I Would Make a Terrible God

I recently watched a three-part TV miniseries adapted from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End”. I had read that book as a teenager, but couldn’t really remember what it was about. After watching the miniseries, I decided to pull out my old paperback of the novel (yes, I still have it) and re-read it just to see how closely the miniseries followed it. As it turns out only the main plot line was the same. All the details were quite different.

For those of you not familiar with this book, the gist of it is that mankind has reached a pinnacle in its evolutionary development. An alien race is sent to Earth to oversee its final stages. These aliens are called Overlords by humans. The Overlords are godlike in that they can monitor essentially all human activity on Earth and stop any major nefarious activities before they happen. In short order, bad people gave up even attempting to execute their evil plots as they knew they would be thwarted by the Overlords. Peace begins to reign over the world.

I found myself kind of liking these Overlords. In fact, I realized that if I were God, I would probably do something very similar to what they do in the novel. I would use my omniscient and omnipotent powers to keep an eye on all activity on Earth. If I saw a 35-year-old man attempting to rape a 10-year-old child, I would put a stop to it. I might freeze the man in carbonite like Han Solo, or I might just castrate him. Or, given that I would know well in advance what he was going to do, I might just make sure he never exists. In other words, I’d be a terrible God.

Some of you might be thinking, “So, what’s so bad about doing that? I don’t want to see that young child raped either.” Well, it apparently has something to do with free will. I hear a lot of people say that God is good in that he gives humanity free will. We can use that free will to do good or to do evil. God is gracious in allowing us the freedom to choose our own course in life, even if that course leads to other people’s free will being denied. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t be so gracious. It would be too troublesome to me to be that gracious. I would not be able to just sit by and let one human decimate another, especially since it would only take an infinitesimal amount of my attention and power to put a stop to these things. I figure that, just like in the novel, if I zap the bad guys enough, the rest of them will get the message and quit even trying to do evil.

Here’s the way I would look at it. I want all people to have free will…to a point. But if one human being is trying to take away other human beings’ free will by using direct force on them, I would feel compelled to put a halt to the perpetrator’s free will in order to protect the free will of the victim. I would much rather keep the good person’s free will intact than the bad person’s. That’s just the way I roll. Not very God-like I know, but to paraphrase the old Sinatra song, “I’d do it MY WAY!”

Now, don’t get me wrong, bad things could still happen to a person in my world. Accidents could still happen, for instance. I wouldn’t want people to become cocky in their decision making knowing that I would always bail them out. Also, indirect bad things could still happen to people as the result of the actions of others. For example, suppose a longtime business owner suddenly found himself losing business because a new competitor came to town. If that new competitor drives the old business out of business because they offer better products, prices, and services, then I would not put a stop to that. That’s one person using his free will to compete honestly against another person using his free will in a sea of customers using their free will to decide which business to do business with. All very kosher, even if the old business fails. However, if a new businessman came to town and tried to beat his competition by burning his store down, that I would stop.

So, as you can easily see, I would make a terrible God. I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself from interfering with the evil decisions of my creation.

But, wait a minute! Where does the definition of good and evil come from? Who gets to define these terms? Well, according to most folks I talk to, that would be God. So, if I was God, then I could just declare my way of doing things to be good.

Wow! I’m now beginning to feel better about myself. I guess I wouldn’t be that bad a God after all, especially since I would get to make the rules.

First Contact – Part 28 – Christian Music

Does God change? According to the Bible, he does not. But also according to the Bible, he does. That is the confusing nature of the Holy Writ. Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” This seems to imply that while we humans change our minds on things, God by his very nature does not. Yet, throughout the Bible we see God change his mind. Some might say that the Numbers verse is only talking about crucial matters, not trivial things. Okay, but what about changing his mind about sin itself? Wouldn’t it seem reasonable that God would be consistent about matters of good and evil?

Let’s look at a few examples. Keeping the Sabbath was extremely important to God in the Old Testament. It was so important to him that he made breaking it punishable by death. But today believers don’t pay it any mind. They work and play on the Sabbath without concern of being put to death. And not only that, many Christians have started calling Sunday the Sabbath. But the Bible never does that. The Sabbath was always Saturday. Sunday was called the first day of the week. Did God change his mind about the importance of the Sabbath, or did people make that change?

The Bible is pretty consistent in its lack of condemnation of slavery. This institution was simply accepted as a reality. Christian support of slavery was common as late as the mid-1800’s. Of course there were some Christians who found it abhorrent regardless of the lack of condemnation in their Scriptures. Today, slavery is pretty much universally condemned by the Church. Did God change his mind about slavery, or did people make that change?

In the Old Testament, adultery was so evil to God that he called for the execution of its participants. But in the New Testament we see that Jesus thought that only people who were without sin should cast those execution stones. Does anyone think that the people God told to execute adulterers in the Old Testament were sinless? So, did God change his mind about how to punish adulterers, or did people make that change?

I mentioned in a previous post that most Churches of Christ believe it is sinful to use musical instruments in worship to God. Yet in the Old Testament we read of people praising God with musical instruments. Did God change his mind about his followers using instruments in praise to him, or did people make that change? I’m sure that all those Christians in churches that do use musical instruments would answer the latter and point out it is just a select few who made that change.

When I was growing up, the predominant form of Christian music I listened to was country, bluegrass, and quartet music. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but today I find it interesting how secular country music and religious country music were all wrapped up together in a bundle. It was not unusual to watch a country music show on TV and hear a song about murdering someone and throwing them off a bridge and then a few minutes later, during the gospel segment of the program, hear a song about the love of Jesus and his coming to take his saints home. I don’t recall ever seeing a secular rock or pop show that had a gospel segment associated with it.

In the late 1960’s, but mostly throughout the 1970’s, something wonderful began to happen. Or rather something evil began to happen. It depended on who you were. Contemporary Christian music came on the scene. I first heard this style of music after I graduated from college and began my career. I had become friends with a fellow named Rod who worked at the store where I bought my stereo system. It turned out he lived in a house just a couple of blocks away from my apartment. He began inviting me to parties he and his roommate would have. Rod’s roommate was a fan of some of the Contemporary Christian music of that era and used to play it on Rod’s $5000 stereo system. Talk about cranking it up loud. That system could handle the sound of a jet engine without distortion. There was one group he listened to that really caught my attention: The 2nd Chapter of Acts. I was enthralled by the pop rock-ish sound of their music; especially given it was “Christian” music. On one album a young guitarist by the name of Phil Keaggy played and sang. He was incredible. I later learned that he started as a guitarist in the secular world, but became a Christian, prompting him to change genres. In fact, he was slated by some to be the next Jimi Hendrix, but that all changed with his conversion. Well, unless you want to consider him a Christian Jimi Hendrix.

Contemporary Christian music began to catch on in a number of Christian circles; but not in others. I heard a number of preachers on TV and the radio condemning this new style of music. They considered the style and sound of the music to be of the devil, and no amount of Christian lyrics accompanying it could make it acceptable to God. They were warning young people to stay clear of the music and called on parents to forbid their children listening to it lest they lose their souls. However, over time, many of those condemning preachers began to embrace the music as a tool to reach young people for Christ. Once again the Sabbath had lost its importance, slavery had become evil, and adultery was no longer punishable by death. In other words, believers had changed their thinking about what God wants and had reinterpreted Scripture to match.

The point of all this is that Deanna Troi was right in Star Trek: The Next Generation when she said, “That's the problem with believing in a supreme being: trying to determine what he wants.” Throughout history there have been people of faith that sincerely believed they knew what God wanted. So much so they were willing to die for that belief or kill for it. Oftentimes a new generation would come along that realized their ancestors had been wrong about those beliefs. Or could it be that the ancestors were right and the new generation had been led astray by the devil? That’s the conundrum. Even so, sometimes it doesn’t even take a new generation to realize the error. People often come to realize that they themselves had been wrong about certain issues and change their minds accordingly, just as some of the preachers who had originally condemned Contemporary Christian music did.

Despite its shaky roots, Contemporary Christian music has become mainstream. Many radio stations across the country specialize in playing this genre. I became a great fan of artists such as Amy Grant, Twila Paris, Newsboys, Stryper, Steven Curtis Chapman, Michael W. Smith, Petra, and many more. I continued to be a fan even after I changed my beliefs about the Bible. Let’s pray they are not of the devil.

First Contact – Part 27 – Good and Evil

Growing up I was fortunate to have had a loving father and mother. As a very young child I was sheltered from the complexities of the world. Therefore, my first exposure to Evil was when watching television. One of Mom’s, Dad’s, and my favorite TV shows was “The Rifleman”. This was about a single rifle-slinging dad (Chuck Conners as Lucas McCain) raising his son (Johnny Crawford as Mark McCain) while ranching in New Mexico during the latter half of the 19^th century. Watching “The Rifleman” was a special family occasion each week. Mom would pop popcorn beforehand, and we would eat it while engaged in the show. Sometimes after finishing my popcorn, I would sit on the floor and let my mom or dad comb my hair. This always felt really good for some reason. I can’t enjoy anyone doing this to me anymore because a comb doesn’t work well on a bald head.

In the show, Lucas was presented as having a high moral code and always exhibiting it to his son Mark. Most episodes involved an entanglement with shady characters if not downright outlaw vermin. There was one particular episode where the bad guys were really getting the upper hand on Lucas. I went ballistic, blessing out (in mild child language) the bad guys and wishing for Lucas to turn the tables on them. My mom and dad had to calm me down and remind me that what I was seeing wasn’t really happening; it was simply a staged TV show. I already knew that, of course, but the acting was so convincing I forgot it temporarily.

What was interesting about my interaction with “The Rifleman” was that I just intuitively knew that what the outlaws were doing was wrong and in need of correcting. I don’t think my parents told me I should be filled with righteous indignation over what they were doing. I just knew it. But of course “The Rifleman” was a work of fiction, and the authors could write the script in such a way as to clearly delineate the good guys from the bad.

Finding out that there were bad people in the world willing to bring harm to others for their own personal gain was devastating to me. I just couldn’t understand how anyone could bring themselves to harm others. It just simply didn’t make sense to me. But then I grew up.

As I have aged I have come to understand more about Good and Evil. And what I have come to understand is that oftentimes it is very difficult to distinguish between the two. This is because what is Good and what is Evil is totally dependent on each person’s individual viewpoint. Let me give you an example.

Back in the 1700’s, the American colonies were under the reign of the King of England. However, given the distance and the fact that the colonies were being taxed without having proper representation in Parliament, a number of colonists started pushing for independence. As tensions escalated on both sides, the situation eventually led to the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the fighting of the Revolutionary War. A lot of killing took place by both sides. Who was Good and who was Evil? Today we Americans tend to think of the revolutionaries as the Good and Righteous ones as they were fighting for their God given unalienable rights that the Brits were denying them. But the Brits believed that the King had the God given authority to rule his kingdom, and anyone who defied this authority was opposing God himself.

A similar thing can be seen in the modern day Arab / Israeli conflict, which now involves many different countries. The blame game can go very deep with one side saying they did so-and-so because the other side did thus-and-such. Then the other side blames their actions on previous actions of the former side. The blame continues to go further into the past until time blurs the lines between Good and Evil. Many years ago I read a book by President Jimmy Carter entitled “The Blood of Abraham”. I don’t remember much of what he said, but I do remember that he clearly showed how difficult the issue is given the extensive history of conflict. It kind of reminds me of the episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” entitled “A Feud is a Feud”. In this show, Andy comes up against two families that have been feuding for so long they couldn’t even remember what started the whole thing. Sometimes it seems that we just have to put the past in the past and negotiate a peace without regard to who did what in the past. I know this is easier said than done, but if both sides want peace it needs to happen. If only we had the equivalent of an Andy Taylor that could resolve the age old conflict as easily as he did in the TV show.

However, sometimes one or both sides don’t want peace. That’s the rub. This can especially be true if one or both sides believe that their opposition to their enemies is God ordained. There are apparently many people in the world that think that the God they believe in is inherently Good, regardless of what he does. This means that anything they believe God is telling them to do is also Good, regardless of how heinous it appears to outsiders. You see this in the Old Testament. God supposedly told Moses to lead his people into nations unprovoked and kill everyone, including the women and children and animals. These actions would be considered Evil if a nation did them of their own accord. Yet somehow if we are convinced that God was behind the actions, they suddenly become Good. The problem with this attitude is that it leaves Good people open to becoming Evil should a tyrant or dictator be able to convince them that the reprobate orders he is giving them are authorized by God himself.

I have been watching some documentaries about Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and his decline to destruction. It is said that Hitler believed his actions to be approved by God. After watching these documentaries I can certainly see why. Hitler was nearly killed by a mustard gas attack in World War I. Hitler was confronted by an Englishman who had him in his rifle sights, but didn’t feel right about killing a wounded unarmed enemy, so let him go. Upon becoming dictator, his own countrymen attempted to assassinate him several times, but fate didn’t allow it. I can easily see how he could come to think of himself as being invincible and protected by God, thus adding fuel to his mission. Yet the world now almost universally views Hitler as being the epitome of Evil. He’s the go-to person to compare someone else to when we want to decimate that person’s character. Yet, if indeed Hitler was taking his marching orders from God, he was really a Good and Righteous person. So, if everything God does is Good, the question becomes, “How do we know when a person is acting according to God’s will?” We certainly don’t want to cut short a God-ordained killing spree and thus find ourselves opposing God, would we?

I contend that any given action in a given situation is either Good or Evil or neutral or somewhere in between regardless of who perpetrates it, even God. If that is not true, then how can we with any certainty be able to condemn a person who performs a heinous act and then claims that he was only following the will of God?

Some people are very good at obfuscation. They can say one thing while secretly doing another. Hitler and his propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, were extremely good at this, presenting an appealing image of the future Fuehrer while planning something more sinister. Many of the politicians in the US are good at obfuscation also. They speak one way to one group and another way to another group, then perhaps do neither when it’s time to vote. Can you tell I am cynical?

So, how does one properly determine what Good and Evil are? Who decides? What is appropriate for our government to do about it? To my way of thinking, the only thing the government should have the power to do is prevent or punish Evil, not force us to do Good. So, what is Evil? This is a difficult question since it is highly dependent on circumstances, but I can answer generally. Basically, Evil should be considered to be using unprovoked force against other people. Everyone should be free to live their own lives without interference from others except in the case where that person wants to use his freedom to limit yours. In other words, your freedom to move your fist ends at my face. Obviously, there are more than 50 shades of grey when it comes to this general rule, but that is why we have courts. Facts are gathered and a reasoned conclusion should be reached about a person’s guilt or innocence.

Hey, it’s not a perfect system, but neither are we perfect people.

God or Money?

I was listening to Dr. Jimmy Jackson, senior pastor of Whitesburg Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama, on TV this past Sunday morning. The topic of his sermon was finding financial freedom. He discussed what people normally consider to be financial freedom, which is being totally free of debt and having enough money to live on for the rest of our lives without having to work. He said that this goal was fine, but the financial freedom he was going to talk about was the only true financial freedom, and that was depending upon God for our needs rather than ourselves, other people, or our finances. He quoted from Matthew 6 where Jesus says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."

At one point in Dr. Jackson's sermon he said that if we put our trust in money, it will disappoint us, as it did in the recent financial crisis. However, if we put our trust in God, he will not disappoint. I understood the point he was trying to make, but I had to take exception with it. Just think a bit about it. Many people place their trust in God for many things. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn't. For instance, a person places his trust in God to protect his children during those times when the parent cannot. Yet, the child ends up severely injured or dead. A farmer trusts God to protect his crops by not bringing severe weather, but the freeze comes and the farmer's crops are decimated. There are many, many ways in which people trust God, only to be disappointed. Some of these people become disillusioned, while others take the attitude that God knows what he is doing, and the bad things that have occurred happened for a reason. Now think with me further. If people took the latter attitude with money, they would find that they could trust in money just as much as God. For example, if a person trusts that his money will see him through his old age, but suddenly all is lost due to a severe economic downturn, the person could just say that it all happened for the best. His money has not let him down after all. So, the success or failure of the object of our trust is more in the eye of the beholder than in the object itself. If we take the attitude that things should always work out as we want if we trust in something or someone, then we can become bitter with that object should things so sour. However, if we take the attitude that the object of our faith can do no wrong, then regardless of what happens, we will consider the object blameless. This can apply to Yahweh, Buddha, Zoroaster, Zeus, money, or a totem pole.

Some of you might say that God cannot be compared with money since God is eternal while money is temporal. That is true, and that is exactly the point that Jesus makes in Matthew 6. Many people trust in God for eternal things, but I know of no one that trusts in money for eternal things. So, if we are to make a valid comparison between God and money, we must talk about temporal matters only. Who or what can be trusted the most with temporal matters: God or money. Well, there have been many people who have placed their trust in God for their temporal lives here on Earth only to be severely disappointed. Other have been extremely satified with God's provision. On the other hand, many people have placed their trust in money and finances for their temporal well-being and have been greatly disallusioned. There really are things that money cannot buy. However, others have been very satisfied, being able to live into old age with all their needs, and many wants, met, while perhaps being able to leave much of their wealth to children and charities.

So, it appears that there really is no person, thing, or deity that we can place our temporal trust in 100% and never be disappointed. Unless of course, you are one lucky dude.

I have spoken of money in this post as if it is some sort of conscious entity that can decide whether to benefit our lives or destroy them. Of course, it is no such thing. Money is simply a tool that we use to make it easy to exchange our labor for the labor of others. So, when money blesses us, that typically means that we have managed our money well and no one has been able to take it from us. When money fails us, it typically means that we have mismanaged our money or others have either stolen it or set in play the financial conditions that led to its devaluing. In the end, it is normally conscious entities, such as ourselves and others, that ultimately determine how well money works for us. However, there are also those chance circumstances, whether fortunate or unfortunate, that can make or break us.

Whenever I think about money and it's nature, I think of Francisco d'Anconia's speech about money in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged". It lays out how money arises and what its purpose is. If you would like to read this speech for yourself, it is available online at http://www.usabig.com/autonomist/moneyspeech.html . While reading it, please keep in mind that Ms. Rand uses the common misquote of 1 Timothy 6:10A. She uses the phrase "money is the root of all evil" rather than the correct "love of money is a root of all kinds of evil". I am not sure if Ms. Rand was mistaken in her knowledge of what the Bible says or if she used the misquote because so many people have a misconception about what the Bible actually says.

ENJOY!