It continues to baffle me why they'd give such short shrift
to the topics their members think are most important. This week, they've given a quarter-sermon
each, split up between two preachers, to topics that easily warrant a sermon
each, if not a whole sermon series each.
I. Dinosaurs:
The dinosaurs segment opens with a reasonably sound casting
of the various ways different Christians think about origins into four broad
categories (though, obviously, the categories as presented leave out vast
tracts of Christendom; there are as many Christianities as there are
Christians):
1 - Young Earth Creationists think that the days of creation
presented in Genesis represent literal 24 hour periods, and that the universe
is roughly 6,000 years old.
2 - Day Age Theorists think that the days of creation in
Genesis represent potentially vast tracts of time. They believe in an old universe/creation, but
otherwise consider the Genesis account of creation factually reliable.
3 - Theistic Evolutionists believe that the facts of origins
are exactly in line with known scientific fact, including a universe and an
Earth billions of years old, and an evolutionary origin of life. They graft onto science the belief that
Jehovah guided evolution to give rise to humanity.
4 - Literary Framework Theorists claim that Genesis ought be
read in a largely metaphoric light, that it addresses why & who made the
universe, but not when and how.
The preacher, Dan, claims that Literary Framework Theorists
find the evidence presented by both the Young Earth Creationists and actual
scientists inadequate, but many theistic evolutionists also fall into this
category; they read Genesis metaphorically and understand scientific fact. The thrust of the sermon is to downplay the
importance of these distinctions, to refocus Christianity away from origins,
and instead on Christ. He goes on to
incorrectly posit that all things that have a beginning must also have a
creator.
Questions of the origins of the universe, of the Earth, of
life are both important and directly addressable with evidence. Simply by counting rings of trees, we can
demonstrate that life on Earth is over 10,000 years old. By looking at the annual layers in permafrost
(which work much like tree rings do), we can demonstrate that the polar ice
caps are hundreds of thousands of years old.
By looking at the speed of light and the distance of other galaxies we
can demonstrate that the universe is billions of years old. And by looking at the DNA of life on Earth we
can demonstrate a shared ancestry, a single family tree tying us all to a
common ancestor.
But the Bible doesn't point to any of that. The origins answers presented there directly
contradict observable fact. Dan says
later in this sermon that it's important to think of how the authors thought
about what they were writing, not just to read their words through our 21st
century eyes. And the authors of the
Bible had no idea that the Earth is old, no idea that all life shares a common
ancestry. They hadn't even realized that
the Earth is a spheroid and not flat (it's usually presented as rectilinear, as
in Isaiah 11:12[1]). The presumption of a flat Earth underneath a
dome (referred to in the Bible as the firmament), with heaven on the other side
of the dome permeates several Bible stories, including the Flood story, where
Jehovah opens up physical doors in the firmament letting water pour through,
and the Babel story, where Jehovah is afraid that people will build a tower
high enough that they can reach heaven.
This continues into the New
Testament, into the stories of Jesus Christ.
First, the Devil takes Christ to the top of a very high mountain, from
which they can see all the kingdoms of the Earth. This only works on a flat Earth; on a sphere
it’s impossible. But more critically,
it’s a fundamental part of the story of Christ’s final miracle. The Bible claims that Jesus Christ, after
living the life around which the entire history of the human species revolves,
levitated up from this flat Earth into the physical plane of existence
physically above this Earth, to Heaven.
The author of this portion of the book of John wrote the story this way
because he believed the earth to be flat, and directly, physically located
beneath a literal, physical Heaven.
Once you acknowledge that the Earth
is a sphere the story falls apart as any kind of literal historical event. What could possibly have occurred? Was Jesus Christ standing on a hill, saying
goodbye to some of his followers, then taken up toward outer space? Why?
The contemporary Christian conceptualization of Jehovah is no more or
less present in outer space than on a hill in Judea. Neither is the contemporary Christian
conceptualization of Heaven some other planet Christ can be said to have flown
to. Did he vanish, fade into some other
Heavenly dimension once he was beyond the clouds? That’s directly contrary to the way the
author and all readers for thousands of years understood the story. Besides that, it makes no sense. If he just faded into a Heavenly dimension
once he got past the clouds, why ascend at all?
Why not merely vanish? To make a
more impressive final miracle? Christians
cannot credibly claim in one moment that Jesus Christ was not merely a true
historical figure, a man who actually existed, but was, in fact, the purest
physical manifestation of Truth itself in all history: objective reality itself
distilled into physical form and given a pulse, and then in the next moment,
claim that his final act on Earth was a willful deception of everyone present
and millions of readers thereafter about the fundamental nature of the universe…
for the sake of a cheap publicity stunt.
II. Premarital Sex
Mike Breaux presents this section of the sermon. His position is that the only Jehovah
approved sexual activity occurs within a heterosexual marriage that lasts a
lifetime, and that sexual intercourse fuses the souls of the participants. He presents a quote from an author stating
that people who are happy with sex outside those bounds are “severely
emotionally dysfunctional”.
As I have no evidence to point to that indicates the
existence of a soul, I feel like any position I could generate on his sex fuses
souls hypothesis would be purely fictional. Much like the position itself. A couple of weeks ago, in this sermon series,
Jon Weece spoke very highly of his marriage.
And I’m happy to take him at his word.
He seems to have found, in marriage, a deep source of ongoing emotional
and social dividends. Which is obviously
wonderful. But it’s unconscionably
dismissive of him then and of Mike today to suggest that that’s how all
marriages turn out, even among dedicated Christians. And, equally, that the only way to find that
is within a marriage. Marriage is a
miserable, rotting sort of experience for many, many people. And many, many people find relationships,
including relationships with a sexual component, outside of marriage profoundly
rewarding. Which in no way makes them
“severely emotionally dysfunctional”.
People for whom monogamous marriage works should work to be in a
monogamous marriage. Other people should
not. The human experience is far to
complex and diverse for their one-size-fits all solution to be in everyone’s
best interests.
Further, the Jehovah of the Bible does not share Mike’s
stance that monogamous life-long marriage is the only valid outlet for human
sexuality. See Figure 1 for a few of the
various types of marriages presented in the Bible.
III. End Times
Dan’s position on the end times strikes me as, among the
Christian alternatives, fairly reasonable.
I’d very loosely paraphrase it as “we can’t possibly know when the
Second Coming will occur – live well today; it may be your last, or you may
live another hundred years.” Being
explicitly aware that the second coming may not happen in your (possibly long)
lifetime is a good start.
“For the Son of Man is going
to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every
man according to his deeds. Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will
not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.“ (Matthew 16: 27, 28)
Here, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ claims that
some of his audience will live to see the second coming. They’ve all been dead for millennia. These stories were written by people
centuries before anyone realized that the Earth is a sphere. They are demonstrably fictional. There is no magical Jehovahn cavalry coming
to right the world, and it’s irresponsible to behave otherwise. If we want a better world, we’ll have to
build it ourselves.
IV. Other Religions
This sermon series is entitled “You asked for it”. Southland’s members asked for a sermon
addressing other world religions. They
didn’t get it. Mike Breaux’s treatment
of the subject of the entire spectrum of all world religions lasts for less
than three minutes.
He makes two points.
First, he quotes the Gospel of John, in support of the correct position
that Christianity treats the figure of Jesus Christ differently than any other
world religion:
Jesus said to
him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the
Father but through Me.” (John 14:6)
Then he divides all world religions in to two categories,
those that require human acts to placate an angry god/God/gods (not
Christianity) and those founded on faith in already-enacted salvation through
Jesus Christ (Christianity alone).
Members of any religion could describe what sets their
religion apart from all the others. They
could succeed, as Mike does here for Christianity, in painting those
differences in a positive light for their respective religions. But each of those presentations would, like
Mike’s treatment of Christianity, lack the support of external evidence. Christians can claim that Jesus Christ is the
Messiah, and Jews can claim that he isn’t; Muslims can claim that Mohammed is
the last true prophet, and Mormons can cite Joseph Smith as a more recent one. Hindus can tell stories about Shiva, Vishnu,
and Shakti, while Nordic believers spoke of Odin, and Loki, and Thor, and
Greeks spoke of Zeus, Hades, and Apollo.
In the absence of evidence, regardless of the details that endear a
particular faith to a given believer, this is all just competitive fiction,
spinning of myth.
Next week the sermon will be glossing over Interracial
Marriage, Secular Culture, Gender Roles, and Suicide. I’m sure I’ll come up with something to say.
[1]
“Four corners of the Earth” wasn’t just a figure of speech when this verse was
written; it became a figure of speech because it’s in the Bible.
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