Years ago I got into a minor debate with someone at my church. She believed, as the Dispensationalists teach, we Christians will be secretly raptured seven years before Jesus returns. I don’t. I hold, as Paul taught, the rapture and Jesus’s return occur simultaneously.
The Left Behind view, that Christians get to escape all the mayhem of the Great Tribulation, is a really popular one in the United States. Christians, who can make neither heads nor tails of apocalypses, have decided—no surprise—to embrace the most comfortable view, which lets us suffer least. Heck, I wouldn’t mind if it were true. Being here on earth for all those plagues in Revelation? It’s gonna suck. You’d have to be a masochist to want to ride that out.
So, understandably, she hated my point of view. (And me, just a little bit, for insisting upon it.) I don’t blame her for not liking the idea, but neither I, nor she, could refute the passage in 1 Thessalonians—though she was pretty sure, once she got home, she could find something on the Internet to refute my interpretation of it. And I have no doubt she could.
“Go for it,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong. I don’t have this view because I like it. I have it because I can’t prove otherwise.”
But she’s not the only Christian who holds beliefs because they’re comfortable. Nor is she the only human who believes things based on wishful thinking. I’d venture to say most of us believe in the things we want, rather than the things we can’t help but accept.
Skeptics do it all the time.
I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence. Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless.
—Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means 270.
Huxley was an honest skeptic: He believed in a meaningless universe because it wasn’t convenient for him to believe otherwise. The things he and his contemporaries wished to do and believe—some of them political, some of them moral and sexual—butted heads with the then-popular sentiment in England. “There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt,” he wrote: “We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.” [Huxley 273]
Other skeptics are not so honest. They don’t believe in God, or religion, or ethics, or conservative (or progressive) morals. Not because they’ve taken the time to consider these points of view, and accept those which sound the most truthful: They don’t care about that. In fact, these views seem to get in their way. People keep telling them their sins make baby Jesus cry. So of course they want nothing to do with baby Jesus. They want to do what they like, and don’t want anyone, or any system, to tell them otherwise.
If they ever do embrace any of these views, it’s again only for selfish reasons: They want to forbid what they don’t like. They’re looking for a useful, pragmatic reason. If they can find a system of morality which other people will actually accept, one which states, “That’s immoral” yet doesn’t require them to change their lifestyle any, it’ll do nicely. It’s why we see a lot of young radicals, once they get older, become neoconservatives. Or why we see a lot of young conservatives, once they get older, lighten up about a surprising number of their strict beliefs. Extremists become flexible, and tolerant people take sides. And both of them will tell you it’s because they’ve matured—they’ve lived a little, and know better—but it’s rubbish: Their previous point of view doesn’t work for them anymore. Time to try on a new one.
Some of ’em come to Christ for this very reason. Lucky for them, Jesus will take them on, and transform them in ways they never expected.
Christians do it all the time.
We Christians would like to claim our particular Christian beliefs are based on substance and evidence. But, same as the skeptics, that’s rubbish too. We embrace the Christian beliefs we like best, and set aside any interpretations which inconvenience us. We’d much rather adjust God to fit ourselves. It’s just easier that way.
Look at the Sermon on the Mount. At face value, it’s how Jesus wants his followers to interpet the scriptures, live in the Kingdom of God, and bring it into the world. But face value isn’t convenient for us Christians. It’d require us to change too much; to practice far more self-control than we’d care to. So we’ve chosen one of these other ways:
- The medieval view that the Sermon is only for clergy. Average Christians don't have to bother with it.
- Martin Luther’s view that the Sermon is impossible, because we have to be more perfect than Pharisees. So he figured the entire thing is hyperbole, meant to show us how badly we need grace.
- Existentialists figure it means whatever you feel it means. (Just don’t lay your trip upon me, dude. If I wanna treat the whole thing as a metaphor, don’t make me follow it literally.)
- Dispensationalists teach it's not for this dispensation, so we don’t need to follow it. It’s for the previous dispensation, where people were saved by works instead of grace; and it’s for the next dispensation, where Christians won’t sin anymore and can finally follow the Sermon on the Mount perfectly. But the present day? You can ignore it.
- The most prevalent present-day view is a modified version of Luther’s: The Sermon is God’s ideal. It’s something to aim for. But since we’re never gonna achieve it in this sin-plagued lifetime, don’t worry about it.
And we do this with all sorts of Christian beliefs. The Old Testament gets nullified, and we can ignore all God’s commands. Except maybe the Ten Commandments. Well, not all the Ten Commandments: We don’t have to take the Sabbath off, or have to honor our parents, or have to worry about coveting. Oh, but let’s keep the commands which ban homosexuality. And let’s definitely not keep the commands which ban certain foods; love my bacon-wrapped shrimp. And so on. We pick and choose which parts of the bible to follow, and which to ignore, in just the way God warns us not to.
Jesus tells us we can’t serve both God and money. Americans are pretty sure we can. We’ve renamed it “good stewardship.” We claim when we’re good stewards, God remains in control of our money, even though it looks exactly like we’re still controlling it. We seem to be acting more like the rich fool in Jesus’s parable than like any good steward Jesus ever talked about. The wealthy are required to do more good deeds with their wealth, but it seems they think they’re only required to make themselves more comfortable, and spend a token amount on charity so they can feel righteous about it.
We have a lot of delusions about what God promised us. We think he promised to prosper us, ’cause we quote Jeremiah out of context and apply that passage to ourselves. We think every circumstance will ultimately be for our benefit, ’cause we quote Paul out of context too. We believe a lot of things based on misquoted bible. Even when we know better, when we’ve been taught better, in a pinch we’ll revert to those same misquoted verses. I’ve caught so many of my students doing it, ’cause they take more comfort in their false ideas than the correct ones. We’re like dogs which go back to their own vomit because we don’t have the sense to reject foolishness when it feels so good.
A preacher will share a new idea with us. We’ll grab tight to it, and share it with everyone, because it sounds good. Someone will post a wonky interpretation on Facebook, and we’ll share it with every friend we have, because it sounds good. But we never bother to take a minute or two to double-check these ideas against the scriptures, and find out whether they’re junk. Sometimes it’s because we’re lazy. Most often it’s just because the new ideas appeal to our flesh so very much. They make us feel righteous about our anger or argumentativeness or partisanship or prejudice. They justify our bad behavior. So we embrace them, just as we’ve embraced other fleshly works, instead of reject them as fruitful Christians should. We throw out wheat, and grow fat on chaff. We let our interesting new knowledge puff us up, instead of build us up.
Practice healthy skepticism.
If we’re truly gonna follow Jesus, we have to learn this question, and say it every single time we hear something new. (And, for that matter, say it every single time we bump into something old.) We need to ask, “Is that really true?”
We need to confirm the truth of everything we’re told. Double-check it against scripture. Double-check it with fruitful, trustworthy Christians. Double-check it against godly wisdom: If it’s not consistent with the fruit of the Spirit, nor the teachings of Jesus, there’s a screw loose somewhere. Double-check it against what God’s already done in your life. Don’t just accept whatever feels right. Prove it’s right. Practice good theology.
Yeah, it’s gonna irritate you: You’re gonna discover a lot of favorite, cherished beliefs aren’t worth believing.
Yeah, it’s gonna irritate the devil, ’cause thinking Christians don’t make its job easy. If befuddling you doesn’t work, it may feel the need to resort to outright harassment.
Yeah, it’s gonna irritate others: They’re gonna hate how you take apart their favorite, cherished beliefs, and how you’re constantly asking, “Is that really true?” when they’d prefer you just shut up and swallow the Kool-Aid. They’re gonna point out how “Is that really true?” resembles the serpent’s “Did God really say that?” —as if our pursuit of truth is anything like the devil’s pursuit of confusion.
The usual opponent to a skeptical Christian is the apathetic Christian, who says, “Oh, stop thinking so hard and just believe. Just have faith.” But by “faith” they don’t actually mean faith. They mean wishful thinking. They think spirituality is emotion, not facts. They’re comfortable in the dark, and wish you’d stop trying so hard to light the candles.
But if we’re gonna follow Jesus, he’s in the light. He is the light. Double-checking the light to see whether it’s on, does not turn it off. God can stand up to scrutiny. Our bad theology and false teachings, on the other hand, will fall apart—and must fall apart now, before tribulation knocks them apart later. So don’t be afraid to scrutinize them. Never be afraid to ask questions. The Spirit approves of truth; it’s his job to guide us to it anyway. Pursue it wholeheartedly, wherever it leads, for it’ll lead to God.