Asking in faith

Today I was reading this,

Matthew 21:18-22 HCSB

Early in the morning,  as He was returning to the city, He was hungry. Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He went up to it and found nothing on it except leaves. And He said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again! ” At once the fig tree withered. When the disciples saw it, they were amazed and said, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly? ” Jesus answered them, “I assure you: If you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you tell this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.   And if you believe, you will receive  whatever you ask for in prayer.”

We are supposed to have faith and to ask in faith, but can we simply ask for anything and expect to receive it? That does not appear to be the case in the rest of scripture.

First faith must transform us, and then our desires will be in line with what the a Lord desires. We will be then asking not based on simple human desires, but desires transformed by the Lord. Further when our request is not met exactly as we expected we will then be able to accept the answer and also to be better able to apprehend what God really had in mind.

The whole idea that we can simply believe hard enough for something that we want and it will be done simply does not square with the hardship faced by people of great faith in the rest of the Bible.

This is confirmed by James who also talks about asking in faith (James 1:5-7, 4:3-4). Here James explains that we do need to ask in faith but that if we ask with the wrong motives we should not expect to receive from the Lord. The more we pray in faith the more we are transformed to be the people God created us to be.

Jesus could have cursed all bad plants that he saw, and he could have healed everyone in the world. Why didn't he? Because he knew this was not the will of his Father in that moment. He also knew that in the end he was going to redeem the earth, so he could allow temporary suffering and temporary fallenness to affect the earth because he knew that greater glory for His father would come in the long run.

When we pray we do not know the whole plan in detail, but we do know that in the end God wins. Therefore as our faith in Him grows we learn to pray with His purposes in mind. For example when we pray for someone who is sick, we want that person not to feel the effects of pain but we do not know the whole picture. So we pray out of the knowledge we have but perhaps God is using that pain to help them trust Him more, or perhaps to also help those around to grow in their faith.

Therefore, I am learning to pray always that God will be glorified in and through the circumstance. I then pray my desire that I think will bring more joy and less pain in the moment. But if God chooses a different path I learn to trust Him that He knows best.

This does not mean that I do not believe He is capable doing what I asked for, but rather that I know ultimately He knows best. God promises not to give us a snake when we ask for fish (Luke 11:11), but this does not mean we always get the fish. At least not right away.

Our faith rests not in getting what we think we need, but in God who gives us what we need!

Parenting : What is your goal?

Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to a story that he called the best thing he had read in a long time. After reading the article I was left with the question, I wonder what the author's goal was in parenting her children? I have 5 kids (one in heaven now), and I know that I do not have it all figured out. Therefore, Traci and I have done quite a bit of research on parenting, both from a Christian perspective and from a secular perspective. We have done this not just as a clinical exercise but because at times we just do not know what to do next. Therefore this article intrigued me because I am always trying to examine parenting ideas and techniques for myself and for others who ask me for advice.

The article is titled "How Machiavelli Saved My Family," and it tells the story of a mom who took principles from the Italian statesman and philosopher, Machiavelli, and applied them to raising her kids. Machiavelli had a philosophy that emphasizes the use of power to accomplish goals. He wrote primarily to give advice to help the ruling class be more effective.

Some of the principles from Machiavelli's book, The Prince, she applied to raising her kids are: (I summarized the points.)

1. Do not let your kids have everything they want, because in the long run it will not be good for you or them. She recommends giving them some money of their own to spend so that they can learn how to be more responsible and not nag you for stuff.
2. Encourage your kids to compete with one another to spur them to accomplish more.
3. Provide consistent discipline to help your kids learn how to behave.
4. It is okay to be a little immoral if the goal is good enough to justify it. The example she used was lying to her kids about what she and her husband were doing one weekend so that they could have some much needed away time.
5. To maintain good control it is okay to use power even against your spouse. The example she gave was withholding sex for the purpose of getting him to agree to her plans for the family.

Now, I have not read Machiavelli myself, so I cannot say whether Ms. Evans, accurately interpreted  him, but I believe my summaries accurately reflect what her ideas. Furthermore, I agree that consistent discipline and teaching about not getting everything you want are great lessons that we all should learn.

On the other hand, Ms. Evan's Machiavellian principles for parenting seem to reveal that she has a wrong understanding of what the goal of a parent should be, especially when compared to the biblical standard of parenting. As a Christian, my goal in parenting my kids is to encourage them to follow Jesus with their whole heart. In other words, parenting is really discipling my kids in their relationship with God. This does not just mean that I just want them to look like Christian externally, but that I want to encourage them to have a personal relationship with the true God of the universe and that their hearts would be oriented toward him. The best material I can recommend in helping understand this goal and giving practical advice toward this end is Shepherding a Child's Heart, by Ted Tripp or for teens, Age of Opportunity, by Paul David Tripp (they are brothers).

As I was reading the article, I could see Ms. Evans had some wrong parenting goals listed by the Tripp brothers in their books. For example, it is clear that Ms. Evans highly valued a controlled and orderly environment in her household and that before applying these principles she did not have those things. Now having an orderly household is not a bad thing, I would suspect that most people value this as well, but if it becomes the goal, then it can be accomplished through means of use of power while at the same time not touching the hearts of the kids.

Another example is the use of competition between the kids to get them to do better in school. Again, I have no problem with encouraging kids to live up to their potential, but the way that she was doing it shows that she had both the wrong goal and techniques that could lead to other problems. She was clearly teaching her kids that their identity and acceptance was tied to their performance in academics. Now again, I am not saying that we should not encourage our kids to succeed in school, but often the report card is a symbol of value of the individual, not just a measure of personal growth.

Furthermore, she was also teaching them their identity was measured in comparison to other people. So life is all about measuring yourself compared to others, and in particular compared to other according to specific standards of success as given by education. This mentality leads some to arrogance because they are now better than others and are rewarded for proving they are better, and it can lead others to despair because they can never measure up. Where in these measure is love for one another? How are they developing character that might encourage them to think of the other person as better than themselves or to love their enemy?

Finally, although Machiavelli never said specifically the ends justify the means, the concept is certainly in his writings and Ms. Evans article clearly shows that she agrees. You are going to teach your kids that a little immorality is fine as long as it leads to some great good, but who determines the greater good? She gives us no idea of what that is other than what she personally desires. She desires a break from the kids, so she lies to accomplish that. (As an aside, why would that require lying? Why would it not be possible to teach your kids that they are not the center of the universe and that parents need time together without deceiving them? In fact, would it not be better to help them see the goodness of their parents spending time together and help them see that a little sacrifice from them in the short run leads to a better outcome in the long run.)

She also apparently thinks that not having any more kids is better, so she uses her relational power to manipulate her husband to the goal that she apparently thinks is better. So she teachers her kids that as long as they perceive the goal to be good, it is okay to ignore the wishes of the other person and force your will on them. I would hate to be her if her kids learn this lesson well and become little Machiavellian princes themselves! As they grow older and learn to use the growing power that they have, they will either revolt and overthrow her in the home or simply leave if they cannot win.

Ms. Evans goals seem to be primarily self centered and while in the short run she may actually help her kids by providing a more stable and controlled environment, in the long run she does not seem to have their interior life in mind, which could lead to major conflict later. Would her way be better than complete chaos? Yes, but that does not mean it is the best way or even close to the best way. I believe it is completely possible to achieve a stable loving household by pointing kids to the gospel so that they can repent and become more like Jesus. This does not mean the kids will be perfect, because we are still being formed into the image of Christ too, but unless we have the right goal in mind we will never come close to the right target.

Moving the marriage fence.

I am posting here a response to a letter in our local paper, The Independent Review, written by Democratic Senator John Marty. You can read the letter here. This is the same letter that was posted to our local paper.

My response is as follows:

Letter to the editor of Independent Review:

“Moving the Marriage Fence”

An old saying goes, “Before you move a fence, you should find out why it was put their in the first place.” Senator John Marty recently wrote a letter to your paper in which he argued that it is now time for marriage equality, and by this he means that we should now allow same-sex couples to get the legal definition and privileges of marriage. He claims that we should do this because most people now support this change and because it is a matter of equality.

Most people have probably not really considered the arguments for or against traditional marriage by which I mean one man and one woman for life, but rather have simply heard sound bites. We should examine the issue a little deeper, because before we move this fence, namely change the definition of marriage, we should understand why it was put there in the first place. Furthermore, we also should consider what the consequences of changing the definition of marriage might be.

Marriage laws have never been about treating people equally. Marriage is in fact about giving privileges to one kind of relationship that we do not give to all types of relationships. There are certain financial, legal and social benefits that marriage laws give to this relationship. The claim that same-sex relationships should get equality is in fact the claim that they should also get extra benefits from the government just like traditional marriages.

But what benefits does society get from marriage that it has a privileged position in the first place? The primary benefit of traditional marriage for society is to provide the best environment for raising children and thereby creating many other societal benefits. Many studies along with our own intuitions show that the best outcomes for kids and even for the couple comes from families made up of a heterosexual couple that stays together long-term. The benefits of long-term stable families led by a Dad and a Mom are better emotional health, financial health, wealth accumulation across generations, and less crime. In the past, this intuitive truth was simply taken for granted because of the common Judeo-Christian ethics that informed western culture, but many people no longer hold to those same ethics, so we are now being asked to change our laws in accordance with new standards. But for our own benefit, we should still consider whether adding new relationships to the definition of marriage provides similar benefits to society.

At best the answer to this question is we do not know because not enough long-term same-sex relationships have been studied, and at worst the answer is no they do not provide those benefits. A recent study, called “New Family Structures Study” by University of Texas at Austin sociologist, Mark Regnerus, helps to verify that traditional marriage still clearly provides the best outcomes. He studied over 3000 adults who grew up in a variety of backgrounds including some that grew up with parents who engaged in same-sex relationships. He found that traditional marriage still clearly provides the best outcomes for children over all other types of relationships. If you doubt this evidence, I encourage you to read the study (it is available on the internet) to see whether or not the study was reasonable and leads to a fair conclusion. If we cannot say for sure that same-sex relationships provide benefit or not, should we be granting them special legal status?

This leads me to the second question we should answer, namely, what is the consequence of making this change? Senator Marty along with many same-sex marriage advocates claims that we should do this because people should be able to marry the person they love. Are they really ready to use that as the primary definition of marriage? If so, then what if someone loves more than one woman or man? Why should those relationships be denied special privileges? Or how about a brother and a sister who have romantic feelings for one another and always have? Why deny them? In fact, why should someone's private feelings of love be taken in to account in public law in the first place? Why should would we discriminate against long-term roommates who are not romantically involved? This same argument used to appeal for publicly recognizing same-sex marriage can be used to justify giving special recognition to all sorts of other relationships.

In fact, lest you think this is simply a silly argument about something that may happen in the future, polygamy advocates are already arguing that they should be able to marry multiple people because that is their desire. If marriage is primarily a public affirmation of private desires, then why limit it to desires for just one person? Either same-sex marriage advocates will need to be open to all other redefinitions of marriage or they will be engaging in the same type of prejudice that they claim others have. Namely, they will be claiming that same-sex desires are good and should be recognized but other people's desires are bad and should not be. The long-run extension of this principle means the choice is not between traditional marriage and same-sex marriage, but between traditional marriage and no definition of marriage.

Senator Marty claims that primary reason that people like me oppose is simply because we are trying to push our particular “religious” truth, with the implication that our truth is really just some old-fashioned opinion that should have no bearing on modern policy. You will notice that my entire argument rests not on my “religious” truth, but rather on testable facts about how human society works best. My primary concern is that any laws and benefits written into law should really reflect what is best for society as a whole. On a personal level, I daily deal with the kids and adults who are wounded from broken families because over the last generation we as a culture have already greatly devalued the nuclear family, and my personal passion about this issue arises out of a desire to see stronger families and fewer hurting people.

Do these facts and arguments match my particular religious beliefs? Yes, but they also match the beliefs of many other religions and societies throughout thousands of years, thus our designation of traditional marriage. Furthermore, history shows that traditional marriage provided a strong framework upon which our civilization was built, and modern social science proves that it remains the best foundation that we could have going forward. My hope is that we will think and discuss the issue rationally and with good will toward each other, because if we consider all the facts, we will see that laws encouraging traditional marriage help us continue to have a society of free, happy and healthy people.

Finally, undoubtedly simply by addressing this issue, I will be labeled as a bigot. Some people, perhaps many of those define themselves as gay or lesbian will feel like I am attacking them personally, because they think I am trying to deny them happiness simply because of a prejudiced mind. Let me state categorically that I do not hate you or anyone. I wish you the best, and although we may disagree about what is best for you, me and the world, I have no bad feelings toward you. I hope that you will give me the same benefit of the doubt that you want me to give you, so that you can consider my arguments before you dismiss me as a person. I am also open for dialogue and I have no problem having friendships with people even when we disagree on certain issues and lifestyles. Thanks for giving me a hearing.

Sincerely,
Mike Sechler

What's wrong with the world?

Here is the video blog with basically the same text posted below it.


Over the past couple of months I have seen many people and politicians make comments relating to the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Many people have simply expressed concern and wished the victims families, while others have gone on to lay the blame for the shooting in various places. Likely all of us who have been affected by the news have wondered why this happened, and questioned at least in part, “What went wrong to allow this to happen?” Some have blamed the easy availability of guns, some have blamed violence in the media, some have blamed the lack of proper mental healthcare and prevention, and others have been quick to point to the lack of a belief in God in the school system as at least a partial cause.
I am not trying here to answer why this particular tragedy happened, but rather why these types of tragedies are becoming more common and why I believe we should expect it to happen more not less in the future. Now before I get into the meat of this article, I want to warn you that I am going to be stating what I believe to be true about America and the world. So if you do not want to read about morality, culture, religion, God, and what is wrong with the world then please do not go any further. If you do not come here to read these types of deeper discussions, I am okay with that, but consider yourself for warned, no one is making you read further.

What is wrong with the world?

I am (and so are you!)
In the early 20th Century a newspaper in England asked some writers to respond to the question, to answer the “What is wrong with the world?” and author G.K. Chesterton had the shorted reply which was, “Dear Sirs, I am.” What Chesterton was reflecting is the Christian notion of the fallenness of humankind. That in spite of all of our good intentions we all have a tendency to do bad things. We all can be selfish, prideful, and hurtful, and if we are left to on our own these tendencies will over rule even our best intentions.
How many of us, when we hear the news or hear about a problem in the world first react with self-reflection about the ways you have failed? Jesus said in Matthew 7 that when we go to take a speck out of someone else's eye, we should we should first look in the mirror to see if we have a plank in our own eye. This sort of self-examination is unusual in our culture because we are regularly told that the problem is not our fault, but rather it is a societal, economic, or educational problem. Even when we do see a problem in ourselves, it is not our fault but rather we are simply products of our upbringing, class, or race. People are no longer evil, rather they just have a mental illness. The solution for guilt is not to repent and change, but to go to a counselor (or Oprah if you are really famous) to help you overcome your mental defect.

What is wrong with anything?

This leads to a the deeper question of how do we know when something is wrong in the first place. In the western world, right and wrong used to be defined by the Judeo-Christian moral code as expressed primarily in the Bible in places like the 10 commandments (Exodus 20). Morals were what God said was right, and we believed that because God created the world and us, that these rules reflected the way that things really should be. Even if you did not personally go to a Christian church, enough people in your community did to help set the standard for everyone.
For the vast majority of people now though this is not the case. Most people do not go to church now, and the dominant view of the world is not Christian, but rather a materialistic secularism. Although many people still claim to believe in God even if they do not attend church, if asked to describe God they often describe God in a very different way than Bible describes God. Further, when asked to define right and wrong, most people will have a vague notion that agrees with traditional Christian values, which is probably some left over values from previous generations, but in any place where traditional morals might infringe on something they want to do, their personal desires take priority over their claimed morals. In this case, they fall back to the modern notion that each individual can decide what is right for themselves.
For instance, most people will still claim that divorce in general is wrong, but very few people who want a divorce will claim it is wrong for them. Rather, personal happiness becomes a higher value than a commitment to a marriage.
Unfortunately, this is true even among many people claiming to be Christians and attending church regularly. The problem is many Christians do not really believe that God's rules are good and therefore they never take the time to even study them. We Christians are often viewed as hypocrites because we don't live up to what we say we believe, and I have seen this lived out time and again. If we claim that God has the best in mind for us, and then fail to even know what He says or try live up to what we say is best, then we show we do not really believe it ourselves. That is a pretty big log in your eye.

Rejecting God and rejecting good.

My conclusion is that our collective behavior shows that our culture has rejected the idea that God is active in the world. Therefore, we have also rejected the idea of a code right and wrong that everyone agrees upon. We look like the Hebrews did during the time of the judges when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
So in looking for an answer to why such an event like killing of children in Newtown happened, I challenge you to ask yourself why it is even wrong. If your answer is simply, “of course it is wrong” or “because it is obvious,” then think about why it was not obvious to Adam Lanza. What could you say to stop the next Adam Lanza? If what is right and wrong is defined simply by my own feelings or what is obvious, then people like Adam Lanza will continue to kill and hurt others when they feel like it. In fact, if this is the way you determine right and wrong, you may be hurting others and justifying it and not even know it because you don't even have a standard outside of yourself by which to examine your own behavior.
So as you think about the bad stuff in the world, consider, how do you know what is really right and wrong and whether or not you are really a good person?
In a future post, I will try to make the case for that Christian morals really are good and are good for you.
God bless.

Evolution, Science and Evidence

As you might suspect, I am a Bible-believing Christian and I will freely admit that I am influenced in my view of the origins of the world and universe by what I believe the Bible says.

On the other hand, I am also still pretty open to examining the physical world to see if that evidence agrees with what I believe. Among many scientist, especially biologists, evolution is taken as a given truth, not just one possible theory. There are many reasons for this including a progressive fossil record where the best evidence does seem to suggest a progression for less complicated beings to more complicated beings over time. Also, there do seem to be similarities among groupings of animals that suggest they are related and modern genetic evidence points to specific similarities in the genetic code. Now while these evidences are consistent with the evolutionary theory, I have always been troubled with the fact that the suggested mechanism for change in the evolutionary theory, namely natural selection acting upon random mutations, was not sufficient to explain all the changes and improvements necessary for evolution to be true.

The more I study the issue, the more I am convinced that natural processes are not only inadequate for the task, but could never be adequate to create new genetic information that would be necessary to create new features that differentiate species and families of plants and animals.

Douglas Axe, who co-wrote a book called Science and Human Origins with Ann Gauger, wrote this in response to a critique of his book,

"My challenge to McBride, and everyone else who believes the evolutionary story of human origins, is not to provide the list of mutations that did the trick, but rather a list of mutations that can do it. Otherwise they're in the position of insisting that something is a scientific fact without having the faintest idea how it even could be. That's just not what scientists should be doing." (emphasis mine)

Here are a couple of articles with this quote.

Christian Post article

Axe's response

This is exactly my problem. I am told by various professors (biology professors in college) and atheists that science demands that we not consider special creation and that evolution must be true, but then when challenged to present evidence for how evolution could happen using mutations they have no answer. Axe and Gauger suggest that mutations cannot create the necessary change and have experimental evidence to back up that claim.

Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box suggests that certain types of biological structures are so complex and interrelated that chance mutations could never account for them because it would require multiple mutations at the same time for the structures to work.

Also, Stephen Meyer's book Signature in the Cell makes it clear the DNA contains specified information like computer code, and the only other examples of this type of information are products of human minds, suggesting that DNA is also the product of intelligence.

Now as a Christian I have no problem with the fact that natural processes are not capable of producing everything or with the idea that science may in fact point us toward an intelligence outside the physical universe, because I do not have a worldview that demands that all explanations must come from within the physical universe. What happens though when someone is committed to only natural explanations? Do they even consider explanations outside their worldview? Generally they do not. They are not allowed to challenge their assumptions. Many scientists have a prior commitment to philosophical naturalism that demands that regardless of what the evidence may suggest they cannot possibly consider that evolution is false. They cannot consider it false because there is no other natural explanation given, and they must have a natural explanation.

As I see it the best testable scientific evidence we have leads to the conclusion that natural selection based on random mutation, which does in fact happen in limited cases, cannot create the types of changes necessary to explain the origins of new information that leads to new body structures. This means that the proposed mechanism for evolution does not work. Furthermore in examining the structure of DNA we see information that looks just like the type of information that we use in language, and we already know that type of information comes from human minds. Therefore, one explanation for what we see does not work, while another explanation, namely an intelligence, fits exactly what we see.

I have seen it written and heard it said by atheist, "there is no evidence for God," but that is only true if you start with a commitment to a philosophy that excludes the possibility of God. From my perspective, the physical world clearly points to God and the more I study, the more convinced I become.

Why is the fence there?

An old proverb says "Before you move a fence you should find out why it was put there in the first place." This is why I am convinced of the need to speak to the topic of marriage. Before we as a country and as a culture agree to change what we say marriage is we should probably find out why we ever valued it in the first place. I have a number of thoughts on this issue myself, but Alan Shlemon does a very good job of laying out the basic issues here.

In particular I agree with his statement at the end of his article, "Make no mistake about it. Redefining marriage will impact our culture. It won’t be today, next week, or next year. It will be in the long-term because ideas have consequences."

I have heard it said a number of time recently that people who believe in the traditional marriage are on the wrong side of history, and that the redefinition of marriage is inevitable because that is where our society is headed. Perhaps we are, but I am afraid that while we could be on the wrong side of history for a few years, we are not on the wrong side of history in the long run. Human nature has not changed, and if some believe that we can destroy basic societal units and rebuild them however we chose then they are fooling themselves.

Simply put, humans function best under specific conditions, and to deny that obvious truth is like denying gravity. You think you can fly right up until the time you hit the ground.

http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/05/should-homosexuals-be-allowed-to-marry-whom-they-love.html

The Law is Good.

Recently I was reading through Psalm 119 which is all about how good the law of God is and I realized that as modern Christians we don't often emphasis the goodness of the law. In fact, we frequently talk about grace and mercy, and we often avoid talking about the law because it might make us sound judgmental.

In fact, this is exactly what happens whenever we talk about biblical morals in public conversation. We get push back from people that we should not judge others and that we cannot push our morals on other people. But this is not what we should be doing when we try to encourage others to see the truth of the biblical law.

The law is good, because in following it we get the best outcomes. If you care about someone or something, you want the best for them, and we should promote the law because in following it people end up living in the best way possible for themselves and for other people. In other words, biblical morality is not just some arbitrary opinion of some people or the random whim of some god, but rather expresses the timeless truths about how the world works and how people work.

People who consistently follow the law are consistently better, freer, happier, and more content people, and the world is better because of them.

As an example marriage is not some random rule, but is a relationship for which we were created and in which people function best. Therefore, we should not apologize for promoting biblical morals in our culture around us, but we should explain that what we desire is the best for ourselves and others.