I've been in and out of churches all my life and I have yet to run across a class offered in churches concerning Christian apologetics. Why is that? We're required as Christians to be able to give a ready response to the hope that is in us, but so few lay people can. There are all kinds of books on the market concerning this subject and it's been researched and written about for centuries, but when you talk to other Christians about it, they can only give you the conclusions they've been handed. Very few can actually talk about the history and the research done on those conclusions. And I am just as guilty of this as anyone I've talked to about it. Now, there are very well-learned men and women out there who have done the research on their own, but I wish, as I had been growing up, classes in this had been offered. I think it would have really been a help to me to know more about why I believe what I believe. It is only been recently as I tried to ask my teenage son's questions about life, God, the Bible, etc., that I have realized how embarrassingly little I know about how to defend my faith and how ill-prepared I am to answer his questions.
So, this blog will be about my search for that. I don't know where it will take me, but I'm excited about the possibilities. If you want to join in and give your opinion or ask your own questions, I invite you to do so. You don't have to be a Christian or believe in God to have a voice here, but I do ask that everyone be respectful. Derogatory, ridiculing and rude comments will be deleted, whether it's coming from an atheist or professing Christian. I will try not to delete comments as much as possible, but personal attacks will not be tolerated. I don't want to get in flame wars but I do want honest opinions and ideas. My goal is not to win an argument but to get a better, broader, firmer grip on truth for myself and if you learn something, too, than everybody wins.
My topics will center around things my son and I are discussing, books I'm reading, or something that just flitted through my head.
So this is my first question that I'm just going to throw out there...is religion, as a whole, good for society? Is it still relevant or are we evolving past the need for it?
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16 comments:
A class in Christian apologetics should be offered by every church. I think it's a great idea.
As for religion as a whole being good for society, yes. For the most part, various religions tell us to be better people. (Notable exceptions exist, of course.) I don't see how that can be anything but good.
And I got the first comment, too. That pleases me. :)
I'm pleased you got the first comment, too. Heck, I'm just pleased someone commented. :)
I agree that religions generally tell us to be better people, and that's a good thing, but just to argue the other side of the coin, do we have to have religion to be good? Wouldn't something as basic as survival of the species have forced us to come up with a code to civilize us?
We sure haven't evolved past the need for it. You only have to watch the news channels or read the stats on the number of children who are dying of disease and starvation to realize we have a long way to go or hear about the latest bombing/attack on innocent people. When evolution can provide the hope that faith can, when it can teach people to behave better, when it's capable of inspiring people to give and work for soup kitchens and charities, then we'll talk.
Of course, religion has some terrible things to be blamed for, too. Nothing in this world will ever be wholly good as long as people are involved. That holds true for every religion, creed, technology, science, medicine, government, etc. At its best religion inspires us to attempt to be better people. And we need all the inspiration in that area that we can get.
I'd say religion has done more harm than good in human history, and I say that as an active member of a church. Religion, doctrine, theology, all of it leads people to argue -- myself, perhaps, chief among them -- and defend themselves to the point of violence.
That's what the war in Iraq is about. It's what the strife in the Middle East is about. It's what's tearing THIS country apart in the so-called "Culture War."
Jesus knocked the excesses and hypocricies of religion -- and it got him killed. The worst thing to happen to The Way he left behind was that it became a religion.
Hmmm...I see your point, Tech, but a skeptic could flip that argument around and say if you're looking for religion to solve wars, disease and starvation... well, it's been around for thousands of years and we still have pretty much the same problems as we always have.
There are doctors who are atheists who do wonderful work for humanity; stories of Muslims helping American soldiers overseas; Mormons who do incredible amounts of charity work, etc. And, yes, there are Christians doing a lot of "in the trenches" kind of work, too.
People will do good things in the name of religion, and people will use religion to justify horrible behaviors, just like they will in just about any field of philosophy, government and even science. I find it difficult to believe only religion can inspire us to do better. What else have you got? :)
Okay, ER, if religion has done more harm than good in human history -- a point that is still up for debate -- tell me again why you're in church? What benefits are you getting out of it that outweigh what you just said?
I admit, I have probably only gone to church a dozen times in the last three years due to my travel nursing and working on weekends, but since, I've settled down, finally, I decided to try and find a church. I flipped through the yellow pages and couldn't find one that looked like it would be a fit for me anymore. It was actually a little depressing. I guess you don't really find a church by looking in a phone book, but I thought it would be a place to start.
Is the war in Iraq about religion? I mean, I know there are Muslim extremists over there, but do the American soldiers believe they're fighting for God? If only one side thinks it's a religious war, is it?
It seems to me most wars boil down to very basic things: food, land, power and self-defense. You can say whatever you want to about your justification for going to war, but that's basically why people fight. If you took religion out of the equation, I seriously doubt there would suddenly be peace all over the world. People would just find another reason to go to war and you have only to look back to Alexander the Great, Napeleon, Attila the Hun, Hitler, etc. to see what I mean.
I'm talking about the peopel who are fighting each other in Iraq whether or not U.S. soldiers are there. Sunnis. Shia. Kurds. It's all about religion.
And, I think I've found a church that actually puts its money where its mouth is, so I joined. Oh, and it's a safe harbor for homosexual Christians. Except for a few spectacularly wide-open-and-affirming United Methodist churches, I can't imagine another churhc in the OKC area, that I know of, that I'd adhere to. And even MY church gets a little high and mighty sometimes.
As a Christian, I believe Jesus died for our sins. Something foretold in prophecy for at least a thousand years. It was His choice to die for us. Men's motives for killing Him are immaterial.
People like to place a lot on religion, but mankind's history is littered with wars that had nothing to do with faith. It's easy to say that God is telling you to wipe out another nation -- just as it is easy to justify a war due to national interest or police action, etc. It is as unfair to blame religion and chuck it out the window as it would be to blame democracy for the Philippine-American War. People can justify their actions by whatever means they want.
As for wide open churches, I'm not sure what that means, but the expression does remind me of what Mark Twain said about one of his critics: "His mind is wide-open, thus allowing his good sense to fall out. We must undertake a search for it sooner rather than later as he sorely needs it."
If by wide open, we're saying that churches should be welcoming to all people regardless of their race, religion, creed, nationality, appearance, social status, sexual orientation, etc., then yes, churches should be wide open. And shamefully, many are not. But if by wide open, we're talking about disregarding sin, then no, that's wide open enough to let godliness fall out.
I think I'm going to have to lean more towards religion is still good for society, with the caveat I certainly don't think all religions are good for society and I certainly think a lot of people use their religion as a justification for horrible behavior. But just chucking it all out doesn't mean wars, fighting and horrible human behavior will stop. It just means we'll have less resources to fight those things.
Organized religion isn't all bad. It's what set up the hospitals like Mercy in OKC. If I remember right, there are 27 hospitals in their health system now, and that doesn't include assisted living centers, free clinics, hospice, home health care, etc. And that's just the Sisters of Mercy, that doesn't include all the Catholic hospitals, or Baptist, or Methodist, and these hospitals or non-profit hospitals. Trust me, as a nurse who worked in for-profit hospitals, you don't want to go there. My point is that one person or family couldn't do that on their own. It takes organization.
If you want to set up a Jesus House or soup kitchen, it takes organization to do it. Sunday school classes from many different churches take turns rotating shifts at Food for Friends, here in Norman for instance, and have been doing that for over 20 years. One individual could never have done it alone for that period of time. Youth groups from churches volunteer their summers to work building houses for Habitat for Humanity, another organization started by a Christian who relied on other Christians to keep it going. And, yes, I'm sure not everyone who swung a hammer for Habitat was a Christian, but I'm also sure the majority of volunteers are.
For every horrible act that's been committed in the name of religion, there are a thousand good deeds that go unreported and unsung about. For every theological or doctrinal rift between believers there's even more amazing examples of forgiveness (the Amish forgiving the guy who executed their school children and reached out to his family, who were also hurting comes to mind), and love.
I think true religion is ideally a manifestation of God's mercy towards his creation, and human beings extending that mercy toward each other.I think we have to find a way to hold on to that.
Welcome back Crystal :)
Nice to see you, Michelle. :)
Ah, but the question wasn't about faith, or "true religion." It was about "religion." And "religion," IMHO, has done more harm than good, present expressions of the social gospel in action notwithstanding.
And Tech, Re: "If by wide open, we're saying that churches should be welcoming to all people regardless of their race, religion, creed, nationality, appearance, social status, sexual orientation, etc., .." That is what I'm saying.
Yes, you're right that is what I said, but are you saying religion as a whole is bad for society, just not the one you believe in?
An interesting question, taken in interesting directions by your commenters.
I once thought that "apologetics" was a dirty word. I associated it with the kind of intellectually thin and disingenuous stuff you find in the popular religion section of the bookstores, Josh McDowell and all that. Now I understand it as nothing more and nothing less than making sense of the Christ event in our lives today, here and now, in a language we can comprehend.
As for the question of the "goodness" or "badness" of religion, I think that, like all human institutions and cultural and social constructions, it is pretty much a wash. This is not to downplay the evil religion has wrought; nor is it to slight the good. I just think that trying to construct such a moral calculus misses the point that, on the whole, religion is with us whether we like it or not, whether it is nonsensical or not, and it is much better to figure out ways to construct it in a beneficent way, rather than ask ultimate questions for which answers differ, and for each of which correct answers can be given, leaving us no better off than before.
What Geoff said. The religion of my ancestry has done, and continues to do, great harm. I think mass-media preachers and religious leaders, as a whole, have done much more harm than good to this country. I think churches that do nothing, or very little, of the things that Jesus said we should do -- love God and love neighbor as ourselves, and all that suggests and implies -- and waste time, resources of "culture war" issues like homosexuality, even abortion law, and any other contentious public policy question -- are doing more harm to the church, to the Gospel, and to the country, than good. The attempt by conservative Christians to connect themselves to abolitionism, and the civil rights movement, is so galling to me it causes bile to rise in my throat.
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