Faith and Health

"For people who are going through great suffering and for whom life is very very difficult, I deal with these people every day. I'm a clinician- I take care of older adults, younger adults with chronic pain syndromes, with horrible depression, with very difficult life circumstances, and religion is probably the most powerful coping behaviour that I have ever seen. More powerful than the drugs that I prescribe, more powerful than the psychotherapy that I do. I think that religious faith and the consequences of that, the tools that it gives you to cope with suffering, to give meaning to suffering, we just have no competition from anything that science, medicine or psychiatry or psychology have. I really think there's nothing that's even close. So those beliefs are very powerful and we shouldn't underestimate them". 

- Dr Harold G. Koenig, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, and Associate Professor of Medicine, Duke University.

Koenig has published over 280 articles in peer reviewed academic journals, as well as numerous books and book chapters, and has been studying for intersection between religious faith and health for decades.

Media and Faith

People often make claims of media bias. The ABC, it is often said, is left wing, Fox News is right wing. The Herald Sun is right wing, The Age is lefty. And so on. But what of religious faith? Is the media inherently anti religious, as some claim? Or is atheism a dirty word? This topic was broached on last week's episode of Q and A.

Upon reflection, I recalled that there were two recent examples of actors speaking about religious issues in the public sphere. I found it interesting that in the Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax Press), there was a sharp contrast in the way the comments were reported. Chris O'Dowd's vitriolic ignorance was given a platform by being reported without comment ("Religion is ruining the world") whilst Matthew McConaughey's expression of faith in his Oscars Speech was used as a springboard for an argument against God and for religious belief to be treated with ridicule.

Science and Ethics

A few weeks ago John Dickson finally made it onto ABC's Q and A program. This was a long time coming because, being a big fan of Dickson, I'd noticed people suggesting he should go on for quite a while. Notably, after Cardinal Pell's appearance with Richard Dawkins.

I highly recommend watching the episode- it covered topics such as what Christianity says about science, what science says about ethics, the teaching of creationism in schools and more. It's good to see Dickson showing the Australian public a reflective, thought out, reasonable Christian position on many issues, in contrast to the brilliant mind of a brilliant scientist appearing unintelligent and poisoned by his scientistic philosophical bias.

Anyway, I have a minor claim to fame from last week's episode- a tweet of mine appeared on the show! See the above video at 8:22.

My tweet was:

Science helped create the atomic bomb. Ethics?

To elaborate, my tweet was prompted by Krauss's response to the first question of the night, where the audience member asked where our values will come from if we place our future hope in science instead of religion, given that science has no ethical boundaries. Krauss's response was incredibly disingenuous. He claimed that truth telling and full disclosure is central to science, and therefore science promotes ethics.  

If Osama Bin Laden orchestrates a terrorist attack and then admits his involvement, is he then being ethical because he's telling the truth? No. Ethics is much bigger than that. Science tells us what is (eg: "This is a cell") but it cannot tell us what we ought to do ("We ought to save lives by cloning this cell"). The motivations for deciding what we should or should not do with information must come from somewhere external to the impersonal scientific method. In other words, even if science can consistently manage to progressively find the truth about the universe, this doesn't mean it can then tell us what to do with that truth. It tells us nothing about that.

The Classical Christian View on Sexual Relationships and What it means

The Classical Christian View on Sexual Relationships....and What it means.

That's the title I've given to John Dickson's talk at Storey Hall, Swanston st on 6 September, 2012.  Below are my notes from the event. Note that this is also now available on Ridley's website. Have a listen!

(I started typing the below notes straight after the event, and am posting them anyway. If you don't have time to listen to the 35-40 minute talk then these condensed notes will work for you).

____________________________________________________________________

Purpose: Not to convince you that homosexual behaviour is wrong. Not to convince you that Christians should block gay marriage. The purpose is simply this: To demonstrate that the Classical Christian view is not inherently hateful and bigoted.

In our society today, there is a dichotomy fuelled by the media. Either you are a tolerant, loving person or you are a HATEFUL HOMOPHOBE!

The high culture view for at least 10 years, and now increasingly the popular view is that Christians are just hateful bigots. Example, David Marr on Q and A.

 

1. Is this View- that Homosexual behaviour is wrong- actually what the Bible says, or has the church read it's own conditioned, idiosyncratic view into the text?

 

- Leviticus 18:20-24.

²⁰ “‘Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor’s wife and defile yourself with her.

²¹ “‘Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

²² “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

²³ “‘Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

²⁴ “‘Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled.

 

- Romans 1:26-27.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

 

-( editor: Genesis 2 was performed by a Biblical storyteller before Dickson spoke. This passage also speaks of man becoming one with wife etc, not with man. Strong implicit support for traditional marriage. Dickson mentions this below also but curiously didn't mention it at this point).

 

On face value, it appears that the Bible is clear.

 

But, there are powerful minimising arguments being used against this:

 

2.1 Christians Pick and Choose.

 

The West Wing:

 

 

- However, the writers of the West Wing have conveniently ignored Bible 101, the way the Bible has always been read.

- There are TWO testaments!

- The OT has always been looked at through the prism of Christ.

- Some things are refracted, some things are intensified.

- Classic example: John 8:3-11 woman in adultery. Jesus affirmed the OT ethic but did not affirm the death penalty. Again, some things are affirmed or intensified, others are not affirmed or are refracted.

 

2.2 Homosexuality is Neurophysiologically predetermined.

- The Biblical authors didn't know this, so we should re interpret the Bible through our modern scientific knowledge.

- Some Christians respond by saying "The evidence is biased". Well, some of it probably is biased. However, I spoke to prominent Christian doctor and sexologist Patricia Weerakoon and I asked her to point me in the direction of the best current research on this topic. There are various neurophysical links with homosexuality. They are not fully understood yet, and there is no "gay gene" but it is becoming increasingly clear that there can be neurophysical factors at play- Gays don't "choose to be gay".

 

- Does this minimise the Bible's teachings? Yes and No. The church must show grace towards others who have tendencies (influence by biology) that the Bible speaks to. Example: Addictive behaviour is influenced by neurophysiology as well.

 

- Polyamory is neuro influenced too.

 

- The discussion does not end here.

 

- Example: 40 year old single gay man in my congregation in Sydney. The Bible asks him to be celibate, so he does. Others in John's congregation, who are heterosexual, are remaining celibate until they find someone. Does the hope actually make it harder day by day, or easier?

 

2.3 Jesus didn't forbid it, only Paul.

- Jesus didn't forbid many things. This doesn't mean they're alright.

- Nonetheless, Jesus does implicitly forbid it by his support for Genesis 2.

- There are more sexual practices in the Old Testament than in Playboy. Jesus knew this. The New Testament word "Porneia" doesn't refer to one thing, it refers to what went outside the Jewish norm at the time. ie: Hetero monogamy.

 

2.4 In Biblical times there were no long term gay r'ships, so the Bible can't speak to this topic

- Untrue. Eg: References: GA Williams Roman Homosexuality and K.J Dover's Greek Homosexuality

- Plutarch's Dialogue on Love

- 1st Century Gay marriage was a reality.

 

The Biblical view doesn't arise from ignorance. It arises from a view of what is Good.

 

The Christians are out of step with society because the Bible is.

 

- If The Bible agreed with every social or sexual practice of every society then this would be proof that the Bible isn't eternal wisdom.

 

- Thought Experiment: If there was an eternal book with eternal wisdom, what would it contain? It would have to be out of step with every culture at some point or another.

 

- The Bible isn't out of date, it's out of this date.

 

- (Edit: What Dickson said above is so so so true. It's worth repeating. It sounds a lot like this from Tim Keller, actually....).

 

But..are we Christians automatically homophobes? Does this view make us homophobic?

 

The Bible shouldn't necessarily lead to legislation.

 

- Classical Christians simply are unable to think of other types of marriage. There is only one kind of marriage.

 

- Everyone discriminates. Every view of marriage discriminates against another type of marriage. (Edit: For example, if you believe that gay marriage is a legitimate form of marriage, do you believe that marriage is between two consenting adults? ie: One man and one woman or one man with another man or one woman with another woman? If so, then you are discriminating against men who want to have two wives. As Bernard Toutounji says here, "Discrimination is the act of making a distinction and choosing between differences. From choosing chicken over ham on your sandwich, to the government deciding that the aged pension will be given at 67 instead of 65; these are discriminations. Without the ability to discriminate, that is the ability to state that one thing is not another thing, we could not have a democratic society. A musical note only has value because of the silence that exists before and after that note, if we were to label the silence as unfair discrimination against sound and remove it, there would only be an ongoing noise").

 

- This does not mean the church has the right to block redefinition legislation.

 

- Democracy. We all vote. This is OK.

 

- Christianity was never meant to be in power. The tools God gave us were PSP- Prayer, Service and Persuasion! No bullying or backroom deals.

 

- C.S Lewis on Divorce- may be applicable to Gay Marriage in our modern age.

 

“Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question-how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mahommedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.” 

 

(Edit: I don't totally agree here. I do agree in theory, to a point, but I think the statement needs a lot of qualification. Maybe a topic for another blog post).

 

 Losing well is a Christian specialty.

 

So...where does all of this lead?

 

- An apology. For allowing our Biblical views to lead to Unbiblical behavior. For belittling people and creating a culture of shame. The heart of Christianity is finding our faults and asking for mercy.

 

- We can't walk away from our Christian view (that homosexual behaviour is not a part of God's plan). But we can serve others.

 

- Recover the genius of Jesus. He had meals with sinners. He flexed the muscle of moral conviction and the muscle of compassion simultaneously. These days the church only does one at once. There are examples of both- Churches who are big on moral conviction and churches who are good at compassion, but we need to be good at both because that's what Jesus did. Jesus took judgement so seriously that he had to die, and he took compassion so seriously that he died for us.

 

- Tolerance is not saying "Every view is equally true and valid". (Edit: That doesn't make sense anyway!). Tolerance is deeply disagreeing and yet deeply loving. This is harder. Eg: Koran/Islam. We disagree theologically but we respect the Muslim community. We may disagree with the materialist 21st century Aussie culture, but we love our materialist, hedonistic friends. We may similarly see same sex acts as a departure from God's will, yet still serve the gay community.

 

I had a conversation with a Ferrari driving atheist at a dinner party. He told me he couldn't entertain Christianity because of it's bigoted and discriminatory attitude towards homosexuality. It's backwards, he said. I paused, and asked him: Is it possible to deeply disagree with someone but profoundly love them? He paused, and then said "Yes, we do that all the time". And then he realised what he'd just said. The blocker to Christianity was removed.

 

Is it possible to deeply disagree with someone and yet profoundly love them?

 

Question Time

(Edit: I took some notes here but not detailed notes like the above).

 

Is the airtime given to certain things and indication of God's view of their importance? Dickson: I'm not sure. But if it is, then we should be focusing more on poverty and helping the least of these.

 

How do we live out what you've suggested- by loving Gays? Individually-Friendships. Ask questions. Listen. Get head around their views. I'm giving this talk but I don't have so much authority and I'm speaking to myself too as I only have two gay friends. One mentioned earlier (church goer), the other a vocal activist. He has asked me to some gay events but my diary hasn't allowed it. I plan on going soon so I can act out some of the above.

 

For the church, welfare on a macro level.

 

Does the Bible ask us to go against our natural inclinations? In all kinds of ways, yes. Christianity asks us to. To find solice and comfort anyway, example the sweet sadness of my churchgoing gay friend.

 

Guide our leaders towards Christian ways? No.

 

Persuade, not legislate. PSP= prayer, service and persuasion.

 

Christians and politics Christians should be public Christians. That is good. We are not meant to be church mice. Make our case- ok. But I object to political tactics. They are sub christian.

 

If AUS overwhelmingly supported Gay marriage and you had veto powers, would you use them? No! But on the other hand if a journo asks me my view on marriage, I will give it.