Questions on Christianity

Charles Koch in his book Good Profit lists the principles that have guided Koch Industries to its phenomenal growth. First on the list is integrity and he gives a very good reason for this emphasis: The transaction costs in business are greatly reduced if people have integrity. Think of all the money that could be saved if people had integrity. There would be no spending on security systems (alarms, locks, safes, weapons, guards), lawyers to write contracts, lawyers to sue those who default on contracts, internal and external auditors to verify a company does what it committed itself to do). [1]

Integrity is defined as: adherence to moral and ethical principles. This definition implies that we must do more than just believe in ethical principles, we must adhere to them; we must actually practice them. So why do we Christians maintain that all we need to do to be saved is to believe in Jesus and his death for our sins? To hold such a belief means that God is not concerned about our integrity; that it does not matter to God whether we put our beliefs into practice or not. Is that the God you read about in the Bible?

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[1]   Charles G. Koch, Good Profit, New York: Crown Business, 2015, p. 123.

Whenever I go to a Protestant church, the part of the service I like least is the altar call. It seems that at the end of every service it is a requirement to have an altar call. Why? Because standard Christian belief is that one must believe in Jesus and his death for our sins to be saved. Therefore, convincing people to believe and make a public statement of that belief is the top priority for a church.

But if, as this blog maintains, salvation is the renovation of our soul so it becomes like God then a change in people’s lives should be the church’s first priority, not altar calls. What would a church be like whose primary mission was to move people to become more God-like? An example is Rosaria Butterfield’s conversion to Christianity that we discussed in the last blog. Her conversion was not the result of attending a church; it was not because someone recited the Four Spiritual Laws to her. Her conversion was because someone lived Christian principles. After she wrote an opinion article, she received “the kindest letter of opposition I have ever read” from a pastor. The pastor and his family started a relationship with her, not with the idea of converting her. She said: “This was not friendship evangelism but friendship”. [1]

There is a place for altar calls in church just as there is a place for the rite of baptism. Both are a public expression of a commitment to follow the teaching of Jesus. When we place these rites above the task of becoming more like God, then there is something wrong with our belief system.

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[1]   Bill Sherman, “TU community gracious to ex-lesbian speaker”, Tulsa World, November 21, 2015, p. A11.

This blog is often critical of Christians who think that belief is the only requirement for salvation. So it is refreshing to hear of a Christian who thinks that salvation involves actually putting our beliefs into practice. Such a person is Rosaria Butterfield.

Ms. Butterfield was a very successful college professor who was also a lesbian and Marxist. When she became a Christian, she realized it would mean giving up her lesbian lifestyle. So she changed and it cost her. She says the aftermath of her decision was a “bloodbath” as she felt that she had betrayed her friends and community [1] and I’m sure the feeling was mutual.

Ms. Butterfield understands that the purpose of salvation is to make of us a new creation and that means we must change. That has always been the problem we humans have with God. God wants to interfere with how we think we should live our lives, with the type of person we want to be. Human nature, being what it is, means we constantly try to think of ways to avoid having God meddle in our lives. And one way to accomplish that is to make salvation only a belief system.

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[1]   Bill Sherman, “TU community gracious to ex-lesbian speaker”, Tulsa World, November 21, 2015, p. A11.

Charles Koch has taken a business his dad started and turned it into a $100 billion dollar company—one of the largest privately held companies in the world. It should be obvious this is a person who knows how to get things done. In discussing implementing the management system that has led to this phenomenal growth, Mr. Koch maintains the employees in a company must actually practice the system, not just talk about it. He states:

If you’ve never swung a golf club or driven a car before, theory and instruction will only get you so far. You need to pick up a club or get behind the wheel and keep practicing until you internalize the mechanics to the point where you can do it automatically. It needs to become second nature to you. [1]

He also quotes the scientist and philosopher Polanyi who “argued that we only truly know something—that is, have personal knowledge of it—when we can apply it to get results”. Koch summarized Polanyi’s argument by stating that knowing and doing are two different things. [2]

In this blog, we have taken examples from almost every area of our lives to show that it is commonly accepted that we must live something to truly learn it. Yet we Christians still hold to the idea that we only need to believe to be saved; that we only need a theoretical knowledge of what it means to be a follower of Christ to be saved. Why?

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[1]   Charles G. Koch, Good Profit, New York: Crown Business, 2015, p. 11.

[2] Koch, p. 76.

In the US, the first amendment to the Constitution protects our freedom of speech. Throughout the years, various court rulings have defined precisely what is free speech and has led to the legal principle that even “inflammatory speech is protected as long as it is not incitement to imminent violence”. [1] Our founding fathers and many courts have recognized there is a difference between what one says and actually acting upon those statements.

So why do we Christians have such a difficult time recognizing that fact? We say that salvation is only through belief in Jesus and his death for our sins. Do we really think we will be saved just by saying we have a certain belief?

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[1]   Emily Belz, “Clamping down on speech”, World, February 21, 2015, pp. 50-52.

Jeff Skiles was the copilot of the plane that landed in the Hudson River a few years ago (US Air 1549, Miracle on the Hudson). They are making a movie of this incident and the actor who will play Skiles asked him a simple question: Why does he like to fly? For someone whose vocation is aviation, one would think this would be an easy answer but it was not for Skiles. The reason this question was so difficult for Skiles was:

How does one explain the feel of an open cockpit on a spring morning, or the challenge of an approach to a remote high altitude mountain strip, or perhaps the view from 7 miles aloft of a landscape on the other side of the world. How does one express a feeling to someone who has never felt it? . . .Only those who have experienced flight can truly understand its many charms. [1]

This illustrates, as we have demonstrated in the last few blogs, the fact that theoretical knowledge, our belief system, is not sufficient in any area of our lives. To truly understand something we must live it. We cannot say we truly understand Christianity, we cannot say we know what Christianity is all about unless we actually live it. We must become a new creation, not just profess belief.

Belief in Jesus and his death for our sins is a good first step. But it is only the first step of a life long journey God has planned for us.

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[1]   Jeff Skiles, “Why Do We Fly”, Sport Aviation, December 2015, pp. 36-38.

The cartoon Non Sequitur published on November 24, 2015 shows St. Peter at the entrance to heaven. Beside him is a sign which states: “Entrance Requirements: Actually practiced the morals taught by your religion”. A group of people are waiting in line to gain admittance into heaven and one, upon reading the sign, states: “I think it means we don’t have to worry about it being too crowded in there”.

This cartoon is really more sad than funny. The underlying premise is that religious people subscribe to certain ideals but largely fail to actually live them. Why is this so? Why would we say we believe one thing but do another?

For us Christians part of the reason is because we have made Christianity a matter of belief instead of action. Our doctrine states all we need to do in order to be saved and go to heaven is to believe in Jesus and his death for our sins. Nothing is said about our actions in spite of the fact that, as is detailed in this blog and my book, the Bible clearly states action is required (see the “What the Bible Says about Salvation” tab on this blog’s home page). Two examples are: I Corinthians 13 which describes love as an action and places it above faith and hope in terms of importance and James 2:26 which states that faith without works is dead.

Salvation is more than belief. It is putting those beliefs into action; it is the change of our soul so it becomes more like God.

John and Martha King write a monthly column in Flying magazine about aviation safety. They teach that to improve safety pilots must use a technique called risk management which has two components. First is the “habit of situational awareness by systematically thinking about risks”. The second is “coming up with mitigation strategies for the risks you have thought of”. While this idea of risk management has been around for some time, Martha states that much of a pilot’s “aviation knowledge is an abstraction. . .until we apply it in a practical scenario” and therefore she suggests pilots develop habits whereby they address these two components of risk management before every flight. [1]

Our Christian beliefs are also an abstraction until we apply it in a practical situation. Jesus tells us: “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” (Matthew 5:44 NIV). This verse is an abstraction for many (e.g. the Westboro Baptist Church) because they do not put it into practice. In fact they do just the opposite by spewing hate toward those with whom they disagree.

Paul tells us Christians should not sue each other but we are to resolve our disputes among ourselves (1 Corinthians 6:1-8). This passage is an abstraction for many churches and denominational headquarters as they sue each other over who owns a particular church property. Applying this verse in a practical situation would mean we would be prepared to and in some instances actually experience a financial loss instead of suing a fellow Christian.

Like pilots who institute habits that enable them to use risk management tools to improve the safety of each flight they take, we Christians must develop habits that assist us in actually putting into practice what the Bible teaches us.

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[1]   Martha King, “Why Some Pilots Are Bad Risk Managers”, Flying, December 2015, p. 34.

In the last blog we noted that we must live something to really know it. There are multiple examples of this truth in our lives and we will discuss a few of them over the next few blogs.

I have just finished reading the science fiction novel The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir. It is about an astronaut (Mark Watney) who is stranded on Mars with no way of communicating with earth and no means of getting back to earth. When Mark went to retrieve a RTG unit which was four kilometers from his living quarters (the Hab), he was out of sight of the Hab for the first time. He had been alone on Mars for 66 sols (Mar’s days) and had the intellectual knowledge he was alone on Mars. However, seeing “nothing but dust, rock, and endless empty desert in all directions” [1] and losing sight of the Hab which was his only evidence of civilization caused him to experience his loneliness in a way that mere intellectual knowledge could not. As Mark states: “But there’s a difference between knowing it and really experiencing it”. [2]

As I mentioned in my book, this was brought home to me when my wife’s sons gave us gift certificates to go sky diving. Reading about sky diving, watching videos about sky diving, and talking to people who had been sky diving was helpful but all this knowledge was nothing compared to the actual experience of sky diving.

So why do we think Christianity would be any different? Knowledge of Christianity (our beliefs about Christianity) is so very different from actually living the Christian life. We all know that the Bible teaches that we should love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:33). That is knowledge. However, until we actually take some action that demonstrates that love toward our neighbor we truly do not know what it means to love our neighbor.

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[1]   Andy Weir, The Martian, New York: Broadway Books (Random House LLC), 2014, Kindle edition, p. 74, location 1233.

[2]   Weir, p. 75, location 1244.

I have just finished reading The 33 by Héctor Tobar. It is about the 33 men who were trapped in the San José mine in Chile and how they were rescued.

One of the miners was Franklin Lobos who was formerly a soccer star with the nickname of “The Magic Mortar” for his ability to kick missile-like free kicks into his opponent’s goal. As he got older, his soccer career faded and he had to take other jobs including being a miner at age 52.

The miners even while they were still trapped underground were famous the world over. Franklin’s soccer career showed him how fleeting fame can be and he wanted his fellow miners to recognize that the “heady sense of being at the center of everything, will disappear quicker than they could possibly imagine”. [1] He tried to communicate this to them but he recognized that “the only way to learn it is to live it”. So all he could do was to watch “as his fellow trapped miners’ obsession with their public image drives them to pettiness”. [2]

It is the same with all of us. How many of us learn from the mistakes of others? How many of us learn by reading or hearing what someone else tells us? Most of the time, we must live it to learn it.

That is why Christianity is more than a belief system. Christianity is putting a belief system into practice. It is only when we actually live what we say we believe that our beliefs come to life. “. . .faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:17 NIV).

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[1]   Héctor Tobar, The 33, Kindle edition, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook, Kindle location 4089.

[2[   Tobar, Kindle location 4100.