Michael Gungor and what Christians believe

I have seen a couple of comments about Michael Gungor recently. I have never heard of the guy or his music. He made a comment in his blog earlier this year that is apparently controversial,

I have no more ability to believe, for example, that the first people on earth were a couple named Adam and Eve that lived 6,000 years ago. I have no ability to believe that there was a flood that covered all the highest mountains of the world only 4,000 years ago and that all of the animal species that exist today are here because they were carried on an ark and then somehow walked or flew all around the world from a mountain in the middle east after the water dried up. I have no more ability to believe these things than I do to believe in Santa Clause or to not believe in gravity. But I have a choice on what to do with these unbeliefs. I could either throw out those stories as lies, or I could try to find some value in them as stories.

Now the context is that he doesn't think he can choose his beliefs, which I disagree with, but is important to understand this paragraph.

In places he sounds like someone leaving a hyper-literalist background,

So if up and down aren’t real, then what do we mean by God being “up” in Heaven? And why do so many worship leaders stare at the lights of the sanctuary and reach their hands into the sky as though trying to reach somebody “up” there? Up where? Towards which planet? Which galaxy? Because if it’s in some direction that we are supposed to think about God, that direction would be constantly changing. Sometimes the congregation should be gazing down and to the right or reaching their hands straight out behind them.

Though elsewhere he makes some reasonable comments,

Give me the samaritan. The heretic. The outsider who may have the ‘wrong’ ‘beliefs’ in words and concepts but actually lives out the right beliefs by stopping and helping me. That’s the kind of belief I’m interested in at this point.

There is much that one could comment on in this post, I'll address one: moving away from orthodox belief is often a dangerous sign.

In the orthodoxy-orthopraxy debate the upper-hand probably goes to orthopraxy. God calls us to obedience. As much as I desire and enjoy defending the truth, our faith needs boots. We need to do the things Jesus did and love like he did which means love in action.

And even though his comments are being labelled controversial, many Christians think the world is billions of years older than 6000 years, some of these people even subscribe to the general theory of evolution. Such beliefs (while incorrect) do not keep them outside the kingdom. I know many Christians that hold to one or both of those beliefs and who are more godly than me.

Now that I have defended orthopraxy and acknowledged godly Christians with heterodox beliefs, let me say that any move away from orthodoxy needs to be watched closely. This is partly because Christianity is a centred set: over time we should become more like Christ in our beliefs and behaviour.

It is the case that some abandon true beliefs without abandoning Christianity: some Christian evolutionists become creationists and some creationists become evolutionists yet only one of those positions is correct. Similar could be said about other doctrines such as paedobaptism and credobaptism. But in general, if we are truly following Jesus we should become more and more like him. Thus abandonment of true beliefs may be the beginning of one leaving the kingdom.

Right beliefs over time often lead to right actions. We may not desire such actions, we may do them out of duty and only come to love them with the practice of obedience; nevertheless, believing the truth is more likely to lead to right behaviour than believing falsehood. If we want to do what is right then we tend to do what we think is right. On balance, heterodox belief is more likely to lead to heteropraxy than orthopraxy. So while orthopraxy may be preferable to orthodoxy if one is to choose, when one abandons orthodoxy how long is it before one's behaviour is no longer the orthopraxy that is being lauded? And how long before one is justifying heterodoxy?

Progressive Christians are fond of reminding conservatives to love sinners outside the church. This is indeed true and they are right to do so—though they often are slow to offer such love to those that they disagree with within the church. Note also that addressing heathen sin is not intrinsically hateful. But I often observe that such a pathway that starts with denying orthodoxy and approving heterodoxy—because what matters is right behaviour—ends up approving wrong behaviour.

Gungor finishes with an appeal to James 2,

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

What we are seeing here is not the man with works addressing the man with faith—orthopraxy versus orthodoxy—rather the man with faith and works addressing the man claiming to have faith. Jesus, after all, did show the Samaritans the living water and Rahab abandoned idolatry to worship the Lord.

But what actually piqued my interest; the statement that I wished to address, was a comment Gungor made in response to all this controversy,

But now that I am a songwriter, I see this whole thing as absolutely absurd. Genesis is a poem if I’ve ever seen one.

Which I will write about anon.

Obedience as a path to truth

A.J. Jacobs is a agnostic, secular Jew and the author of The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. I have not read the book. He gave a talk in 2007 on how the experience of trying to follow every law in the Bible changed him. It is a mildly amusing talk. Though he makes several errors in his conclusions it seems as if he made some positive progress. Of his insights I think this is one of the more profound, and I am not certain most Christians grasp the significance of this.

I couldn't believe how much my behaviour changed my thoughts. This was one of the huge lessons of the year is that I almost pretended to be a better person and I became a little bit of a better person. So it's that I had always thought you change your mind and you change your behaviour but its often the other way around, you change your behaviour and you change your mind. [6:20]

Rosaria Butterfield noted something similar during her conversion

But God's promises rolled in like sets of waves into my world. One Lord's Day, Ken preached on John 7:17: "If anyone wills to do [God's] will, he shall know concerning the doctrine" (NKJV). This verse exposed the quicksand in which my feet were stuck. I was a thinker. I was paid to read books and write about them. I expected that in all areas of life, understanding came before obedience. And I wanted God to show me, on my terms, why homosexuality was a sin. I wanted to be the judge, not one being judged.

But the verse promised understanding after obedience. I wrestled with the question: Did I really want to understand homosexuality from God's point of view, or did I just want to argue with him? I prayed that night that God would give me the willingness to obey before I understood. 

Elizabeth Goudge writes in her excellent (albeit slow) novel The Bird in the Tree,

Creative love meant building up by quantities of small actions a habit of service that might become at last a habit of mind and feeling as well as of body.  I tried, and I found it did work out like that. Feeling can be compelled by action not quite as easily as action by feeling, but far more lastingly.

While we need to renew our minds (Romans 12:2), obedience (when the pathway is clear) in the face of uncertain feelings eventually convinces us of the truth we have accented to.

Practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word

John Ortberg writes a eulogy for Dallas Willard. He was an intellectual that was big on spiritual formation. It mattered not just what we believe, but our character is major importance. Who we are matters, and winning others not the argument also matters.

In one of his classes a student challenged him with statements that were both offensive and incorrect. Dallas paused and told the class that that was a good place to end their discussion. Somebody asked Dallas afterward why he had not countered the students' argument and put him in his place. "I'm practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.

"This is part of why Dallas would never debate non-believers. He would engage in a mutual conversation where both parties could seek for truth together. He would often say: "I'm sure Jesus is the kind of person who would be the first to say you must ruthlessly follow the truth wherever it leads." Through the last week of his life he was still hoping to help believers engage non-believers by looking together at questions where people get stuck in their actual lives rather than by trying to win arguments.

Hat tip: Wesleyan Arminian

Orthodoxy or orthopraxy?

Flipside asks,

Do you think that in US/Western churches today we focus too much on knowing scripture in the intellectual sense, and not enough on living it? If we did not explicitly say that we are Christians to our friends and acquaintances, would they make the same observation of us as the people at Antioch did - Namely that we are like Jesus!

So, is right behaviour more important than right belief?

In drawing men to Christ a love of Christians for their brethren is attractive to those on the outside; they see our love for one another and that testifies to the love of God. As Jesus prayed,

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17)

There is also a place for telling the truth. Demolishing arguments and explaining the truth to unbelievers. In Athens Paul reasoned in the Areopagus and some believed (Acts 17).

So both our behaviour (love for each other) and our reasoning (explaining the truth) are important in attracting men to Christ.

But what in our own lives? How do we please God (though that may also influence others around us)? We are to please God first, even if unbelievers find this unattractive; we are the smell of Christ, fragrant to the elect and a stench to the rebellious.

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. (2 Corinthians 2)

In our pleasing God it is right behaviour which is important. Jesus frequently states that those who love him will obey his commandments (John 14). We must obey him even when we struggle to understand him. In contrast it is possible to have right belief but not live it, or at least try to live it. Teaching people the truth but refusing to live it is hypocrisy; a practice Jesus frequently condemned. Orthopraxy triumphs orthodoxy.

An aside, doing the right thing when you think it is wrong is not recommended. For example eating food that has previously been offered to idols means nothing intrinsically as there is only one true God (1 Corinthians 8, 10). But if you have qualms about it you should avoid it. Eating food when you think the act offends God is an offence against him.

So why the huge emphasis on orthodoxy? Because belief and behaviour cannot easily be separated. Belief does actually lead to behaviour. Wrong belief frequently leads to wrong behaviour. So while one is to obey God, thinking you are doing God's will when in fact you are not is not obedience. Sincerity, while of some value, does not excuse sin. This is why we must continually return to Scripture. We must renew our minds to be conformed to be like Christ as well as obey him as he asks of us.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

There is a further benefit of learning truth: it becomes our default thought pattern. So when we face difficulties that challenge our emotions the struggle doesn't automatically cause a crisis of faith. Expecting suffering because we are told it will come may not make suffering any easier. It is, however, more likely to encourage us to ask God's help in our pain and less likely to see us asking questions like, "Is God real?" or "Does God love me?"