Sharing Life — Abortion, Stem Cells, Euthanasia, Intelligent Design, Reproduction Technology

The word “apologetics” in its Greek origin means “to explain or account”. In Theology, it is used to mean “to provide a defense of the Faith”. In a world of skeptics and a culture openly disdainful of God, “apologists” are busy.

A not so new argument against God is that he doesn’t exist because He is not perfect, and because He is not Perfect, He is not eternal or all-powerful. Evil you see implies things are askew, out of control, and ultimately chaotic. A God who created evil, or is even subject to it, is out of control, and therefore not God.

I recently attended a Biola University lecture in a series entitled “Christian Apologetics”` The speaker, with the aid of a Power Point presentation, took us through the “apologies” or arguments for the defense of God. Frankly, I can’t think of a higher calling than to be God’s defense attorney. That I have a law degree and nearly 30 years of litigation experience only adds to the hubris. However, I suggest a word other than “apology”. It seems a bad start to “apologize” for God. Theologians, I’m convinced, live in an insular world and are therefore unconnected to the language of the people. So they use terms like “apologetics”, “providential”, “election”, “sin”, “grace”, “born again”, “salvation” and “redemption” without regard to whether those terms help or hinder the “average Joe” in his struggle to know God.

So, what is the Case for God? The “prosecution” presents a mound of evidence that there is evil in the world. That evidence is loud and convincing, and covers horrendous misdeeds. After hearing centuries of murders, rapes, power grabs, beatings, deprivations, and loveless relationships, the Court raises its hands in exasperation, and declares that the evidence is cumulative and unduly time consuming. Turning to the Defense, the Court asks for a stipulation that truly there is evil in the world, and not just trivial evil, but such evil as turns the blood cold. I so stipulate, and we move on.

Now the burden of proof shifts to me. What is the case for God? Here are the notes of my lecture at Biola:

1. God made an evil world because an evil world permits the free assertion of moral action. That is, what is the merit of ethical conduct in a world that does not challenge the “good”? The argument then is that a sinful world is better than a sinless world because only in a sinful world does “goodness” have meaning. Now, in heaven, as opposed to earth, “goodness” is the soup of the day, and there is no evil in heaven. To the contrary, we are incapable of evil in heaven. How then do we know of “evil” in a perfect heaven? The answer is that we acquire the knowledge of evil without the disposition to do it because God has conformed our character to be like his own. We have real choice in heaven, but the conditions of our soul produce only one outcome: to honor God. Thus, our new natures in heaven can produce only good, and evil is not possible.

2. The second argument I will refer to as the “humble pie” argument. I love this argument, because with a little reflection, it is powerfully persuasive: Is my human capacity and knowledge sufficient to contain, grasp, and account for all possible explanations for evil in the world? That is, if I reach a conclusion based on the available evidence and by use of my available mental powers and my limited experience, may I then conclude that only those reasons I have generated are among the plausible? Add to this refreshingly humble approach that there is abundant evidence in Creation for the existence of a Creator, and that His creation is “good” or at least has many numerous “good” tendencies. In the law, we consider burdens of proof as matters of degree. We know that in a “case” there are facts and arguments for both sides on an issue. The question is never one of “no evidence”. The question is: What degree of persuasion does the evidence present? The scales may be tipped by a “preponderance of the evidence” for one side or the other. Based on that balance, juries by supermajority come to conclusions as to the “probable” truth. Stated simply, the balance of evidence, particularly in the thinking of Intelligent Design, is that there is a wonderful and awesome Creator behind Creation. Some would say the evidence is “clear and convincing”, or even “beyond a reasonable doubt”. We are like children when it comes to proof of God. We conduct our daily lives based on degrees of persuasion, but when it comes to God, we want absolute proof, and we want it now. Yes, we are like children. Further, while I may in my own powers reason to a definition of a “good God” who conforms to my idea of the world based on my human, mortal perspective, it may be that God is bigger than that.

Conclusion: We underestimate God continuously. As I have heard, God created man in His own image and man has ever since been busy returning the favor. Our hubris is amazing. We cannot grasp a God who knows all that is, including all the possible other universes that could be, but are not, and Who knows all there is to know in one instant, without regard to linear time. Still, having only an infinitesimally small piece of the evidence, and only a minuscule intellectual ability to process even that evidence, we proudly assert conclusions that a god who does not conform to our notion of God is no god at all. We are like Job’s accusers in the Book of Job, offering up various definitions of what and who God is, and spinning theories to account for the reality of evil that assume a “reasonable” God would see things our way. We do not so much make a case that God is “evil” as we make the case that God is “unreasonable”. As God responded to Job: Who are you to be my counselor? Were you there when I laid the foundations of the Earth? This accusation turns the tables: It would seem that man, and not God, has the burden of proof. Perhaps it is we who should “apologize”.

The nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court on October 3, 2005 brings her life into sharp focus and national scrutiny. The reports by the L.A. Times repeatedly describe her as a “workaholic”.

If Ms. Miers were male, her “addiction to work” would probably not raise many concerns. To the contrary, males are usually praised and honored for workaholism. The only people complaining are their children, who of course come to feel abandonned and unloved.

As a female, however, Ms. Miers is probably going to be viewed ambivalently by some people of both genders. She has never married, and is without children. Her life has most likely been her work. She has consistently risen to the top in her profession by putting in long and steady hours, day after day, over her 60 years of life.

The result of her native skills, her character, her intelligence, and of course “being in the right place at the right time” is her current nomination. By this measure, she is an outstanding success. Her life has impact and influence.

Both genders should reflect on the meaning of success outside of one’s career focus. Women particularly are burdened with this question because they are the traditional keepers of the family, while also entering into the “male dominated” world of career and work. The result: women are choosing to work to exhaustion, mental, physical and spiritual.

The further truth is that the exhaustion and emotional guilt cut across gender lines. Men who love their women seek to carry the burden also, and they too love and nurture their children. They cook, they clean, and they change diapers, and they transport kids to soccer games. They are not just “enlightened” men. They are men who love their families, understand the burdens of their wives, and seek to share that burden.

So the question is a “person” question in our current culture, not just a “gender” question: What is a successful career in the context of successful life? Every choice one makes in answering this question limits all other potential choices. If one chooses to marry, to have children, to buy a house, to incur debts of money and of the heart, then other choices are limited.

The focus of this blog is “LIFE”. When a man and a woman bring life into the world, all other choices that follow are determined by that primary choice to create life. Harriet Miers chose not to marry and chose not to have children so that she could pursue her professional goals. I respect those choices. I hope those choices were not the result of “workaholism” as the L.A. Times flippantly reports her work ethic. If those choices were based in addiction to work, then they were not balanced or healthy choices, and they carry a high spiritual and emotional cost.

But when a man and a woman bring life into the world, they lose the choices they theoretically had before the conception of that child. Their choice to conceive a child was actually a “choice” to care for the life of the child. They became biological parents, and with that choice, they are to sacrifice themselves daily for their child until he or she matures to independence.

That is the rub. Many in our culture have sought to evade the responsibility of their choice to conceive life by the convenience and legal opportunity to abort their children. Even in the case where the pregnancy is an accident or unintended, the reality is that a new human life is conceived. Even if a person has not chosen to be in the circumstance of saving a human life, the moral obligation to preserve life is still present. One cannot, for example, stand by and watch a person drown without assisting him simply because it did not “choose” to come upon the scene.

The family today is torn apart in many cases by the demands of two parents working long hours to meet obligations they have chosen to incur in order to live a culturally expected lifestyle of “prosperity”. The American dream can easily become the American nightmare as two parents lose the contact of love and freedom they once thought was theirs. Children suffer. The community suffers.

A successful life is one in which we have the energy, joy, and opportunity to love and care for those God has given us. We sometimes can only have more by having less.

I remember a song presented each Friday night at Saddleback Church’s 12 step program. “I’m on the Road to Recovery, Step by Step, Day by Day”. The song included the words “trusting God along the way”.

Isaiah the Prophet also spoke of the Road to Recovery. He addressed the Hebrews threatened by the massive army of Assyrians. At Chapter 35, verses 8-10, Isaiah told his people that there was a “Highway of Holiness” or “Holy Road” for those who walk in God’s ways. Only the redeemed follow this Road. It is the main road that passes thorugh the once deserted land, and it leads to the New Jerusulem.

The Recovery Song at Saddleback and the Restoration Promise of Isaiah both describe a way through the barreness of life without God. A person on a spiritual journey may experience sorrow, pain, fatique, discouragement, but he also uses the road as a way to a destination set by faith and trust in a power greater than himself.

What is it we “recover”? What is it that we need to have “restored”? Why is it that we must follow a “road through the deserted places” to reach our place of restoration?

The “new Jerusulem” is the world retaken by a victorious God, in the person of Jesus, in the end times, and brought fully under his sovereign government. Those who live there will be the redeemed who remained faithful even in times of severe oppression. They will be the ones who travelled the “Highway of Holiness” to its ultimate destination: eternal life with God.

This description sounds like “pie in the sky” and foolishness to the Unbeliever. I can understand that reaction. I once held it, because I had not committed myself to the journey. I remained attached deeply to the barreness through which the Holy Road of Grace and Mercy passed. Only by faith and grace is a person able to travel a road so unlike any other. The reason so many persons who are in a 12 step program find “a Higher Power” is that all those other roads are dead ends.

For the Christian, Jesus is the “Way”. The early believers were not called “Christians”, but followers of the “Way”. Isaiah, hundreds of years before Christ, announced in prophetic language that a Messiah would come to bring restoration. He was the “highway called the Holy Road”. He would be God’s gift to a lost people, a “way” to return them to Himself through the barreness of sin.

God gives us a foretaste of the inexpressible and unimaginable joy of life in the “New Jerusulem”. He heals our infirmities now, he sanctifies (transforms us into His own character) even now. We experience a “here and now” recovery of life and relationship with God that foretells of the perfect life we will experience when we are fully restored in eternity. Addicts near death physically and spiritually are restored to life and freedom in this present life. Yes, struggles and set-backs occur, but the Road still beckons us, and we pick ourselves up and resume the journey. In doing so, we occasionally look back, and marvel at how far we’ve come.

This is the Message version of Isaiah 35:8-10:

There will be a highway
called the Holy Road
No one rude or rebellious
is permitted on this road.
It’s for God’s people exclusively—-
impossible to get lost on this road.
Not even fools can get lost on it.
No lions on this road,
No dangerous wild animals—
Nothing and no one dangerous or threatening.
Only the redeemed will walk on it.
The people God has ransomed
will come back on this road.
They’ll sing as they make their way home to Zion,
unfading halos of joy encircling their heads,
Welcomed home with gifts of joy and gladness
as all sorrows and sighs scurry into the night.

Starvation is occurring in the most affluent and best educated parts of our national community. In fact, the starvation is sometimes thought of as a “rich girl’s disease” although it can strike any socio-economic strata and either gender. Still, there is a “profile” of a likely anorexia victim: 15 to 25, female, highly intelligent, upper income, academically or athletically driven, and unusually pretty. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that deep at the core of these young people is a feeling of being worthless. There is a drive to accomplish “success” by some external standard in order to feel “good enough”. There is a deep sense that one is unloved, abandoned, and unlovable.

The primary diagnosis is “phobic” — a fear of food. The secondary but almost always present diagnosis is anxiety and/or depression. Why a phobia of food? Well, “why any phobia?”, might be the threshold question. A phobia is a specific focused fear that otherwise would be so general as to be completely unmanageable. One can avoid a specific source of danger, but not a generalized anxiety that is unrelenting. Food becomes the enemy, and avoiding it gives a sense of control and safety. In the process, the person develops “body dysmorphia”, or the inability to see in the mirror what everyone around her can see clearly: she looks like a holocaust victim. This dysmorphia persists as her bones disintegrate from osteoporosis and her internal organs begin to fail, including her heart. There is a 10-20% mortality rate associated with this disease.

Anorexia is a disease that baffles the general public, and still challenges the understanding of the medical community. It can be treated, and if treated early with a combination of medication and psychotherapy by professionals specializing in the disease, it can even be managed over the patient’s lifetime. The disease is not “cured’ in a permanent sense.

For sometime, medical personnel sought to treat alcoholism by various ineffective protocols. Carl Jung, founder of Jungian psychology, did all he knew to do, unsuccessfully, to treat an alcoholic. He told him there was no treatment he could offer that would cure the patient. The patient was near death and desperate, and pleaded for a referral. Jung replied that he had heard of a few men like his patient who had turned to one another for support, and that they had seemed to find some recovery through a belief in God. The group was the beginning of the original 12 step program, and Jung’s patient found hope among these fellow lost souls.

The 12 Step program requires as its first steps that the adherrent acknowledge his life is unmanageable, and that only a power greater than himself can restore him to sanity.

Anorexia, although quite different diagnostically than alcoholism, still is a spiritual as well as a physical disease. The unmet love needs deep within the human heart account for the insane drive to meet those needs through self-destructive methods. Medications can provide a platform from which an individual can better address those spiritual needs, but no medication can provide the core love and core healing needed to recover from phobias and addictions.

Sin is very much a spiritual disease also. We all suffer from it, and we all are in denial in varying degrees that we are in need of help. We can handle our lives for ourselves, thank you very much. We dig our personal and societal holes deeper and deeper, until we fall in it, and can’t get out, all the while declaring that we know better than God how to run our lives.

Some see God as a stern and unfeeling task master who sets arbitrary and impossible rules. In truth, God is a compassionate Father who sets guidelines for right living so that His children can mature into fully alive and happy people who will live with Him forever.

How can we know such love? We must first ask God to for us what we cannot do for ourselves: to see clearly our predicament and to see the depth of our need for divine help. Secondly, we must put aside our pride and call out to a God we may hardly even know to rescue us from our misery and pain. Finally, as God responds to our need, we must respond to Him. We must learn more about Him through the study of Scripture, and by community with “safe” persons who know Him also.

Our deepest hunger is not for food, but for God. We are meant to “feed upon the word of God” and to find comfort and refuge in His Spirit. In our spiritual illness we have come to loathe and resist the very Source of Life. We suffer from a sort of “Spirit Dysmorphia” similar to the anorexics “body dysmorphia”. We cannot see that we are dying, and we vigorously deny and even chide Christans who may in one way or another tell us that our eternal lives are at risk.

John 6:35 - Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

This morning’s Sports section described an altercation between an 18 year old tennis professional and her father during the player’s tour at the Carlsbad Resort in California. The incident was one of several past similar events between fathers and their teen daughters in the world of professional tennis. In this incident, however, the young player was battered, and suffered cuts and bruises. The exact cause of the father’s “acting out” was unclear, but he was arrested for the attack. His daughter had ranked 35th in the world, but recently had dropped to somewhere in the 100s. The daughter declined to press charges, but the father has been restricted from attending future matches by the professional tennis association organizing the event in the interest of protecting the player.

I can imagine the stress and sadness of this young woman. She was battered by her own father during a competition when she most needed his support. She may have already felt the disappointment of losing her ranking by objective performance standards of “winning and losing”. Now she may have felt her father’s love was just as conditional and unpredictable. Who was she if she didn’t win? Was she lovable only if her ranking met expectations?

This young woman’s dilemma of not knowing if we are loved or lovable is something we all share in some degree. Some of us are lucky by disposition or by actual experience of love. We know that inner feeling of calm security that we are cared for, provided for, nurtured, and safe. We have resources then to “face the world”. Others of us grew up in insecurity, without reliable parents, and maybe even parents who verbally and physically attacked us on a regular basis. We felt loved only if we were “good enough”. The result is that consciously or unconsciously we go through the world with a fear of abandonment and a broken spirit. We are unable to trust others to love us.

Christians are broken, sinful people, who also sometimes struggle to “face the world” because they continue to need an inner healing of the places left empty by the sins and omissions of others. The difference is that they have consciously accepted that brokenness, and in faith they placed it before God, their Heavenly Father. They believed in such a Perfect Father because they found Him through God Incarnate, Immanuel, or “God With Us”. They went in faith and trust to a spiritual Father through the introduction of the living God-Man, Jesus, the Christ or “Promised One”.

This process of salvation is difficult for the sophisticated and cynical people of the 21st Century (or of any time) to accept. Many educated and bright people reject the idea because of intellectual pride, and the belief that this way of simple faith is too easy, and too strange. A “sophisticated” God would have done things much differently.

Yet, the journey of the wounded heart captured and restored by God is not a “sophisticated” journey, but a straight-forward experience that is proved by a radically changed attitude and a renewed hope. A life is not merely “touched” by salvation, it is regenerated and renewed to the original glory God intended before sin infected the human race.

So, even as Christians continue to sin, and even as they continue to struggle with some of the “old issues” of their past, they know deep within their hearts that a continuing process of regeneration and renewal is underway, and that daily love is retaking the territory of the heart lost to injury and sorrow. This experience is the power of “Christ living within”.

In my earlier posts, I have written about the experience of God’s grace “within the gap”. The “gap” is that place which is the distance between where we are and where God hopes us to be. Our God, however, is not like the tennis professional’s father. He will not hammer us if our score doesn’t meet his expectations. When a Christian accepts God’s invitation to be renewed through following Jesus Christ, the score is settled: God 1, Sin 0. Now the process of life is one of daily transformation in which we are no longer condemned by God, and we are wise to therefore no longer condemn ourselves. The prize of the Christian life is freedom, and our daily challenge is to live in that freedom in a world characterized by enslavement to sin.