Monday, December 4, 2017

Plan to Read Your Bible

This was originally written for the Evangelical Free Church of Oakland December 2017 Newsletter.

In our church and our tradition, the Bible is very important because we believe it is God's special revelation to us that is the final authority on all matters upon which it speaks. So if God talks in the Bible about salvation, His nature, our nature, history, the future, the best way to live now, whatever, we believe it and should live it. That is an easy thing to say, but do you really know what is in the Bible? The easiest way to know what it says is to . . . read it! Yet in spite of supposed high view of scripture many of us struggle to regularly read the Bible and consequently really do not know what it says, which means that we are not letting God word impact our lives. I know the struggle because it took me many years to develop a regular habit of Bible reading.

Here are some tips that have helped me to be more consistent in my Bible reading.


  1. Make a plan.
  2. Set a time.
  3. Make a realistic commitment.
  4. Get accountable.


First, you need to have a plan, so that you know what you are reading next. Random reading just does not work, and often leads to misunderstandings and cherry-picking verses. On every Bible website you can set up a plan to read the Bible in a year or read specific portions or books in a set amount of time. Some people let daily devotionals lead them in their reading, and that may be what helps you get started. You might also follow along with the sermon series or pick your scriptures by your Bible study or life group material. Finding a plan to give you direction will help you be more consistent.

Second, you need to set a regular time. For many of us, the first thing in the morning works best, but for others a lunch break or right before bed might work best. If you do not set a time, your intentions will simply be a wish. Something else will always be more important at that particular moment of the day.

Third, you need to make a commitment that is realistic for you. If you have no time set aside now, do not start with a plan that takes an hour. Instead, start with a plan that takes five minutes a day. If you are not reading any days of the week commit to at least four of seven. You can still try to read everyday, but you have some grace built into your plan.

Fourth, if you really want to be serious about your commitment, you need to tell others and have them hold you accountable. This could be your Life Group, a mentor, a good Christian friend, or just someone else who wants accountability too. One of the ways that I have done this recently is by texting a number of guys and my kids, one verse or lesson from my daily Bible reading. I also encourage them to text or snap me back what they have learned.

Here a few of lessons from others that I have received in the last couple of weeks.


  • The Lord will not reject forever, for if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness. For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men. -Lamentations 3:31-33
  • Ps. 5:11&12 but let all who take refuge in you rejoice, let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exalt in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord, you cover him with favor as with a shield.
  • Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10.
  • Love this mornings odb.org scripture reference.  I needed to hear: "Dear friends, we are already God's children..." 1 John 3:2.


So not only do I get a personal lesson every day, I often get to hear what God is saying to others, and at the same time, it helps to hold me accountable.

My personal experience has been that the more I get in the Word, the more strength and wisdom I have for daily living. Furthermore, the more I read, the easier and more important it becomes to me. Now when I miss a day, I feel it! I long for my time with God. My prayer is that you would you desire to know Jesus so much that you want to hear His word for you every day, so you would take these practical steps to make it a reality.

Friday, November 24, 2017

Why me?

Oakland Independent Article November 22, 2017

When something bad happens to you, do you ever ask God, "Why did this happen?" or just "Why me?" Often we want an answer for why God allowed some hard circumstance like an illness, death, or conflict into our lives. We can easily think it is unfair of God to allow so many bad things to happen to us.

How often though have you ever turned the question around and asked God "Why did this happen to me?" when you get something good?

Why God do you . . .

. . . paint the beautiful sunset with so many colors.
. . . make steak so tasty.
. . . make a smile from my wife so enjoyable.
. . . make coffee smell so good.
. . . make a baby's giggle so infectious.
. . . make a day hunting with friends and kids so memorable.
. . . make a world filled with so many daily pleasures they are hard to count.
. . . use the hard things to help us appreciates the good things and teach us character.
. . . love me even when I don't love you.
. . . offer grace and mercy through the work of Jesus to sinners like me.
. . . promise an even better, everlasting world to those who will accept your gift.

When trouble comes into our lives it is easy to focus exclusively on them and forget all the past, current and promised blessings. When we focus on the trouble it seems overwhelming, but when we focus on the blessings, we will be overwhelmed with gratitude. Furthermore we end up getting happiness as an added benefit. Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host, dedicates an hour of his show every week to happiness, and he has come to the conclusion that key to happiness is learning to be grateful for the many blessing in our lives.

Johnson Oatman, Jr., the writer of the hymn, "Count Your Blessings" understood this, as he wrote . . .

Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
  1. And it will surprise you what the Lord has done. 

During this week of Thanksgiving, remember that thanksgiving should not be done just one day a year, but rather should become a lifestyle. Then when struggles come (and they will!), we will see more clearly that they are not the main point of life.  If we ask, "Why me?" in all circumstances, we will come to understand it is because God loves us,  and wants us to live with Him forever. He is using the good and the bad to draw us to Himself, so that we can experience His goodness all the time!

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

How Kids Help Us Grow

Here is an article I wrote for the Oakland Independent in December 2016. 

Children are a gift from the Lord: they are a reward from him . . . Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. Psalm 127:3 & 5

Much of our focus during the Christmas season is making it a special time for kids. From buying them just the right present to going to Christmas programs, we spend lots of time and money on our kids. At various times kids may seem like blessing or a burden, but recently I have seen how God has used my kids to help me grow. Here are some of those lessons:

From the first smile on a young babies face to a preschooler bunny hopping across the stage at the Christmas program, kids bring great joy to our lives. Experiencing life with them lets us return to the carefree times of having fun without the burdens of adult life. I love to get down on a kids level and have fun with them. It puts a smile on their face and on mine.

But kids are not all smiles, hugs and bunny hops. Often they are downright naughty, and God can use this to teach us patience and perseverance. I have become convinced that it takes about 100 times of repeating some correction for a child to finally learn a new behavior or boundary. If we give up on try 90, the child suffer and so will we. They will not learn to behave the way they should and everyone else will be impacted by their wrong behavior, so for their sake and ours we need to learn to persevere.

Furthermore, in training our kids, we have to constantly be learning. Each stage of child's life requires new ways to teach them and even to communicate with them. You cannot discipline a 16 year old who can now out wrestle you in the same way you did when he was 8. Likewise each child is different, so techniques that worked so well for one child completely fail for the next. If we don't grow in wisdom as parents, we will not be successful in helping our kids live wisely.

Further, if we don't grow in love for our kids, we will not go through the hardship of training them properly. Love is desiring the best for the other person, and kids by their very dependence force us to live for someone other than ourselves. If we resent this and don't grow in love, we become a bitter and angry, which turns our kids against us. On the other hand, if we can learn to love our kids unconditionally many of our imperfections in other areas will be forgiven, and when they mess up they will learn it is safe to confess and restore the relationship.

Finally, even with the best of efforts, we need to learn to trust our kids into God's hands. As much as we may plan, we cannot control the future, ours or theirs, so we should learn to turn them over to Him. He loves them more than we do, so it is safe to release them to Him. I have already released one son to God's hand for eternity, and I know that pretty soon my other four kids are going to grow up and leave home (or at least I hope so!).  We may as well surrender them daily to Him now so that when they leave us we have already learned to trust God with them.

Now some of you reading this may not have any kids of your own or your kids are grown and you need to relearn some of these truth, so I would invite you to invest your life in kids or even adults who need mentoring. Many kids need mentors in their lives, and when we invest our lives in others, God uses them to help us grow.

Friday, November 3, 2017

How do you know when God says no?

The questions

I recently had a conversation with a friend who asked me if God answered my prayers. I said, "Yes", and he asked how often to which I answered, "Always."

He then responded, "What did you mean?" I said that God answers my prayers in one of three ways; yes, no, and wait.

He then asked two questions that I could not answer in simple ways, so instead I am writing this post to go into more detail.

First he asked, "So how would this work for a farmer who prayed for the rain to stop so that he could harvest his crops?"

Next he asked, "How is the 'no' answer conveyed?"

 I do not claim to be an expert in prayer, even Christian prayer in which I as a Christian pastor have some experience and on which I have had numerous times of training. In regular personal practice, I feel very inadequate and not very deep, but because I have had some training, I will attempt an answer to what I will admit are sometimes hard questions about when God does not answer a prayer in the way I want or expect.


The first response


The first way a 'no' answer can be conveyed clearly is simply that the request is not granted or perhaps even the opposite occurs. If we ask God for something definite, whether it is healing, material help, like a new job for example, or perhaps for the rain to stop so that we can harvest, then a yes and no answer is something that we can track in a particular time period.

I recently prayed for a healing for Nabeel Qureshi, a famous Christian apologist, who at 34 years old had stage 4 stomach cancer. In the last month, he died from complications of that stomach cancer just a year after getting the diagnosis. That was a direct 'no' to lots of people praying for healing, who by that meant long-term healing.

When praying for rain to stop, a no answer would be continued rain for long periods of time that causes the farmer not to be able to get the crops out and to suffer losses that year. An answer that perhaps is not a direct no, but is a wait would be for the rain to continue for awhile and eventually stop enough that the farmer can get his crops out. This perhaps comes with some loss of time and money, but not a disaster.

A current situation like this for us is that we have been praying for God to intervene and bring someone to buy our house in Minnesota that has been on the market for over two years. The answer has clearly been no to this point, but it has not been a disaster for us because we have had several renters that have helped us pay the expenses on the house.


But why?


A natural follow up question though is why doesn't God answer my prayers the way I want. Most of the time in these situations, what I or others request from God is not wrong in itself, and it is something that we want or something that we see as the best thing. The Christian God as described in the Bible though is not just a Santa Claus figure who gives us what we want when we want it, rather He is a God over the whole universe with an understanding that is bigger than our particular plans. Sometimes, our prayers might in fact fall in line with His best plans for the universe, but sometimes He knows the big picture better than us.

For example, in the case of the farmer here in America not getting his harvest, we could easily think of poorer farmers in South America who pray the God would help raise the crop prices so that they can survive another year. So God would allow poor weather in one area to help lessen the supply of crops worldwide and raise the prices for those who got crops that year.

In the case of our house, Traci and I have had the opportunity to help out several people in need of a short-term rental.

In the case of the death of a loved one like Nabeel or like my son Micah, I am not sure that we can or ever will (at least in this life) fully understand why they did not get to live a longer life like we would have desired. But God clearly does allow and yes even cause people to die and suffer in this world.

The one clear answer that we have about all suffering is that this world in its current condition is not the final answer. God clearly points to a better, eternal condition and that this world is simply a place on the way. Therefore, God's purposes are not wrapped up by making everything neat and tidy here, but rather by pointing to greater things yet to come.

While we do not always understand the bigger picture, sometimes we do get a better understanding of why God did not give us what we wanted and this leads to another way in which we understand that God has said no to a request.


The second response


After praying, studying and asking for wisdom, we may come to the conclusion that what we prayed for is not what we want anymore. If we are regularly searching the Bible and listening to wise counsel, we may come to the conclusion that what we desired was not what we should have wanted. James 4:3 talks about this type of wrong prayer "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." If we ask for something with the wrong motive then God may not give it to us for our own benefit, and if we are continuing to grow we may come to realize that we did not get it because it was bad for us.

For example, we might desire a better job or a winning season, and come to understand that we wanted those things primarily for selfish reasons. This may lead us to change our lives in response to the prayer rather than continue to focus on the desired thing.

So I think we may say that God answered no to a prayer when the thing did not happen and we realize that we no longer want that thing, so we stop praying for it.


Conclusion


Sometimes a no from God is very clear, while other times it is not as clear. Perhaps God will give us that good thing in time (wait) or perhaps he will reveal that what we needed is something different. In all these cases though, the primary purpose in prayer is for us to communicate with God our desires and learn to trust him with the response. Knowing that the good God who made the world is in control helps us to have peace no matter what the circumstance.

Phi 4:12 — Phi 4:13
I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.




Monday, September 4, 2017

Half Hearted, Half Blessed

This was originally written for the September Newsletter of the Evangelical Free Church of Oakland

A friend and pastoral mentor of mine told me, that when someone came in for counseling, he asked these three questions:
1. Do you have a problem? In other words, before you can be helped you have to acknowledge that there is something wrong.
2. Do you want my help? People sometimes know they have a problem, but do not really trust the person they are asking for help. This creates a barrier because they will not trust the person when they make a recommendation. 
3. Are you willing to do anything and everything you need to do to get help? I think most people probably really stumble on this question, and this is where I want to spend my time in this article. They want help because where they are is painful, but they also fear change, because they know it will be painful as well.

In Luke 9:57-62, Jesus deals with three objections from people who claim they want to follow him, but have just one thing that is holding them back. Jesus drives home the point that anything or any barrier that keeps you from following him right now, completely, means that you are not really ready to follow Him at all. He wants our complete loyalty. Many of us genuinely desire to follow Him with our whole hearts, but we do not understand what that will mean until we get challenged or we begin to suffer. The call to follow Jesus takes on a new dimension when He asks us to follow Him into unknown or painful territory.

Frequently, in my years of ministry, I have had people come and talk to me about serious problems in their lives. My goal is help them find joy and peace in the Lord. In that process then, I ask them if they are willing to follow Jesus and obey Him. Of course most of us readily say yes, and in that moment we mean it. On the other hand, when we start to get down to specific life changes, it gets much harder. Suddenly, when the idea of taking up our cross daily is not just a phrase about the necklace we wear, but about obedience that requires real change and real challenge, then it is much harder to say yes to Jesus.

For example, a husband will come and tell me he wants a better marriage, but his wife does not respect him, so he cannot treat her lovingly. In the course of the conversation it will become clear that his wife has become an idol to him, and he is looking to her opinion for his identity instead of who he is in Christ. The solution is the begin to trust that Jesus loves him and gives him purpose. From this solid foundation of identity in Christ, he can begin to love his wife unconditionally even if she does not respect him.

Now the rubber meets the road when he is challenged to act lovingly toward her even when she does not treat him well in return. He will often not be willing to change, because he is waiting for her to change, which shows that he has not trusted Jesus with his full identity yet. Often, when I talk to the wife, the same pattern will emerge. She is waiting for him to love her well before she can act lovingly and respectfully. Even though both are Christ followers, they do not yet understand how following Christ impacts how they should love their spouse unconditionally. The fruit of our trust in Jesus shows up in our relationship with other people.

I know this situation intimately because I have seen this pattern repeatedly in all kinds of situations where the question is not what does Jesus want me to do, but rather, am I willing to obey what I know Jesus wants me to do? Frankly, the place I see it the most is in myself!

When we fail to obey, we do not get the full blessing of God. We want to obey, and we often obey up to a point, but when real change is required or God challenges us to step out in faith in a new area, we back away from Him. When we back away from Jesus, then we also back away from the full abundant life that he promised in John 10:10. He wants us to have peace, joy, hope, and faith which lead to loving relationships. If we are unwilling to obey when it is hard, we will miss out on the changes in us that can bring us those blessings, and that allow us to experience the abundant life no matter what the circumstances.

My challenge for you today is to ask God where He is leading and commit to follow Him no matter what even it seems hard In that process you will learn that God is faithful and will give you the strength to obey Him. He promises to bless you, but you have to be willing to follow Him with your whole heart to experience all that He can give you.

Friday, September 1, 2017

One Way

This article was originally written for the Oakland Independent July 12, 2017.

I like to explore and one of the ways that I do that is by finding different ways to drive from here to there. I often drive back roads when coming home from some meeting in Wayne, Norfolk, Omaha, or Fremont. Eventually with the help of Google maps and my compass, I do make it home, but it often involves lots of twists and turn and sometimes even backtracking. One thing is clear though, I have to keep on roads that lead in the direction Oakland. If I am leaving Norfolk, I cannot start heading west and keep heading west and ever expect to get home. When looking at a map there may be several ways to get from here to there, but anyone who has ridden with a directionally challenged driver knows you cannot just go where ever you want and expect to get to your destination.

Jesus makes the extraordinary claim about spiritual direction, that he is "the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through him" (John 14:6). He is claiming that there is only one way to get to God and that is through himself. This exclusive claim sounds harsh in the light of our modern and tolerant society, but I am convinced that Jesus is who he claimed to be and that his work provides the only way to get to God. Like the belief in a Trinitarian God who created everything else, the belief in the uniqueness of Jesus set Christians apart from those who don't believe in him.

Now when I say that Christians believe these things, I don't mean that we simply have a faith that they are true in spite of the facts or even though we don't have evidence. This is not the type of faith that is described in the Bible. We believe these things because we believe the best evidence points us in this direction.

I frequently tell our church that Jesus was a real man, who really lived, really died, and really rose again. The Bible is not just a book of fairy tales like a Disney movie, but rather a record of real historical events. Jesus is the best man who ever lived and in fact the best man who is still living! Furthermore, besides being just a man, the Bible makes it clear that Jesus is also God. So we, Christians believe that Jesus is both fully God and fully man.

He came and lived a perfect life, a life unlike any other before or since, and he came to live as a man for the expressed purpose of reconciling the relationship between God and man. All worldviews recognize the imperfections in the world, and the solution in most of them, religious and secular, is to somehow work yourself toward heaven and perfection. Jesus is unique in that he represents God coming to us and bridging the gap because we can never earn our way to heaven. What he offers is a free gift of salvation and life with him forever. His resurrection is also unique in history and proves that we can trust what he says about salvation.

Who Jesus is and what he has done, makes him the one way to get to God. Maybe though you think I am wrong and you do not believe any of these "wild" claims about Jesus that traditional Christians believe. Well, I cannot make you believe anything, but I would love to have a dialogue about it. Call me, write me, or write the paper. Start a conversation and tell me why you believe what you believe, and I will show you why I believe in Jesus. Let's talk and learn about each other.







Friday, July 7, 2017

Who is God?

This article was written for the Oakland Independent July 5, 2017 addition.

Last week I wrote that we should be fine with expressing our unique ideas and listening to the ideas of other people. This week and next I wanted to share some of the ideas that make traditional Christianity unique compared to other worldviews. What I mean by traditional or "orthodox" Christians are those who hold to foundational beliefs that have historically set us apart from other religions and other sects who claim to be Christian. The core Christians beliefs would be held by Protestants like Evangelical Free, Baptists, Covenant, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and most Pentecostal churches like the Assembly of God. Furthermore, older churches like the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox churches, and Episcopalians / Anglicans would also official hold these ideas. For all our divisions, Christian churches still hold many core beliefs in common.

The first area of agreement is in answer to the question, "Who is God?"

We believe in one God who is creator of all other things (Genesis 1, Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 45:5,6). Now to many of us in the Midwest, who only know a one God religion, this might seem obvious, but our society is becoming more pluralistic. We live next to and around many people who perhaps believe in multiple gods or lesser gods associated with the natural world. Furthermore, many people are secular and do not believe in anything outside of the physical world, whether it be one God or other spiritual forces.

Christianity is even distinct from the other two "one God" religions, Judaism and Islam, because we believe in one God, who eternally exists in a loving unity of three equally divine Persons. This concept called "the Trinity" is unique to Christianity and is very often misunderstood by those inside and outside the church. One common misunderstanding claims that we believe in three gods, when in fact we believe that members of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, are eternally unified because they share the very nature or being of God. We claim then that God is one in essence and purpose, but still exists as three persons.  

Another misconception of the Trinity, denies that God is really three persons. Some people claim that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are simply different manifestations of the same person, like the same water existing as ice, liquid or steam. Others deny the divine nature of Jesus and / or the Holy Spirit. For us, if someone denies the Trinity in one of these ways, they do not believe in the same God and that separates you from true Christianity.

The plainest teaching of the Bible makes the truth of the Trinity clear, and the early church leaders wrestled against many of the same misunderstandings we still see today. They declared non-Trinitarian ideas about God to be wrong, and therefore those who believed them were not true Christians. In fact, these truths about God's nature are really just a restatement of the early Christian creeds, which were written to respond to some of the early misconceptions of God (called heresies).

To restate, Christians believe in one Trinitarian God who is apart from and created everything else, and those who believe something else about God are not real Christians because they believe in a different God. Next week, I will present the idea that Christians believe there is only one way to God, namely through the person and work of Jesus. If you disagree with me, I invite you to write a letter to the editor to start, not an argument, but a conversation. As a Christian, I would love to hear what you believe about reality and have a continued discussion about these important ideas.




Thursday, July 6, 2017

Mike Sechler Sermon Archive 2017

Here are the links to the my sermon audios for the last year. Some of them you can play on the website while some of them will have to download to hear.

I am preaching through Luke this year, so most of my sermons are directly from that series. I may have few holiday sermons interspersed. Also sometimes the recordings don't work and so I may miss a Sunday or two. Finally, several other leaders also preach for me and if you are interested in hearing their sermons, go to this link for all the sermons from Oakland EFC.

1/8/17 “Who Should You Love?” (Luke 10:25-37)

1/15/17 "One Thing is Necessary” (Luke 10:38-42)

1/22/17 “Teach Us to Pray” (Luke 11:1-13)

1/29/17 “The Strongest Man” (Luke 11:14-26)

2/5/17 “Signs of a Dark Heart” (Luke 11:27-54)


2/12/17 Live Fearlessly! (Luke 12:1-12)

2/19/17 Biblical Investment Strategies (Luke 12:13-34)

3/5/17 Follow Jesus Now (Luke 12:49-59)

3/12/17 Turn Around and Be Fruity (Luke 13:1-9)




4/9/17 Focus on the Finish (Luke 9:51 and 19:28-40) Audio starts at about 17 Minutes.

4/16/17 Do You Recognize Jesus? (Easter Sunday, various passages)





6/11/17 Should You Follow the King or the Law? Luke 16:14-17




Wednesday, July 5, 2017

You are Wrong!

This was originally written for the Oakland Independent on June 28, 2017.

I think you're wrong. I don't know what everyone who reads this article believes but I am sure that on some issues we disagree and I think you're wrong. If I did not think I was right, I would stop believing it.

Furthermore, we cannot both be right when we believe things that contradict one another. We all know this in the physical world. If you step in front of a moving bus, one of you is going to win, you or the bus! Likewise, in areas of politics and religion, everyone cannot be right because we are often believe contradictory things. For instance, believing that the government should fund a single payer healthcare system cannot be reconciled with the idea that everyone should pay for their own healthcare individually. Likewise, you cannot logically believe both that Jesus was just a good human teacher and also believe that he is the Son of God and one of the three persons in the Trinity.

In polite society we sometimes simply refuse to talk about these issues or gloss over real differences to keep the peace. Often I think we do this because we are not sure about what we believe and why we believe it, so talking about it makes us uncomfortable.

I want to challenge you to be willing think and talk about what you believe about what might be called spiritual questions, such as: Does God exist? Did Jesus rise from the dead? Is any religion true and if so why? The Apostle Peter tells Christians that we need to be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have within us (1 Peter 3:15), so we should be thinking about these questions anyway.

When we begin to study and talk about these ideas, we should be prepared to be challenged by those who disagree. If what you believe is true then it should hold up to the challenges, but you will have to study more to discover why it is true. You may find that in some things you were wrong, while in other areas your beliefs are strengthened.

I am currently in long conversations with two religious people who are not traditional Christians and one secular person. I have not lost my faith in Jesus, but I have been challenged to study and understand it more. I am more convinced of the truth of Christianity, but I have learned that I was often wrong about what they believed. In the process my life has been enriched getting to know them, and I have had the opportunity to share what I believe is true.

Christians can tolerate people who believe different things, because no matter what they believe God created them in His image, so they are valuable. We can love them even we think their ideas are wrong. In fact, as Christians we are commanded to go into the world to share about Jesus. In practice this will mean both showing people that we love in concrete physical ways, and showing them we love them by telling them about Jesus, even if they do not believe us.

As ambassadors for Jesus we can be both humble and knowledgeable, loving and clear. In this way, we can seek to tell people what we think is the truth while still respecting them enough to listen to them tell us we are wrong.

Of course, maybe you think I am wrong about my approach. You should write a letter to the editor and tell me why so I can hear about it!

Monday, June 26, 2017

Be a blessing

This was first written for the Oakland Independent June 21, 2017. 

When writing an article for local paper, one of my goals is to help Christians understand how we should interact with our local community.

The second great commandment, "love your neighbor as yourself", helps us understand what our attitude should be regarding those in the community. If we can love our neighbors as ourselves we will end up being a blessing to all of those around us, and in the process make our community a better place to live.

Here are some biblical suggestions about how to live out the second great commandment:


First, be a hospitable neighbor. In 1 Timothy 3, we see that one of the characteristics of the Christian leader is hospitality. This should not just be true of leaders, but we should all aspire to be hospitable. A hospitable person is someone who is welcoming and generous to your neighbors. In practice this might mean having a neighbor over for a cookout, letting them borrow your mower when theirs breaks, or bringing them a meal when someone in their household is sick. On a more basic level it might mean just saying hi when you see them going out in the morning. Jesus was a hospitable person who cared enough about the people around him to notice them and help them when he could.

A second way that we can love our neighbors is by living a righteous life around them. In our business dealings we should be known to be fair and honest. We should not gossip, lie about, or speak harmfully about anyone else in the community. We should be careful about what commitments we make and then be careful about keeping the commitments we do make. A righteous person becomes a safe person who can be trusted, and who is seen as an asset to the community.

Finally, the Bible tells us in many places that we are to look after those who cannot help themselves, such as widows, orphans, and foreigners. Often people who are needy are nearly invisible in our society, such as an older shut-in or single mom struggling to provide for her children. To help these people we have to ask God to open our eyes to needs that we would otherwise not see, and then give us the courage to overcome the social barriers and go to them and offer help, because many times they will not have the courage to ask for our help.


Learning to love our neighbors well is one of the ways we learn to be more like Jesus. In this way, we will be a blessing to those close to us and Christians, but is exactly what we should do as we follow Jesus.

Friday, June 2, 2017

Who is a leader?

Last month, I wrote on the reason to become a church member, and now I want to encourage you to see yourself as a Christian leader in the church and in the community.

All Christians begin and continue as followers of Jesus (Matt. 4:18). This is the definition of what it means to be a Christian, namely someone who follows Christ, but in following Christ, we are all also called to be on the mission of making more Christ followers (Matt 28:19-20). This is not just my job as the pastor, but rather is the responsibility of everyone who decides to follow Jesus. Therefore, we are all in positions where we are or should be leaders of one type or another, and this article will focus on the various ways in which we, as Christians, can be leaders.

First, all of us should see ourselves as leaders to those non-Christians around us. Through our love and our witness about Jesus, we should be encouraging friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family to also follow Jesus. Our attitude should be, come follow Jesus with me, and our lives should reflect this as well.

Second, almost all of us have or will and can fill roles where we are responsible for leading others. Here are some leadership examples from everyday life: young ladies leading VBS singing; life guards at the pool; parents; bigger siblings; starters and upper classmen on a sports team; managers / bosses / owners in a business; teachers at school or church; older kids in a neighborhood; older / more mature friends in a group. There are many and varied opportunities for us to be in positions of leadership in life and they come to us almost everyday. 

Third, every Christian is given gifts (Ephesians 4:7-16) to be used for building up the body. Some of those gifts are defined as leadership gifts, but all the gifts are meant to serve one another. As we become proficient in using our gifts, we help others use their gifts and we can also teach those with similar gifts to become more effective in using their gifts. For instance, the gift of helps or service (Romans 12:7), may not seem like a leadership gift, but it is essential for those people who need help and to help free up other leaders to do that which they are called to do as is shown in Acts 6:1-7. 

Fourth, in relationship to the church we have some specific leadership roles defined by scripture and some that are defined by the structure and needs of our congregation. Next month, I will spend time talking about those roles and who can and should fill them. If everyone begins to see themselves as leaders we will have many more people ready and willing to fill specific positions for the church when they become available.

Here are some ideas to help you prepare yourself for leadership. First, every Christian needs to be sold out and submitted to their leader, Christ. Spend time daily in His Word and in prayer. If you don’t know how to start, contact me and I will help get you a plan for reading and studying and some simple ways to begin to pray. Next, begin serving somewhere. Go where you see a need, go where you hear about a need in the church, and go where God puts a need in front of you. In the process you will begin to see where you are effective and learn what gifts God has given you. Along the way, examine your heart and actions and pray that you will be continually transformed into the image of Christ. If you see yourself as a leader then you will understand the need to have the character of a Christian leader. It is not just the Pastor and elders that the world is seeing as an example of what a Christian should be. While never perfected in this life, every Christian should be changing for the better as the Holy Spirit works in and through us. 


As we grow in Christ, we will together help lead many others closer to Him, both those in the church and those who do not yet know Him. 

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Why should you be a church member?

This is an article that I wrote for the May 2017 newletter for our church Oakland Evangelical Free Church to encourage attenders to place their official membership.

First, membership in the local church is the assumed natural position of all believers in Jesus in the New Testament church. Paul tells us that when we believe in Jesus we are baptized by the Spirit into His body, meaning the church in the universal sense of the collection of all Christians through time, but in reality it also meant you became part of the local gathering of Christians. A lone ranger Christian is apart from a local church is simply not seen or envisioned in the New Testament, and as the following reasons will make clear, Christians are not made to grow and mature in their relationship with the Lord without a local church.

Second then, Christians need a commitment to and from a local church for church discipline and personal accountability to function properly. Matthew 18:15-20 and 1 Corinthians 5 lay out some principles for how we can challenge sin in the lives of other Christians and how we should expect the local church to challenge sin in our lives. As a member of a local church we should love and trust one another enough to allow ourselves to be challenged and to be challenged in areas where we are sinning or where we see sin in the lives of other people. Sin hurts and having loving people who can challenge and walk with us through the process of repentance and restoration is a key component in becoming more like Christ.

Third, God gives people the gift of leadership, but for godly leadership to operate, we need to submit to it and if we are gifted in leadership we need to make ourselves available to use our gifts. Christ is the head of the church (Col. 1:18), but he established under shepherds to whom we are supposed to submit (Hebrews 13:17, 1 These. 5:12-13, 1 Tim. 5:17). One of the ways we submit to Jesus then is to submit to the leadership he has established. Leaders are giving the role to shepherd and guard the flock (Acts 20:28-29), but to do this they have to know who the flock is, and that requires that they have committed to a defined group of people and that those people have committed to that body as well. 

The Holy Spirit gives certain people leadership gifts (1 Tim. 3:1, Ephesians 4:11-12), and to use those gifts fully you have to be in a position of trust in the lives of others. If you are given leadership gifts, then your gifts and character need to be affirmed by the body so that they can trust that you are indeed gifted and submitted to Christ yourself. Even if you do not have leadership gifts or calling, you are still called to help affirm, support leaders and to hold them accountable.

The fourth reason you need to be a member is for your own personal growth and for the growth of the church. The three major passages on spiritual gifts (Ephesians 4:13-16, Romans 12:3-8, 1 Cor. 12:12-29) all speak about using our gifts in the context of the church and for the good of the church. When we use minister together we learn to lead, submit, create, and help others while getting the benefits of their gifts in our lives. Together we love each other better and also multiply our efforts to reach out to the world.

Finally, Jesus tells His disciples that their love for one another is a way of showing the world what He is like (John 13:35). In a local body of believers we learn to live sacrificial and loving lives. The church is first and for most a family and not just a social organization. In fact, Paul reminds us that if we say we love Jesus then we should love those in the church. The fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23 are expressed primarily with people who are close to you, and in the church we commit to caring for other imperfect people and in the process we learn to love like Jesus loves us. 


So come and join us and help us show the world what Jesus' love really looks like. 

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

How do you measure success?


Philippians 3:7-8 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

A friend of mine from high school recently heard that I was a small-town pastor. He made a comment something along the lines that I had more potential and could have done something more with my life. Upon hearing this I did not get angry or upset but I did get reflective about what various people consider important in life. Even in my own life when I was younger I may have considered my location, my job title, or the size of my ministry to be the primary factors of what made my life successful. From very early on in my life I had committed to go into ministry, but I did think of success in terms of Billy Graham or DL Moody, who were both world famous evangelists. 

Yet, as I sit here a pastor of a small church in a small town in rural America, I am continuing to learn that true success is not a matter status or even achievement. Instead, humans are a truly successful when we accomplish the purpose for which we are made, namely to glorify God by being in close relationship with Him. 

The apostle Paul learned this lesson so well that he was willing to give up a life of earthly success for a life of hardship. As a boy he had been taught by a famous Jewish teacher, Gamaliel, and then because of his devote life and learning went on to become a leader among the Jews. So much so, that he became a leading opponent of this new Jewish cult that followed the supposedly resurrected Jesus, and he devoted his life to stamping it. In an earthly sense, he had made it. He had climbed the latter of what it meant to be successful in his society.

But one day, he met Jesus, and all of his ideas about success were rearranged. All the things that he once thought were really important, now became meaningless, because he saw that the most important thing about life was knowing Jesus.His life was reoriented around following and obeying Jesus, and even though that meant loss of status, an itenerant lifestyle, prison, beatings, and eventually death, he was now more content, because he had found the true meaning of life. 

When I was younger, I was focused on doing things for Jesus and then hopefully being recognized for how much I had done for God. God has slowly been teaching me that my true meaning in life will come when I am content in just knowing Him. The more time I spend getting to know Jesus and submitting my life to Him, the more joy and contentment I have. Furthermore, I am finding that my ability to obey Him is radically increased when I find my joy with Him. If I don't have to worry about finding success in the outcomes or how other people measure success, then I am freed up to love and serve people because Jesus loves and serves people. He gives me the desire. 

Now I know (and it is probably obvious to you too!) that unlike the apostle Paul, I have not yet arrived at the place where I can say that have learned to be content in all circumstances (Philippians 4:11), but because of his teaching and example, we can see that true success in all any life starts and ends with loving Jesus.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Should you see "The Shack?"

My family and I went to see a movie together over the weekend (Lego Batman, which was very good), and one of the previews for coming movies was a rendering of the book, The Shack, which many people, including many Christians, loved.



I remember the many conversations when the book first came out and that is why I read the book at the time. Many people claimed that the book helped them get closer to God and / or understand God better, especially the Trinity. I suspect that this movie will have a similar impact, and so I wanted to encourage Christians to use discernment when evaluating whether to go to this movie and how to use it or the book.

Frankly, we need to use discernment with all the media that we consume, because none of it is neutral. Every bit of media has a perspective and we should be aware of the messages, however subtle they are, because if we don't we might end up accepting as true things that are wrong or that contradict other things we believe.

In this case for instance, "The Shack "teaches" about the doctrine of God's nature, salvation, good, evil, and dealing with grief to name a just a few ideas. Now one of the reasons I think the book had such a wide reach is that in the western world we do not often think it is appropriate to talk about such topics. People who are really hurting like the main character of this book, often do not have safe people in their lives with whom to discuss their pain. Further, questions about the ultimate nature of things and who is God are often too controversial to bring up in polite company, so we never discuss them with anyone.

Therefore, the book or the movie might be a good tool to start a conversation with someone who has questions or who is hurting. On the other hand, if you are using as a guide to learn who God is and what the Trinity is like, then you need to compare it to what the Bible has to say about these topics. Rather than dismissing its message as heresy or accepting its message as truth without knowing why, use it to educate yourself from biblical and theological sources that make things more clear. It is simply not true that no one understands these doctrines, rather it often takes effort to understand any idea that is true, but knowing the truth about God is worth the effort. Knowing the true God personally through His son Jesus is more than worth any effort!

To that end, here are a couple of links that discuss the book in more detail:

Tim Challies has a thoroughly review here.

Albert Mohler has a shorter review here.

If the book or movie spurs any thoughts that you want to discuss more personally, please email me at my personal email littlemas2@gmail.com or my pastor account pastormike@oaklandefc.com .

As Mohler says in his review, Christians do not need to fear any book, but we must be ready to answer them. Let this movie spur you to go deeper into the true nature and character the God of the Bible.

Friday, March 3, 2017

When to Leave a Church?

My next few posts are going to be from a friend of mine, Pastor Tom Starkjohn of Louisville Evangelical Free Church in Louisville, Nebraska. He has recently help start the church there and they are going through the process of inviting people to become members. Therefore, he has written several emails to his church family about membership that have some interesting thoughts. I present them here for your learning.

From Tom Starkjohn to Louisville Evangelical Free Church:

Did you read my email last week? I tried to encourage you to think of a good reason to not become a member. My point is that if you are a Christian, you should be moving towards membership in our church or another church. Perpetual church attenders are like people who date but never get around to marrying – it misses the point of dating. As one pastor said, “Stop dating the church and fall in love with the family of God.” When you chose to love the people, you commit to the people.

What I'm going to think about with you today is when to leave a church. The people I'm writing to here are those who are or want to be members. Members are the ones who have committed to the church, and they are the ones who need to take seriously the matter of leaving a church. Attenders, on the other hand, have never taken the step to communicate that they committed to the church, and their leaving (though likely painful to all) is not of the same kind.

When I do premarital counseling with a couple, one of the questions I ask them is, “So when might you divorce one another?” Awkward question, yes? I assign some reading and Scripture passages to study on the topic. We process it together. I do this because marriage is vitally important, and it's foolhardy to think that one might never encounter a time when a separation or divorce is needed. A young couple needs to think through the Scriptures before things get rough, because when things get rough the impulse is just to get out.

Leaving one good church for another good church is NOT the same as leaving a spouse. Leaving a church for anther religious would be like spiritual divorce, but that is not my present concern. Yet leaving one church for another is painful, and there are many bad reasons to leave. And yet there are RIGHT reasons to leave, and those are the first things we should think upon.

It is right to leave a church when Doctrinal Purity as been lost or gravely compromised. A church is a church when the truth of the Gospel and God's Word is rightly proclaimed and walked in. If the leadership do not teach and walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel, it is time to remove your affirmation of the church by leaving it. This must be taken slowly and with repeated efforts at clarification – it could be that you yourself are making a theological mountain out of a molehill and need to put down your theological sword. Or it may be that you will help the church repent of it's ways and come back to the truth. There is no completely pure and true church. Nonetheless, if your leaving helps to protect the truth by removing your affirmation, then you should leave.

Second, it is right to leave the church when Leadership abuses their authority. “Abuse” is a loaded word, and such allegations should be carefully looked into and addressed. But suppose someone in a leadership position is a bully or worse. Following Scripture has taken a back seat to following a person. Instead of showing Christ-like service, humility, and other-centeredness, authority is demanded. If, in such a situation, efforts at pointing out the sin and seeking for help is rejected, then a person must leave. In such a situation (like when doctrinal purity is lost), it is not the one who leaves that is in the wrong. It is the one who stays who is in the wrong.

Third, it is right to leave when you are sent out to a new work. Yes, this is a positive thing! We see in the book of Acts how Gospel-work spreads by people being sent out from their mother church to start a new work elsewhere. When this happens, it's not a leaving but a sending. It's a wonderful thing when a church recognizes that God has raised up workers in their church to be sent out in ministry to another church. This is not just a reason if you are the pastor or on the core group – it's helping in any way get a new work started.

Fourth, it is right to leave a church when you've moved to a new location. The local church is meant to be local. If you've moved from one location to another, the distance may demand that it's time to find a new church (or, better yet, move to a place where you've already located the right church).

Fifth, it may be right to leave when church unity is severely compromised by your staying. This is the most subjective reason I've listed. It's the reason that could be most easily misappropriated. I'm going to refrain from examples here, but imagine someone who is vocally committed to a certain program, relatively minor doctrinal point, or ministry. There has been prayerful discerning among the leadership as to whether to pursue this thing, but they have chosen not to. But the person can't accept their decision. He or she continues to promote their agenda, and the church begins taking sides. It may be that in this case leaving for another church is warranted. Maybe.

This list is not exhaustive. There are other reasons to leave a church. And there are a bunch of terrible reasons to leave a church. In future emails I plan on writing about some of these insufficient reasons to leave and how to go about leaving should it get to that point. For now I'll leave those questions alone.

I'll end with this: I want you to think about leaving because I want you to think about what a commitment to this church implies. It implies you are not going to leave without thoughtful, biblically-informed cause. It implies that you will take the responsibility to leave if our church is unfaithful. It implies that you are committed to making the relationship work and will not be easily dissuaded from this task.


Monday, February 27, 2017

Sam Harris assumes Morality to Prove it?


The following is a transcript of this TED Talk, and my comments on it. The black is the transcript itself, and the blue text are the words or phrases upon which I comment in the green bullet points.


I'm going to speak today about the relationship between science and human values. Now, it's generally understood that questions of morality — questions of good and evil and right and wrong — are questions about which science officially has no opinion. It's thought that science can help us get what we value, but it can never tell us what we ought to value. And, consequently, most people — I think most people probably here — think that science will never answer the most important questions in human life: questions like, "What is worth living for?" "What is worth dying for?" "What constitutes a good life?"
So, I'm going to argue that this is an illusion — that the separation between science and human values is an illusion — and actually quite a dangerous one at this point in human history. Now, it's often said that science cannot give us a foundation for morality and human values, because science deals with facts, and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres. It's often thought that there's no description of the way the world is that can tell us how the world ought to be. But I think this is quite clearly untrue.Values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

  • Why should we care about the well-being of conscious creatures? Why is a conscious creature more valuable than a rock? Says who or what? In fact, from a physical standpoint, they are both simply examples of a collection of atoms held together by various physical forces.
  • Another question is, does Sam believe that consciousness is real or just an illusion?
Why is it that we don't have ethical obligations toward rocks? Why don't we feel compassion for rocks?It's because we don't think rocks can suffer. And if we're more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it's because we think they're exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering. Now, the crucial thing to notice here is that this is a factual claim: This is something that we could be right or wrong about. And if we have misconstrued the relationship between biological complexity and the possibilities of experience well then we could be wrong about the inner lives of insects.

  • "Ethical obiligations" Isn't this what Sam is trying to prove? He seems to be assuming those, but upon what is the assumption based?
  • "Feel compassion" and "more concerned" describe human experiences (feelings) that in fact, the majority of humanity may experience, but while they may point to something this true, they do not in themselves make the thing an obligation or "ought" that I could pass on to another. From an evolutionary standpoint, they could describe a trait that had value to pass on that trait to the next generation, but this does not prove that the well-being or felt happiness or lack of suffering of conscious creatures is better than the opposite. From Sam's perspective aren't the feelings simply a combination of electrical impulses and hormone changes?
And there's no notion, no version of human morality and human values that I've ever come across that is not at some point reducible to a concern about conscious experience and its possible changes. Even if you get your values from religion, even if you think that good and evil ultimately relate to conditions after death — either to an eternity of happiness with God or an eternity of suffering in hell — you are still concerned about consciousness and its changes. And to say that such changes can persist after death is itself a factual claim, which, of course, may or may not be true.

  • He is once again assuming what he is supposed to be proving. Just because people believe in morality or values does not make them an obligation that others should follow.  If we use this standard to "prove" something, then I don't have to prove the existence of the supernatural, I can just assume it because most people believe in some sort of supernatural. But isn't challenging the old assumptions supposed to be what a scientific viewpoint is supposed to do.
  • For the purpose of definition, objective morality if it exists at all is an obligation or ought to someone or something that is true regardless of whether the individual personally believes or feels it. It has to exist outside the individual and have some force if not followed.
Now, to speak about the conditions of well-being in this life, for human beings, we know that there is a continuum of such facts. We know that it's possible to live in a failed state, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong — where mothers cannot feed their children, where strangers cannot find the basis for peaceful collaboration, where people are murdered indiscriminately. And we know that it's possible to move along this continuum towards something quite a bit more idyllic, to a place where a conference like this is even conceivable.
And we know — we know — that there are right and wrong answers to how to move in this space. Would adding cholera to the water be a good idea? Probably not. Would it be a good idea for everyone to believe in the evil eye, so that when bad things happened to them they immediately blame their neighbors? Probably not. There are truths to be known about how human communities flourish, whether or not we understand these truths. And morality relates to these truths.
  • "Good idea" depends on what the goal is. Morality is tied to teleology or purpose. If your purpose was to make a bunch of rich westerners sick then adding cholera to the water would be a good idea. If your goal is "human communities flourishing" then perhaps you like the TED community of humans and you don't want to add disease to the water. The question remains why is any "human community flourishing" a good idea? So far the whole talk is based on assuming that at least one thing is good, namely human flourishing, but he did not provide evidence why this is better than dead space or nothing at all. I mean he might feel it is better, and lots of people might feel it is better, but why do their feelings get to impose upon someone else who does not like other humans or who is more concerned about their own flourishing?
So, in talking about values we are talking about facts. Now, of course our situation in the world can be understood at many levels — from the level of the genome on up to the level of economic systems and political arrangements. But if we're going to talk about human well-being we are, of necessity, talking about the human brain. Because we know that our experience of the world and of ourselves within it is realized in the brain —
whatever happens after death. Even if the suicide bomber does get 72 virgins in the afterlife, in this life, his personality — his rather unfortunate personality — is the product of his brain. So the contributions of culture — if culture changes us, as indeed it does, it changes us by changing our brains. And so therefore whatever cultural variation there is in how human beings flourish can, at least in principle, be understood in the context of a maturing science of the mind — neuroscience, psychology, etc.
So, what I'm arguing is that value's reduced to facts — to facts about the conscious experience of conscious beings. And we can therefore visualize a space of possible changes in the experience of these beings. And I think of this as kind of a moral landscape, with peaks and valleys that correspond to differences in the well-being of conscious creatures, both personal and collective. And one thing to notice is that perhaps there are states of human well-being that we rarely access, that few people access. And these await our discovery. Perhaps some of these states can be appropriately called mystical or spiritual. Perhaps there are other states that we can't access because of how our minds are structured but other minds possibly could access them.
Now, let me be clear about what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that science is guaranteed to map this space, or that we will have scientific answers to every conceivable moral question. I don't think, for instance, that you will one day consult a supercomputer to learn whether you should have a second child, or whether we should bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, or whether you can deduct the full cost of TED as a business expense. (Laughter) But if questions affect human well-being then they do have answers, whether or not we can find them. And just admitting this — just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish — will change the way we talk about morality, and will change our expectations of human cooperation in the future.
For instance, there are 21 states in our country where corporal punishment in the classroom is legal, where it is legal for a teacher to beat a child with a wooden board, hard, and raising large bruises and blisters and even breaking the skin. And hundreds of thousands of children, incidentally, are subjected to this every year. The locations of these enlightened districts, I think, will fail to surprise you. We're not talking about Connecticut.
And the rationale for this behavior is explicitly religious. The creator of the universe himself has told us not to spare the rod, lest we spoil the child — this is in Proverbs 13 and 20, and I believe, 23. But we can ask the obvious question: Is it a good idea, generally speaking, to subject children to pain and violence and public humiliation as a way of encouraging healthy emotional development and good behavior?(Laughter) Is there any doubt that this question has an answer, and that it matters?

  • On the whole, I actually agree with many of the points made by Harris once we get past that he has assumed morality and not proven it. I think the general standard of human flourishing sounds suspiciously like "Love your neighbor as yourself." In fact a good portion of the justification for laws, whether religious or civil is that they lead to the well-being of the people. I have read lots of religious texts, wisdom literature and historic philosophy about how to live well. Harris seems to think that the science of values based on human well-being is something that has just been discovered, but in fact it has been happening for thousands of years. 
  • For instance, I have no problem asking the question about spanking. Notice that when Harris speaks about spanking in a pejorative way, he is already making a value claim about its "goodness," without providing evidence. I have seen and talked with lots of people who have been abused and recognize the harm physical and emotional abuse has. On the other hand, I have also seen many instances of kids that are raised with virtually no negative consequences and they are in fact spoiled and it ends up causing them and those around them great harm because they have not learned proper boundaries. Therefore, I would suspect that a study that honestly tested the hypothesis that child rearing with lots of positive reinforcement and some negative reinforcement, including moderate physical disciple actually provides the most human flourishing. I and millions of people have had overall positive outcomes with this kind of child raising practice. Ancient wisdom should not be rejected just because it is ancient. Let's authentically test it and see if perhaps the observations and wisdom of people down through history actually match what really works.
Now, many of you might worry that the notion of well-being is truly undefined, and seemingly perpetually open to be re-construed. And so, how therefore can there be an objective notion of well-being? Well, consider by analogy, the concept of physical health. The concept of physical health is undefined. As we just heard from Michael Specter, it has changed over the years. When this statue was carved the average life expectancy was probably 30. It's now around 80 in the developed world. There may come a time when we meddle with our genomes in such a way that not being able to run a marathon at age 200 will be considered a profound disability. People will send you donations when you're in that condition.(Laughter)
Notice that the fact that the concept of health is open, genuinely open for revision, does not make it vacuous. The distinction between a healthy person and a dead one is about as clear and consequential as any we make in science. Another thing to notice is there may be many peaks on the moral landscape: There may be equivalent ways to thrive; there may be equivalent ways to organize a human society so as to maximize human flourishing.
Now, why wouldn't this undermine an objective morality? Well think of how we talk about food: I would never be tempted to argue to you that there must be one right food to eat. There is clearly a range of materials that constitute healthy food. But there's nevertheless a clear distinction between food and poison. The fact that there are many right answers to the question, "What is food?" does not tempt us to say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition. Many people worry that a universal morality would require moral precepts that admit of no exceptions.

  • This whole talk seems like Harris is Columbus just discovering the New World and acting like no one has ever been here before when in fact he is simply talking about moral and ethical discussions that have been happening for thousands of years. Absolute moral standards applied in specific situations is called situational ethics. 
  • For instance, as a Christian Pastor, I have read through the Hebrew law code in Exodus - Deuteronomy and the Ten Commandments are listed both in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. The commandment not to murder is clear, but then there are various laws dealing with situations where perhaps and accidental death occurred or where the governing authority has the right to take someone's life. There was an absolute standard based on the value of human life, but the law was written with the understanding that various situations impact how that absolute should be applied.
  • All ethical systems have done the same thing. Rather than reinvent the wheel, why not study some history and philosophy and discover if the wisdom of the ages can help you in this search for practical morality.
So, for instance, if it's really wrong to lie, it must always be wrong to lie, and if you can find an exception, well then there's no such thing as moral truth. Why would we think this? Consider, by analogy, the game of chess. Now, if you're going to play good chess, a principle like, "Don't lose your Queen," is very good to follow. But it clearly admits some exceptions. There are moments when losing your Queen is a brilliant thing to do. There are moments when it is the only good thing you can do. And yet, chess is a domain of perfect objectivity. The fact that there are exceptions here does not change that at all.
Now, this brings us to the sorts of moves that people are apt to make in the moral sphere. Consider the great problem of women's bodies: What to do about them? Well this is one thing you can do about them: You can cover them up. Now, it is the position, generally speaking, of our intellectual community that while we may not like this, we might think of this as "wrong" in Boston or Palo Alto, who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags? And who are we to say, even, that they're wrong to beat them with lengths of steel cable, or throw battery acid in their faces if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way?
Well, who are we not to say this? Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this? I'm not talking about voluntary wearing of a veil — women should be able to wear whatever they want, as far as I'm concerned. But what does voluntary mean in a community where, when a girl gets raped, her father's first impulse, rather often, is to murder her out of shame?
Just let that fact detonate in your brain for a minute: Your daughter gets raped, and what you want to do is kill her. What are the chances that represents a peak of human flourishing?
Now, to say this is not to say that we have got the perfect solution in our own society. For instance, this is what it's like to go to a newsstand almost anywhere in the civilized world. Now, granted, for many men it may require a degree in philosophy to see something wrong with these images. (Laughter) But if we are in a reflective mood, we can ask, "Is this the perfect expression of psychological balance with respect to variables like youth and beauty and women's bodies?" I mean, is this the optimal environment in which to raise our children? Probably not. OK, so perhaps there's some place on the spectrum between these two extremes that represents a place of better balance. (Applause) Perhaps there are many such places--again, given other changes in human culture there may be many peaks on the moral landscape. But the thing to notice is that there will be many more ways not to be on a peak. Now the irony, from my perspective, is that the only people who seem to generally agree with me and who think that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions are religious demagogues of one form or another.
And of course they think they have right answers to moral questions because they got these answers from a voice in a whirlwind, not because they made an intelligent analysis of the causes and condition of human and animal well-being. In fact, the endurance of religion as a lens through which most people view moral questions has separated most moral talk from real questions of human and animal suffering. This is why we spend our time talking about things like gay marriage and not about genocide or nuclear proliferation or poverty or any other hugely consequential issue. But the demagogues are right about one thing: We need a universal conception of human values.

  • Once again a very uncharitable reading of history. Frankly even from a materialist sociological standpoint I would at least give credit to those religions that survived and under which people flourished. Perhaps by accident or because of the wisdom of some sage, these people discovered some principles which helped the most people flourish. Those religions and societies that did not promote human well-being were perhaps got killed off by those more productive societies that found out these principles. 
  • In fact, using Harris' logic about human flourishing and evolutionary principles then perhaps we should examine history to see which societies have produced the most human flourishing and then test their values to see if those values continue to work. 0000
Now, what stands in the way of this? Well, one thing to notice is that we do something different when talking about morality — especially secular, academic, scientist types. When talking about morality we value differences of opinion in a way that we don't in any other area of our lives. So, for instance the Dalai Lama gets up every morning meditating on compassion, and he thinks that helping other human beings is an integral component of human happiness. On the other hand, we have someone like Ted Bundy; Ted Bundy was very fond of abducting and raping and torturing and killing young women.
So, we appear to have a genuine difference of opinion about how to profitably use one's time. (Laughter)Most Western intellectuals look at this situation and say, "Well, there's nothing for the Dalai Lama to be really right about — really right about — or for Ted Bundy to be really wrong about that admits of a real argument that potentially falls within the purview of science. He likes chocolate, he likes vanilla. There's nothing that one should be able to say to the other that should persuade the other." Notice that we don't do this in science.
On the left you have Edward Witten. He's a string theorist. If you ask the smartest physicists around who is the smartest physicist around, in my experience half of them will say Ed Witten. The other half will tell you they don't like the question. (Laughter) So, what would happen if I showed up at a physics conference and said,"String theory is bogus. It doesn't resonate with me. It's not how I chose to view the universe at a small scale. I'm not a fan." (Laughter) Well, nothing would happen because I'm not a physicist; I don't understand string theory. I'm the Ted Bundy of string theory. (Laughter) I wouldn't want to belong to any string theory club that would have me as a member.
But this is just the point. Whenever we are talking about facts certain opinions must be excluded. That is what it is to have a domain of expertise. That is what it is for knowledge to count. How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise, or moral talent, or moral genius even? How have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count? How have we convinced ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects worth considering? Does the Taliban have a point of view on physics that is worth considering? No. (Laughter) How is their ignorance any less obvious on the subject of human well-being? (Applause)

  • Notice how the assumption made at the beginning comes into play here. The assumption that human flourishing in general is the standard is used to judge both Bundy and the Taliban, neither of which had (have) that as their goal. Bundy's goal was to satisfy a sexual power urge, and the Taliban's goal is to be obey their god. The question still comes back to Harris and anyone else, why should these other people accept your understand of good? This really makes a difference when trying to convince 1.5 billion Muslims who will not simply accept your definition as a starting point. Especially if many of them hold a moral system that allows them to use force to coerce others if necessary. 
  • As an interesting aside, notice that Harris hardly would have to convince Christians because his standard is suspiciously close to the Christian standard of loving God and loving others.
So, this, I think, is what the world needs now. It needs people like ourselves to admit that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing, and morality relates to that domain of facts. It is possible for individuals, and even for whole cultures, to care about the wrong things, which is to say that it's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering. Just admitting this will transform our discourse about morality. We live in a world in which the boundaries between nations mean less and less, and they will one day mean nothing.
We live in a world filled with destructive technology, and this technology cannot be uninvented; it will always be easier to break things than to fix them. It seems to me, therefore, patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human well-being than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads, or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes. We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life. And to do that, we have to admit that these questions have answers. Thank you very much.(Applause)
Chris Anderson: So, some combustible material there. Whether in this audience or people elsewhere in the world, hearing some of this, may well be doing the screaming-with-rage thing, after as well, some of them.
Language seems to be really important here. When you're talking about the veil, you're talking about women dressed in cloth bags. I've lived in the Muslim world, spoken with a lot of Muslim women. And some of them would say something else. They would say, "No, you know, this is a celebration of female specialness, it helps build that and it's a result of the fact that" — and this is arguably a sophisticated psychological view — "that male lust is not to be trusted." I mean, can you engage in a conversation with that kind of woman without seeming kind of cultural imperialist?
Sam Harris: Yeah, well I think I tried to broach this in a sentence, watching the clock ticking, but the question is: What is voluntary in a context where men have certain expectations, and you're guaranteed to be treated in a certain way if you don't veil yourself? And so, if anyone in this room wanted to wear a veil, or a very funny hat, or tattoo their face — I think we should be free to voluntarily do whatever we want, but we have to be honest about the constraints that these women are placed under. And so I think we shouldn't be so eager to always take their word for it, especially when it's 120 degrees out and you're wearing a full burqa.
CA: A lot of people want to believe in this concept of moral progress. But can you reconcile that? I think I understood you to say that you could reconcile that with a world that doesn't become one dimensional, where we all have to think the same. Paint your picture of what rolling the clock 50 years forward, 100 years forward, how you would like to think of the world, balancing moral progress with richness.
SH: Well, I think once you admit that we are on the path toward understanding our minds at the level of the brain in some important detail, then you have to admit that we are going to understand all of the positive and negative qualities of ourselves in much greater detail. So, we're going to understand positive social emotion like empathy and compassion, and we're going to understand the factors that encourage it — whether they're genetic, whether they're how people talk to one another, whether they're economic systems, and insofar as we begin to shine light on that we are inevitably going to converge on that fact space.
So, everything is not going to be up for grabs. It's not going to be like veiling my daughter from birth is just as good as teaching her to be confident and well-educated in the context of men who do desire women. I mean I don't think we need an NSF grant to know that compulsory veiling is a bad idea — but at a certain point we're going to be able to scan the brains of everyone involved and actually interrogate them. Do people love their daughters just as much in these systems? And I think there are clearly right answers to that.
CA: And if the results come out that actually they do, are you prepared to shift your instinctive current judgment on some of these issues?
SH: Well yeah, modulo one obvious fact, that you can love someone in the context of a truly delusional belief system. So, you can say like, "Because I knew my gay son was going to go to hell if he found a boyfriend, I chopped his head off. And that was the most compassionate thing I could do." If you get all those parts aligned, yes I think you could probably be feeling the emotion of love. But again, then we have to talk about well-being in a larger context. It's all of us in this together, not one man feeling ecstasy and then blowing himself up on a bus.

  • It is really interesting how people who talk derisively about God are so willing to play his role. What is the larger context Sam, and who gets to decide? You see the guy blowing himself up thinks he is doing it for the larger context. Planned parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and Hitler thought eugenics was a good thing and that forced sterilization of the unfit (Sanger) or outright killing them (Hitler) was helping the larger context of human well-being. In fact, there is nothing I fear more than a person who trying to force others to do the right thing for their own good. Sam would quickly turn "moral scientists" into the new high priests who help direct society "for their own good." In fact, isn't that exactly what the larger bureaucratic states all become?

CA: Sam, this is a conversation I would actually love to continue for hours. We don't have that, but maybe another time. Thank you for coming to TED.
SH: Really an honor. Thank you. (Applause)

Final Thoughts:

  • Sam did not prove objective morality, and in fact did even try. He simply assumed a standard and ran with it.
  • While Sam's standard ends up looking very like my own Christian standard, I am afraid that he will not have any luck promoting it because he does not give any convincing evidence for it. Basically, his standard is generalizing human empathy, but that relies on people's feelings. We don't actually feel empathy for everyone. In fact, we feel apathy toward most people and we downright dislike others. How does he plan to promote the idea that we should generalize our feeling toward people that we actively dislike? As a Christian, I have an answer to that question, namely that those people are loved by God and therefore I should love them too? Why should someone who only empathizes with those in their group or who only live to satisfy their own desires change to love others?
  • Finally, many atheists have recognized that atheism does not provide a ground for objective morality and therefore disagree with Sam. Nietzsche and Bertand Russell are examples and here is a more modern example.