Challenging Your Assumptions: Advice for a College Freshman and the Life-Long Learner

Historical geology, evolutionary biology, ancient history with its Mesopotamian and Babylonian creation and flood stories, sociology of religion….my children are both hearing and learning things they have never been exposed to before. What will they do with the apparent contradictions to their faith? Have they learned how to analyze and evaluate?  How will they integrate the new information with their beliefs?

It may sound dangerous, but my first advice is to challenge our assumptions, including our assumptions about what we believe the Bible says before automatically dismissing  new ideas as contradictory or dismissing the Bible as myth without fully examining both sides.  Clinging to our assumptions prevents growth, stunts loving God with all our minds, and inhibits insights.

We get stuck when we fixate on false assumptions.  For example, consider the mind puzzle with the 9 dots.  Can you connect all the dots with no more than four straight lines without lifting your pencil from the paper? 

In preschool, we learned about connecting dots and coloring within the lines.  Based on these experiences, we might assume that 1) we have to stay within the borders, and 2) each turn is supposed to pivot on a dot.  Sticking to these assumptions prevents us from solving the puzzle.

Another way we get stuck in our assumptions is the lack of challenge to our assumptions as illustrated by ‘the internet bubble’.  Search engines like Google and Bing learn our preferences and show matches that are likely to satisfy us based on our previous selections.  They will eventually screen out contrary information or information from other parts of the spectrum. Because we never see what gets filtered out, we wrap ourselves in a cocoon of our own beliefs. Similarly, when we tend to read books, blogs, and news media that agree with our points of view and we hang out with people who think like us, we may fail to see assumptions that need to be challenged.

For those of us raised in the church, and even those of us who were not, we need to recognize our assumptions about how we interpret the Bible as we attempt to reconcile its apparent contradictions to history/science and our experiences.

Here is my advice in challenging assumptions to my college freshman, who is quick to see the world as black and white:

1. Listen and understand before you automatically judge something to be wrong. Put yourself in their shoes and understand why they believe that way.
2.  Remember that all truth is God’s truth.  Know what your Bible says and the various ways of interpretation, both literal, non-literal, and figurative. You may have always assumed it said something it did not, or you may have always interpreted a passage in a way that it was never meant to be interpreted.
3.  Engage others in conversation about challenges to assumptions.  Examine all avenues and different perspectives.
4. Know that it is not all diabolical – not all black and white, good or evil.  It’s more than various shades of gray – think of it more like a rainbow of glorious colors to discover in a lifetime of learning, new ways of seeing, perceiving, understanding that enrich your life. God, the world, and you do not fit in a neatly defined box.
5. Avoid the ‘internet bubble’, but don’t try so hard to avoid it that you build a bubble at the other end of the spectrum.  Keep surrounded by Jesus followers, all kinds, and look for things you have in common.  Be willing to challenge each other’s assumptions while remaining united in your core beliefs.  Grow spiritually by continuing to worship with a group of believers and hanging with them.    

Why Know about the Christian Creeds & Councils?

I was raised in a Southern Baptist tradition that rejected creeds, catechisms, and councils.  Yet the denomination conducts denominational meetings much like a council that lays out the representation of its beliefs on a regular basis in a type of confession.  In a tradition of rejecting tradition, I was unfamiliar with the Apostle’s Creed and the Christian calendar until I went to seminary.  Courses in Christian history and systematic theology opened my eyes to the connection we can have with Christians over the centuries and the richness that can come from creeds and confessions. 

Here is a basic definition of each (as described by Justin Holcomb):

• Creeds – Set forth the basic beliefs of the church, the faith entrusted to God’s holy people, drawn from Scriptures and connects all Christians in all places and time. 

• Confessions – Distinguish orthodoxy from heresy and draw the boundary around what is Christian and what is not.  Confessions can also define a group’s beliefs on secondary issues, applying faith to the here and now.

• Catechisms – Outline of teachings on the basic principles of Christianity in a question and answer format to make them easy to understand.

•  Councils – Bring Christians together from all over the world to work out solutions to questions. 

 

Knowing about these four C’s can root us in the foundation of why we believe what we believe as Christians.  They can help us process the divisions and differences between Protestants and Catholics, why this big split in Christianity occurred, and whether or not it was right to split.  While we should not look for reasons to divide, we know that there are issues worth disagreeing about.  Overall, we must recognize that it is with humility that we must approach knowing God and that His ways are a mystery.

If you are unfamiliar with the four C’s and the history of Christianity, I highly recommend Justin Holcomb’s book Know the Creeds and Councils.  In the introduction, he explains the purpose of creeds and how they were used, the purpose of confessions, the usefulness of catechisms, and the councils that shaped Christianity.  His succinct summaries bring each of these to life as he shows how the essentials of the foundations of the faith were established and preserved, and their importance to Christian life.  Each chapter has a bibliography of references for further reading if you want to go deeper.  (I was provided a complimentary copy of this book from Zondervan Publishing in exchange for my honest review).

Arguing with an Atheist

The book review I posted yesterday most certainly was by Divine appointment, at least to get my thoughts going if nothing else! After school, my teenage daughter handed me a note that a ‘friend’ at school gave her, and she asked me to help her respond. As I looked at the title, I inwardly groaned.  She asked me to do what I do not enjoy doing, and that’s arguing with an atheist.  Here is what it said:

This Is Why I’m Atheist:  Your God –

1.    Creates disaster – Isaiah 45:2

2.   Is a man of war – Exodus 15:3

3.   Instructs to kill – Exodus 32:27-28

4.   Kills pregnant women – Numbers 31:17

5.   Kills 1/3 of mankind – Revelation 9:15

6.   Jealous – Exodus 20:8

7.   Makes a victim of rape marry her attacker – Deuteronomy 22:28-29

8.   Kills children – Hosea 9:11-16

9.   Instructs how to treat slaves – Exodus 21:2-6

10.                Is sexist – Genesis 3:16

11.                Is NOT pro-life – 2 Kings 15:16

12.                Says a bat is a bird – Leviticus 11:13

“The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible” – Mark Twain

Religion had its chance to run the world. It’s called the Dark Ages.

If you ever want to think logically, we should talk.

(There’s much more if you need it. I’ve got an endless supply).

Braydon

For knowledge, logic, science, and vanquishing ignorance

I’m not certain if he is truly an atheist, or if he is really trying to understand God.  His argument seems to really be “why do we worship a God who we claim is good but His actions are bad?” Is he trying to make sense of God instead of proving He doesn’t exist?

In D’Souza’s book God Forsaken, he presents a chapter that argues the atheist remark that if God exists, then He is the perpetrator of evil, violence, and suffering.  But I found very little of his arguments agreeable on this topic – I disagreed with things like the idea that God doesn’t have feelings but humans give him anthropomorphic qualities, and the Bible exaggerates things to make a point. So I realized I was just going to have to think for myself and guide my daughter through her thoughts.

We looked up each verse and considered its context and what it says about God (haven’t yet consulted any commentaries or done any research).

1.    Isaiah 45:7 – He created the light and the darkness, prosperity and disaster. He allows both good and evil. He is both good and just at the same time. He created people with free will to choose.

2.    Exodus 15:3 – Moses sang a song calling God a warrior. God had hurled Pharoah’s chariots into the sea.

3.    Exodus 32:27-28 – God instructed the Levites to kill the Israelites that God had set free from Egypt when they rejected Him and built the golden calf to worship.

4.    Numbers 31:17 – Moses instructed the warrior to not let anyone live unless they were virgin girls. This wasn’t God speaking.

5.    Revelation 9:15 – Angels will be released to kill 1/3 of mankind. This is prophecy and hasn’t happened yet.

6.    Exodus 20:8 – One of the 10 commandments to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.  I think he meant to reference the following verse that refers to God being a jealous God. Not a short answer for this one.

7.    Deuteronomy 22:28-29 – cultural issue – not a short answer for this one.

8.    Hosea 4:11-16 – Hosea’s prophecy.

9.    Exodus 21:2-6 – Instructs how to treat slaves.  Every known culture at that time used slavery. This passage recognizes it was ingrained as a human institution and offers grace, a way to be kinder to slaves.  Cultural issue.  Actually historically, Christians (and no other group) mobilized to end slavery.

10.  Genesis 3:16 – God is sexist? God gives punishment for Eve’s rebellion. In the next verse, Adam was punished too.

11.  2 Kings 15:16 – States that Menahom sacked Tiphsah and ripped open all the pregnant women. Not God. Not endorsed by God nor instructed by God.

12.  Leviticus 11:13 – A bat in the bird list.  So…? Is the accusation that God is stupid for not teaching the people about mammals and calling a bat a mammal? Or maybe for the English translation of the Hebrew word, bat was the closest translatable word.

In some of these verses taken out of context, evils attributed to God are actually the result of human characters doing things for their own purpose.  Also, it should be noted that the Old Testament times were barbaric times.  Consider it in context with what was going on in the rest of the world at that time. It is easy to sit here today and assume the people were all decent peace-loving people who were arbitrarily and mercilessly slaughtered.  The Canaanite people and other cultures practiced human sacrifices.   And are we so innocent of not warring? And is it always bad? Think of recent history – Aztecs, Nazis, Japanese imperialism, 911….When a grave offense is afflicted against the innocent, we tend to seek justice!

“The New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed; the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.”  The Bible is a love story. Try reading the whole thing in context.

Christianity IS logical.  But logic won’t win an atheist. Maybe love will.