute answer. “I am a Christian because I feel that it is true.” “I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus.” “I am a Christian because I know that God loves me.” These may be answers, and they may be, in part, true, but they are not the answer. They all lead to still more questions.

Often, the answers given by Christians are founded on faith. “I am a Christian because I have faith.” But faith is not a first principle. Faith cannot (at least, should not) exist on its own merits. It must be founded on something.

“Faith,” as is recited so often that it has become almost cliché, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Further, “…without faith it is impossible to please (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”

Faith is lauded throughout scripture, and we are promised that our faith will be rewarded; consequently, one is often tempted to rely on faith, as if it stood alone at the core of Christianity; further, we come to suspect that true faith requires no foundation of evidence, or, worse, that evidence must be avoided, for it means that faith is no longer needed. But the truth is that faith, while wholly necessary, is not a first principle.  One cannot be a Christian without faith, but one cannot have faith without knowledge. Real faith must be founded upon something more tangible. Just because faith is “the conviction of things not seen” doesn’t mean that it is a thing with no basis. Faith isn’t a feeling, and real faith is certainly never blind. This is something that I think is often misunderstood, even among Christians. It is not a burning in the bosom or the result of a vision from a dream. When faith is founded purely on the ethereal it is more often than not a means of justifying one’s own needs and desires. One may claim to act in the name of faith, but the faith is only a manifestation of some deeper desire.

It is clear in the Bible that to have faith is not as easy as just believing in something without reason. If it was that simple, one could simply follow their own urges and claim faith as justification for almost anything (in fact, this is exactly what does happen far too often in our world). The Christian often bristles at the thought that one should need to offer evidence to support Christianity, as if that would somehow circumvent the requirement that one have faith. But faith must be founded on something! It cannot possibly exist without a foundation.

There are matters of fact and there are matters of faith, and they are rarely as separate as they may seem; more often than not it is the fact comes first, and faith is what results. The new Christian takes the final step of faith only after a foundation of fact has been laid. One may scour the scriptures for the great demonstrations of faith, but only rarely (if ever) does one find that faith is not preceded by some fact. Abraham was not acting on feelings or urges when he agreed to sacrifice his son—it was only after hearing, directly, the voice of God, and well after God had already provided him plenty of proof.  Moses did not venture into Egypt to face Pharoah on faith alone—he did so after God Himself spoke to him out of a burning bush. Even Paul, so often lauded for the great faith that allowed him to be persecuted and, in the end, martyred, believed as the result of a face to face meeting with the risen Christ, and though it may have manifested itself as physical blindness, there was nothing blind in Paul’s faith. If Paul was asked why he was a Christian he would not have said, “Because I have faith.” He would have proclaimed, boldly, the facts of what he saw and experienced.

One generally does not begin believing in God by first believing in the parting of the red sea.  Rather, one first comes to believe in God, and only then obtains the faith that God worked that miracle. One does not first come to believe in the strange truth of the trinity and then accept Christianity; Christianity comes first, based on facts, and then one can come to faith that this profound mystery is true.  

Christianity really is based on facts first and then faith.  

Which leads us back, once again, to the initial question: What are the first principles of Christianity? What are the facts upon which the faith is founded?

There are two that seem to stand above the others: the fact of existence and the fact of sin.

I have spent too much of my own life in trying to prove things that ought to be taken on faith (obscure theological principles), and taking on faith things that really ought to be taken as fact (science and history). But it is a fact—no scientist would deny it (though the occasional philosopher might)—that we exist. It is a fact that there are, in fact, things in our universe and that somehow these things came to be, and though science has tried theory after theory, it is a thing with no absolute scientific explanation. That is the fact, and it is faith that leads me to believe that there is no scientific explanation to be found (just as it is faith that leads others to believe in the contrary). As Lewis explains: “…the laws of Nature explain everything except the source of events. But this is rather a formidable exception. The laws, in one sense, cover the whole of reality except—well, except that continuous cataract of real events which makes up the actual universe. They explain everything except what we should ordinarily call ‘everything’. The only thing they omit is—the whole universe.”

So, when someone asks, “Why do you believe in God?” I might begin here--with the fact of existence. Something that science still cannot explain, but which those who believe in God have understood for thousands of years.

Second, it is a fact that man, after coming to exist (see above), found, somewhere along the way, that something was terribly wrong. Man has always been defined most accurately by his imperfections. Is there a single historian who would deny that man is a broken, imperfect creature? The story of the growth of the Roman Empire is grand, but the story of its fall tells us far more about humanity.  Indeed, history offers no ambiguity as to the fact that man has been his own worst enemy for as long as he has been keeping records of his own failures. And it is a fact that evolution has failed time and again in ridding man of his weaknesses or curing society of its ills; we are neither better nor worse than we have always been.

It is a fact, as well, that both of these questions are resolved within the first pages of scripture, and with far more certainty than science or philosophy could ever hope to obtain.

So, when someone asks, “Why are you a Christian?” I might begin here--with the fact of sin, and the fact that Christianity has provided, not only the only clear explanation, but the only clear answer.

All of this, of course, demands greater exploration, and these are by no means the only facts to be found in Christianity, but the principle remains: Christian platitudes aside, faith is beautiful, but it is something that must stand upon a foundation. Every Christian should stop and ask themselves why they believe before attempting to explain it to others.

“Saul,” says the book of Acts, “increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.” Paul did not demand of his listeners that they must simply have faith. He understood that his faith had a reasonable basis. He understood that there were facts that could lead his listeners to faith, and that is a beautiful thing.

Why Suffering?

Why indeed? Who hasn’t asked, or been asked, a question along the lines of, “If God exists, then why is there suffering in the world?” The question is good and it is important, but the fact it is that it is only rarely genuine. The more I study the more I realize that the question of suffering is more often than not a means of provocation, asked by skeptics who really don’t care about the answer; skeptics who, in fact, know full well that there is no answer a Christian could give that would satisfy them. And they are absolutely right. Because of this, the question of suffering remains one that every apologist in history has been forced to acknowledge at some point or another. Because of its pervasiveness, no book or article hoping to defend God from the arrows of the skeptic could possibly be considered complete if it does nothing to address this most difficult and sensitive of issues, and for thousands of years now it is a question that Christians have dreaded facing up to.

I’m certainly not presumptuous enough to believe that I can settle the issue once and for all here, and there are certainly things yet to be said, but I hope to at least begin the conversation with a few observations of my own.

To begin with, it doesn’t seem insignificant to note that it is often the most privileged skeptics who are quickest to point to the suffering of the world as a means of disproving God—and that seems like a rather odd thing. Wouldn’t one rather expect the strongest cries against suffering to come from those who actually suffer? Shouldn’t the streets and slums of the third world account for more cries against God than the halls of the Ivy League? Shouldn’t refugee camps and homeless shelters be hotbeds of atheism? They should, but they are not, for the truth of suffering is a strange thing. No, we really don’t see much suffering in the western world; not, at least, at the scope or scale that we see elsewhere. Even the hungry of America are generally well-fed; even the poor are relatively rich; even the sick are relatively healthy. And yet the skeptics of the Western World are the first to decry God for allowing suffering into creation.

Yes, suffering is real. I have seen it too many times, and it has broken my heart. But what have I found in walking through the slums, hospitals and orphanages of the third world? Diseased, enslaved and famished multitudes cursing God for their plight? Orphans and widows abandoning their various faiths and giving in to their despair? No. I’ve never found what one ought to expect: I’ve found people thirsty for faith; eager for hope. I’ve found people hungry for the taste of eternity. I’ve witnessed men and women, suffering more than most of us will ever know, flocking en masse toward faith, and, likewise, I’ve seen these same sufferers finding faith, then immediately turning and preaching to their fellow afflicted.

It is a strange truth: Those who suffer—who truly suffer—are those least likely to use suffering as an argument against God.

And how is one to explain this? Why should suffering lead one toward God rather than away from Him? One must first understand the cause of suffering—something the theist and atheist ought to be able to agree on: suffering is a symptom of freedom. The fact that man is free—free to accept God (or a more secular morality) or to reject Him; to walk faithfully with Him or to turn away—means that there will always be suffering in this world. As long as there is freedom there will be some who disagree with others; as long as we are at liberty to believe what we want there will be no worldwide unanimity on anything of importance, and, yes, there will be those who suffer as a consequence. Suffering is not a symptom of man’s rejection of God, and nothing more. Dostoyevsky wrote beautifully of this in The Brothers Karamazov, through the words spoken by the Grand Inquisitor (one of the truly sublime characters in all of literature, no matter how brief his presence). The Inquisitor, a closet skeptic attempting to cure the world of freedom’s curse, argued the point while standing face-to-face with Christ. The greatest failing of Christ’s earthly ministry, the Inquisitor argues, was to give man freedom, a fact exemplified in the temptation in the wilderness. Jesus refused the Devil’s offer of miraculous food, which he could have used to feed the world. He declined a worldly throne, from which he could have forced us all to worship, thus ending all religious wars. He declined to show his power to the world through miracles, thus taking away the need for a faith that leads to so much disagreement. His threefold refusal gave us freedom and humanity has forever suffered as a result. As a rule mankind accepts freedom as a good thing, and yet we suffer because we are free.

But take heart! The same freedom that enables human suffering offers us a way out: it enables us to transcend even the bitterest of human suffering by humbly kneeling before the heavenly throne and finding comfort. It allows us to be sought and found by a God who promises, among all of His great graces, an end to suffering. No, it is not always during our lifetime—indeed, even the slave is not promised freedom on earth; rather, he is encouraged to obey and to work hard, as unto God (Eph. 6), even if it means that he will be a slave until the day he dies. But even for the slave; even for the hungry and thirsty, orphan and widow, there is promised an end to suffering that is both definite and absolute. Though this revelation may be (rightly) dismissed by the skeptic as absurd, it can scarcely be denied that this knowledge, this revelation, has a real, profound, lasting effect on those who suffer. The hope of eternal rest can and does set at ease even the most troubled heart; it can relieve even the most intense suffering. Yes, there is great power in hope, and even more so when that hope is based on truth. Though the humanist somehow thinks it humane to tear this hope away from the sufferer, allowing them to simply wallow in hopelessness, the truth is not easily destroyed, and those who suffer know in their soul that real hope lies only in eternity.

Here is the great secret of the Christian’s response to suffering: it will never make sense to the skeptic. Nor should it. There is no common ground to be found. Even the cleverest Christian will not find an answer that will put an end to the debate once and for all; it will rage on and on, both sides growing endlessly frustrated, but only because the two sides are speaking different languages and never acknowledging the fact. The answer of the Christian to the problem of suffering lies entirely in the eternal; that is, it lies entirely in a concept absolutely rejected by the skeptic. The Gospel is embraced by the sufferer, not because it offers immediate, miraculous relief from physical hardship, but because in the promise of the eternal it promises a far greater relief than any Novocain or Aspirin; a bliss far greater and far more lasting than any opiate or hash-pipe. A sufferer who truly understands the Gospel understands that even the worst of the world’s suffering is but a tiny leaf blowing in the wind of eternity, that we are as much sojourners in suffering as we are sojourners on the earth, and this brings joy. Real joy. Unreasonable, unexplainable joy.

It makes perfect sense that this should be taken as gibberish to the skeptic. “For the word of the cross,” says 1 Corinthians, “is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” One cannot possibly be expected to understand suffering before he understands God. One absolutely must come before the other.

To accept eternity—that is, to accept the Gospel—is to accept this great truth: “Truly, truly, I say to you,” said Jesus in John 16, “you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” Likewise, Romans 8 says that creation itself is groaning as in the pains of childbirth. But Christians alone can take comfort in knowing that this groaning, which manifests itself in death, disease, and every vile facet of human nature, is not our true reality; it is our present, but certainly not our future. Our future is in our “adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies.” Just as the woman experiencing painful labor can look forward to the joy of her child, so each of us, engaged in some form of suffering or another, can look forward to the joy of eternity if we know God. Without God, there is no hope; suffering will give birth to even greater suffering, like a stillborn child.

The difference between the Christian and the skeptic is not that one can offer a clear, reasonable explanation suffering and one cannot—though both certainly try. Nor is it that one can necessarily put a stop to it and the other cannot—though both certainly do make admirable attempts, all of which should be encouraged to continue. The difference is really can offer hope for those who suffer and the other cannot. One can offer the promise of a suffering that will turn to joy, and the other offers only suffering that ends in death. The skeptic may think that in the idea of suffering they have ammunition with which to attack the Christian, but before they mount their attack they must first acknowledge that they themselves have nothing to offer the suffering but the cruel notion that this is all there is.

There is much more to be said, of course. How are we to respond to suffering? How do we strive to put an end to it? Why is Christianity the optimal worldview for ending the world’s suffering (which it certainly is)? And so on. I may respond to these questions in time, but what I have already written ought to serve as a start—we have to understand suffering before we can truly attack it. 

Jesus and the Kings of Earth

As I read the gospels, the continuous story of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom is a story that captivates me far more than any of the dramatic water-into-wine or healing-the-blind moments, though the latter certainly make for better television. This story does not begin in the Gospels, of course—it begins far before the man ever walked the earth. It is absolutely everywhere in the Old Testament, as we see creation groaning and man failing time and again to create the kingdom for himself. But in the New Testament we see, at last, a kingdom not just being longed for and prophesied about, but a kingdom come!

This startling revelation has perhaps its most poignant roots in the poetic words of the mother of Christ, as the boy who would one day rule over a kingdom that would never end nestled and kicked within her womb. According to Luke’s Gospel, Mary, in the Magnificat, uttered a beautiful song, whose themes would be echoed by her son during His ministry:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.”

Here is the strange and bold truth of a Kingdom that had not yet come, for it would only come with the child in her womb: Jesus would not become mighty, but he would establish a kingdom that would bring the mighty low; He would never be rich, but he would establish a kingdom that would render worthless the riches of the earth. Five chapters and thirty years later, when Jesus gave his Sermon on the Plain, His message was the same as his mother’s: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”

From the beginning of Jesus ministry—yes, even well before the beginning—the message was the same: the worthwhile things of the earth were not the worthwhile things of His kingdom. All the riches of the world were left worthless when compared to the incomparable riches of His kingdom that will never end.

Jesus knew this, of course, when He was tempted. Had he not understood His own message (as we consistently fail to understand it today) He surely would have given in to Satan’s devious machinations. Malcolm Muggeridge was right in noting that Satan’s great secret in offering Jesus the kingdoms of the earth, is that at its core the offer is bogus. “There are no kingdoms for him to bestow; only pseudo or notional ones presided over by mountebanks masquerading as emperors and kings and governments.” Jesus, who would be called King of kings and Lord of lords, who came to usher in a glorious kingdom, who would send out His forces in the form of a church destined to conquer the earth, was being offered the mirage of earthly rule and authority. Satan offered Jesus nothing more than the laughable, passing pleasure of meaningless authority. Imagine Jesus actually giving in! Imagine Jesus sitting on a paper throne when there was a heavenly one waiting for Him! Imagine the inanity of Jesus ruling over a Potemkin kingdom that, like every nation and kingdom of earth, would be blown away again and again by every light breeze. Jesus declined earthly rule not because he was too humble, but because there is no earthly rule to be had! There never has been. Jesus alone knew that the offer was not just beneath Him; it had no value whatsoever, just as the sustenance of a loaf of bread has no value when compared to the pure, eternal substance of God’s Word. Though truly tempting to we of such little perspective, for Jesus to take these things would not be to accept something good, it would be to lose something of supreme value!

But the Jews failed to understand this in the first century, just as we continue to fail, even though we have the truth at hand. “To what should I compare this generation?” Jesus asked in Matthew 11. “It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, andyou did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” The people of Israel expected something different in their Messiah—and though they may have thought that their expectation was greater than the reality, in truth it was far less. They expected a king, to take a physical throne in their physical palace, for they hadn’t yet learned that every physical throne is destined to collapse; every physical palace to crumble and decay. Jesus may have been truly afraid when, “perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.” (John 6:15) What a mockery this would have been! For Jesus to be lifted up to be king of the Jews would have been the greatest tragedy to ever befall that nation—a greater tragedy, even, than the destruction of the temple a few decades later. To raise up Christ as an earthly king would have been to deny Him the eternal throne to which He was headed. It would have been to sacrifice something unbelievably great for something unbelievably worthless.

The story of Christ’s kingdom reaches its denouement, of course, at Golgotha. On the cross Christ put to death every pretense of Earthly rule; just as in His resurrection He made the first movement to take His seat on His eternal throne. But the truest perspective can be found in the hours leading up to the cross, with the mockery of Jesus by the guards and, surely, the priests of Israel as well. In mocking Christ, they were bringing judgment on themselves; in draping Him with the clothes of royalty and cruelly crowning Him with thorns they were demonstrating Christ’s decisions in the wilderness—they were mocking not just a would-be king, but the man who would be King of Kings. Jesus’ destiny was to rule over everything, bringing low the powers of men, and, ironically, it was His death that made this possible. While mocking Jesus, these people were enabling His rule, helping to usher in His kingdom, dramatically sealing their own fate.

So Jesus was killed, and so He rose, and so did His Kingdom find its foundation, on which it continues to be built today. Since Christ died, ostensibly ending what had been a vibrant, but brief, ministry that might even have led to a revolution had it been allowed to continue, two thousand years have come and gone. With those years, decades, centuries and millennia have come the world has seen the Roman Empire fall from dizzying heights; it has seen the Mongol Empire on the edge of conquering the known world; it has seen a British Empire, a French Empire, Portuguese, Belgian, Japanese Empires all rise and fall. Bitterly and tragically fall. Empires built by human hands, withering and dying with age after just centuries.

Christ’s Kingdom continues to grow; it shows no signs of aging.

Had Hitler been successful in his dream of establishing a German Reich so pure and so powerful that it did indeed last a thousand years, it would still perish and be replaced, in the end amounting to less than nothing when standing before the sheer weight of Christ’s eternal kingdom, which has persisted already for twice that.

If Christ’s Kingdom has indeed persisted, then Mary’s prophecy concerning her son is made even more beautiful, for it is being fulfilled even today, before our own eyes. If Christ’s Kingdom is alive and thriving then His temptations in the wilderness remain both relevant and urgent to every man and woman who has ever been caught up in the things of the world; for, as Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, “...in (Satan’s) three questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as it were, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are united all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature.” If Christ does indeed sit on a throne, reigning over an eternal kingdom, then those present at His trial were not mocking their victim by pretending that He was a king, but mocking every king and emperor who has ever lived by pretending that they might be anything like Him. “Who,” asks Muggeridge, “among the motley collection of spectators of so obscure an event could possibly have envisaged that there before their eyes another civilization was being born, which would last for two thousand years, shining so long and so brightly? Not even the Apostles could have thought of that; what they looked for was an apocalyptic Second Coming and the end of the world, not the beginning of Christendom.” God’s ways, we need to be reminded time and time again, are not our ways. They are far, far better.

The Church and the Pursuit of Happiness

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” – United States Declaration of Independence

These words, penned by Thomas Jefferson, are hardly a matter of controversy. Rarely, outside of those few who still subscribe to some form of tyranny or another, will anyone be heard arguing against the very basic notion that a nation ought to be founded on the principle of freedom; fewer still would, or should, argue that a nation ought to do anything at all to stifle its citizens pursuit of happiness.

As a political doctrine I take no offense to the Declaration of Independence. As an assertion of basic freedoms it is practically unmatched; it is used to affirm very basic principles of government—that a citizen and a government are separate; that a government does not exist to control the people, but to protect and to enable individual success. I even understand when this principle is abused in an effort to support certain viewpoints that I happen to oppose. Of course there are reasonable limitations that have to be placed upon any such unrestrictive doctrine; if it makes a person happy to kill his neighbor that is, of course, not a pursuit we are likely to oblige. If it makes a person happy to steal another’s property, it is only the rare, freewheeling judge and jury who might grant leniency when the defendant decides to quote Jefferson on the stand.

I certainly understand the value the world places on the pursuit of happiness, and I understand that it really is a good thing. What I object to—what I really cannot fathom—is when the church comes to the very strange belief that it might go well with them if they hold to the same thing.

This is one of many ways that the doctrines of a church ought to have no overlap with the doctrines of a nation. Just as I can assert that the communism practiced in the early church ought never be considered a valid principle for governing secular society, so also it should be stated emphatically that the church ought never be tempted to teach its members to pursue their own happiness.

To a Christian, after all, the pursuit of happiness should be seen as a great contradiction. It should, at the very least, be recognized as an enigma—for the Christian ought to know that happiness is not a thing that can possibly be pursued. If anything, we could say that happiness has already pursued and overtaken us, and that we are foolish to think that anything could work the other way around.

Christianity is really not the solemn, quiet religion that the secularists make it out to be; the content Christian is not really the opposite of the giddy drunkard or the self-fulfilled womanizer. The Christian simply knows a great secret: That he needn’t go searching about the world, wandering back and forth in it, in the pursuit of happiness, contentment or fulfillment. He needn’t any politician to tell him that he is free to pursue his happiness. For the Christian, happiness is intrinsic. “Man is more himself,” wrote Chesterton, “when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live... Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.”

The church that dares encourage its members to pursue happiness, each in their own way, is a church that has quite clearly never understood the nature of happiness, for it has somehow mistaken the temporal, in which happiness is futile and fading, for the eternal, in which happiness is inward and indistinguishable from joy. Such a church has really sought to undo the drama of the temptations of Christ! For what was the temptation to turn stones into bread but the temptation to place the temporal above the eternal, to feast now and ignore the later...? The Devil offered Christ nothing more than a moment of earthly happiness—a temptation just as direct as an offer to a philanderer of his choice of lovers.

Many churches in recent years have failed in this very particular and very important regard (just as, in many other regards, churches have been failing throughout history). We are all sinners, of course, but the fact that a man had to die for our sins mean that we ought never be proud of them, and we certainly never ought to convince the church to accept them! Needless to say, not only are certain sins being tolerated within the body of Christ, but they are being celebrated!—for certain sins offer the impression to the weak minded that they are nothing more than men and women pursuing their own happiness, non-traditional places though their happiness might lead them. Sinners are no longer driven to repentance; they are driven to the altar in holy matrimony.

How can one obtain the status of Pastor or Priest—titles that one expects to go hand-in-hand with theological training and, one hopes, devoutness—and yet utterly miss such a fundamentally scriptural doctrine? Faith is not a means of obtaining happiness—not in this world, at least.

When the author of Hebrews offers his beautiful account of the great men and women of faith in the Old Testament, how does he conclude his account? “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth,” and, again, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us...”

What about the Bible could possibly lead us to believe that earthly happiness is our ultimate reward? Time and again men and women are reminded to have eternity in mind and to reject their impulses toward earthly security and happiness. But true happiness is not the fulfilling of our every desire, just as true pleasure is not the momentary giddiness of a strong drink or the brief impulses of eroticism.

G.K. Chesterton says that this “religion” of happiness and pleasure seeking, “is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose that Dante saw. Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendor of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in.”

Likewise, Malcolm Muggeridge, writing near the end of his life, offered an intriguing observation on the source of true happiness: “I increasingly see us in our human condition as manacled and in a dark cell. The chains are our mortal hopes and desires; the dark cell is our ego, in whose obscurity and tiny dimensions we are confined. Christ tells us how to escape, striking off the chains of desire, and putting a window in the dark cell through which we may joyously survey the wide vistas of eternity and the bright radiance of God’s universal love.” 

Christ and Philosophy

Of the most effective attacks on Christianity, the most common today seems to be the attacks from those who oppose “religion” in its most general meaning and proceed to argue against the concept of “god” in the most abstract sense, arguing against one by arguing against another. An argument against Hinduism, then, is an argument against organized religion, hurting the Christian as much as the Hindu. This form of attack (like so many) is, of course, disingenuous when applied to any religion, but is even more profoundly wrongheaded when applied to Christianity, for Christianity cannot be compared with the religions of the world.

I could scarcely begin to describe the myriad ways that Christianity is unique, and not only among the religions of the world (that much has been said time and again). Far more interesting to me has been the revelation that even as a general philosophy of man, it is unique among philosophies. And I do not mean “unique” in the watered-down and inane sense that there might somehow be different “stages” of uniqueness, nor do I mean that Christianity is only unique by a matter of degree. I mean it in the definite, exact sense of the word: Christianity is unique. It is not just to be differentiated among the world's religions; it stands absolutely alone. It does not merely offer an alternative to other philosophies; it is really the only philosophy.

Philosophers see themselves as the observers of mankind. They see themselves as theater-goers observing the many acts of a sweeping play, every scene filled with equal parts comedy and tragedy. It is a performance of such depth and magnitude that every member of the audience might take something different from it—they, having seen the very same play, might come to a multitude of conclusions, all of which seem, in some sense, true, but are really contradictory. Some will give rave reviews to the performances of the actors; others will have endless criticisms for the dialogue or the set construction or the direction. Philosophers have witnessed the same performance time and again; it is not the play that changes, it is their views of it that change. Philosophers provide a haughty, pretentious audience, and it all stems from their belief that they have somehow stepped outside this farce themselves, looking down from a private box, musing after the strange behavior of strange creatures they could never understand. The philosophers have forgotten that the stage extends to them, as well; they have forgotten they cannot abandon their humanity for the sake of their philosophies, just as no historian can ever step outside of history.

Christianity, on the other hand, is the only philosophy grounded in objective absolutes rather than human ingenuity; it is, in other words, the only philosophy not rooted in failure. Secular philosophers pride themselves not in understanding things fully, but in understanding them slightly better than other philosophers, which can only mean that they do not understand things at all. The same could be said for the pursuit of science, which is not to understand things perfectly, but to understand things better than those who came before. Even among the philosophers and scientists there is rarely any pretension of knowing everything, and there is a tacit acceptance of the limitations of knowledge. Not so with Christianity.  

Christians have long held the key to philosophy, for ours is a philosophy not originating in human observation, but originating outside of humanity. A man cannot fully understand himself without first forgetting that he is a man; but Christian philosophy originated with a God who is separate from man, but who also became man; a God who knows man’s heart both from the outside and from within. This powerful truth has been wielded by men and women of all ages and with varying degrees of education, beginning not with the educated elite, but with lowly fishermen and tent makers. The poor and the humble have been speaking more common-sense notions on philosophy than the richest and most educated since long before we bothered to keep track of these things. Ever since all philosophy found its ultimate meaning in the incarnation, the most reasonable philosophers have been those that recognize the utter futility of philosophy itself, for the philosopher, with his endless degrees and his almost worshipful devotion to language, will inevitably spend the course of his life in trying to understand why a man should decide to do what he does, while at no point recognizing that he really ought to just ask himself. 

Secular philosophy begins by asking a question about human behavior; why, for instance, should we be so driven by greed or power? Why are we so afraid of death? From these questions are devised increasingly clever (and, consequently, increasingly less likely) explanations and algorithms that seek only the broadest possible generalizations. All of man’s actions are driven by a will to power, a will to live, a will to procreate, etc. Once the philosopher discovers the ultimate driving force of man, all of his decisions will somehow come to make sense at last. But as philosophers stumble about in the darkness looking for the light switch that might finally illuminate the mysteries of man, Christians are free to sit in the comfortable warmth of a bright sun that has been shining all along; an oasis to which I may freely invite others, for there is room for all.

Christian philosophy alone does not begin with an observation of man, but begins instead with two principles: sin and grace. The scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you never to begin a principle, for a principle must always be based on observation and never the other way around. One should never begin by saying that the stars are made of chicken soup, because there is a very good chance that, once we learn how to study the stars, we will most likely discover that chicken soup is nowhere to be found. The secular philosophers are very much more in tune with the scientific method—observe, hypothesis, theorize, observe, re-theorize. That is all well and good, but only until one realizes the strange truth that the presumptuous principles of the Christian faith have for thousands of years offered a perfect description of man, while the philosophies of men seem to come and go on every changing breeze of fad and folly.

Christians are also blessed with a perfect philosophical text. Secular philosophers have wasted countless volumes in defining the abstract principles of humanity, decipherable only to those who have learned the language, while the Bible stands alone as the most complete description of man ever assembled. Alone among ancient literature, the Christian scriptures offer man in his most primal, vulnerable state, as a sinner desperately in need of grace; as a fallen being in desperate search of salvation but unable to procure it for himself. There is no thousand page philosophical tome that comes close to equaling the 42 chapters of Job in explaining hardship, suffering and injustice. There are no expressions of joy, sadness, brokenness, humility, gaiety, loss or victory that can equal the Psalms. There are no modern histories of any race of men that equals the Pentateuch, both in describing the fickleness of man and prescribing a cure. There are no works that are so candid about failure, no depictions of life so honest about difficulty, no religious tract as blunt about its difficulties. The Bible stands alone.

Every human philosophy is built on truth; but it is only ever a partial truth. They are based on observations of man rather than the whole man. The truth of philosophy is always overshadowed by its inadequacy, simply because it tries to make man a rational creature, whose choices can always be explained. It is strange that the philosophers who carry on this tradition, who seem so sure that humanity can be explained, seem to have never stopped and looked at themselves; to observe their own strange decisions and inexplicable actions. A secular philosopher who bothers to look at himself will recognize quickly that he is the best evidence against his own philosophies. Philosophers can wax on and on about the condition of man, but until they recognize that man is best defined by his relationship with God, their words and insights will pass away. They will never stumble upon anything as lasting or insightful as the words of King David: “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”