why go home?

coming to God as an outsider

Try this experiment: read the Bible as if you were an outsider. Pretend that these scriptures belong to a now-extinct sect that many admire but nobody follows. Imagine that someone loaned them to you and that you have no claim of understanding or even believing them. For once, don't assume that you have the right to be encouraged by every encouraging word within their covers. This experiment isn't as difficult for those who don't consider themselves Christians or Jews. They don't have so much to prove. You don't need to convince them that they may not be experiencing all the promises of the Bible. As a result, the Bible sometimes means more to a sincere outsider than a complacent believer.

progress in which direction?

At root, many modern conveniences were not developed for people's needs, but for the Industrial Age Your automatic dishwasher was not designed for cleaner dishes, it was designed for automatic dishes. You have become used to washing the food off them before putting them in the dishwasher, precisely because it can't clean dishes as well as you can. A washing machine for clothes is also designed for automation not quality. Those who know say the only way to remove stubborn dirt is with a washboard, but it's hard to mechanize one of those.

The fruits and vegetables you buy at your local supermarket were not developed for superior flavor but for automated production and ease of transport. Some of the tastiest tomato varieties have such delicate skins that you'll never see them in your produce section. A century and a quarter ago, you would have planted seed varieties best suited for your part of the country. Now those varieties may be extinct.

The professions of teaching and social work weren't created because they could do a better job than parents. Like a dishwasher, they were created to automate parenting. An automatic dishwasher usually does an inferior job, but it works when a human dishwasher isn't available. In the same way, no classroom can approach the student/teacher ratio, professional dedication or understanding of the students that a committed homeschooling parent can. Schools stay in business because, like orphanages, they can do their work even without parents if necessary.

Medicine is practiced to fit into its own suppositions, not necessarily to make patients well. For example, where malpractice suits abound, legal opinions are sometimes more important to doctors than medical opinions. But medical workers often believe their traditional tools (drugs and surgery) should be applied to every problem. If drugs cause side effects, prescribe more drugs. If surgery causes complications, operate again. Ironically, after years of sending medical workers to developing regions to teach that sicknesses are not caused by spirits, the western world has to admit that its own medical problems are overwhelmingly caused by spirits. Because of their spiritual needs, Westerners engage in destructive behavior such as the use of mood-altering drinks and drugs, or overeating or oversmoking, or sexual promiscuity or perversion, or acts of violence.

Abortion has become the most common elective surgery, championed as a woman's right though it was considered a means of men exploiting women for most of recorded history. Today it continues to allow men to shirk responsibility for the children they sire, and to allow male-dominated industry to pressure female employees to limit their motherhood if they want to get ahead.

Comfort and assurance is the highest goal, not salvation. Modern society misses the joy of personal responsibility, non-compulsion/non-wrath, community. With nearly everyone losing his virginity before marriage, they don't even know the wonders of intimacy kept intimate.

Entertainment comes from the Latin words meaning "to hold between." Do you really want someone to hold you between? No, you say, it's not entertainment, it's recreation. Then when will you be recreated and what will you do when you are? Or is it that God really has a purpose for only part of your time and you need to kill the rest, killing yourself as well? Did God give you too much time to keep your interest without artificial assistance? Do you want him to give you less time? Are you afraid that if you decide to serve him with your whole life, he won't allow you enough rest to keep healthy and happy? Do you believe you need to steal breaks from him, as from an unreasonable boss who expects you to keep going until you collapse?

More people are afraid of dentists than they are of death. That's because they believe dentists are more real than death. They can't really imagine death coming their way. As much as possible, death is handled by institutions such as hospitals and mortuaries.

The unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates, but with today's distractions, nobody has the time or the need to examine their lives.

Some people talk about God from personal experience. Others speak theoretically about God, as if they never expect to know for sure. The silliness of that approach becomes more obvious when you substitute your own name, or the name of your best friend, in place of God's in these discussions. Statements about "my belief," "my opinion," "my faith," or "my philosophy" don't make as much sense when they are applied to a real person. If you want to know what God is really like, meet him.

Many people believe the age of miracles (etc.) has passed away. Others insist it's still here. There is often little practical difference in the lives of these two groups. We all agree that some things haven't passed away. But we read the non-miraculous parts of the Book of Acts, and we still aren't experiencing the same power, joy, love, unity and holiness that the early Christians did. If we read the miraculous parts with an honest heart, we will likewise admit that we don't see many miracles in our lives.

Religious people are accused of harping on fire, brimstone and damnation. They don't really. It's rare to hear about such subjects in a religious gathering. They may believe in them, theoretically, but it's extremely rare to apply such warnings to themselves. Everybody is already "in."

Is there such a thing as false conversion, the belief that you are "in" with God when you are not yet? What about the unrepentant mass murderer who repeated a "sinner's prayer" at the urging of his Vacation Bible School teacher in second grade? It's easy to imagine that something didn't quite "take" in his heart, something that might have prevented his crimes. But what did he do at age seven that you haven't done to secure your salvation? If conversion never sufficiently changes your life, how do you ever know it's real? Is the grace of God like a weightless, odorless, colorless, massless gas that cannot be sensed?

Compared to the Kingdom of God and our part in it, does anything else really matter? What should you do now? Should you turn off your computer? Weep? Repent? Click on a different link? Get a drink? We have answers and goals. But we're answering the wrong questions, and reaching the wrong goals, like a Roman father in Pompeii who finishes remodeling the family room just before Mt. Vesuvius buries it in ashes. When we don't know God's will, we're filling in the gaps with our own will and ideas.

Most people, despite their religious beliefs, are practical atheists. They can make plans without him, meet their needs without him, live the essence of their lives without him. Their prayers give them away. They cheerfully talk to God as if they didn't really need anything. They may pray for God to heal a sick friend, but in their hearts, prayer is secondary to medicine and not really important at all. When sickness strikes home and medicine doesn't stop it, their actions may begin to line up with their doctrines. Then their prayers might become prayers of desperation, the kind God can answer. At last they mean what they pray.

Some of the most refreshing people to spend time with are converted murderers and recovered terminal patients. Someone who used to kill people has no illusions about what a nice guy he is, or what he would be like without God. Someone who was given six months to live has no illusions that he will live forever, or where his life comes from. Neither kind of person wastes as much time on themselves as the rest of us who haven't yet come to the end of ourselves.

We become accustomed to mediocrity instead of miracles, just as we've become accustomed to walking instead of flying. We accept our handicaps instead of asking God to heal them.

What is our motivation for trying to change our government and our society? Woodrow Wilson said he was fighting World War I to make the world safe for democracy. Many liberals want to make the world safe for perversion. Many conservatives merely want to make the world safe for themselves. The need is not for social conservatism, but rather social conservation. Just as we protect natural habitats because of their complex interlinking which we don't fully understand, we should respect human ecologies, equally complex and equally misunderstood. If we fear the environmental impact of a new factory on a town, why don't we fear the social impact of a new pastime on that same town?

Sociologists decry the weaknesses of single-parent families, but how many of them speak out against the socially-acceptable sins that made them common? Historically, repentance and conversion, not social programs, have been the only effective solution for a myriad of problems such as child abuse, child exploitation, poor working conditions, low incomes, high unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse and teen pregnancy. God helps a father to stop drinking and start working, God helps the father's employer to provide job training and increase wages, God helps the employer's teenaged daughter to seek love from himself instead of boys. Social scientists have even coined a term for the phenomenon: "redemption and lift."