Showing posts with label Theology. Show all posts

For the last several weeks, my church group has been having some very raucous discussions Sunday mornings. Our teachers have started bluntly stating what the bible says, calling people out on contrary beliefs, and allowing discussion over their teachings. Whether the discussion is over evolution vs. creationism, or how to reconcile, if at all, biblical teaching with worldly teaching, or whether wives should submit to their husbands (1 Peter 3), we are no longer allowed to ignore the differences between the Word of God and the teachings of man.

The resulting arguments have destroyed the typical tranquility of Sunday mornings.

I don't wish to get into the arguments themselves. I'm sure they'll be beaten to death in the comments anyways. Instead, I want to look at the effect even asking the question has had on the Christians in the class. The question, generally stated, is: if the bible says this, and the world says something else, which do you believe? Since we are in a church, and everyone claims to be a Christian, everyone wants to answer: the bible. But then caveats and exceptions and accommodations are thrown in, and someone says those aren't in the bible and now you sound like the world, and so the argument goes.

The reactions to having an argument in church have been most interesting to me. The men have generally been enjoying themselves. We like having the debate. it has been far more entertaining than the typical lecture, we are learning new things, and we are being called to be actual Christians rather than just churchgoers.

However, many of the women, and a few of the men, have not been pleased with the new class. The peace and unity of a normal church class have been shattered by the back and forth nature of the debate and by the passion with which people hold their beliefs. Everyone feeling happy and getting along is important to them, and that people have gotten upset over the various subjects makes them upset.

And of course some people don't like being told they aren't following the bible. They want to think they are basically good people, but it's hard to rationalize that when you know you are doing wrong. So they argue that they are doing right and that the bible doesn't really disagree with them.

This highlights several problems withe the church, both the general church within America and my own church that I attend on a regular basis. The first problem I see is that many people are using the church as feel-good therapy. It's fluffy bunny Jesus. It's a touch, feely, group hug session. But if one wants everyone to get along or feel good about themselves, what does one do about Christians who still sin? What does one do when the bible calls for him to do something hard, or challenges his existing beliefs?

Saying that it's OK because your sins are forgiven is true, and it is a great comfort for we can never eliminate sin from our lives. But if you stop there rather than also calling for a new behavior, you have failed. What I am seeing is that in the church's effort to alleviate guilt, it has also eliminated conviction. If I do not feel bad about the bad things I have done, why should I stop doing them? Guilt is uncomfortable, but that discomfort drives me, or at least should drive me, to change myself so that I am no longer actually guilty.

But that's the hard way to eliminate guilt. It is much easier to say that one's sins don't matter because Jesus loves you no matter what and that you shouldn't feel bad just because you messed up. And now the church tolerates sin, for to tell a person to change is to imply that he is wrong, that he is guilty of something. To live in harmony and avoid conflict, we tolerate each other's bad behavior rather than calling each other out and risking a confrontation.

In the same manner, the church lets slide certain commands that challenge deeply held worldly beliefs. Most of the women in my class do not want to submit to their future husbands (we're a singles class). And half the men aren't going to ask it of them. Considering our feminist culture, I'm not surprised that Christians do not want to follow this particular biblical command. The church doesn't bring it up much, since it offends so many women. But a biblical command it remains, and when it does come up people go through serious mental gymnastics to rationalize why it doesn't apply anymore, or only applies in specific case, or otherwise try to get out of following it while still being able to claim that they are following God's commands.

I hope our class continues facing these controversial issues. The church weakens itself when it concedes it's teachings to the world or doesn't call Christians to actually behave like Christ.

It has helped me greatly to have these issues pointed out to me. Studying God's word, knowing what it actually says, synthesizing it into a cohesive, Christian philosophy, learning the opposing philosophies and views, learning apologetics, these have all helped me to realize where I had unconsciously absorbed the world rather than God. But while the whole 'learn everything' approach works well for highly logical, independent minded people, I suspect that the emotional and consensus based people need a strong leader or mentor to keep them straight.

That is really where the church has failed. It needs to stand for something rather than appease the masses.

Now that the House has passed the health care bill, though it still needs Obama's signature to become law, it seems like the time to review what to do about it. We are fairly far down the road to serfdom, one we have been walking for over a century. It's not like state control of our lives is a new thing. People are not going to suddenly get better because the government runs everything (as opposed to just regulating it...), nor are they going to magically get sick and die. For most of us, the changes will come slowly and without notice. So option number one is:

Do Nothing
Bureaucracy being as ineffective as it is, it will take time to implement any of the legislation, accompanying regulations, agencies, and enforcement. It might be years before everyone finally figures out what it all means and how to comply with it, and it will happen slowly, giving people time to adjust. That's not intentional, but bureaucracy retards progress, and people are used to bureaucracies doing stupid things anyways, so a new set of random regulations and procedures aren't going to phase anybody.

Most of us will simply accept things as they are, and keep our heads down, hoping that we never become the target of the government's ire. It's a very practical mentality. The government is extremely powerful and not required to play by its own rules. Challenging it on your own is a loosing strategy. Most people will assume it's not that bad, and hope and wait for sanity and common sense to return to D.C.

Only we've been slowly shedding our freedoms for several generations now. Something most people haven't really noticed because we've been gaining material wealth much faster. But we've reached the point where our material wealth is going to stop growing and start shrinking. And then we'll realize we have neither the freedom nor the power to go create all that wealth. All the while some faceless government bureaucracy adds more and more regulations and laws on how we work, and play, and build, and consume. So we could always:

Switch Sides
The best place to be in a statist regime is high up in the government apparatus. The laws don't apply, you get more of the wealth, such people will generally see no change at all in their lives due to the all consuming power of the state. The point of taking over everything is reap the benefits of controlling everything.

In America at least, media elites also fall in this category, being more an informal branch of government than an independent organization (the Department of Propaganda, to be specific).

Of course, for us on the right, we wouldn't be able to maintain our principles. Or reason. Or common sense. So if we don't want to sell our souls, we could:

Fight
Open rebellion is an option. One that our founding fathers ultimately picked against British (and for much less cause). I've not heard anybody seriously advocate revolt, but at this point, I think an armed revolt that completely replaces our current government is the only way to regain our liberties. I wonder how much trouble I'll get in for saying that?

The problem with this approach is that if you loose, you die. And you cause all kinds of hell for everybody else on your way out. And give the government a solid excuse for taking away more of our freedoms.

A little insurrection looses. To beat something as powerful as the US government, you'd need a sizable portion of the population willing to fight and die for their freedom. More and better people than those willing to fight and kill to maintain the current regime. Nothing I've heard from the Tea Parties or the right wing blogosphere indicates that people are willing to fight and die for their beliefs. They're still trying to work within the system, all nice and legal. I've not even heard any serious calls for civil disobedience.

So if fighting is not an option, that leaves:

Flight
Our last option is simply to run away. Leave America and it's state run nightmare and go...somewhere. The list of places better than America is really short. I haven't put any entries on the list yet.

America's influence spreads across the world, but that influence is weakening, and it will get weaker, as socialism slowly eats up all our resources. So there should be places out there that don't have to follow America's lead.

Ideally, such a place would be strong and growing in Christianity. Christian morals and values are the foundation of liberty. From Christianity we get such ideals as hard work, taking responsibility for yourself, honesty, generosity.

Such a country should have the resources and industry to provide for it's people, to be self sufficient in the event of a global economic collapse. Basically have everything going for it that America had going for it for most of its history. Such a country may exist, but I don't know where it is, which makes it difficult to run away to it.

None of these options are very good. Perhaps instead of asking 'what should I do,' I should be asking a different question:

Why
Why do I need freedom? Not in the abstract sense, not in the 'what's best for society' sense. In the very personal sense, why do I need freedom? And I realize that I need freedom so I can choose to follow God. Or not. Everything hinges on that choice. I choose to follow God, and His son, Jesus. That is not a choice anybody can make for me, and it is not a choice anybody can prevent me from making. At best, they can hide that the choice needs to be made.

But having already made my decision, having already declared my faith in the LORD, what can any power on earth do? Persecute me? Imprison me? Kill me? Such things are hard to stand, but they are nothing compared to eternal life with the Father.

But now I am truly free. It does not matter if our government takes over every aspect of our lives. It does not matter if I am a citizen or a serf. I have the freedom to follow God, to try and live a righteous life. I can be honest, though it cost me. I can be generous, though I have nothing. I can love, though I am hated for it. What freedom I need no force can take away. The real question is will I exercise that freedom, even unto death, or will I cower and submit, and take the easy way out?

I do not need to flee what my country is becoming. I do not need to rebel against the government. I do not need to give in to progressivism. I need to be the best man I can be. That is an option that is infinitely more difficult than any of the others. But if I can do that, then I have done all I can to fight for freedom.

There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, is is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Romans 3:10-11, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Ephesians 2:8-10

Moldbug continues his long running, oft interrupted series on the actual power structure of the United States, and what might be done about. Or at least what might be a better alternative.

For those who do not want to read the whole thing, allow me to give a brief summary. Power in the US is wielded by a distributed, undirected movement (the Left) whose goal is to have as much power as possible, for as many people as possible. A bureaucracy is well suited for this, since it means more people are involved in any given task, and thus, more people wielding power. Actual productivity is not important, only how many decisions you can affect.

At the top of this mess is academia, who, under the cover of Science, develop public policy. And since it's from Science and not men, these professors are not responsible if things go awry. This public policy is then sold to the masses by the media. Public opinion has now been formed. Which is what various politicians and Supreme Court justices look to in making their decisions. Said decisions actually being implemented by the largest and most byzantine civil service every created by man. Populated to the man (and woman, they're all PC) by people who have been raised to believe that science and democratic consensus are the only ways to make a decision. Physics created the atom bomb, therefore Women's Studies can't be wrong.

OK, so that's a brief and incomplete description of the problem. But recently, Moldbug began looking at what to do about it. Some weeks ago he posted his first step in replacing the US government, where he includes anyone who tries to influence policy as a part of the government (such as Universities). Simply put, don't resist the government. Accept that the Left controls everything. They have all the power.

This is very difficult for most people to accept (and by most people I mean something closer to all of them). Moldbug's reasoning is that without an opposition, the movement will simply weaken, lose energy, grow apathetic. I see two basic problems with this. It doesn't strike me as too hard to simply create an opposition 1984 style. The Left does this some already, demonizing people (remember, there are 5 A's in raaaaacist) with little regard to actual truth. It's not much of a step to continue using the caricature without finding an actual person.

The second problem is with human nature. There will always be someone that will not submit, and that is enough to fuel the Left.

But there is a side to this that Moldbug has not considered. God has commanded us to submit to authority. In 1 Peter 2:13-15:

Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among me: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to the governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.

We are, by God's own command, to submit to earthly authorities, even ones that are unjust or cruel. Christ Himself submitted to Roman and Jewish authorities, even though that got Him executed on trumped up charges. But there are none who can claim that Christ didn't cause a ruckus in the establishment. There is quite a difference between submitting to authority, and admitting that the authority is correct.

As Christians, we should obey our leaders in Washington and all the laws that they pass. And we should do it cheerfully and courteously, though it erodes our freedom to nothing. There must be a marked and obvious difference between Christians and everybody else. Having a Christ-like attitude combined with a firm refusal to worship the State instead of God should be all the protest we need to make. Remember that the early church did not try to conquer Rome, but rather preached the gospel.

I have returned from the Great Debate and I am rather disappointed in both sides. The first part of the debate mostly consisted of D'Souza and Hitchens making assertions. They rarely addressed anything brought up by their opponent, and provided little, if any, reasoning or evidence for their beliefs. In this regard, I think D'Souza did slightly better than Hitchens, but I could only understand his arguments because I had read his book What's So Great About Christianity. I can only guess at Hitchens line of reason, because it was never stated.

Which puts my predictions for the debate way off. Hitchens made no personal attacks, and only a few sarcastic remarks, some of them directed at the moderator. Hitchens was definitely the more entertaining of the debaters. I do, however, give the money quote of the debate to D'Souza. Towards the end of the debate, each person was allowed to ask their opponent one question. Hitchens asked if D'Souza would rather Hitchens stay an atheist, or convert to some non-Christian religion, like Islam. S'Souza's reply: "It's much safer to debate you as an atheist than a Muslim."

I thought there were a number of fallacies and historical in Hitchens assertions, but D'Souza never dug into them. And D'Souza's arguments were not as strong as they could have been. He could have used some additional evidence and reasoning.

The last part of the debate was a little more lively. The moderator took a few questions from the audience, and Hitchens or D'Souza gave a short answer, and then the other gave a short rebuttal, and they did a bit of back and forth until the moderator cut them off. This is where Hitchens made some of his more egregious claims (the Nazis were a Christian group, the Communist founded a state church based off Eastern Orthodoxy to worship Stalin) that just don't stand up to the historical test. I'm not going to analyze or refute Hitchens' arguments until I've had a chance to read God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, since I really don't know more about Hitchens' position except that he believes every evil in the world is caused by religion and he thinks that religion is immoral because of it. So I want to get his take on that where he has a chance to explain in detail his beliefs.

It was an interesting debate, but I didn't really learn anything from it. I'd heard most of the arguments from both sides before, and without much explanation for their assertions, the ones that were new didn't mean much to me. It was more to see how the two men debated than to really learn anything. It looks like formal debates are terrible forums for either informing or persuading.

This Thursday I am going to the Great Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza. For those who do not know, D'Souza is a Christian apologist and Hitchens is his atheist counter-part. The debate is billed as asking whether religion (read: Christianity) has been good or bad for civilization. It has generated a great deal of interest here in Orlando, with over four thousand people registering to attend, many times more people than the organizers originally expected.

I am most interested in how Christopher Hitchens will present his arguments. I am already quite familiar with the Christian side of this debate, having read D'Souza's book What's So Great About Christianity and then teaching it to a small home group. And in another bible study, we have gone through I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. And as a part of that study we watched the debate between Chistopher Hitchens and Frank Turek.

So after all that study, I am convinced of both the historical accuracy and truth of the New Testament as well as the social benefits of Christianity on civilization. Hitchens, however, believes that religion in general and Christianity in particular has been a destructive evil and civilization is well to be rid of it. So I am curious to know what evidence Hitchens has and what reasoning he will use to show the evilness of Christianity.

I am afraid he was not terribly convincing in the Turek debate, seeming to rely on general accusations and insults, avoiding or ignoring any issues raised by his opponent, and otherwise not actually answering the question of the debate. I rather expect him to use the same tactic, but it would be nice to see the pattern established. It might be time to obtain a copy of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and see if he is any more reasoned when he has time to put his thoughts in order.

Meanwhile, I expect D'Souza to show up with statistics, historically verified facts, and common sense and debate straight from his book, which addresses debate's question directly. I don't expect Hitchens to be impressed with D'Souza's arguments, but I would like to see if he actually refutes them or if he dismisses them with a snide comment and moves on. I also want to see how D'Souza approaches Hitchens. Turek seemed to be somewhat out of sorts trying to debate someone who wasn't actually debating anything and I want to see how D'Souza handles that.

Post debate analysis to follow this weekend.

The topic we were discussing in men's Bible study the other day was moral law. One of the sticking points was whether moral law comes from an outside source, or whether it is made up by society. Obviously, Christians believe that moral law comes from an outside source; God. Whereas evolutionists and many other scholars believe that moral law is made up by society.

Where Calvinball comes in is with an analogy that was used to describe moral law. In almost all games, the rules are made up by an outside source. The players don't make up the rules as they go. Nor do they even agree on the rules before the game starts. The rules exist from beforehand, whether in basketball or Monopoly, and the players are expected to follow them. This is our outside source. The rules of play are created by some external entity and anyone who wants to play the game follows those rules.

In Calvinball, however, the players make up rules as they go. Rules are invented and disbanded at whim. This is the evolutionary theory, where people make up rules to progress themselves, and eventually eliminate them when they are no longer useful.

Both approaches to games are possible. You and your buddies can make up your own rules and have a great time. Or you can play an existing game and have a great time. But in real life, the question is whether moral law is absolute or relative. For it to be absolute, it must come from an outside source. And by outside, I mean outside of humanity. Any objective standard is external to the thing being measured.

With relative moral law, we can invent and modify right and wrong however it suits us. But in a dispute, whose right and wrong do we use? Whoever has the bigger stick. If right and wrong are social constructs, then whoever has the power to enforce the standard gets to set the standard. But if the standard changes, it's not really standard.

Which is shiny and all, but it doesn't really tell us which of these theories is correct. Either we're all playing basketball, even if we don't know the rules and are inclined to cheat, or we are playing Calvinball, and only use rules we like.

Maybe I should go read some more Calvin & Hobbes and see what other theology I can discover.

I am reading through Dinesh D'Souza's book What's so Great About Christianity. In part 5 of his book, he talks about the limits of reason and senses and empirical evidence, and Pascal's Wager. I want to go a little deeper into Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager begins as follows: either God exists, or God does not exist. These are the only two logical possibilities. Likewise, we as humans can only make two choices, to believe God exists, or to believe God does not exist. Since it is impossible to know with absolute certainty whether or not God exists, Pascal analyzes the risks and rewards associated with each choice in light of each possible truth, and comes to the conclusion that it is reasonable to believe in God.

Here's how it goes. If God does not exist, and choose not to believe in God, then I can do whatever I want on this earth, and the afterlife does not matter, because there is no afterlife. There are no eternal consequences to our actions or beliefs. Therefore, I can do whatever I want on this earth that pleases me. But if God does not exist and I choose to believe in God, then I make sacrifices to live a good life, but I get no eternal rewards. Therefore I have not done whatever pleases me, and all for nothing. Though it should be noted that many people are still satisfied with this life.

If God exists, and I choose to believe in God, then I make sacrifices to live a good life, and in return I go to heaven in the afterlife where I receive rewards from God for all eternity. But if God exists and I choose to not believe in God, then I do whatever I want on this earth that pleases me, and in return, God sends me to hell for eternal punishment.

This being the case, Pascal states that it is better to believe in God, because if you are wrong, you have not done everything you wanted, but probably still lived a satisfying life, but if you are right, you are given eternal rewards. The rewards are great and the risk is low. Contrast that to not believing in God, where if you may do as you please, but if you are wrong, you are eternally punished. The reward is low and the risk is high. Therefore a reasonable person should choose to believe in God.

But now I want to look at whether the wager is even valid or not. For the wager to be valid, two conditions must be met:

1. First, we must not be able to know whether or not God exists. For if we know which is true, then there is no need to make the wager in the first place. We simply choose to believe the truth.
2. Second, we have to have made an accurate assessment of the risks and rewards. If believing in God leads to atrocities, then the risk of believing in God and being wrong is much higher than if believing in God leads to good behavior. Similarly, if not believing in God leads to atrocities, then the rewards of being right are not as great as we would assume.

So can we know, with absolute certainty, whether God exists or not? According to Kant and Hume, the answer is no, since we cannot know anything with absolute certainty.

Kant's position was that since we can only perceive the world through our human senses, we cannot know everything there is to know. What we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell is only a portion of the universe. There are things beyond our senses. And even the devices we build to see beyond our senses merely translates something into something else we can perceive. Because of this limitation, there is no way to verify if what we perceive is true. We have only our senses, and to use the senses to prove the senses is circular. Therefore, everything we know about the world is based on the unproven assumption that our senses are accurate.

Hume had a different take. Hume stated that all our scientific knowledge is based on empirical observation. That is, we repeat something many times and measure how it behaves. The problem with empiricism is that it is not proof. It is evidence, yes, but for it to be proof, you have to observe every single instance of the cause and see the same effect. So while we may be confident that X causes Y, observing X then Y many times with a very high correlation does not mean that there are not cases where X happens and then Y doesn't happen.

So while we may be very confident of God's existence or not, we cannot know with certainty. So the first premise of Pascal's Wager is satisfied.

So now let us look at the risks and rewards. We shall start with the eternal risks and rewards first. If God does not exist, then there are no eternal rewards. Nor are there eternal risks. There is no box on the other side of life we have to fill in in order to make our assessment. There are no positives or negatives. But if God does exist, then the reward is eternity with Him in His heaven. Whether you call it heaven or paradise, you receive what makes you happy and satisfied for all time. (Whether what you receive is what you think makes you happy is another discussion). But the risk is the opposite. Eternal suffering. For some it is living in a pit of flame and despair forever. For others, it is returning to live again on the earth. (This last had more impact before the Europeans created ubiquitous luxuries and living was actually hard). So if God exists, it's eternal bliss or eternal suffering.

But what about the temporal risks and rewards, those that affect us in this life? If God does not exist, then there is no moral truth, no right and wrong. There is no transcendent meaning to our lives. The universe just is, for no particular reason, and we just are, for no other reason than because the universe just is. And that's all we've got and we can do with it as we will.

For those who accept this as truth, they are free of all moral obligations, and can do anything their heart desires. And the only limit on this is what others (such as society) allow them to do. Might makes right, for their are no other external limits on behavior. So the reward is to do whatever you can get away with. But the risk is that someone could come and do whatever to you.

For those who believe that God exists when he does not, they are deluding themselves. They may be content in this life, believing that ultimately everyone will get their just rewards, but won't ever find out that they are wrong, since they just cease to exist upon death. In the meantime, they place limits on their behavior. They do not do everything they want, because sometimes God says it's actually bad for you, and sometimes what they want hurts others, and God doesn't want them to hurt others. This prevents anarchy and armed conflict and generally allows people to get along, so most people, even those who don't believe in God, consider it a good thing. However, in their zealousness, the believer often imposes these limits on the non-believers. The non-believers do not like this, especially in cases where the harm of the behavior is not obvious. This can cause conflict, and would be the downside of believing in a God who does not exist.

Interestingly, the temporal risks and rewards are very similar if God does exist. For those who do not believe in God, they still have no moral limits or meaning to their lives. And they are still in conflict with those who do accept the morality of God and the meaning He gives to life. What changes is that if God exists, He can step in and give blessings to those believe in Him, and withhold them, or even punish, those who do not.

So for assessing risks and rewards of God's existence, they are mostly tied to eternity after death, with the temporal rewards being driven largely by our own choice. So it is still reasonable to believe in God even if we aren't sure, because the rewards in the here and hereafter are greater, while the risks of not believing are higher, both in the here and now and in eternity. So the second premise is satisfied.

I went to the Christmas Eve Candlelight service at my church tonight. Everybody was given a candle when they came into the sanctuary. It's a vast auditorium, filled with over five thousand people. At the end of the service, they turned off all the lights. It is dark. I can barely see the candle in my hand. The people beside me, in front of me, all around me are just dark shapes, sensed more than seen. The rustle of clothes and the quiet stamp of feet mingle with the low strains of Silent Night. Up on the stage, a dozen candles flicker in the darkness, tiny pinpricks of orange light.

There is movement up at the front. Little candles begin to wander, multiply. The pastors and deacons can be dimly seen lighting their candles, and taking them out to the congregation. The little flickering flames grow in number. The unseen ceiling is revealed in the warm glow as the light spreads. I can see my own candle again. The people around me slowly regain their color.

The little flames finally reach me. I light my candle, and then pass it on, lighting others around me. The tiny flame is bright to look at, dancing on the wick. The vast hall, so dark before, is lit up, bright enough to read by. Thousands of little flames flicker amongst the people. As one, we begin singing Silent Night. We raise our little candles high, the flames wavering and flickering on unseen winds.

Five thousand candles. In the deepest darkness, a single candle is a bright and welcome sight. Five thousand together light the room enough to work by. We are the light of the world. In some places, we are single flames shining bright and lonely in the darkness. In others, our many lights push the darkness away. But we are little candles still. Our flickering, wavering flames overcome the darkness around us, but compared to us, our Lord is as the sun, great and mighty, vanquishing all darkness. By His Holy Spirit our little flames shine for all the world to see, a pale little light for those who cannot see the sun.

I have, over the past year, begun developing a philosophy to life. A worldview, if you will, that gives a foundation for knowing how things work and how best to deal with life. I first started thinking about my understanding of the world when my bible study did a series called the Truth Project. Its goal was to explain the Christian philosophy.

What makes this remarkable was that this was the first time I had ever heard of philosophy explained as a holistic foundation from which to approach life. I had gotten the impression in school that philosophy was a pointless exercise in debating and explaining things that nobody in the real world thinks about and has no bearing on one's decisions. The Truth Project showed me what the point of a philosophy is, and why it's worth thinking about.

Namely, that everyone has a philosophy. That is, the set of foundational beliefs that drives a person's decisions. You may not know what those beliefs are, and they may not have an 'ism' attached to them, but somewhere, there is something that makes you choose option A over option B. This is what drives people. It explains why people do the things they do. Something which often takes some serious explaining.

With my philosophical foundation being Christianity, I start off with an assertion that directly contradicts society: people are basically evil. People put themselves first, seeking after their own desires and pleasures, and only secondly, if at all, think of others. However, most Westerners seldom think of fulfilling your desires and pleasures as evil. Didn't Maslow say that self-actualization was the highest form of being? But they never seem to think that most people self-actualize at the expense of others. If your goal is yourself, then what do you care if you have to rape to get sex, or steal to get money?

But of course, those are the exceptions, not the rule, right? If people are really evil, why do we have the idea of progressivism, the idea that people are good and working to make things better? Perhaps somebody should tell Darfur that they are basically good people. But here in America's favorite baseline for everyone in the world, we are raised with Christian morals and values. Which seek to curtail our evil desires. Morals which most people don't have. Americans simply don't think of murder as a form of advancement.

So I behave according to the idea that people are evil and only moral teachings (Christianity does not have a monopoly on these) keep people from being totally depraved. This means I should expect, as moral teachings are more and more removed from society, that Americans will become more selfish and more likely to harm others in seeking their desires, with the level of harm increasing. Which, anecdotally, seems to be the case.

Believing people to be selfish rather than altruistic gives rise to a number of interesting realizations. First, you can't really trust people. Or perhaps I should say you trust people to work in their interest and not yours. So if you want something from someone, be it honesty, goods, or help, you have to make it in their interest to give it to you. Else why should they bother? There are any number of ways to make someone help you, but payment and force seem to be the most popular. So I can take what I want by force, or simply buy it from you.

Force is easy to understand. I get what I want and you get to live. Or you're strong enough yourself to keep me from bothering you. Of course, I could get some buddies to tip things in my favor, splitting the loot, but then, so could you. This ends when one side wipes out the other, or 'buddies' grows into nations and everybody goes bankrupt with a military industrial complex.

Or we can come up with some other method of getting your cooperation, one that doesn't involve wasting time or resources trying to take...your time and resources. Such as payment. I convince you that it is more profitable to give me some of your stuff in exchange for some of my stuff, rather simply taking all your stuff outright. Perhaps at the end of the day, we are both better off with the trade than if we'd devoted time and resources to fighting and taking whatever is left.

But we still have to keep each other honest in our dealings (or at least honest enough). If you have overwhelming force, it's easy to keep me in line, but the idea was to not spend everything on fighting (so you can spend it on yourself, remember). You could stop trading with me and tell other traders I'm too dishonest to trade with. Or you could start trading dishonestly yourself. Of course, I could force you to trade with me, but now we're right back at using force to coerce good behavior. But we have changed the dynamic somewhat. You want to trade, because you know is often times more profitable than conquest. So you need strength of arms to prevent me from taking from you. But you only need enough strength to make it too expensive to be worth invading. As more people figure this out, those who trade will become richer, and stronger, than those who simply fight.

So from the biblical premise that all men are evil, selfish beings, we arrive at not only the foundational logic for capitalism, but also with maintaining a relatively strong fighting force to keep people from taking advantage of each other. This also reveals the fatal flaw of capitalism, that what's good for me is not necessarily good for you, and a strong arbiter is needed to prevent me from forcing deals that only go my way. The use of force, either to coerce good behavior, or for theft and conquest, is a natural outworking of men being evil, and capitalism cannot escape it.

But what of capitalism's big rival, socialism (called welfare in America)? The idea behind socialism is that each person contributes what they can, and each person takes what they need, regardless of how much they put in or how much they need. What you put in the pot is unrelated to what you take out. If people are good, with a natural inclination to share, this would actually work. But if people are evil, they will quickly realize they can simply not produce anything, but still take what they want. This will lead to poverty as production approaches zero, or someone will come in with a big stick and force people to produce. The historical examples of each should be obvious.

I will end with a prediction, since the point of a philosophy is to understand the world enough to make informed decisions. And while it might be many years, perhaps decades, before I'm proven right or wrong, it is worth writing down so that I and others can look back and take note.

As America implements more and more socialist policies, and by this I mean wealth redistribution by which the wealth of those who produce is given to those who do not, the per capita income will go down, and the GDP of America will shrink. Left unchecked, America will come to resemble a third world country, eventually unable to provide even for the basic needs of its people. This will happen quickly enough that people will remember living in the land of prosperity.

This will be stopped in one of two ways; either people realize socialism doesn't work and they go back to capitalism, at which point wealth flows back through America, or America becomes so poor that it can no longer force socialism, and America splits in rebellion and civil war, as each person or group tries to find wealth outside of socialism.

All this, just from believing people are evil.

The other week I was teaching a co-ed bible study. We were going over 1 Peter. We had read the whole thing through several times, and were then stepping through it verse by verse, chapter by chapter. But we ran into trouble when we started going though chapter 3.

3 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, ²when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. ³Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. ⁴Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. ⁵For this is the way holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, ⁶like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

Some of the women in the room did not appreciate being told they had to submit to their husbands. Note that this is a singles bible study and no one in the room actually had a husband yet that they could submit to. But they did not even like the idea. The men's reaction to this passage was along the lines of 'yeah, that's right!' which of course just made the women more offended.

Everyone there was a Christian, so I find it curious that people would disagree with one of God's commands. Not surprising, in fact I rather expected the reaction, but curious nonetheless.

So what is it about submission that so gets women's hackles up?

The root of the problem lies in the difference between how God ordered society and how America has ordered society. Here in America, post the feminist movement, women are considered equals, and often times betters, to men. Women either want to be in charge, or do not want men to be in charge, but in either case, women do not want anyone telling them what to do. It is anathema to our society to place limits on our behaviors. This is as true of men as women, but women have an organized movement to make sure nobody thinks it's acceptable to limit women.

This is in direct contrast to God's plan, which states that the wife submits to the husband, and the husband submits to God. Here, the husband is in charge of the family, responsible for its instruction and behavior. The wife is to assist in this, but follows the husband's lead in how to go about it.

You can see the conflict between the two approaches to family. The two are not reconcilable. There is no middle ground and can be no compromise. There is no half submission and half in charge. You can try running your family like a committee, but ultimately, when a decision has to be made and the husband and wife have two different ideas about it, one prevails and one is discarded. Whoever has the final say is the one running the family. This is not to say that two people can't talk things through, but still, at the end, a decision is made by someone and the other goes along with it.

So there is the reason for our curious response. We have been taught the world is a particular way, or at least should be a particular way. But we find in the bible that God made the world a different way. So Christians who have spent more time learning the world's ways than God's ways become flustered when the two contradict.