Foundations of an Ethical House

A fact is something that actually exists. It is reality. It is truth.[1] Why is fact important? Every Spring we celebrate the two most significant events in history: the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The Apostle Paul valued them as “first importance” (1 Cor 15:3). What was Jesus’ attitude toward truth? On Good Friday, we commemorate that when Jesus stood on trial before Pilate, he stated the significance of truth. He said, “…for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (Jn 18:37). Therefore, the weight of truth was of such value that he stepped into humanity’s courtroom to reveal ultimate reality.

We measured the importance of fact as valuable, but let us now discuss “human values, of how we ought to live, and of what constitutes right conduct” [2] “How shall we then live?” is the question that each person must ask. On what basis in truth can we ground our lives upon?

The basis of truth for the ancient Greek Sophists of the fifth century BC was themselves. Of them, Protagoras held that “man is the measure of all things” [3] His moral relativism asserted that whatever is thought right in a particular society is right for that society. Every society needs a set of moral conventions in order to function as a community. In 1967, one of Protagoras’ disciples, Thomas Harris, wrote the book, I'm OK You're OK, which influenced the Boomer generation to have a more tolerant view of a widening global community. Young Ryan Dobson, Dr. James Dobson’s adopted son, counters this thinking with the book whose title says it all, Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid (2003).

Over history, the secular philosophers pondered the meaning of the value of “good.” Some argued ethical conduct is expressed by what a person is. One person whose name kept popping up in my management courses was Abraham Maslow. His hierarchy of needs pyramid shows self-actualization as our highest goal. He would have clashed with Max Lucado, who wrote, It’s Not About Me (2004).

In another vein, secular ethics can be found in an attempt to please the greatest number of people. This is called teleological ethics. Our U.S. political system appears to function this way as demonstrated by this election year process. However, this ethic can be manipulated and find its basis in lies, which is also demonstrated by this election year process. And what of the ethics of the Cynics and Stoics, whose disciples appear to be Immanuel Kant, David Hume, and G. E. Moore? We have been experimenting with these secular ethics for thousands of years and have discovered that they are not coherent, complete, or consistent.

As a former quality assurance manager for a large government program, my concern was to answer the question of the value for our products and services. The definition was sometimes obscured by unrealistic expectations, but the definition always returned to what the contract and the quality assurance manual stated.

As Christians, our definition of truth and value also come down to basically the same thing. In place of the contract, we have a covenant, and in place of the quality assurance manual, we have the Bible. What kind of foundation do we offer the world? Jesus said, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matt 7:24). How,then, are you building your ethical house?
--Al

1 "fact." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 19 Mar. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fact>.
2 Richard Norman. The Moral Philosophers: An Introduction to Ethics. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1.
3 Ibid, 7.

Why is it important to target evangelism?

Most of us have heard the axiom, “he couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.” It has been used extensively to describe my batting skills in baseball when the umpire screamed, “Strike three! You’re out!” It is quite embarrassing because the broadside of a barn is, well, such a large target.

Since I am such a geek, let me use another illustration. In 1961 (I was 7), President John F. Kennedy spoke before a joint session of Congress and laid down an extraordinary challenge. He said, "... I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." As I followed the development of Apollo manned space program, I was amazed that the team of project managers, scientists, and engineers calculated the location of the earth in relation to the moon, the required trajectory, and all the required fuel and systems so closely that the Lunar Module, nicknamed “Eagle,” almost ran out of fuel when it touched down in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969. [1 ] What made that event extra special for me was that I watched it on TV with my WW1 veteran grandfather, Herbert Goff, who saw the event not only as a milestone for human ingenuity, but as another way for God to show his grace on America. When the astronauts safely returned to earth several days later, they could say that they hit their target.

Whether, then, it is used in sending men to the moon, in sports, in a war, in business, or in Christian evangelism, hitting the target is a critical measurement of success or failure.

In his book, The Purpose-Driven Church, Rick Warren says that our churches should know who we are trying to reach for Christ.[2] We should know our target. Who is our target? According to Christ’s Great Commission challenge, it is “all nations” (Matthew 28:19, NIV[3]). That’s a pretty big broadside of a barn for my church of about 400 adult members. How can we accomplish this mission? Like the Apollo’s Saturn V launch vehicle, we need to break this down into stages.

Christ helps us by further stating, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In this we have a place to start and the stages of progression. Jerusalem is the city where the disciples began. This was their initial geographic target. In Jerusalem, there were many kinds of people visiting at Pentecost. On that day that the Holy Spirit came on him, Peter segmented the crowd into a particular demographic target by saying, “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say” (Acts 2:14).

Bowie is the city where my church can begin by breaking down its many sections[4] and its streets to geographic targets. I want to know what streets are closest both to my house and to the church. Those are the people I want to attract first. We can further narrow down the target by demographic type (age, race, married with children, income, etc.) so we know who and how to address their particular needs with methods that will best reach them with the gospel.

Paul used a sports illustration about the importance of targeting when he said, “Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air” (1 Cor 9:26). An aimless man doesn’t know what direction to run, and a fighter whose punch only beats the air will soon wear himself down and be knocked out. This is not the way of the church. We are in this game to win—win the lost to Christ. And, we can do it if we train to focus on the target.

--AL

1 NASA, Apollo 30th Anniversary, (Online) http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/introduction.htm, Last updated Sept. 20, 2002.
2 Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 156.
3 Unless otherwise specified, all Scripture is quoted from the New International Version (NIV) of the Holy Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984).
4 Most of the City of Bowie is divided into sections with street names beginning with particular letters of the alphabet.

Not Just Another Programming Language

You might be familiar with PASCAL as a computer programming language, but did you know about the Christian man from which this language was named?

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, and theological philosopher from the 17th century. Under the direct tutelage of his father, Pascal thrived intellectually and showed a penchant for theoretical and practical science. He is attributed with the invention of 0ne of the first mechanical calculators and with the laws of hydraulics.

Following a near-death experience in late 1654, where Pascal and several friends escaped plunging over a bridge in a coach, he had a vision from God. He left mathematics and physics and devoted himself to studying scripture and writing apologetics. What is apologetics?

"Apologetics attempts to render the Christian faith persuasive to the contemporary individual.

• For unbelievers: it is belief forming. It helps to establish Christianity as credible by giving intellectual support to the explanatory value of a biblical world view.



• For believers: it is belief sustaining. It nurtures Christian faith by calling believers to love the Lord with their minds (Matt 22:37)."[1]

His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres Provinciales (The Provincial Letters) and the Pensées.[2] The Provincial Letters was a critique of religious and political leadership of his time. The Pensées is actually a collection of notes Pascal made for a book he planned to title "The Defense of the Christian Religion," but was not completed due to his untimely death in 1662.

Pascal’s primary concern was focused on the church and combating the ignorance of those who professed to be a Christian without displaying Christian virtues. J.G. Stackhouse says, “Blaise Pascal and Soren Kierkegaard are only the most famous of a long line of apologists who tried to wake up a sleepwalking culture that comfortably thought itself Christian.”[3] Though a Catholic, Pascal criticized the Catholic church for being “too Calvinistic.”[4]

Pascal’s greatness in apologetics was not to deify his personal interests of mathematics and science, like so many of his contemporaries. Rather, he chose to honestly dismiss limited human reason and accepted both the obvious ambiguity of knowledge of God and the Scriptural view of man’s fallen state. He states:

But for those in whom this light is extinguished … find only obscurity and darkness; to tell them that they have only to look at the smallest things which surround them, and they will see God openly, to give them, as a complete proof of this great and important matter, the course of the moon and planets, and to claim to have concluded the proof with such an argument, is to give them ground for believing that the proofs of our religion are very weak. And I see by reason and experience that nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt. It is not after this manner that Scripture speaks, which has a better knowledge of the things that are of God.[5]

Though dead, his ideas fit in with modern teleological arguments. It appears that Pascal’s war against the identity crisis and apathy of Christians has continued into the 21st Century, where there seems to be little if no difference in the lifestyles between those who profess “Jesus is Lord!” and those who profess their allegiance to secular humanism. In addition, many of our modern churches that are "too Calvinistic" seem to be less concerned with working with other "less Calvinistic" churches. What does Christ have to say to this? "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another"(Jn 13:35). Love, therfore, is our primary apologetic. If this is so, then can the inverse be also true? Can you demonstrate that you are not Jesus' disciple by hate and indifference? John was called the apostle of love, but his words are quite direct and stern on the matter. He says, "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness" (1 Jn 2:9).

A programming language is a set of instructions for the computer. A computer that has no capacity to translate those instructions and do what is expected no longer serves the purpose of its human master. People, however, are not computers - and we are far more valuable to our heavenly master. He has given us instructions by giving us the Bible which lines up with our primary mission to glorify Him. Christ said, "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matt 5:16). Does the way you think and act line up with the commands of Christ? Churches: are you communicating and collaborating in such a way that the unbelievers in your community want to join your fellowship? Are you celebrating your similarities in Christ or are you accentuating your differences? Is the Christian faith you profess persuasive to the world?

AL

1 Walter Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 82.
2 "Blaise Pascal." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 2005. Answers.com 21 Oct. 2006. http://www.answers.com/topic/blaise-pascal (accessed October 21, 2006).
3 J.G. Stackhouse, Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 44.
4 Ibid., 167.
5 Wikisource contributors, "Pensées/IV-242," Wikisource, The Free Library, http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Pens%C3%A9es/IV&oldid=212972 (accessed October 21, 2006).

6 Image. Augustin Pajou (1730-1809). Blaise Pascal (1785, Paris, Musйe du Louvre)
http://nibiryukov.narod.ru/nb_pinacoteca/nbe_pinacoteca_artists_p.htm

Seeker-Sensitive to Sinner-Sensitive

Both Warren and Schwarz address being a seeker sensitive church in their respective books, The Purpose-Driven Church (1995) and Natural Church Development (1996). Is it important to be seeker-sensitive? Yes!

I have heard and read opinions from those who think it is a bad thing because it tends to compromise the order and respectability of what they think a church service should be. Their attitude is that visitors need to come in a behave themselves. If they behave, they must be Christians. If they don’t behave, they are going to hell and they do not belong in church. This is the seeker insensitive model, which is grounded in centuries of tradition. The Pharisees and scribes did church this way two thousand years ago.

Then came Jesus, who drew quite a crowd. The Jewish leaders growled, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends" (Lk 15:1, MSG). Perhaps they complained that Jesus is too “sinner-sensitive.” According to Warren, it is important to be seeker-sensitive like Jesus. He said:

At Saddleback Church we do not expect unbelievers to act like believers until they are. We do not expect visitors in the crowd to act like members of the congregation. We expect very little from the seeker who is investigating the claims of Christ. We simply say, as Jesus did in his first encounter with the disciples, "Come and see!” (Warren, 54)

The seeker-service is perceived by the visitor that, not only is this church a safe place to attend without feeling judged or being hassled by pushy, zealous members, it is a place that they can come to find out more about God. After all, if fellowship was the only criteria of the visitor, the local sports bar or Starbucks, might do as well.

Though Schwarz posits that being seeker sensitive is not a church growth principle, he does find that there is indeed “a strong correlation between an inspiring worship experience and a church's quality and quantity” (Schwarz, 31). He further states, "it can be demonstrated that there is a significant connection between laughter in the church and that church's qualitative and numerical growth" (Schwarz, 36). In other words, being seeker sensitive impacts the environment that is attractive to the visitor. And Warren states, “No one becomes a church member without first being a visitor” (Warren, 253).

Can we be seeker-sensitive and not quench the operation of the Spirit? Again, there may be a preconception that for the Spirit to transform, the environment has to be quiet and somber. This is truly a misconception. God works when our hearts are open and receptive to his word, as the good soil was in the parable of the sower (Matt 13:3-8; Mk 4:3-20; Luke 8:5-8). A seeker sensitive service provides that environment. Is there possibility for church growth? Look at the result of the good soil. Jesus said, “Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown” (Matt 13:8).

--Al