We are all connected in relationship. Some relationships are more important than others. Some are close at hand while others are far away. But we also have relationship through time. We are connected to all those who came before us, and with all those who will come after us.
Below is a link to an article I wrote about how Christian philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy viewed relationships through time…
Click here: Past and Future
**Note: I’ve updated some of this article in a new blog post.
A new worldview which exists in the west these days is something called New Atheism. The main proponents are Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and others like them.
New Atheists tend to believe that their worldview was created in a vacuum — that, in and of itself, it formed from nothingness and exists as a stand-alone philosophy on life.
Atheism is nothing new. Simple atheism has been around probably as long as simple religion has been around. But New Atheism is something different. It is a completely reactionary phenomenon.
New Atheism is a reaction to Christianity; it can not exist without Christianity; it carries with it many of the attributes of Christianity.
We can look at three attributes of New Atheism…
These three attributes can only be found previously in Christianity (and before that, Judaism). In no other religion will you find the moral concern for people that you find in Christianity. In no other religion will you find the concept of life getting better on a linear timeline. No other religion evangelizes.*
There is a belief that the world drastically changed in the 18th century. To some extent that may be true. But to the New Atheist, the 18th century is when humanity’s eyes were finally opened to the truth. The darkness of the past was swept away by the shining lights of science and reason. For the Christian, the darkness of the world was swept away two thousand years ago with the advent of Jesus Christ.
In the days of Jesus, when a new king came to power, heralds (called euaggelistēs in Greek, or evangelist in English) would proclaim this good news (or euaggelion in Greek) to all the people.** It was good news if you previously supported this king. It might not have been good news if you opposed him. But, if you had opposed him, you were give a chance to turn away (repent) from your previous allegiances and commit your loyalty to the new king.
New Atheists believe that the event of the euaggelion occurred in the 18th century, and are very frustrated at the fact that not everyone has pledged their allegiance to the new prevailing order.
With the euaggelion comes a hope for a better future. In Christianity, the belief is that, because Jesus is now king, the world will be restored to a state of purity with freedom, love, and eternal life.
The New Atheists also believe that humanity is progressing to a better existence, and that this will be brought about by our continued evolution, both in the natural sense and the social sense. The problem with this is that there is no reason to believe that humans will evolve into anything better than what we are currently. Suppose some natural disaster happens, limiting the food supply, drastically changing the environment, and only the physically strongest and those who have no problem with killing survive? What would humanity evolve into then? Back to apes?
Most of the world’s religions in the past, and the present, view time as cyclical. Life just keeps on going with no change, around and around forever. Only in Judaism and Christianity will you find a hope for a better future coming to pass on a linear timeline. This idea is now found in New Atheism.
Westerners love Buddhism. They love the peace and the meditation practices and whatnot. But all you have to do is spend some time living in a Buddhist country and you’ll see what it really is. Buddhists suppress emotion, they don’t control it, they suppress it — and as a result, there can be some unexplained, unpredictable violent outbursts. Buddhists do not help the poor. The poor are poor because of karma. They deserve it. To try to relieve them from poverty is to go against karmic fate. This is the morality of Buddhism. Only in Christianity and Judaism will you find a moral duty to help the poor, the under-dog, and the suffering.
New Atheists hold to the very same moral structure that Christians do, they just don’t know where they got it from.
As we can see above, New Atheism is defined by Christianity. All of its main attributes come from Christianity. New Atheism would not have arisen in a Buddhist culture. It is entirely a reaction to Christianity.
Another misconception of New Atheism is the belief that Christianity, and all other religions, are an attempt to explain the natural world, and now that we have science to do that, there’s no reason for anyone to continue to hold on to religion. But no religious people throughout human history saw their religious beliefs in this way. In fact, not all religions, Buddhism for example, even believe in a creator.
So where did New Atheism come from? As I write above, it came from within Christianity itself. Who were the fathers? It was all those who, while still believing in God, figured that they could explain God with reason. They brought God, who is outside our universe, and pulled Him into our world, into a lab, and tried to study and define Him. They took reason itself off of the foundation of God, gave it its own foundation, and from there began to critique God. That was the birth on New Atheism.
It’s like a man, being born blind, taking the whole visible world, with all its colours, and limiting it to his own confining senses. If he doesn’t know he’s blind, he won’t know he’s doing anything wrong. Taking reason off of the foundation of God is like gouging our own eyes out, and then erasing our memories of anything we once saw.
I, as a Christian, of course cannot help but criticize New Atheism, but there are atheists who do so as well:
The Atheist Delusion by John Gray
The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins by John Gray
Know Nothing: The True History of Atheism by Michael Robbins
* Muslims do not evangelize. The definition of the word implies “good news” and that’s not what Muslims proclaim. Muslims proselytize. Christians proselytize too, but only in conjunction with evangelism.
** The Greek words euaggelion and euaggelistēs both have the prefix eu (pronounced ‘you’) which means “joyful.” The second part of the word, aggelion (pronounced ‘ang-ghelion’) means messenger or message and is where the English word “angel” comes from.
I’m amazed at the story of Adoniram Judson. He was an American missionary to Burma in the early 1800’s.
Here are a few facts about his life after he arrived in Burma:
-During the voyage to Rangoon, Nancy (his first wife) suffered a stillbirth and had to be carried off the ship to their new land.
-He and his wife spent twelve hours a day studying the Burmese language.
-They had great difficulties sharing the Gospel as the Burmese people had no concept of an eternal God who cared about mankind.
-They slowly built a church up to about ten people by the summer of 1820. These believers began to evangelize to their own people even when the Judson’s were not around to supervise. One started a new school, one became an assistant pastor, and the others began distributing tracts.
-Their six month old son died from fever a year and a half after their arrival in Rangoon.
-In 1822 Nancy made the trip back home to the United States to recover from illness. While she was away Adoniram completed translating the New Testament into the Burmese language.
-In 1824 Nancy returned to join her husband. Their reunion was brief. War broke out between Burma and England, and all foreigners were suspected of being spies. Adoniram was arrested and confined in a death prison where he awaited execution.
-Life in the prison was very difficult. His ankles were bound with fetters. At night his ankle fetters were hoisted up on a pole so that only his shoulders touched the ground, and this is how he slept. Each day executions were carried out and no one knew who was to be next.
-In 1825 Nancy gave birth to their new daughter, Maria, while her husband was still in prison.
-At one point Nancy’s health became so deteriorated that she could no longer nurse their young daughter. Only at the mercy of the guards was the baby kept alive–they allowed Adoniram out of the prison twice daily so that he could carry the baby around the village so that she could suckle from Burmese nursing mothers.
-Near the end of 1825 Adoniram was released from prison so that he could work as an interpreter in the peace negotiations between the British and Burmese.
-Adoniram was able to spend a brief relaxing time with his family before he had to return to help with the negotiations. Before he was able to return to his wife again she died of fever. Several months after that, baby Maria died also.
-Adoniram buried his sorrow in his work. But soon his grief overpowered him and he became extremely depressed. He stopped socializing with the other missionaries and moved out into the jungle alone, where he built a small hut for himself. At one point he dug his own grave and sat in it for days on end filling his mind with morbid thoughts of death.
-Adoniram was able to break out of depression due to his solid faith in God, and from the love and support of his fellow missionaries and native Christians.
-Adoniram became greatly encouraged as he traveled around Burma and found many more people turning to Christ. With this new excitement for his work he spent the next several years completing the translation of the Bible into Burmese. In 1840 he completed his task of translating the entire Bible into Burmese.
-In 1834 he remarried a missionary widow named Sarah Boardman.
-During the first ten years of their marriage Sarah gave birth to eight children. The strain was too much for her. While she and Adoniram (and three of their children) were on their way home to the States for a medical leave, she died.
-By this time Adoniram had not been home to the States for thirty-three years.
-As Adoniram traveled around the States speaking to people about his work he met another woman named Emily Chubbock. They were married in 1846 and returned to Burma together (without the three children, who remained in the States with family) one month later.
-Upon their return to Burma, Emily became the mother to Adoniram’s other children (which at this point was only two, as the others had already died). She enthusiastically immersed herself into the work.
-The new couple served in Burma for three years together and had one child together as well.
-In the spring 1850, while Emily was pregnant with their second child, Adoniram became very ill and left on a sea voyage hoping to recover. He did not, and was buried at sea.
-Ten days later Emily underwent a stillbirth. She did not hear of her husband’s death until the following August.
-The following January Emily, along with the remaining children, set sail for the States. She died three years later at the age of thirty-six.
All of these facts, and most of them word for word, were taken straight out of the book “From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya” by Ruth Tucker, pages 121-131. This book is a must-read for all those interested in the history of missions.
Whenever I’m tempted to complain about my work in Cambodia I just need to think about the life of Adoniram Judson.
Our joy, hope, purpose, and meaning in life is not rooted in our circumstances. These things are rooted in Jesus.
Tribes and Language
Our belief systems and capacity for knowledge are limited by our language. The smaller the vocabulary of a language, the less the adherents of that language are able to conceive of and develop new ideas. Like in the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the language of Newspeak was used to control the people, and this was done was by decreasing the vocabulary.
“‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take “good,” for instance. If you have a word like “good,” what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good,” what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?…'” (George Orwell, 1984, Book One, Chapter Five.)
I read an article recently about western psychiatrists working with post-Khmer Rouge Cambodians suffering from PTSD. The main frustration of the psychiatrists was that there were no words in the Cambodian (Khmer) vocabulary which properly defined the condition the patients were suffering from. The limitations of the Khmer language prevented the patients from fully understanding what they were experiencing.
Languages keep tribes divided. You can only know what your vocabulary allows for. This doesn’t just refer to your general spoken language – like English – it refers to your definition of certain English words and concepts in comparison to how other English speakers would define those same words and concepts. In order for tribes to combine into one, a common language, with common definitions, would have to be developed and adopted. A common language (words, beliefs, ideas) will create a common worship center as well, which is essential for a group of tribes to join.
Like at Babel, all the people spoke the same language, and as a result, they all worshipped the same and had the same philosophy of life. The division of languages not only caused confusion because they couldn’t understand each other’s words, it caused confusion also because they no longer believed the same way, thought the same way. This didn’t all happen at once of course, but over time the different languages created greater rifts between the tribes.
Once you’re limited to the vocabulary of a certain tribe, any new ideas coming from without the tribe will first have to be translated into your own tribal language. If there are no words to express the new ideas in your tribal language, you will either outright ignore the new ideas, or the new ideas will change to fit the language of your tribe. If the new ideas are changed to fit your language, they will also change to fit your current belief system. So, even if the new idea opposes your beliefs, once translated into your language, it will work to support your beliefs. The original intent of the idea will be lost.
Consider this example:
“‘Two African natives, S. and K., go to the wood to gather honey. S. found four big trees full of honey, whilst K. could find only one. K. went home bewailing his ill luck, while S. had been so fortunate. Meanwhile S. had returned to the wood to bring away the honey, was attacked by a lion and torn to pieces.
The relatives of the lion’s victim at once went to the soothsayer to discover who was responsible for his death. The soothsayer consults the oracle several times and declares that K., jealous of S’s rich harvest of honey, assumed the form of a lion in order to avenge himself. The accused denied his guilt strenuously and the chieftain ordered the matter to be settled by the ordeal of poison. Matters then followed their usual course — says the explorer’s account — the ordeal was unfavourable to the accused, he confessed and succumbed to torture… The accusation appears quite natural to the soothsayer who formulates it, the prince who orders the trial by ordeal, the crowd of bystanders and to K. himself who had been transformed into a lion, in fact to everybody except the European who happens to be present.’
It is clear to us that K. had not actually experienced turning into a lion and tearing S. to pieces, and so at first he denied having done so. But he is confronted with an overwhelming case against himself. The interpretative framework which he shares with his accusers does not include the conception of accidental death; if a man is devoured by a lion there must be some effective reason behind it, such as the envy of a rival. This makes him an obvious suspect and when the oracle, which he has always trusted, confirms the suspicion he can no longer resist the evidence of his guilt and he confesses having turned into a lion and having devoured S. This closes the circle of the argument and confirms the magical framework in which it was conducted, and it thus enhances the powers of this framework for assimilating the next case which will come under its purview.” (Taken from The Stability of Beliefs by Michael Polanyi.)
Within the confines of a tribe’s language, there will be its own justice system. No matter how nonsensical it may appear to the outsider, even the accused will agree with a verdict against him as he himself holds to the same belief system as his accusers. Tribes are bound within their own circular reasoning. New ideas are not able to penetrate this reasoning from without, nor are they able to take seed and grow from within. Only the presuppositional beliefs of the tribe will survive.
In order for new ideas to form within tribes, a systemic logic must be formed to support those ideas. New ideas, all alone, presented to the tribe on a one by one basis will not take root; they will not be understood. A new idea must be built on the framework of less radical pre-existing ideas, and those built on even less radical pre-existing ideas, and so on. This is the systematic step ladder on which the new ideas can climb.
True ideas must last, and false ideas must disappear. For this to happen, ideas cannot remain vague. They must be defined and then put to the test in practical reality. If the idea stands up to the test it will remain.
I can use “speaking in tongues” in Charismatic churches as an example. Most Charismatics have only a vague idea of what they’re doing when speaking in tongues. There is no agreed-upon definition of what tongues truly is within the Charismatic church. Some say there are two different kinds of tongues, others say three, some say one and what modern Charismatics do today is what the disciples did in Acts 2. Some say one does not have the Holy Spirit if they don’t speak in tongues, others would disagree with that, but would say that one is a less mature Christian without tongues.
Tongues is a tribal marker. It is a circular belief within Charismatic theology. In order to determine if it is a true idea or not, first it must be clearly defined within the entire Charismatic movement, then it must be practically applied to the personal lives of the members of the tribe. It will either disappear or its true purpose will be discovered. If it is a true idea and its purpose is clearly known, it can then be an idea which can pass on to other tribes as it is no longer merely a tribal marker. As long as tongues remains vague, its true nature will not be discovered, and it will remain a simple tribal marker easily rejected by non-Charismatic tribes.
The language of the Charismatic church prevents itself from discovering the true nature of tongues. In fact, tongues itself is an unintelligible “language”. Is there a vocabulary to tongues? Are there rules of grammar? If there were, the language could be translated. What can tongues say about itself? Do Charismatics speak in tongues because they have nothing to say?
One can choose his own tribe or one can be chosen for a tribe. To choose, one must increase his vocabulary to the point where he understands a wide range of ideas. He can then choose which ideas he thinks are best for his well being. With a limited vocabulary comes a limited mind, and limited options.
Tribes, Kingdoms, and Empires – Part One
Tribal Markers
Some ideas and beliefs we hold allow for some give and take. Other ideas, however, no matter how much our opponents logically refute them, we hold on to as though our whole self-identity depended on them. Which, they do. These are our tribal markers.
How do you know your tribal markers? If you’re in a debate about what you believe, and you are willing to cede some of your arguments to your opponent, then those particular beliefs are not foundational to your identity. But, if you and your opponent reach a point at which you have no other argument to offer than to say, “You just don’t understand. My people understand. We will just have to agree to disagree.” Then you have found your tribal marker.
For example, Charismatic “speaking in tongues” is one such tribal marker. Speaking in tongues is not essential to being a christian, but it is essential to being a Charismatic. If one stops doing it, one is no longer a Charismatic. It is essential to the identity. A Calvinist’s “predestination” beliefs are tribal markers as well.
The more radical the marker, the smaller the tribe, and the less one has to use logical thought to defend it. The more a group insists upon and refines a tribal marker, the more people will be excluded from the group.
Pursuit of Percipience 