Dialogue on God’s Hair Color

I was recently having a discussion with a friend about God and he objected, “But what about God being a man? Surely you don’t think he’s sitting on some throne up in the sky, do you?” The following is inspired by a real conversation, but as I have the personal memory of a goldfish, I’m going to kinda have to make up most of it. And in attempting to remember a real dialogue I’ll probably end up like Eric Cartman) and/or Plato in making my position sound totally awesome and my discussant a total fool. But this is not reality, and my apologies to my real-life discussant. I might try this style more often, especially as I have other real life events to inspire them.

So as I was saying, my friend asked me “But what about God being a man? Surely you don’t think he’s some bearded man sitting on a throne up in the sky, do you?”

I thought about it for a minute, noting how my discussant intentionally tried to make it sound as ridiculous an idea as possible. And I said with confidence, “Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”

And then there was a wonderful silence. I’m beginning to see why Jesus said shocking things all the time. It really bothered me at one point. I used to think, “Why don’t you just answer them straight? Really, Jesus? I could have given a clearer answer in line with Christian Orthodoxy than you just did.” And perhaps I could have. But what I’m beginning to realize is that it’s not all about true information. Presentation matters.

After the silence, he asked a real question. Or rather, he asked a question whose answer he was going to pay attention to: “Why?”

I asked him, “Do you think the idea of God is something easy or hard to understand?”

“It’s very hard. Maybe even impossible.”

“Harder than physics?”

“Much harder.”

“I agree,” I said. “When we try to understand physics, we have to use symbols and metaphors. Gravity works like a bowling ball resting on a rubber sheet; a marble will ‘fall’ into its divot. Relativity can be understood by imagining twin astronauts. And so on.”

“OK. But what does that have to do with God?”

“Because,” I said, “If we think God is harder to understand than physics, then wouldn’t it be reasonable to try to understand what we can of Him using similar tools?”

“Sure.”

“So could I say, ‘Imagine God has a white beard’?”

“Yes, but he or she or it doesn’t. It’s above that.”

“And gravity isn’t a rubber sheet. I said, ‘imagine’.”

“OK. God has a white beard.”

“What does a white beard mean?”

“Male. Unshaven.”

“Think literary. What attributes might an author be communicating if he gives a character a white beard, as opposed to, say, a black beard, or a clean chin?”

“Age. Maybe wisdom.”

“Good,” I said, “So the visual image communicates something about Him.”

“And that’s another thing. Why do you keep saying ‘Him’. The concept is above such crude biological concepts. God is not a man.”

“Isn’t He?” I asked. “Does manhood communicate anything? Would the image be different if it were a woman sitting on the throne?”

“Well, I suppose.”

“What if it were not a man or a woman, but energy. Would that image be more or less relatable?”

“Less.”

“So,” I said, “The image of God as a white-haired old man sitting on a throne says to the reader, ‘God is like a wise old king,’ which we can imagine, even if God’s true nature is unimaginable.”

“I envision God genderless. Why does God have to be a man?”

“He doesn’t have to be anything.” I said, “The hero of a story could have black hair or brown hair. It’s a story. The writer may give him black hair to go along with his mysterious nature, or brown hair to match his boots and ground him. God doesn’t have to be white-haired. But in Daniel 7, He is. It’s less useful to complain, “Why does he have to be white-haired?” and more useful to ask, “Why is he white-haired?” Perhaps we need to think of God less like grown-ups arguing theology and more like kids reading a story. And a kid reading that God is a man might think, ‘God is a man like Dad! He must be strong and smart and brave, and good at keeping the bad guys away and making sure there’s no monsters under the bed.’ In fact, on this attribute, God was not just pictured as a man, but took on the flesh of a first-century Jewish man.”

“But it seems so provincial! How can God just pick one race? Isn’t he more universal?”

“It’s a suit. We can’t see God in heaven, so he ‘clothes’ Himself with humanity. He puts on a suit so that we can better understand him, so that we can talk to Him face-to-face.”

“But why can’t it be another color?”

“Which would you prefer?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s a little arbitrary?”

“Definitely,” I said. “But He just as well might have picked another color suit and you could justly ask why He hadn’t put on the one He did. Keeping on the suit analogy, if He chose to mix all dyes, it would be a black suit; if He left it undyed, it would be a white suit. Even if we could understand “every color” or “no color,” black and white are both still colors. Perhaps He could’ve picked a transparent suit, but then we’re back where we started: an incomprehensible, invisible God. He’s gotta wear something. And He happened to wear the First-Century-Jewish-Man-In-Palestine suit.”

“So you’re saying that we can learn something from a first century Jewish man in Palestine?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

How a Christian Can Thrive at University

It was Youth Weekend at our church and we celebrated the youth groups with a special emphasis on the graduating Seniors. I remembered what a challenge college was for me spiritually. I have friends who went in solid Christians, and came out secular (and remain secular to this day). It’s not a friendly place for Christian thought. Thinking of these young men and women preparing to go into college, it got me thinking: what advice would I have liked when I headed to UCLA?

Find solid fellowship
Make this a priority. It is absolutely critical that you have a solid community to support you through this time. I don’t care how strong you think you are, a secular university can tear you apart without fellowship. If you prefer an on-campus fellowship (sometimes called ‘para-church’ organizations), there are usually plenty to choose from: Intervarsity, Navigators, Campus Crusade (and others). If you want to worship with more than just students, get plugged into a local church. Many people do both. Whatever you do, find strong community. Also, if you have strong Christian friends from high school, make it a point to stay in touch. Continue to hold each other accountable at least until other accountability partners are found.

Study your Bible
This is basic stuff, but don’t forget about it. John Lennox, an Evangelical and Oxford Mathematician told a group me and a group of graduate students to know our Bibles as well as we know our professional fields; a Christian neuroscientist should be as sophisticated in his knowledge of Scripture as he is of the brain. STUDY your Bible and find people who can help (including fellowship). Also, this is the 21^st Century. Find Bible teachers online who you like and study under therm. I was greatly helped by Chuck Missler (www.khouse.org, especially his “Learn the Bible in 24 Hours”) because of his scientific perspective and how well he’s able to show the beautiful connections in the Scriptures. I’ve also heard Ray Steadman’s “Through the Bible” is a solid series. The Internet is a big place; find someone whose teaching style speaks to you and learn from them.

Read and listen to Christian thinkers
There are three paths for your mind: 1. Apostasy. You may find the claims of Christ unbelievable and reject Him. I have seen this happen to solid Christians. 2. Split Mind. The path of a clear majority of Christians at the secular university is to quarantine Christianity from the rest of their thought. They may deny the existence of the soul, the creation of the universe and the possibility of freewill Monday through Saturday, but start believing in them again on Sunday without even knowing they’re doing this. They are not morally split (i.e. sinful 6 days a week); but mentally split. This is the wide road; this is the easy way. But your mental life is robbed of the vitality of the Gospel and you have no sure defense against a catastrophe of doubt. The third way is by far the hardest: 3. A Living Christian Worldview. You will be alone. In your classes, you will probably be the only one with a Christian worldview. You might even be the only one in your small group thinking about how to understand all of the world from a Christian perspective. You’ll need to work harder than all the other students to learn both what the professor believes, but also what Christians believe about the subject. And this goes for nearly every subject.

To follow this third way, you’ll basically need to get a minor in Christian Thought. Organized programs like this don’t exist yet (to my knowledge); you’ll need to teach yourself. Set aside time to listen to and read Christian thinkers. Make it a habit to listen to Christian lectures when you’re at the gym, or walking to class, or driving places.  You live in a time in history when you can be lectured by the greatest minds who ever lived, living and dead. Read Christian thought in your field.

Conclusion

The secular university is a fire. It has consumed many faithful people. But if you stand firm through it, you will be tempered. The purest gold must pass through the hottest fire. I grew an incredible amount in my faith while at UCLA, more than I could have imagined growing. Though it was very difficult, and there was even a time when I feared I would leave the faith, God delivered me and I am stronger because of it.

Remove the Log

I went snowboarding in Tahoe with my fellow medical students last weekend. To begin, let me confess that I am no expert snowboarder. But I generally go a day or two per year, and can hold my own. Anyways, I and a friend got out-boarded by a group that I was trying to keep up with. My friend was a beginner, and was going to go off by herself so as not to hinder me, too. Now if you’ve never learned snowboarding, let me explain: learning to snowboard sucks big time. It pays off in the end because snowboarding is totally awesomer than skiing. But when you’re learning it, it is not fun. Not even a little bit. Especially if you’re doing it all by yourself. So I decided to go with her a few runs and give her the boon of my super-smart expert advice. And so I did that. So under my wise tutelage, she endured many corrections: “Go faster; you’ll have more control.” “Don’t be afraid of falling.”

Then after the two runs of this, I realized something: I kicked my foot out when I turned. I went slow. I was afraid of falling. I knew what was right, but I didn’t do it. My mediocrity that day and the day before was because I did all those things I told my friend not to. I was the biggest snowboard hypocrite on the mountain.

…

In Christianity, there’re a lot of things that God gets angry about. But there is a special place in the wrath of God for hypocrisy. Jesus certainly did not approve of sexual sins, but treated sexual sinners with compassion and forgiveness. He didn’t do that to hypocrites. He proclaimed their doom, shamed them in front of massive crowds, and once, even used physical violence against them. In Matthew 7, Jesus gives a powerful and wise command, and then follows it up with a mocking satire:

1 "Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

This got me thinking about the Church (big ‘C’, that is, the set of all those who are followers of Jesus). How often do we say things and how often do we actually do them? How much of our own super-smart expert advice do we actually take?

A perfect small example of this is the Jesus fish on cars. To my Nor Cal friends, in other parts of the country, Christians will put a fish on the back of their car, (Ichthus which is an acronym in Greek for “Jesus Christ God’s Son [and] Savior”); the more familiar Darwin fish (and the Flying Sphagetti Monster logo) was a response to this. Imagine if Christians actually were “slow to wrath” and “considered others better than themselves” on the road. I, for one, have certainly not noticed a difference between rude driving by cars with Jesus fish and those without them. Remove the log!

Let’s take a more serious case. We are (in)famous for proclaiming the importance of family values. But we still engage in divorce and adultery. We shout with righteous indignation about how the gays/liberals/perverts/pornographers are ruining marriage, and then we, even the most faithful among us, have a 32% failure rate (among Christians who frequently attend church). It’s no good pointing to the non-Christians with a divorce rate of 48% and saying, “Well at least we’re better than them!” We are to compare ourselves only with God. If we want to be able to proclaim that homosexuality is an abomination, our ranks need to be slightly cleaner than 32% abomination. Remove the log!

Finally, let’s look at the Great Commandment. Jesus asked to summarize the law. #1 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” #2 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Let’s just look at #2. Do we really love our neighbor as ourselves? The example Christ gives to illustrate is a foreigner helping a Jew who was robbed (“The Good Samaritan”). Do we behave like him? Christians certainly give more to charity than secular people, $2,210 per year, compared to $642 (2). But we are the ones with the “Not of this world” stickers. If we really considered our citizenship in Heaven, would we not be much more liberal in our charity? The cost to prevent the death of a child in Africa is as low as $1 per year of life saved. Did we really need the leather seats, the pool, or the grande caramel macchiato? Will we be able to present our bank statements to Christ on judgment day and hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant”? How can we tell others to leave the concerns of earth and care only for the things of Heaven? How can we talk to others of eternal life, and yet pay it so little regard ourselves? Remove the log!

If we’re right about theology, we’re sitting on the greatest teachings of the greatest man who ever lived. We have the ability: the philosophy and teachings of Jesus, the example of the saints, the fellowship of the Church, the Power of the Holy Spirit! We can look up from our grey daily struggles identical to those of our non-Christian peers and we can see the multi-colored glory of Christ, who calls us to a life of adventure. But such a life of driving our cars radically differently (that is, politely), making promises that we never break, and giving with abundance and joy is scary. It was the same problem I had on the mountain. I knew exactly what to do, but I didn’t have the courage to do it. I even told someone else how to do it, but I didn’t do it. I was content with my mediocrity.

…

Last Sunday, I removed the log. I took my own advice. I rode the lift to the top of the mountain, and pointed the nose downhill. A thrill of adrenaline, and then I was moving fast, faster than I can remember! I nearly fell, but I caught myself because of the control that came with speed. The fear melted away as the thrill of carving down the mountain set in.

I pray that we would overcome our fear and trust God completely. Only when I lost control, did I gain it. Only when we give up our lives, can we save them. I pray that we would remove the log. I pray that we would rise up and live according to the radical teachings of Jesus. I pray that we would lose control, but then realize this was the only way to ever get it.

(1) http://brewright.blogspot.com/2006/12/christian-divorce-rates.html 

(2) Brooks, Arthur “Religious Faith and Charitable Giving.” Hoover Institute. http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6577

Living an Extra Seven Years - Conclusion

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5
What is the conclusion of the matter? Church is good for you. You know it’s good for your soul. But now you also know it’s good for your body. Without looking at other factors, people who don’t go to church have an 87% increased chance of dying every year compared to those who attend more than weekly. This works out to a 7 year increase in life expectancy. Even after adjusting for risk factors, a 50% reduction in risk remains. The presence of this effect has been confirmed by many studies on over a hundred thousand people.

What should you do? If you’re in church, stay there. If you’ve left church, go back! It’s good for you! If you’ve never been to church, give it a try! I’m sure your religious friends would love to take you. Christians believe that God has built us to be in spiritual community. Is it any surprise that we operate better when live as we were made to?

In 1964, a group of doctors came together to critically evaluate the risks of smoking. They published their report and it, "hit the country like a bombshell. It was front page news and a lead story on every radio and television station in the United States and many abroad." News of a common behavior, smoking, increasing mortality by 70% was the public health crisis of our grandparents’ generation. Thousands of lives were saved by this information. Now the mantle falls to us. Our generation will be the one to make public this knowledge about church, to save the lives of thousands alive today and those yet to be born. We look at old movies and snicker because everyone is smoking; our children will look at our movies and snicker at people sitting at home on Sundays.

Living an Extra Seven Years - Medical Implications

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5
Church abstinence is today what smoking was in 1954. Everyone who’s looked at this knows it’s bad for you. There is debate on the mechanism of action, but not on the effect itself. What do we do? Or perhaps a better question is: did the Surgeon General do the right thing in condemning smoking before it was fully understood?

Because this is a behavior and not an opinion or belief, we can, in good conscience, recommend it to everyone. An atheist can go to church without changing a single belief. He can attend church potlucks and volunteer with church members without agreeing to a single point of theology. It wouldn’t be easy; an atheist might get withdrawal symptoms like a smoker, but if this can be pushed through, it’s probably a good thing in the long run. Pushing belief on an unwilling person had ethical implications, but a doctor can push a behavior like attendance with no ethical misgivings.

Even if we don’t care about atheists (or are afraid of their anger at such a reasonable suggestion), doctors should have absolutely no misgivings with asking Christians about church attendance and encouraging them to increase it. We have very solid evidence to support such a recommendation.

In the Hippocratic Oath, Doctors swear to ‘do no harm.’ If you went to your doctor, it would be unethical for the doctor to ignore your smoking habit; he has information that could prevent you harm; withholding it is wrong. How is this information about church attendance different? Can we doctors, in good conscience, withhold this information from our patients? Would this be anything other than harm?

Unfortunately doctors are terrified of religion. An enlightening essay was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on this topic (5). The author (a non-physician) told physicians that they should not talk about religion. Even though 77% of hospitalized patients want physician to consider their spiritual needs and 48% of patients want their physician to pray with them, the authors explain, “Patients often ask for things that are unrealistic or that may not be in their best interests.” After all, “physicians are not trained to engage in in-depth conversations with their patients about their spiritual concerns.” In other words, doctors are so bad at spiritual conversations, they shouldn’t even try. This idea comes straight from the Hippocratic Oath; all doctors swear to, “Never attempt a thing I’m not already good at.”  Actually that’s a lie. We don’t swear silly things like that. And neither should we live by them.

It is clear to me that doctors ought to recommend church attendance to every one of his patients. It is likely that patients will ignore him as they do with smoking. But if he truly cares about their wellbeing, he must at least mention the risk his patient is taking by staying at home on Sundays.

Consider the magnitude of this public health problem. Every year in the US, 2.5 million people die; if we consider the frequency of church attendance and adjust robustly, the number of deaths that can be attributed to missing church is 568,000 (9, 11, 12, 13). Every year, half a million people die because they missed church. This is one-fifth of the total mortality rate. In 2004, a paper was published to try to calculate the actual causes of death in the US (14). They tabulated that smoking causes 435,000 deaths per year. Church attendance is more important than smoking. Inactivity and poor diet cause 400,000 deaths per year. Church attendance is more important than diet and exercise. Deaths attributable to car crashes, alcohol, illicit drugs, sexual behavior, microbes, and incidents involving firearms together add up to 324,000 deaths per year. Church attendance is more important than all of these combined. Church abstinence is the single strongest association with mortality in the United States, but it doesn’t even get mentioned in a paper on the subject.

[All references are listed under the first post]

Living an Extra Seven Years - Clarifications

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5
This effect is very interesting because it is so tightly linked to behavior, not belief. It doesn’t matter how ‘spiritual’ you feel or how religious you say you are (6). You only live longer when you actually go to church (though there is some suggestion that private religious practice counts). It’s very much like the behavior of smoking: people who do X, die. People who smoke, die. People who stay home on Sunday, die. It’s as simple as that.

Because the models have been adjusted, we can’t recommend anything other than the thing itself. For example, if it were the case that church only worked by reducing smoking, then we could say: either go to church OR quit smoking (if you can...). When they found out smoking was bad, they didn’t know entirely what parts of the cigarette caused the cancer; they could only recommend quitting altogether (today they understand the mechanisms better and sell ‘smokeless’ cigarettes). One day, that might be possible for church; but for today, we can recommend nothing but simply attending church.

It is important to note that we don’t have final ‘proof’ that church causes lower mortality. ‘Proof’ in a modern medical sense demands a particular kind of study called a Randomized Control Trial. Correlation is not causation (4). We cannot be absolutely certain that this effect is caused by church. That is to say, if a doctor recommends a non-churchgoer to go to church, we are not certain that the effect would remain.

The skeptic might say that there might be some other effect (maybe a yet-unobserved healthiness factor) which makes people go to church and also makes them live a long time. But it’s also possible that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer, but that there is some yet-undiscovered sickness factor which makes people who smoke get lung cancer (we could certainly have argued this in 1950). To silence the skeptic, we’d have to get a big group of people and have them each flip a coin. Heads gets treatment 1 (smoking/no church); tails gets treatment 2 (no smoking/church). The problem is that we have good reason to suspect that treatment group 1 is going to die, and for better or worse, we decided killing people for science advancement was generally a bad idea. And even if we weren’t sure, nobody objecting to recommendations on church attendance would support an experiment randomly assigning people to church or no church. The experiment is ethically impossible. We package cigarettes with a warning label and doctors push patients into smoking cessation programs without ever having done a perfect study on their deadliness. How is church abstinence different?

[All references are listed under the first post]

Living an Extra Seven Years - Adjustment

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5
My grandfather came to California from Oklahoma at 18 with a nickel in his pocket. He got a blue collar job working at Ralphs. It was good work that paid well enough, but the hours were long. The managers, wanting to be kind to their employees, gave them a smoke break. My grandfather, a nonsmoker, tried to take a break with his coworkers, only to be told that it was a smoke break, not a do-whatever-you-like break. So he took up smoking.

Imagine a researcher asked, “Does working at Ralphs cause lung cancer?” There are two ways to answer the question. You could say yes: working at Ralphs causes smoking, and smoking causes cancer. Statistically, this is called “un-adjusted risk.” Un-adjusted risks tend to be a less specific and so less convincing answer. The 87% increase in risk of dying from never going to church is unadjusted.

But maybe it wasn’t Ralphs’ smoke-break policies, but some other factor which causes lung cancer (maybe they used dangerous chemicals in the canning process). How could you tell the difference? You’d look at the non-smokers. Were non-smokers getting lung cancer, too? If so, you’d suspect that there was some other factor at the cannery. Using the data from the nonsmokers, you can “subtract” the effect of smoking from the smokers and find out for someone like my grandpa, if there was any “adjusted” risk of working at Ralphs. That is, you can find out if there is any effect outside of the known effect of smoking.

So can we tell if the 87% increase in life expectancy is just from Christians reducing known risk factors? The researchers in the papers subtracted the effects of age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, social support (e.g. marital status, number of friends, relatives), health risks (e.g. smoking, alcohol consumption). If church improved health by working through these things, after we’d subtracted the effects of bad behavior, there would be no difference between the churchgoers and the abstainers. We would conclude that the church is a really good way of changing unhealthy behaviors. But even after these risk factors were taken out, the effect remains. Church does indeed lead to healthier lifestyles (less smoking, drinking, etc.). After subtracting all these from the 87%, someone who never goes to church still has a 50% higher chance of dropping dead compared to a frequent churchgoer (6, 15). Church attendees live longer and we don’t know why.

There is speculation, but no solid data to support them. It might be volunteerism. Maybe it’s a more positive outlook on life. Perhaps there is some unidentified good of being in community (“psychosocial effect”). Or maybe there is actually something supernatural going on in church (7). For all we know, it could be the potlucks. But does it matter how it works? Or more accurately, for whom does it matter? Certainly researchers ought to pursue the Truth wherever it goes. But for the average American, mechanism is much less important. And for the average physician, an understood mechanism rarely comes before a treatment.

We have a very strong case for church attendance. Our case for church attendance today is stronger than our case against smoking was in 1950. Our statistical sophistication and our data collection have improved a lot since the 1950’s. But for the family practice physician, does it matter? To the policy makers, does it matter? We started lecturing patients and slapping warning labels on cigarettes before we knew how they were bad.

[All references are listed under the first post]

Living an Extra Seven Years - Introduction

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5
In 1912, Dr. Isaac Alder suggested that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. Immediately everyone stopped smoking. Actually, that’s not true at all. He was promptly and almost universally ignored. It took another four decades before anyone really listened. By 1957, the evidence had accumulated and the Surgeon General declared that smoking caused cancer. One year after this announcement, 44% of Americans believed smoking caused lung cancer. In 1964, “Smoking and Health” was published, and laws started getting passed restricting smoking, from advertisements to taxes (8). In 1968, 78% of Americans believed smoking caused lung cancer. Unfortunately, knowing something is good for you is not the same thing as doing what’s good for you.

For decades we didn’t know for sure if smoking was bad for you. Movie stars and cool kids pushed the habit, and when we found out it was bad, it was too late. People were already addicted. For those who did quit, severe damage was already done. The slowness of the research, the industry lobbying, and the lack of will on the part of the government and public cost countless lives.

Smoking remains to be one of the most important risk factors for heart disease and cancer. It’s not just hypothetical risk. Life insurance, an industry which bets on your life and death, is keenly aware of this risk and charges smokers much more because of this high risk. A smoker has a 70% higher annual risk of death than a nonsmoker (8). Smoking is the single best observable factor in determining your risk of dying. Or at least it was. What if I told you that there’s another behavior that is even better at tracking with lifespan than smoking is?

People who don’t demonstrate this behavior have an 87% higher annual risk of than those who do (9). A 20 year old who did engage in this behavior throughout his life would live 7 years longer than one who didn’t (for blacks, it’s even better: 14 years longer). You might be thinking you know what it is: exercise! Nope. Exercise is good, but not that good. Those who do what the American Medical Association tells them to do (1400 calories per week of exercise; 30 minutes daily) (2) have a 29% lower annual risk of death(1). What about losing weight? Those who are normal weight (BMI <24) have a 25% lower annual risk of death compared to those who are overweight (BMI >26) (1). What could this behavior be? What could be more important than what our doctors talk about when we visit? What’s more important than smoking? What’s more important than exercise? What’s more important than weight loss?

Church attendance. People who never go to church(3) have an 87% increased chance of dropping dead compared to those that attend more than weekly. Statistically speaking, never going to church is worse for your health than smoking a pack a day for the rest of your life (9). I’m not joking. This is an effect that has been seen in dozens of studies over the last thirty or so years. Scientists really don’t like it, but it’s there, and it’s real.

We have lots of evidence that church attendees have a lower risk of dying. We have so much data in these studies, we can even ‘pool’ it, adding up the results of many studies into one “meta” analytic study. The best meta study that did this found, after looking at a total of over 125,000 people in 42 separate investigations, the odds of a churchgoer surviving were better than a non-churchgoer (10).

But how can this be? Perhaps churchgoers are just goody-two-shoes who never smoke or drink or cuss. To evaluate that theory, I need to tell a story.

[Note: this is the first of a 5-part post. The references for all 5 will be posted here in the first post]

References

(1) Paffenbarger, RS; Hyde, RT; Wing, AL; Lee, IM; Jung, DL; Kampert, JB. The Association Of Changes In Physical-Activity Level And Other Life-Style Characteristics With Mortality Among Men. NEJM, 328 (8): 538-545 Feb 25 1993.

(2) Pate RR; Pratt M; Blair SN; Wilmore JH; et. al. Physical Activity and Public Health: A Recommendation From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Sports Medicine. JAMA. 1995;273(5):402-407.

(3) Most of the studies are representative US populations and so are literally measuring church attendance. Others look at ‘religious service attendance’ and find the same thing. I will use ‘church attendance’ in this article as these results do not have enough data to religious services of other faiths (though it is my belief that this would be true).

(4) Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there' – xkcd.com/552/ . Also, I am among those who are not happy about the monopoly that the Randomized Control Trial has on science. It’s a good technique, but not the only good technique.

(5) Sloan, RP. Should physicians prescribe religious activities? NEJM 342(25): 1913-1916 JUN 22 2000

(6) Powell, LH; Shahabi, L; Thoresen, CE. Religion and spirituality - Linkages to physical health. AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, 58 (1): 36-52 JAN 2003

(7) I say supernatural not to give up the search, but to focus it. The effect might be mediated through an undiscovered non-classical mechanism; perhaps it is a hyper-dimensional effect, perhaps it is quantum mechanical. With regard to unsolved mysteries, we must always be ready for a paradigm shift to be hiding underneath it.

(8) “The Reports of the Surgeon General” <http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN/Views/Exhibit/narrative/smoking.html>

(9) Hummer RA; Rogers RG; Nam CB; Ellison CG. Religious Involvement and U.S. Adult Mortality. Demography 36(2): 273-285 May 1999

(10) McCullough ME, Hoyt WT, Larson DB, Koenig HG, Thoresen C. Religious involvement and mortality: a meta-analytic review. Health Psychol.19(3):211-22 2000 May

(11) FASTSTATS. Accessed on 10/23/2010. Centers for Disease Control. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm>

(12) American FactFinder. Accessed on 10/23/2010. US Census Bureau. <http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en>

(13) US Population: 310,546,653. US Mortality rate: 803.6 per 100,000.

(14) Mokdad AH; Marks JS; Stroup DF; Gerberding JL . Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000 JAMA. 2004;291:1238-1245

(15) This trend is supported by the meta-study (reference 10) but with a smaller magnitude. It reports that the increased chance of survival for those who attend is 25% after adjustment. The difference is probably because of a dose-effect in the Hummer paper (reference 9); they didn’t just measure attender/non-attender, but the frequency of attendance. Running 50 minutes every day is better for you than running 5 minutes, and so it seems that going to church more than weekly is better for you than going only on Christmas and Easter. The data in the Hummer paper does appear to agree with the more modest 25% if you ignore the dose-effect and pool all church attenders together.

Showdown at Pizz’a Chicago

“One: if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Two: objective moral values do exist. Three: therefore, God exists,” I said, explaining the moral argument for the existence of God to my a few Christian classmates over Pizz’a Chicago. This argument is one of the oldest and best available to the Theist; for those interested in the argument itself, I would commend you to the work of William Lane Craig. We had just finished a wonderful hike in the mist and trees of the Santa Cruz Mountains and warming up around a fire at my place. We were beginning a lively philosophy discussion. For anyone who knows me, you know that there aren’t too many better possible days. The pizza was delicious (the “Al Capone”; who’d have thought pecans go well on pizza?), and it was looking like it would be the perfect end to a perfect day.

Then there was a person standing over us at the end of our table. It was the man from the next table. He was a short man in his fifties, balding slightly, wearing a full beard with flecks of grey. Surprised, I gave him my attention. He said, “We can hear you from over there. And, you’re wrong!” I suppose I had been a bit loud; it was a pizza joint, after all, and I had to raise my voice to get it across the table. I wondered which of the two premises he disagreed with (I guessed it was the first; this is the approach most Atheists take). I started gesturing for him to join our conversation, but he had already turned around and returned to his seat, next to what appeared to be his high school-aged son and elementary school-aged daughter.

He shot a glance over to me, to see what effect his breach in manners had caused. Perhaps he was hoping for shock, outrage or anger. I don’t think he was expecting polite curiosity. “Which premise?” I asked him. “Both of them!” he shot back, surprised and not looking at me. “Please explain,” I offered politely, again gesturing to the empty seat next to me. At this point, the man came to his senses. He did the most rational thing a mature thinker could have in such a situation: he utterly ignored me.

After this brash interruption of our conversation, I composed myself. I soon continued my exposition of the argument to my friends and the conversation continued pleasantly. All the while, in the back of my mind, I was thinking how to repay this guy. He had interrupted my conversation on a topic which was extremely important. He tried to embarrass me in public and in front of my friends. He wanted to make me look bad and show off to his kids. And then I thought of a way. He’d be so pissed. It would shame him in front of his kids and he’d never be able to get me back. He’d never forget me. Ever. It was perfect.

I called the waitress over, gave her my credit card, and quietly paid for his family’s dinner.

My friends and I finished our pizza, and got up to leave. I walked over to the man’s table while they were still unaware of what I had done and I said warmly, “Enjoy your dinner!” For those unaware of American customs, the proper response would have been something like, “Thank you.” Perhaps this courtesy had shocked the man into silence, or perhaps he was still ignoring me. Maybe his mouth was full. In any case, it was his son who responded with an accusatory tone that ought to be reserved only for the basest of criminals, “You can’t prove God! It’s not falsifiable and therefore false!” Recovering, the man, with what he must have thought was an irrefutable disproof of my argument, said with the confidence of a mathematician delivering the conclusion to a proof, “William of Occam.” Now for those of you who are not experienced in Philosophy, William of Occam is a man and not himself an argument, or at least the words “William of Occam” do not compose a well-formed or convincing argument. But it seemed to be offered as one, which might suggest conversation was actually possible.

I started to respond that proof was possible, but they weren’t listening. I cannot now remember how I knew that they were not listening and desperately wanted me to leave. I don’t have a memory of them covering their ears with their hands, or shouting to drown out my words, or shooing me away like a dog, but however they did it, they communicated as much to me. Then the most unexpected thing of all happened: the daughter, in stark contrast to her family, showed me kindness. She stood up, walked over to me, and gave me a paper craft she had been working on all through dinner.

I walked out of the restaurant smiling. The man and I had battled in the pizza parlor, and I think both of us will remember the day for years to come. And I will treasure my prize, his daughter’s paper craft.

The Solomon Scale (6 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

First, I am thrilled to hear the news about your neighbor! The angels in heaven are rejoicing over it! And it fits in nicely with this letter; it seems like He has thought this through.

I’m excited to write this letter to you! I have not been able to share these insights with many others, as most in my lab are atheists, and the Christian community is still skeptical this science and of me in particular. I’m glad that I have someone like you who is interested and can ask such good questions.

Last week I told you about the results of our paper. What excites me most about these results are their implications, some of which you have already guessed. I think this slipped past most people, because they might be very upset otherwise. It’s also interesting think about this in terms of eternity. Think about a normal person at 26.3S and -0.01S/year and no acceleration. Consider what would happen to that person if he continued along that track. In just 1000 years, he would be what most murders test at, 16.3S. After two, he would be morally equivalent to a dictator, 6.3S. Before three millennia come, he will have reached absolute zero. There will literally be no goodness in him at all. And what happens to a soul when it is utterly corrupt? Does it even remain human? Can something even exist without Goodness?

And on the opposite side, consider a reforming Christian. Let’s assume that the moral acceleration of true convert to Christianity we measured is actually true. Consider a perfectly normal person who truly converts to Christianity on his deathbed, dying at 26.3S with a velocity of -0.01S/year and an acceleration of 0.017S/month². Where would he be after a millennium? His Solomon score would top 5000S. Can you even conceive of that? He would be thirty times more righteous than the current world record holder. That is the power of Christianity: not to make bad men nice, for any religion can do that; but to make Old men New.

I think this is what Lewis was talking about. There is a big difference between a murder and your friendly neighbor (~20). But that difference is miniscule when compared with the difference between even the most saintly on earth and one who has been accelerating for 1000 years. If God’s goal were to maximize the number of Solomons in the universe, then there is no means but Christianity that He should use. Certainly a billion people improving linearly in Islam is very good. But that goodness would almost be swallowed up by a tenth that number accelerating even within a thousand years, not to mention eternity.

And so we shall go on, approaching the likeness of God at ever increasing speeds.

Thank you for continuing this correspondence with me. I hope that is might continue.

Your loving grandson,

Jeremiah Paul

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The Solomon Scale (5 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

Of course I’ll finally tell you what I’m doing! The last letter was getting too long.

My study design is as follows. The experimental group is 5000 new converts from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Secularism (now that the Church of Secularism has been formally recognized). We also have control groups of equal size in each of the religions who did not convert. Our study enrollment is 60,000 people in total. Each subject will come in for testing on a monthly basis to testing centers across the country. We’ve partnered with networks of private test centers to save on cost and allow for a greater sample size; this ingenuity was one reason why I think we got funding. Though the big reason is the study design and power; one reviewer comment said that this was the best possible design short of randomly assigning people to sincerely practice another religion (something I did consider, but ruled out both for practical and ethical reasons).

We expect to have enough data to answer the big question: what is the ability of each religion to improve human goodness? We’ll be measuring the moral progress of each convert, and seeing if there really is a change, and if so, at what trajectory. We’ve gotten funding to track these converts for 20 years and to track their Solomon score throughout the time. The next 19 years of work will indeed be exciting, and will be one consistent publication I can count on each year.

Our first year results are intriguing. Our “Table 1” (the starting demographics), looked good. We did a good job at pulling from every demographic. Age, gender, race and even denominations within each religion were all well represented and in expected proportions.

The starting values alone were quite interesting. They showed that Lewis’ century-old guess to the starting nature of new Christian converts was correct. Of the 12 study populations, new Christians were by far the worst (19.7S). The other convert populations and controls are all nearly average (25.2S). It also seems that Christianity not only attracts the bad people, but is particularly good at calling the really bad people It also draws all the outliers; a large majority, (7/9) of the depraved (<10s)>

And I suppose in retrospect, that’s exactly what it claims to do. Jesus calls “not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” He ate with sinners and tax collectors. This goes far in explaining the ‘average’ similarity. Christians will indeed reform, and go from say 16S to 36S through the course of their lives, but the average in time will be 26S, making Christianity look “normal” when compared to the others.

Looking at the progress in each convert is very interesting. The first thing to note is that not all the converts were real. More precisely, two thirds of all converts to every religion do not change their Solomon score over the study period. There seemed to be a fairly sharp divide between the two; there were few people who made little progress. It seemed that there were those who made progress and those who didn’t. It’s also important to note that there were huge variations in month to month measurements in the new converts. Some gave in to temptations, some valiantly resisted. Overall though, there were two fairly clean categories in each convert in each religion when looking at the year as a whole.

Looking at what we called, “true converts,” in each religion the most significant finding is that the moral velocity of each religion is very similar: 0.1S/month or an average improvement of 1.2S/year. The outlier was Christianity. It showed a slower start than the others; the first month’s measurements showed an average velocity of zero. But by the end, it had produced the same 1.2S improvement. That is, Christianity was the only religion which showed moral acceleration (0.017S/month²). The major conclusion of the paper was this: converting to any religion will make one a better person, and by about the same degree.

These results are consistent with the typical experience and understanding of religion. It makes sense that moral codes improve moral behavior. And as a result, of all that was published before, our paper has provoked less anger than most Goodness Science.

I’m so glad that your neighbor’s health has improved. I’ll continue to pray for her soul.

In Him,

Jeremy

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The Solomon Scale (4 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

To answer your question: yes, I will finally start talking about me. And thank you for telling me how important I am; but remember that I am a scientist, and cannot but note that you are biased towards me. And I love it when you’re biased!

Firstly, no, the biggest surprise wasn’t the differences we found. It was just the opposite. The biggest surprise to people was the homogeneity of the measurements. There is very little difference between countries or races. Patriots and Racists from every nation and race reject the machine because it fails to show their superiority. Generationalists insist it is wrong because the Boomers were not shown to be better than Generation X. Classists dispute it because the rich are no better than the poor.

But the most intriguing result to date, and the one which has raised the most ire, is about the averages within religions. There are no significant difference between them. None. The world average is 26.30 ±0.33. Muslims are at 26.40 ±0.38, Catholics at 26.37±0.25, Protestants at 26.03±0.41, Hindus at 26.31±0.23, Buddhists at 26.41±0.17. Secular people land right in the middle at 26.30±0.51. Atheists are the only ‘religion’ which is not within the normal variation; they’re just barely below it at 25.95±0.21. Everyone, especially the Atheists, disputed this result. But it was Solomon himself who was the lead author on “The Goodness of the Religions – A Global Study,” and the science was bulletproof.

This homogeneity has led to attacks by the Universalitsts and Relativists that the religions are all the same. They say that the Solomon Scale finally proves what they’ve been contending all these years. I’ll admit when I first read the Solomon et. al. paper, it was hard to accept. I struggled with it for a long time. I found this data hard to reconcile with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the redemptive power of Christ. But since first reading it, I reread Mere Christianity. And I realized something. Lewis makes the clear and powerful point that Christianity is, as he puts it, “not about making nice men, but new ones.” Beyond this, he proposes a theory there what we can now test empirically.

He claims that Christianity is indeed the best way of reforming men, but to do a proper experiment, it must be prospective. A cross-sectional study tells you nothing about the long-term and individual moral trajectories of a group. I was inspired by his book to write a grant to evaluate: is Christianity any better at improving the goodness of a person than any other system?

You may ask how I can fairly evaluate this, being that I am emotionally tied to the answer. I’ll answer that I have faith in Christ, and that though I believe His work to be scientifically verifiable, it is not inconsistent with His character to work in secret. But my duty is first to Truth, His Truth, whatever it may be. Not to my theories or those of my favorite 20^th century theologian.

My lab won the NIH grant to do this study. After seeing the great value of Goodness Science, they’ve eased up on the anti-religious prejudices that they once held (and probably gained a few Solomons in so doing). We are doing a prospective study of new converts to the major religions and will follow their Goodness over 20 years. We have completed the first year of the experiment, and our paper was just admitted to Science for publication. It was a great and humbling experience for our work to be so well received by the thought leaders of the day.

Love you,

Jeremy

P.S. I will be praying for your neighbor.

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The Solomon Scale (3 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

Sorry I was so brief in my last letter. I hope to make up for it in this one. Thank you for your prayers, I think the grant was written well. I got an insight at the end which I’ll have to credit to God by your prayers.

As I wrote to you last week, everyone does have a Solomon score at any given time. Last year (the 2042 results aren’t published yet), the world average was 26.3S with a standard deviation of 6.0; it’s pretty close to a normal distribution, though with many outliers (there are many who are very good or very bad). That means that 68% of humanity is between 20.3-32.3S, and 95% fall between 12.3-38.3S.

Criminals and bad men usually came out in the 10-20S range, normal people 20-40S, and particularly nice people sometimes make it to 50S. And then, every once in a while, we find an anomaly. A housebound old woman living alone got a 75S, a homeless man that scores 92S. Most publicly good people (pastors, doctors) turn out to be in the normal range, but I tend to expect outliers of them. I’ve heard of some pastors breaking 100S. The world record is a Chinese evangelist: 147S. In my own lab we recorded the lowest score on record, 0.8, from a popular religious leader. He has since joined the skeptics and believes the machine to be an “instrument of the devil.” When he shouted that, I felt the childish urge to shout back, “It takes one to know one!”

In addition to having a score, everyone also has a velocity. Some are increasing their goodness, in Solomons. Others are falling. We call this “moral velocity.” The scale shows that the world’s velocity is slightly negative (-0.02S/year). And some people are getting better, faster. Their moral velocity is increasing; they have positive “moral acceleration.”

I should mention at this point that there is another quite large group of dissenters to the machine who call themselves Hegelians, who argue that the machine must be flawed because it is self evident that humanity is advancing morally, never declining, never falling back. How they think that 10 years of measurements are at all conclusive one way or another is beyond me.

But if their assumption is right (I’m still withholding judgment), it means that what you’ve been saying to me all these years is exactly right. “When I was a child, we’d never…” or “Young people these day don’t have courage/discipline/piety that we used to.” If you’re right and if we extrapolated this 10-year average back to when you were a young woman 60 years ago, your generation would have been 1.2S better than ours, or 27.5S. But if you were better in your youth, you’ve slipped down with us; there are now no statistically significant moral differences between the generations. For better or worse, we have only ten years of data and we don’t have the data to support such conjectures.

Who knows? Maybe in 20 years, we’ll have enough data to prove you right! Thanks again for your prayers! Is there anything I can be praying for you about?

I love you dearly,

Jeremiah

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The Solomon Scale (2 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

I got your letter and you are right. I forgot to talk about the kind of man Dr. Solomon is. He is an incredible man who loves God. I respect his work and his character. We stay in touch and have collaborated on a number of studies.

To answer your other question, the the machine was hailed with all variety of reactions. Most were skeptical of it until it started showing consistent and useful results. Goodness, it would soon be discovered, was not quite what everybody thought.

And yes. You are right. Every person in the world does have a goodness level, a Solomon score, at any given moment. Actually that’s not entirely true; some people have no recordable goodness. On young children and the mentally handicapped, the machine returns “error.” This was a great disappointment to many people, as they expected the children to be consistently higher than the rest of us. These “Innocents” are one of the many groups that still remain skeptical of the value of the Solomon Scale. Though in my opinion, they are naming the solution to their objection. Innocence is not goodness, it is innocence; the machine is a goodness machine, not an innocence machine. But that’s another debate.

But it does remind me of Dr. Solomon’s most recent work on modifying the machine to break out the individual virtues. His preliminary data shows that two people at 20S might be there by different means; one might be a courageous miser and the other a generous coward. But this work is still very preliminary; I’ll keep you updated in later letters.

Sorry I didn’t have much time for letter writing this week and rambled a bit. I had another grant to submit (please pray for me!). Next week I’ll have the time to answer your questions about the science itself.

With love,

Jeremy

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The Solomon Scale (1 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

In your last letter, you wrote to me asking about the Solomon Scale and how it related to the research I am now doing. I am writing to you to explain the system, including a bit of its very exciting history. Since you left your chair at Harvard, I know that you have trouble keeping up in fields not your own; impenetrable writing is the rule in science these days. I do not fear that the science or math will be beyond you, for I know you are truly an educated woman in the truest sense; but I apologize in advance if I complicate it with Goodness Science jargon.

The story of Goodness Science started ten years ago. According to the father of the science, the scientist and theologian John Solomon, God spoke to him in a dream and told him to build a machine. He said that He wanted to show men their depravity, and that they seemed blind to all but numbers; so He would give Dr. Solomon the plan to build a machine to measure the goodness of a man. Like Moses building the tabernacle or Solomon the Temple, he followed this vision very carefully.

He completed it, and it looked like a hat and vest connected to a box. The subject would sit in a chair next to the machine, and relax. The machine would analyze the state of his soul based on the decisions he then would make in that moment. It would probe the soul and put it through 2.3 million moral tests (which was the minimum number for a consistent reading) to see what it would do in that moment if tested. He would be put through ten thousand temptations, prove his courage on ten thousand battlefields, be annoyed by his boss ten thousand times in ten thousand ways; he would be injured by his brother 490 times and then tested to see if he could forgive. It would then take into account the subject’s upbringing, his genetics, his mind and his intentions; that is, it would consider the raw material with which a man’s decisions were made. Finally, after all that happened in twenty minutes, the machine would read out an absolute score of goodness. The “Solomon Scale,” as it was called, was similar to the Kelvin scale in that both were based on an ‘absolute zero.’ A score of zero Solomons or 0S would mean a perfectly depraved human being.

I hope this clears up the early history of the story.

Your loving grandson,

Jeremy Paul

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On Evangelicals’ Danger and Hope

When Evangelical churches consider giving (they are the only churches which I have first-hand experience with), their first impulse is to maximize salvations. They want to work in places that are “unreached.” Then they look for missionary organizations to win souls. Some of them will go one step further, and support explicitly Christian organizations to serve the poor, but only so long as they do it in Christ’s name. Never would they give to a ‘secular’ charity (for how would the people hear the Gospel, or know from whence the goodness comes)?

Do not misunderstand what I am about to say. I believe in missions, and in evangelism. Of any single action, it is still, in my mind, the most valuable; it is a deed with the highest honor. But there are other parts, essential parts, of Christianity which have been eclipsed by our blind pursuit of this highest honor. Any virtue or impulse may be corrupted if it is sought at the cost of all others. As C.S. Lewis points out on the dangers of focusing purely on the love of humanity, “If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials ‘for the sake of humanity,’ and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.” So, I think, if we hyper-focus on missions and evangelism, we will become a cruel and loveless church.

One commandment of God which is almost completely ignored by us today is charity for our brethren in Christ. Paul tells us, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all [men], especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10) and the author of Hebrews reminds us, “For God [is] not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister” (Hbr 6:10).

We do a mediocre job locally with the poor in general with food drives and homeless shelters. But we do an appalling job of providing for poor brethren abroad. We know generally about poverty and how we are to provide for the poor. But we forget that we have a special obligation to poor Christians.

But who takes collections for poor believers today? How high a priority in the modern Church are poor abroad? We often see poverty work only as a means to the end of evangelism. How many church dollars go to some few thousands of pagans in the Pacific Islands, while millions of our brothers starve in Africa? We send missionaries to the “10/40 window” because there are few Christians there. But how many of us really care about the plight of our brothers in that same window? How many sermons are preached on the plight of the brethren in that window? I have not heard one. We are letting our brothers starve so that we can first win new converts. This ought not be so. We ought to first take care of our own family , and then seek to serve others.

And were we not commanded to? Who are the sheep in Jesus’ Matthew 25 parable? Was it those who were powerful missionaries? Were the goats sent to hell for their lack of evangelism? No. It was for a lack of charity to “the least of these my brethren” (Mat 25:40). Those who saw Christ’s brethren in prison or naked or hungry and did nothing were sent to hell. And who are Christ’s brethren? He tells us: “he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!” (Mat 12:49).

And where are the least? Where are the hungry, poor, imprisoned Christians? They are in the developing world. The centroid of Christianity is moving back again to the south and east, where there is still terrible poverty, disease and death. There is again a need amongst our brethren to the south and east. It is not now in Jerusalem, but in Africa and Asia.

Remember also Paul’s warning, “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Ti 5:8). John also questions the faith of those who fail this duty, “But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels [of compassion] from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1Jo 3:17). We Evangelicals struggle with hypocrisy, with doctrine, with patience and lust. But there is no place where we are closer to hell than in our apathy about the poverty of our brothers abroad.

We care more for the material condition of the unsaved than our own family. After coming to Kenya, I’ve often been asked about the missionary opportunities and never about the poor condition of the brethren. And I was not offered help to relieve their condition, but instead, Bibles. Bibles are good in themselves, and so are missions. But the fact that the condition of our brothers in Kenya is not even thought of is damning. In the present and manifest distress, the fact that church global missions budgets are often an hundredfold higher than global poverty budgets is damning. We must repent.

Providing for our own family is of utmost concern. Of what other duty which if we neglect it, are we promised hell (Mat 25:46), called worse than infidels (1Ti 5:8), said we abide in death (1Jo 3:14) or asked how the love of God could abide in us (1Jo 3:18)? What other duty was so important to distract Paul, the missionary’s missionary, from missions (Rom 15:26, 1Cr 16:3, 2Cr 8:2)?

But consider the wonderful opportunity God has arranged for us. For where we are poor, our brothers are rich; and where we are rich, they are poor. We should remember: we in the West were made rich in money but poor in spirit. Consider the power of the Holy Spirit, spreading Christianity like a wildfire across China, India and the rest of the developed world. Missionaries, evangelists and prophets are being raised up in multitudes by the Spirit there. And what of us in the West? Though we have a heritage rich in Missions and Evangelism in the First and Second Great Awakenings, now it seems to be God’s will that the fire be cooled.

But in the place of that fiery passion, God has blessed us instead with the riches of this world. We are the most productive people ever to have lived. We are far richer than the Romans, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Byzantines and the Britons. We have money, business, ingenuity, organization and technology. We are better equipped than any other people in the history of the world to end the desperation of poverty, an affliction persistent since the Fall of Man. We are the first generation in the history of the world with the ability to actually do it.

Missions is a higher calling indeed (1Cr 12:28), but not one that we are particularly good at. I came to Kenya thinking there was some opportunity for missions. I soon realized that I had exchanged an excellent mission field for a poor one. Though God has given me gifts in evangelism, there were fewer opportunities in a rural village in Kenya than in the ivy halls of Stanford. Christianity is stronger in Kenya than it is anywhere I have seen in the US, and I found myself especially ill-equipped to evangelize, particularly when compared to my fiery brothers here.

While not given particular gifts in evangelism, we as a culture have powerful and unprecedented gifts in “healings, helps, governments” (1Co 12:28); let us use these to their utmost, while ever coveting the greater gifts of our brothers in the developing world. We have a greater ability to give than any people at any other time in the history of the world. One in our middle class has a greater ability to give than even kings and merchants of old. So let us give in abundance and “with simplicity” (Rom 12:8).

And let us never forget the other edge of the sword of opportunity; it cuts both ways. “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” (Luke 12:48). We will not be held guiltless if we squander the greatest opportunity for generosity in the history of the world. And we will surely draw close to hell if we close our hearts to our brothers.

Let this generation of Evangelicals be remembered as our great forbears in Britain were. Two centuries ago, William Wilberforce and his fellows ended the slave trade in Britain and will be forever remembered for it, both on earth and in heaven. Let Evangelicals of this generation be remembered not as those whose greedy hearts were cold, but as those who set the captives of poverty free, those who brought food and shelter forever to billions. Let us act like the Philadelphians, the city of love for the brethren, a Church that keeps God’s word to provide for our Christian brothers and for the poor. And then we can receive Christ’ promise, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, [which is] new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and [I will write upon him] my new name” (Rev 3:12).

Of Alliances and Kingdom Building

We are not saved by works alone. But the Kingdom is not built by faith alone. And it is not only built by Christians. Certainly God uses all for his purposes. Even Satan himself will serve God’s purpose, as will his instruments like the Pharaoh of Exodus; even vessels for destruction have their place in the Kingdom (Rom 9:22).

There are many men who have seen God, whose work will survive them. The mathematician who sees beautiful Truths of God but fails to worship Him will indeed pass away. His postulates will not. And there are many men who love God, but whose work is headed for destruction. The Christian who builds a corporation which oppresses the poor may reach heaven, but as one escaping a fire (1 Cor 3:15).

Truly, we are commanded to use “mammon of unrighteousness” to achieve God’s ends (Luke 16:9). I once heard a missionary speaking on medical missions, encouraging the use of secular grants over church donations, “Why use God’s money for what Satan will pay for?”And if we are to use the fuel of the Enemy, why not also his vehicles? Would not Christ also commend us for our shrewdness in that regard?

This is war. Our mission: to bring about the Kingdom in every way to every place. And if Poverty is one foe standing in our way, can we not coordinate our efforts with its fellow foes? If Poverty is entrenched in a non-Chrisitan region, call it Sodom, can we not support those fighting it, whatever their alignment? Even if this does nothing to fight another of our enemies, Faithlessness, does this not advance the cause of Christ nonetheless?

But it is doubtful to me that these Enemies of the Kingdom are not aligned and strengthened by one another. Let us return to Sodom. Its citizens have never seen compassion before, but the coming of a secular organization shows it to them. Will they not be drawn to know from whence that compassion comes? And will not their inability to answer (for few secular people have any idea why they do good) create an intense yearning for Truth? Would not this Secular compassion till the spiritual soil of Sodom, allowing missionaries to sow where they had not tilled?

Does not “every good gift…[come] down from the Father of lights” (Jam 1:17)? Does compassion have any other source but Christ? And if it is from Christ, will not even secular compassion “draw all men unto” to its source (Jhn 12:32)?

But even assuming we could know that Sodom would never repent, would fighting Poverty there be in vain? I think not. All of Christ’s charity failed to win converts, for by the end of his ministry, “all forsook him, and fled” (Mark 14:50). I would think it blasphemy to call any work of God futile. I think His charity will live on eternally even if its objects do not. Of course, it is the greatest thing for both to live on. But the hard-hearted cannot sabotage the reward of the charitable. There is some element of the charity itself which must be eternal.

Is it wise for Christians to draw such a hard line in their giving? I think not. I think we shall be rebuked for a lack of shrewdness if we continue along our present course. When effective organizations who serve the poor better than Christian ones are ignored for their secularism, will we not be judged for the poor who went hungry because of our foolishness? We should aim to serve the poor by the best means presented to us.

We should remember that arrows into the heart of Poverty are no less lethal because they are shot by a secular bow. And if a secular bowman has the shot, should we deny him arrows?