Two ways to live

[nameandnature]

robhu made a post on the Two Ways to Live presentation, which summarises the important points of evangelical Christianity. That particular posting's intended to be evangelistic without getting de-railed by knowledgeable atheists, so I've move my original comment on it from there to here at Rob's request. This posting remains open for whatever discussion you'd like to have on it (as do most of Rob's), subject to my comment policy. Here's my comment:

Serious points about the video, rather than silly ones, in no particular order:

The video doesn't summarise Christianity, it summarises evangelical Christianity. You won't find many universalists or liberals agreeing with it, and I think the Catholics would at least take a different slant on it. So I think it's a mistake to leave out the "evangelical" qualification when talking about TWTL, unless you really do think those people aren't Christians (which I don't think you do).

TWTL assumes the hearer is prepared to accept that God exists in the first place, and that reading the Bible the evangelical way is a good way to find out what God thinks. This isn't a problem if the intention is to summarise evangelical Christianity, but it is a problem if your intention is to persuade other people to believe it (which is usually what TWTL is for), because you're not presenting any evidence.

There's a difference between creating an inanimate object (like a mug) for a purpose and creating a person. People develop their own ideas about what their purpose is, and we don't accord their creators (parents) the absolute right to determine it. Of course, a Christian could respond that God is supposed to be much greater than human parents, but in that case he stands in relation to us as a parent does to a very young child, or to an animal. In that case, we'd accept his right to bring us up how he wanted, but the way he ignores some children in favour of others and his eventual decision to shove those who aren't his favourites in an oven when he's tired of being patient with them would then become a matter for the NSPCC.

Penal substitutionary atonement doesn't make an awful lot of sense. God is supposed to be so keen on justice that someone must pay for sin, but not so keen on justice that it matters whether he punishes the right person. Furthermore, in the Trinitarian understanding, Jesus is himself God, so the action of punishing himself starts to look like a game of solitaire. As gjm11 says, sin is so trifling that turning to Jesus can get you off, but so grave that an omnipotent God really has to send people to Hell if they don't turn to Jesus.

The video guy repeats the claim that we shouldn't wish God to deal with evil in case he zaps us right now, making God out to be about as clever as George Bush, with shock and awe the only thing in his toolbox. As we've discussed before, that argument doesn't hold up.

Comments

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

There is a sense in which I want to agree wholeheartedly with your comments about purpose. We'd rightly be concerned about a parent who told their child that their purpose was X when a child wanted to live for purpose Y. Freedom of choice in how we live our lives, and the guiding purpose we define for it are important things that you and I would both want to be free choices for the individual. In a very real sense though this is what God allows for us - God love us so much that He does not constrain our purpose in the sense of how we choose to live our life, He gives us more or less free reign in what we do, and we use this freedom to rebel against Him both by not loving our fellow man and by not loving Him.

As you suggest, I think the answer is in how appropriate the relation between parent and child and God and humanity is. While God refers to us as his children in some sense, it also refers to us as his creations and him as our maker. Now it's also true that in a sense parents are the creators of children, but parents do not design their children with intentionality as to their nature, parents are driven by a desire to make copies of themselves, the sense in which they create children is a much lesser sense that the way in which God made humanity. God as omniscient creator did not merely make a kind of (inferior) copy of Himself in man, but carefully planned out all of the aspects of man's nature.

People are by nature replicating genetic machines, generally speaking they have an inbuilt desire to make genetic copies of themselves. Some people for whatever reason will have a lesser sense of this desire, and many will not successfully replicate, but that doesn't mean that in a sense people lack that purpose. Obviously I'm not saying that there is intentionality in evolution that bestows this purpose on people, the point I'm trying to make is that people can't by choice alter their fundamental nature - they can deny it and fail to achieve it, but the general nature of man as a replicating genetic machine remains.

Similarly men and women are created to worship, glorify, love, and be in relation with God. That many choose not to or fail to achieve this ideal state of humanity, and so never achieve the utmost of human purpose does not alter the fact that they were created for that purpose.

Essentially I'm saying that this disagreement may just be an issue of semantics (with purpose having different levels of meaning), but that human free will does not negate pre-existing natural purpose.