Tag Archive for: doctrine

What is so sacred about sex? – Part 2

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This continues from part 1…..

In part one of this article, we discussed the sexual mood of our present culture and whether or not as human beings, we are the owners of our own bodies and minds. We ended on the note that if it is the case that we have been made or created by someone else for his own purposes, then surely we would have a lot more obligations than we would have if we only belonged to ourselves. But we also noted that, this is a big “IF” because some people do not believe (or at least they live as if they don’t believe) that there is any Being higher than ourselves, to whom we must be responsible. Is it reasonable to believe that an actual Being exists who is responsible for our existence and to whom we might be accountable to, regarding our sexual lives? If there is the possibility for such a Being to exist, why would he be interested in what we do with our bodies sexually?

For starters, let us be brutally honest with ourselves: everything in this world – from ourselves to the flowers to the stars to sea to animals etc – points to the fact that some sort of careful designing has gone into the creation of our world and of ourselves, doesn’t it? We often take it for granted that this physical world of ours is structured the way it is. But mathematically speaking, the probability of this world happening by a mindless random or unordered process is incredibly small. According to Astrophysicist Hugh Ross’ conservative calculation, the chance of a planet like ours existing in the universe is about 1 in a trillion billion billion (i.e. 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 10 raised to the power 30).

 Scientists are discovering that had even a single feature of our universe been just a little bit different, the stars, galaxies and human life would not exist. Let us briefly look at a few amazing scientific discoveries before we go on. The distance from the earth to the sun is just right. Why? Even a small change of around 2% and all life would cease. If the earth was too near the sun, water would evaporate. If it was too far from the sun, its coldness level would not support life. In fact, even the rotation speed of the earth is just right; if it was too slow, the temperature differences between day and night would be too extreme, and if it was too fast the wind speeds would be catastrophic. Furthermore, if the ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces had differed by about one part in ten thousand billion billion billion billion (i.e. 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000), then stars such as the Sun, which are capable of supporting life, could not exist. Do you see any picture emerging?

The delicate balance of the elements in our universe, to use the illustration of the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, is like the accuracy level that a marksman needs in order to hit a coin twenty billion light years away on the other side of the observable universe. [A light year is the speed travelled by light in one year. And light, by the way, has the fastest travelling speed in our universe]. In fact it has been noted by some researchers that the earth is placed precisely in a part of the universe that is congenial to scientific studies in cosmology, galactic astronomy, stellar astrophysics and geophysics. That is, if our earth had been positioned in a part of the universe with too much starlight, we could not have been able to see into deep space. There are more than 3000 galaxies in the observable universe, each containing millions to trillions of stars – many being bigger than the earth.

Further, Oxford mathematician John Lennox in his book, ‘God’s undertaker: has Science buried God?’, notes that the distinguished mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, admitted that his atheism was shaken profoundly when he discovered the degree of fine-tuning needed between the nuclear ground state energy levels in order for carbon to be formed either by a combination of three helium nuclei, or by a combination of nuclei of helium and beryllium. (And for the record, life cannot exist on earth without an abundant supply of carbon). Sir Hoyle’s discovery, according to Lennox, led him to remark that, “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,” and that “there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.” Interesting isn’t it? And let us not forget the issue of the human DNA – the molecule containing coded instructions for the cells in the body. A group of scientists have recently estimated that the adult body contains about 37.2 trillion cells, each containing DNA. Each person’s complete DNA is unique; the exception being identical twins. The instructions are in what is called Genetic language and they are detailed, complex and specific. These instructions include for example, which cells should grow and when, which cells should die and when, which cells should make hair and what colour it should be.  If all this sounds too technical, then let me make it simple: the scientific discoveries are pointing in the direction where it is highly unlikely that an intelligent Being did not plan and execute the creation of this whole skilfully crafted universe, including human beings like us.

What is my point with all this information? It is this: if conditions in this universe, and the nature of our human bodies, are the way they are – so delicately precision-tuned – and if human beings like us posses the kind of intelligence we posses, even to study them, then it is very reasonable to (and unreasonable not to) suppose that a more intelligent Being, (1) is out there, (2) is the cause of our beings and (3) is interested in our lives. Now if we relate this thought to Mr. Lewis’ thoughts about moral duties (discussed in part one of this article), we can say with a fair degree of confidence that the whole of mankind must have a Landlord. Our bodies, strictly speaking, are not ours. Our Landlord is this Intelligent Being who created this world and everything in it. Religious folks simply call him, God. Since this God is the cause of our intricately designed bodies and existence, it is not mind-boggling that any “Dos and Don’ts” on how we use our bodies should come from him.

 

A Curious Worldview

 In his speech to the members of the city council of Athens, Paul the apostle of Christ tried to give them a new view of God, saying, “God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands.” (Acts 17:24 GNB) In a city so used to building alters and shrines for every imaginable god, this news was however unimaginable. But to the people in the city of Corinth (a city well-known for its immorality), who became believers in Jesus Christ, Paul wrote them a letter in which he explained to them the sacredness of their bodies: “…the body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord, and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord [i.e. Jesus] from death and will also raise us by his power. … Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.” (1 Cor. 6: 13,14, 19,20 GNB). Dr Ravi Zacharias, a Christian philosopher, appropriately explains that, “the Christian walks with God, not to God. We no longer go to the temple to worship. Rather we go with our temples to worship.” The body of a believer in Christ, rather than a church building, is the holy dwelling place of God and must be treated as “holy grounds.” Thus what this person wears, or touches, or says, or looks at or reads or listens to must uphold God’s holiness.

So much for the Christian “bodies”! What bearing does this worldview have on those who do not subscribe to it? The non-Christian is a prospective temple of God. God wants to live in this person. The Christian explanation for human existence in general is that God made us and not only that, but also that he made us all for himself (Col. 1:16) and he made us in such a way that only in union with him can our greatest good be had (John 10:10). Sin does not allow this to happen. But God became man in Jesus Christ, lived uprightly among us, identified with our human weaknesses, paid for our sins in his death and rose up and wants to live in us to empower us to live as we ought to. Like C. S. Lewis once observed, God invented us in a certain sense like how a man invents an engine. And when a car is made to run of gasoline, it would not run properly on anything else. In this same sense God made the “human machine,” as Lewis puts it, to run on himself.

The fuel we need in order to function the way he designed us is God himself and the food we need to keep our souls spiritually alive is God himself. We cannot expect to function properly on our own terms. Sexual fulfillment (a major hunger of our generation) with its proper joy, peace and security does not come through the pulling down of God’s boundaries. Without God at the centre of a sexual relationship, our much desired real and secure intimacy which we often believe can be found in sexual intercourse will prove elusive. Any person, Christian or not, who tries to outsmart God on this front will soon find that the last laugh is always God’s, not ours; restlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness, broken trust, guilt and shame will ultimately come resting at our door steps. There is definitely pleasure in sin but it is fleeting. Kenyan Christian Apologist, John Njoroge, insightfully says that, “Trying to meet our real needs without God is like trying to satisfy our thirst with salty water: the more we drink, the thirstier we become.  This is a sure path to various sorts of addictions.”

Even in our limited wisdom, we realize that playing our cherished game of football without any rules does not make it really enjoyable. So we have created rules, in all their imperfections. Even with the rules in place, some people hurt others and get hurt themselves; they offend and get offended during the course of the game. Can you imagine the unbridled chaos that would exist if there were no clear rules? In the same way, we are living in an increasing sexually chaotic culture today because we are desperately throwing off God’s moral restraints: husbands and wives are sleeping with people other than their spouses, young unmarried boys and girls are “training” themselves in the act of sex yet ironically the idea of marriage is appearing uncomfortable to them because of its widely acknowledged moral limitations. God has provided a framework within which sex can be properly enjoyed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and it is not outside marriage.

 In God’s scheme of things, according to Christian teachings, you do not need to be experienced in sex before marriage. This is because you have the whole of your married life to get to know your spouse’s body (God’s gift to you) as your bodies lock and your spirits mesh in sexual intercourse before God. With each encounter you get to know the body of your spouse even better to the glory of God. And here is the rich wisdom of the Christian faith (which may seem foolish on the face of it): Any person who genuinely relies on Jesus Christ before his marriage and also during his marriage will be given the grace and spiritual strength to stay the course of marriage should he find out that he has ended up with a sexually defective spouse. Tough to take in, I know, but I cannot make this truth any more appealing than it sounds right now in a time like ours. Marriage is not a selfish enterprise, where if you are not having a sexually exciting life everything else must come crushing down for everyone in it. Rather it is essentially a self-giving worship of God as you commit yourself exclusively to that one person, to love, to cherish and to seek the good of this person always.

 The Christian scriptures teach that all who trust in God will not be disappointed, ultimately. But break God’s precepts on sex (or on any other issue of life) and you can be sure that you will not only separate yourself from God and into a dark loneliness of the soul but you will also hurt yourself and others. Let us be clear: the idea that God is an unloving and unfeeling Judge up there who is simply watching down to see who has gone even slightly wrong so that he may swiftly punish him, is wrong. God wants to reconcile us back to himself. This is the Christian message to the world. God’s precepts in the Bible are intended to facilitate our happiness and not to stifle it. A parent sternly warns her child to steer clear of fire not because she wants to make the child miserable but because she wants to prevent the child from getting hurt or even dying. How can a child enjoy life when he is hurt or dead? If we separate ourselves spiritually from God (a spiritual death), through sin, how can we expect to receive God’s best? God knows the limits within which our best can be had. Stolen waters are not as sweet as we want to believe. Many people may look happy on the outside but on the inside they may be empty, restless, bitter and troubled because they have violated God in this area of sex.

Conclusion

We were made for God and if we spend ourselves in illegitimate pleasures, we will only come away broken and impoverished in our souls (and perhaps with physical scars too). No one enriches his soul by being sexually immoral. Rather we bankrupt ourselves spiritually; we feel the emptiness, restlessness of the soul, the guilt and shame of sin because we have divorced ourselves from God, who is our ultimate good. A more serious side to sexual immorality is that in the end, we must give account of our lives to the God. Some people realize this quicker than others but the important thing is that we are willing to take the necessary steps back to God through the path he has provided – faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. And to be clear, faith in Jesus Christ is not mere intellectual belief in Jesus as Lord but includes a willful commitment to live the whole of one’s life in reverence of him and his teachings. Christ offers forgiveness and rebirth even to the one who has wrecked himself or herself sexually yet is willing to repent. Are you a mess, sexually? Jesus gives hope and strength to those seeking to please God in their sexual lives.

Is The Bible A Reliable Historical Document?

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People who dismiss the Bible as unreliable and unworthy of attention often challenge its historical credibility. The average Christian usually does not know how to adequately respond to the sophisticated form of this challenge. For instance a critic might submit as a historical fact, an issue like the council of Nicaea during the fourth century to say that this was the point at which Christians met to change things in the Bible to suit their erroneous teachings. For the skeptic this is a good strategy because if you can prove the historical unreliability of the Bible, then Christianity, which is perhaps the world’s most spiritually and morally disturbing faith (i.e. its teachings hunts the human conscience with the issue of sin in the heart), becomes minced meat. Truth be told, most Ghanaian Christians do not know much about Christian Church history; they hardly look beyond their denominations. Skeptics often argue against the Bible’s reliability with reasons ranging from the Bible being a myth to having contradictions and also to being textually unreliable. Of course, the implication of Christians hinging their beliefs and way of life on a historically unreliable document is very serious; the oft-repeated charge that Christianity goes against reason or intellect will become valid if this is the case.

In fact, there is a growing number of Christian youngsters in Ghana today who are questioning their beliefs about the Bible in the face of some scientific theories, challenges from the popular New Atheists in the West and sadly the irrational behaviour and practices of the present popular Christianity in the country. Christianity in Ghana, in the past, has not faced much intellectual attacks and as a result most present day Ghanaian Christians honestly do not know how to deal with challenges to the credibility of the Bible as a reliable historical document. This is understandable. But Ghanaian Christians need to understand that the times have changed. An increasing number of young people who were brought up on Christian teachings are now rejecting the faith because they are not getting reasonable or intellectually satisfying answers to their nagging questions. Their present number may be relatively small in Ghana, since we have historically not been a very questioning culture. But with more Ghanaians being educated to higher levels, and having easy access to information around the globe, the questions that their curious minds are raising should not be ignored. They must be addressed head-on.

I am aware that there are huge volumes of books that have responded to claims of the Bible’s unreliability so I will not pretend that this short article will exhaustively address the challenges mentioned above. What I want to do here is to whet the appetite of honest skeptics, critics and seekers for embarking on an honest investigation of the Bible’s reliability as a historical document. I use the word ‘honest’ because there are those who, in their rhetoric, give the impression that they are intellectually honest in their search for answers yet who have actually already made up their minds not to seriously consider any evidence or argument that will go in favour of the Bible or Christianity. Such people are not my target readership because I am convinced of the words of the sage who once observed that, “To give truth to him who loves it not is but to give him plentiful material for misinterpretation.” And let me also clarify that when I use the word “Bible,” I am limiting it to the mainstream translations in the public domain which have not been customized for the theologies of any particular church or fringe group. Also this article defends only the historical reliability of the Bible and not the truthfulness of its doctrines, which is a subject for another article.

 

Myth or History

Christianity would not be so disturbing had it not been for its claim that Jesus is the Son of God and that he is the only way to God and also that these claims are recorded in the Bible. For some these claims are uncomfortably exclusive and they find it easier to believe the hypothesis that Christians in later generations actually invented these ideas which the early disciples of Jesus (if there ever were any) never thought of. But the fact is that this is simply not true! If Jesus’ divinity and claim of exclusivity are myths invented by later generations then there must have been at least two or three generations between the original eyewitnesses of the historical Jesus and the universal belief in the mythic, divinized and exclusive Jesus. Why? In the absence of this condition, the myth could not have been believed as fact since it would have been refuted by eyewitnesses of the real historical Jesus. Both his disciples and his enemies would have had reasons to oppose this new myth. Incidentally, we find no such evidence at all of anyone ever opposing the so-called myth of the divine Jesus in the name of an earlier merely human Jesus. The New testament manuscripts from first century show that this idea of a divine Jesus originated from the very disciples and followers of Christ right in the first century and no competent scholar today denies the first-century dating of virtually all of the New Testament.

Further, the claim of Jesus to be God makes sense of his trial and the Jewish leaders’ desire for his crucifixion. You see, the Jewish sensitivity to blasphemy was a unique thing in the Roman world. No sympathizers of any of the pagan religions at that time would have so fanatically insisted on the death penalty as punishment for claiming divinity because the prevailing attitude in the Roman world toward the gods was “the more, the merrier.” For instance, a city like Athens had many altars for the several gods yet just to make sure that they had not missed any god, they made an altar “to an Unknown God” (Acts 17:23). Now if we still want to maintain that the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, then the question begging to be answered is: who invented it? Whether it was Jesus’ first disciples or some later generation, no credible motive can account for this invention. Why do I say this? Until the Edict of Milan in AD 313, Christians were subject to serious persecution. They were often tortured and killed, and hated and oppressed for their beliefs. No one, especially a skeptical first century Jew, would invent an elaborate practical joke in order to be crucified, stoned or beheaded for it!

Textual Reliability

While some people who may have done some research on the Bible love to point out what they believe to be inaccuracies in modern Bibles as compared to earlier manuscripts, others who have done no study on the subject will often use such purported inaccuracies as valid reasons for not having anything to do with the teachings of the book. Can we trust the Bible as we have it today?

When you take the story about Jesus for instance, we have four Gospels rather than one. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by four different writers, at four different times, and with four somewhat different purposes and emphasis. This makes cross-checking possible. Through a textual comparison, we can fix the facts with far greater assurance here than with any other ancient series of events about a historical figure. Like some historians have observed, “The only inconsistencies are in chronology (only Luke’s Gospel claims to be in exact order) and accidentals like numbers (e.g. did the women see one angel or two at the empty tomb?)” Further, Historians evaluate the textual reliability of ancient literature according to two standards: (1) What he time interval is between the original and the earliest copy available and (2) how many manuscripts are available.

Knowledge of Julius Caesar’s exploits in the Gallic Wars are available today because of ten manuscript copies, the earliest of which dates to within 1,000 years of the time it was written by Caesar, somewhere 100-44 BC. Plato’s writings took place around 400 BC and there are seven manuscripts available today, the earliest of which dates to within 1,300 years after Plato’s death. Homer’s ‘Iliad’ is much more reliable in terms of time gap because the time gap between the date of its composition and the date of the earliest copies available to us for examination today is 400 years. It was composed in 800 BC and the earliest manuscript copy dates around 400 BC. It is worthy to note that all we know about Socrates today is known through his student Plato’s writings yet nobody doubts that Socrates ever existed. Isn’t it interesting then to see people expressing unease or trying to discredit the Gospels just because the disciples of Jesus wrote them?

When we use these same standards above which historians typically use, the New Testament stands impressively tall and without equal when compared to other ancient documents. There are nearly 25,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament books available in Libraries and universities around the world today. John’s gospel has the earliest manuscript copies available to us today in the form of fragments (located in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, England) dating to within 50 years from when the apostle John authored the original between AD 50-100. Which ancient document comes close to this? Further, the earliest Greek manuscript copies available today of the Complete New Testament dates to 225 years from the original writing. This is about half the time gap for manuscript copies of Homer’s Iliad, which is the most historically reliable ancient secular document. This is simply impressive. People who accuse Christians of adulterating and falsifying the current Bible need only to go to the Libraries to do the comparisons. But of course it is easier to claim intellectual honesty while making sweeping statements, perpetuating myths and accusing Christians of rejecting their intellect since most unsophisticated Christians will not be able to put up any formidable defence, isn’t it? Even more interesting is that those who accuse Christians of doctoring the current Bible are hard-pressed to produce any originals with which to compare. In essence, the critic is really saying, “I don’t have any evidence but just take my word for it, your Bible has been corrupted.” Quite sad!

 

As far as the Old Testament (The Jewish Scriptures) is concerned, the standards for making copies were incredibly strict. The Jewish scribes saw the discipline as a high spiritual calling. And the accuracy of their copying has been confirmed by the discovery of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ in 1947. Prior to 1947 the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript dated to AD 900. With the discovery of 223 manuscripts in caves on the west side of the Dead Sea, we now have Old Testament manuscripts that palaeographers have dated around 125 BC. These are 1000 years older than the previously known manuscripts. After the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it has been discovered that the text of the modern version of the Hebrew Bible is 95% identical, with the 5% variation consisting mainly of spelling variations. This is nothing short of impressive. And religiously speaking, this remarkably shows how the Sovereign and All-powerful God, even while working with and through fallible men, has preserved his teachings throughout the ages for the World so that we may all get to know him as he is.

 

Contradictions

Contradiction is a serious thing anytime truth is in question and since Christians claim that Christianity is a religion based on truth, it is crucial that the charges of contradictions in the Bible be looked at carefully. I am sure the critics have a tall list of what is believed to be contradictions that are enough to bury the Bible. But like I indicated in the beginning, this article is meant to whet the appetite of the honest skeptics for investigating the historical reliability of the Bible. For this article I have chosen to look at just a few regarding the story of Jesus Christ in the gospels, in particular, the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the linchpin on which all of Christianity hangs. Christianity stands or falls on the truthfulness of this story, and thus if the eyewitness accounts are essentially contradictory, then there is a big problem – their story cannot be relied upon. One critic has complained that:

 

“In Matthew, when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arrived toward dawn at the tomb there is a rock in front of it, there is a violent earthquake, and an angel descends and rolls back the stone. In Mark, the women arrive at the tomb at sunrise and the stone had been rolled back. In Luke, when the women arrive at early dawn they find the stone had already been rolled back. In Matthew, an angel is sitting on the rock outside the tomb and in Mark a youth is inside the tomb. In Luke, two men are inside. In Matthew, the women present at the tomb are Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. In Mark, the women present at the tomb are the two Marys and Salome. In Luke, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and the other women are present at the tomb.”

 

On the surface, this seems like a combination of hopeless contradictions which should severely damage the narrative about Jesus’ empty tomb. But hold on a moment! Take a closer look at the each of the narratives in the gospels and you will realize that the differences are in the secondary details. There is actually a historical core to the story that can be relied upon – that Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb and sealed with a rock, the tomb was visited by a small group of women followers of Jesus early on Sunday morning and they found it empty but they saw a vision of angel(s) saying that Jesus had risen from the dead. The differences in the names of the women, their number, the exact time of the morning etc do not disturb the core of the story. Besides the differences in the empty tomb narratives actually informs us that we have multiple independent confirmation of the story. Indeed if all four gospels were identical in the smallest details, it would raise suspicion of plagiarism.

 

We must also note how history was recorded back then and how different it is from our ‘journalist reports’ today. The oral transmission of history focused on the major issues of the hero’s life, not the excruciating details of our 21st century style of reportage. Historical documents of that age typically followed this principle and it is not unique to the Bible. “We have two narratives of Hannibal crossing the Alps to attack Rome, and they’re incompatible and irreconcilable. Yet no classical historian doubts the fact that Hannibal did mount such a campaign. That’s a non-biblical illustration of discrepancies in secondary details failing to undermine the historical core of a historical story,” quipped Dr. Lane Craig, a Christian Historian and Philosopher, in an interview with former investigative journalist (also an Atheist-turned-Christian) Lee Strobel. Most of what seem like contradictions in the Bible could actually be resolved easily with some background knowledge and an open-minded reading of the text. It is fascinating to watch people who usually would boast of open-mindedness suddenly switching to closed-mindedness mode when it comes to the Bible.

 

Conclusion

Those who reject the Bible on the grounds of historical unreliability do so not because of the absence of evidence but because of the suppression of evidence or unwillingness to pursue the evidence wherever it may lead. Like I have indicated twice already, my hope is that this piece whets the appetite of honest skeptics who probably thought the Bible was not historically reliable, to embark on an investigative adventure. I also hope that young Christians who may be doubting the historical reliability of the Bible will find some confidence to keep studying about the Bible and come to the point of wanting to study the Bible’s contents and rightly applying them to their lives. The beauty about the Bible is that it stands up to scrutiny. Many have tried to argue against it, destroy it, bury it, and falsify its contents by claiming things it never claimed but the authentic Word of God continues to live on long after its opponents are dead. If God is indeed sovereign and all-powerful God (which he is) then this is exactly what we should expect – he keeps his Word from being lost, adulterated or destroyed. I have little doubt that skeptics who will take my challenge to do an honest investigation of the Bible’s credibility will find that not only is the Bible historically reliable, but its ultimate Author – God – is very trustworthy also.

Ghana’s Part-time Christianity

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“Among my first impressions of Ghana was how deeply religious the country is. In fact the question I got asked most frequently by Ghanaians was, ‘do you have faith?’ With a religious mix comprising approximately 70% Christian, 20% Islam, 5% traditional beliefs and only 5% Irreligious, religion is everywhere in Ghana and it’s often found in the most unlikely places. … The first thing that strikes you is how deeply religious a society Ghana is, with worship performed both regularly and with devotion.  This struck home on my drive away from the airport after landing, with the preponderance of shops and stores that are named to reflect religious beliefs: ‘Praise the Lord Welding Services’, ‘Good Shepherd Plumbing and Building’ and ‘The Lord is our Provider General Stores’. The most souped up car I noticed was a ‘boy-racer’ type, with a massive custom spoiler, alloys and undercarriage neon which was emblazoned with ‘Lord is my Shepherd’ transfers on the rear shield in a ‘scary’ halloween script!.” These are words I read on the blog of a UK visitor to Ghana.

We would be hard-pressed to deny these observations – we are religious. Unfortunately, these public displays of religiosity are worlds apart from the personal characters of many Ghanaian Christians, who form the majority of Ghana’s population. Whether you are looking at politics or business, academia or popular music, you will find many professing Christians. There are certainly Christians who are genuinely living Christ-like lives but one does not encounter them often enough, even within the church walls. They are embarrassingly outmatched by those who pay lip service. Many Ghanaian Christians love to make a show of the religion but when it comes down to godliness and moral uprightness, they are found wanting. Ghana is drowning in the filth of corruption, dishonesty, indecency and sexual promiscuity yet the biblically prescribed morality of the Christian majority, whose songs, symbols and landmarks immediately stand out to visitors to this country, cannot be easily seen nor felt. This is one of the most disturbing and irreconcilable features of Ghanaian Christianity.

Many of us who profess to be Christians simply do not walk the talk. We know our Christian doctrines alright, we understand them, but we simply will not live them out. Perhaps we feel that life is too real for us to keep clinging to the admonitions of the faith, which we are not sure will work in life proper. We give and take bribes before work is done and we also lazy about in the office because the companies we are working for “is not my father’s property,” as we like to say in the local parlance. We sleep with our fiancées and fiancés before reaching the church’s altar, and excuse ourselves saying “who in Ghana is not doing it these days. Even the Pastors know that most of the couples they bless in marriages at the altar are not virgins.” We lie chronically on our fancy and smart cell phones about our geographic locations, to our friends, business colleagues and family. Despite all these things, we pay church tithes religiously because presumably our blessings are inextricably linked to the monetary tithe rather than the impure lives we are living. We claim that God exists yet live as if he doesn’t or, even if he exists, he is not looking. We love to go our own way and make it look like it is God’s way. All this has contributed to an overwhelming spiritual darkness and restlessness in this country, from the pulpit to the home, from the market centre to the boardroom, from the internet café to the seats in trotros and taxis. It is a sorry state of affairs.

 

Poor Work Ethic

Chances are that you have worked with or seen a Christian who comes to work and puts in just a little effort but complains about not being recognized or promoted, as if he had been doing extraordinary work all this while. Some may even attribute this to their enemies and wicked spiritual forces. Again, chances are that you know a Christian who goes to work late and leaves early, although it is against the rules of his workplace. Do I need to talk about customer service? The Christian receptionist puts on a look that almost says the customer is disturbing her. It is so hard to even put your trust in the Christian employee. The employer is ill at ease not to closely monitor his Christian employee at work because this employee is likely to do the work anyhow in the absence of close supervision. We would rather pray in the open office space for people to see us than work hard and dutifully as if we were working for God. We easily get angry at customers and work colleagues. The Christian Manager or Director is known in his workplace for his rudeness and lack of respect for human dignity. Work which can be done in minutes or hours takes days and weeks if not months, when the Ghanaian Christian is on the job. Yet he proudly reminds office colleagues that he has to leave early today because a powerful man of God will be gracing a church program. Making up lies to cover up incompetence has become a skill. We intentionally delay working on people’s requests so that they will be forced to pay bribes. Having done this, we go to church and take part of this bribe and give it as an offering to the house of God.

Some might argue that this is a general Ghanaian work culture and therefore singling out Christians is unfair. But you see, in a country where Christians are in the majority this cannot be unfair. More so, Christians ought to be singled out because we are presenting a curious dilemma to the Ghanaian society and the rest of the watching world. We have shouted for years about how powerful Jesus Christ is and how his death on the cross saves us from the guilt of sin, but the country has been waiting unfairly long to see if the death and power of Jesus Christ is also able to save us from the power of sin which causes us to do the unethical and immoral things that we keep doing. The world has the right to know the answer to their question, “How are you Christians able to claim to be following a person as pure as Jesus Christ and yet live such impure lives?” I bow in shame and admit that I cannot answer this question. It is simply baffling. But one thing we can be sure of is that many of the people in the workplace who profess to be Christians do attend Church on Sunday mornings as well as other weekday and weeknight programs at their churches faithfully. Church programs have become more cherished than actually living like Christ.

 

Indecency

The level of decency regarding Christian women’s dressing in particular has deteriorated so much today that it seems our preachers find it a fruitless effort to talk against it. From the professing Christian actress or songstress to the professional Christian business woman to the Christian girl on the university campus, the story is the same.  Our women today do not only wear revealing clothes to lectures, work, and social functions, but they also wear them to church – to the midst of their fellow saints. The sense of shame is gone. Try to complain about it and you would be hushed with the popular refrain “God looks at the Heart and not at outward appearance.” It is not uncommon to hear a Ghanaian Christian make a statement like, “A woman may dress in an indecent way but you never know, her heart may be pure before God.” And this is usually intended to serve as a knockout punch for any moral judgement from an onlooker who has been irritated by a particular woman’s indecent dressing. 1 Samuel 16:7 is where the cliché “God looks at the Heart and not at outward appearance” was coined from. From the verse 1 through to the verse 7 we are told this story: God has rejected Saul as king of Israel and asks Samuel to go and anoint one of Jesse’s sons to be king. When Samuel gets to the place where he is to do the anointing, he sees Eliab, one of Jesse’s sons and says to himself, “This man … is surely the one He [God] has chosen.” 1 Sam 16:6. But God responds to Samuel saying, “Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I have rejected him, because I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.” vs 7.

The context is clear – Samuel ought not to use the person’s physique or nice features to determine God’s choice. This verse has however been conveniently extended today to mean that God is really not all concerned about or interested in how a Christian dresses. “All God is concerned about is how pure your heart is,” so the thinking goes, as if the heart has nothing to do with how a person lives his/her life. Those with this mindset think that we can do anything we want and for so long as our minds tell us that we still love God, everything is must be fine. But Jesus demolishes this thinking when he says, “To have a good fruit you must have a healthy tree; if you have a poor tree, you will have bad fruit. A tree is known by the kind of fruit it bears. … A good person brings good things out of a treasure of good things; a bad person brings bad things out of a treasure of bad things,” Matt 12:33-34. The point is simple. We live out what our hearts are full of and Proverbs 4:3 tells us to guard our hearts. Our lives are shaped by the way we think in our hearts. If we are hypocrites at heart, our lives will manifest this trait in the form of a double life. In the same way, if we are indecent at heart, it will show on the outside in our dressing, speech etc. If you have a godly heart it will also show.

Once when Jesus condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees of his day, he said, “Blind Pharisee! Clean what is inside the cup first, and then the outside will be clean too.” Mat 23:26. Some Christians are so uncomfortable with this truth – that a pure heart does not live an impure life – but it is blindness to think that a person’s heart can be pure when this person’s life shows consistent impurity. Inconsistency is always a sign of error and the more we try to disprove the truth of God’s Word the more it will prove that we are in the wrong.

The indecency we see among Ghanaian Christians today in the church and in the work place and on the streets is only the outward expression of what has taken place in their hearts – we have become irreverent at heart and left the path of righteousness. We do not fear God anymore. How one lives reflects what he/she really believes deep in the heart. This is why Jesus starts the healing of our disease of sinfulness from the heart. When the heart is changed, the way we dress and the rest of our character will be affected. It will all begin to reflect God’s character of holiness. Jesus cures by giving new hearts that have holy desires and passions. Until we give ourselves fully to Jesus, the flesh will dominate us, even our sense of fashion and choice of dress.

A false Dichotomy 

Whenever a Christian separates his religious life from his secular life it is practically impossible to live a consistent and credible Christian life. The distinction leaves him with no hope of integrating all the complicated but wonderful aspects of human existence into his faith. Indeed this separation is likely to produce the situation where he is often plagued with the question of whether he is in the Spirit or in the flesh. The Ghanaian Christian needs to have a holistic worldview where he sees every aspect of life through the lens of Jesus Christ. Our flesh, spirit, and mind are all inseparably combined by God to make us what we are as human beings and he wants us to bring all of these in a life of submission to him. This is why the greatest commandment tells us to love the Lord with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds and all our strength.

The Christian has only one life to live, and it is a full-time Christian life. We are best placed to impact Ghana for Jesus Christ if we immerse our Christianity right into the political, academic and business life, rather than hiving off our piety away in our numerous and often noisy church programs. Ghana is not feeling the spiritual, economic and moral influence of the followers of Jesus Christ because we are failing to live holistic lives. If we remain in Christ even in the political halls of power, in the company boardrooms and offices, in academic halls of learning, in the shopping centres and market places, in our marriages and friendships, then we will really bear much fruit, just like Christ promised. On the other hand, if we try to be “smarter” than Jesus Christ and live without him, then just as he also promised, we can do nothing. We must not live part-time Christian lives because Jesus Christ is not a part-time Saviour.

 

Is ‘Trinity’ An Unwarranted Complication On The Christian Message?

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“… no doctrine more effectively demarcates biblical Christianity from a variety of modern cults.  Given the historical and contemporary significance of the doctrine, it is lamentable that many Christians today are unable to provide an account of the doctrine’s historical development and its present formulation…” –  John Y. Kwak & Douglas Geivett.

I, like many others in the Christian faith, do believe in the Trinity. But like someone humorously observed, “we often pray to the Trinity that nobody would question us about the Trinity”. Indeed the doctrine is felt by some to be an unnecessary complication imposed on the simple belief in the God. It is understandable but this does not warrant its dismissal by Christians. The fact that we do not understand something does not mean it is not true or real. But to be frank, it is hard to grasp a total understanding of it, isn’t it?  That notwithstanding, I still think we can get a rough idea which can go to strengthen our faith and also help us explain the Christian faith better to those seeking some answers.

In their article Trinity: A Historical and Theological Analysis John Y. Kwak and Douglas Geivett  note that key texts in the Bible about God’s nature fall into three groups:

“(1) those that stress continuity with Jewish monotheism in affirming that there is only one God (Mk 12:29; Rom 3:29-30; 1 Cor 8:4; 1 Tim 2:5; Jas 2:19), (2) those that represent the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three distinct individuals or persons (Mt 11:27; 26:39; 28:19; Mk 1:9-12; Lk 11:13; Jn 14:16-17, 26), and (3) those that variously refer to God in the person of the Father (Mt 6:9; cf. Is 63:16), the Son (Jn 1:1-3, 18; 20:28; Rom 9:5; Col 1:15-20; Tit 2:13; Heb 1:1-4, 8-12; 1 Jn 5:20), or the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3-4).  From these texts it is clear that the New Testament church, without yet formulating with precision the doctrine of the Trinity, fully endorsed the three key theological strands that would later be woven into a tight doctrinal cord: only one God exists; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons; and the title “God” befits each of them.”

The Trinity does present a mystery, but as one of the great philosophers and legal scholars of our time, Mortimer Adler, noted, “Any knowledge of God would be expected to bring both rudimentary clarity and legitimate mystery”. God is the basis of all reality and so his nature and his activity should provide an adequate explanation for what we see and experience in life.

There is a disturbing realization one gets from studying the Bible, on the issue of God’s nature. It becomes unambiguously clear that the God found in the biblical pages is not one that would fit our normal understanding of a ‘person’ as in an individual – one who can only be in one place at a time, is bound by space and changes over time through growth. For we see three persons, all portrayed as being One God together – eternal and infinite in all attributes possessed and also changeless in nature; they do not do things independent of the other. There is obviously a plurality going on in that one word ‘God’. Now some believers, I suspect, believe that we have a singular God who manifested himself over the cause of history in three forms – initially as the Father, then later as the Son and currently he is manifesting as Holy Spirit. But the Bible itself does not postulate a theory of a singular God revealing himself as three persons, each one coming into being after the last one has finished his job. From Genesis to Revelation it is demonstrated that these three persons are eternally co-existing and they work together. So it is not one God manifesting in three different forms over time, one after the other, but rather three persons manifesting their indivisible Oneness of being. “Us” is the word God uses in the creation story at the point when man is about to be created (Genesis 1:26). Yet in the rest of the Old Testament we mostly see God using “I”.

The Theory in Practice

As suggested earlier, what God is like in his being and activity ought to provide an adequate explanation for all that we see and experience. Let us look at a concept which we are all too familiar with – LOVE. Love is the embodiment of all virtue and the highest expression of godliness (indeed the greatest commandment of God tells us to love). God, being God, should not have to depend upon his creation to actualize his capacity to love, for that would make creation as important as the Creator since the Creator would be incomplete without his creation. But the Bible introduces love as an interpersonal quality requiring a subject-object relationship and this is what is shown in the Triune relationship of Father-Son- Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian God (which is the God preached by Christianity) is complete in his love relationship without reference to his creation. The Father loved the Son before the creation of the world (John 17:24). “Beloved let us love for God is love”, admonishes the Apostles John (1 John 4:7-8). I am convinced that the very concept of Love is explained satisfactorily only in the Christian worldview for it is embodied in God himself, the first cause of everything in the created world. On this score alone Christianity stands unrivalled and is therefore a serious contender in the world of ideas.

Looking through John 5:19-27; 16:13-15 is just fascinating. The Father entrusts all things to the Son: his authority, his power over life and judgment. But the Son will not do anything by himself; he will only do what he sees the Father doing. The Spirit will not speak of himself nor seek his own glory. He will bring glory to Jesus by taking what belongs to Jesus and showing them to us. Three self-giving, self-effacing persons constitute the amazing God whom Christians worship! Like the noted Christian Apologist, Dr. Ravi Zacharias often says, it is only in the Christian worldview that the concept of Unity in diversity can be explained in the very first cause – God Himself; we find unity in diversity in the community of the Trinity. It is this aspect of God’s character that we seek to reflect in our life and walk as the Church of Jesus Christ. Indeed Jesus, the head of the Church prayed to the father saying “I gave them the same glory you gave me, so that they may be one, just as you and I are one …” – John 17:22.

I still cannot claim a full understanding of the concept of Trinity but I do find comfort in the words of Mortimer Adler that any knowledge of God would be expected to bring both rudimentary clarity as well as legitimate mystery. God has given enough information to the world that makes having faith in him reasonable. A Christian thus has reason to confidently proclaim and defend the Christian faith in the market place of ideas.