Closing time

 Comment on https://youtu.be/-TyjPa-4aeA

Now, as one who has skirted death and is now possibly on its trajectory (stage 4 cancer, currently in remission) it concentrates one's mind...thrillingly. I used to think, lying in my bed sick from chemotherapy, in pain from peripheral nephritis, a dumb bag on my belly instead of a bowel; this is astonishing. It was like waiting for the curtain go up at a grand opera. The orchestra is tuning. It's all about to happen (three years in, not happened yet, for which I'm thankful for my children's sake) and man, this is spine-tinglingly exciting. Not in a glib or corny way, but almost every reading of the Bible, every hymn, every Bach cantata is a post card from life with our Lord eternally. Being with loved ones is a side show: it's good, I look forward to it, but the huge looking forward that brings tears of overwhelming joy to me is to be in the undiminished (unalloyed as a hymn has it) presence of our great creator and redeemer. Astonishing feelings.

Newly Christian

 OK, so that's volunteers, what about those who are newly Christian?

The steps of faith after a profession of faith.

1. Preparatory classes for Baptism

Reading James' letter. A session on the Apostles' creed (except 'descended into hell') and three or four pastoral sessions discussing relevant passages from the Bible and prayer.

2. Post Baptism

For the next 18 to 24 months the person is a 'novice', but we don't call them that. During this period they will be asked to accept no significant responsibility for spiritual practice. They might be asked if they would be interested in public reading of scripture and similar.

They will be taken through the Apostles' Creed in detail, with study of the relevant scriptures.

A session  on the Bible: its history, structure and over arching description of the reality we all are in.

Shared reading with the pastoral helper of Genesis, Joshua, Isaiah, Mark's gospel, Acts and Revelation.

These sessions start usually with a Psalm and end with some Proverbs verses, for example, from Proverbs 3, 8 and 9.

We might also work through Koukl's Tactics, Relativism and the Story of Reality, with discussion. We don't agree with all that is written in 'Story' but discuss it anyway.

As soon as possible, we encourage the novice to join a small Bible/prayer group.

At the end we suggest they read (re-read) Wright's Simply Christian and Lewis' Mere Christianity.

Volunteering for ministry

We encourage people to volunteer for ministry. To coordinate ministry programs, convene small study/prayer groups, to organise children's groups, etc.

This must be done in an orderly and godly way so that volunteers are properly identified, assessed, evaluated and checked for experience, motivation, capability, potential and risk. Risk because we offer ministry as a church with an implicit guarantee of capability and quality and don't want to betray people's trust in us.

In our state, if you want to work with children in any non-family arrangement, you must have a government OK to do this. This is a check of your 'record' if there is one, of any child related complaints, investigations and offences. This extends to any 'offences against the person' of adults.

At the moment, as we just get used to this last requirement...which is a good one, mind you, we've added it on as an extra on top of our normal Ministry Application.

However, this makes it look like an 'afterthought' on top of what we really want to qualify a volunteer. So, we are going to blend it into one system. This is how it will ultimately work:

1. initial move to volunteer: an interview with a pastor and/or existing senior volunteer or member of the church board, two people to interview. We have a set list of questions.

2. complete a ministry application which includes a set of profiling questions, experience and any training. It requires agreement with the Apostles' Creed, church statement of faith and ministry commitment (like a 'code of conduct' in business, but we aren't in business!)

3. our denomination runs a course in ministry practice. This concentrates on the spiritual, physical and emotional consideration of people (especially children, the young, the elderly, etc.), providing a comfortable and peaceful environment for people who attend the ministry, it also covers the basics of physical safety: first aid, general safety in the premises, what to do in an emergency, basics of communication, dealing with disagreements and having 'difficult' conversations.

4. we run a few courses for volunteers (volunteers are our focus of discipling development) in Bible, theology, church history, ministry practice and apologetics. We encourage volunteers who take more responsibility for ministries to obtain first aid and mental health first aid certificates, do our training in 'advanced ministry practices'. These are like 'management' and 'personal productivity' in a business, and our advanced communication course. We also have an afternoon seminar on handling emergencies.

5. for those who have taken a deeper service role with responsibility for running a ministry group, we offer quarterly afternoon seminars where people swap ideas, share their experiences and have a training spot.

6. lastly, we encourage all our volunteers to undertake external training in ministry: Bible/theology, education, pastoral work.

When a person first volunteers, we encourage them to undertake a program to read the Bible through completely, have daily personal devotions, and read a couple of basic Christian books. Your church will need to select books that suit your theology and practice. We start with Bishop Wright's Simply Christian.

A game of who's the moral monster?

Is God a moral monster for commanding the slaughter of the Canaanites?

No. It was not random 'racially' motivated slaughter, or genocide. It was a just judgement on a people so corrupt and iniquitously evil that parents gave their own babies for ritual murder in the heated statue of Moloch.

Oh, and this world does similarly: about 40 million babies murdered each year by their mothers, for convenience! And some like to think God is a moral monster?

But there's more.

If, as most people hold, a woman has the 'right' to murder her baby, what's the problem with God killing his creatures in judgement when they are as unremittingly depraved and evil as the ancient Canaanites were?

Secondly, for the materialists amongst you, death is a reordering of chemicals. How does that attract any moral value? Wherein lies your disgust at any action in a material world? It's all just atoms. Nothing to see here, folks, no real 'persons' involved, just move along now.

Or maybe you just can't live consistently with your materialism, because it's not true.

Frank Turek addresses this at https://youtu.be/zjBeR6f-NZ8

 
Willy Craig here: https://youtu.be/9FGv9aOCcyU

Singer! So what?

Koukl on Singer's metaethics: edited transcript of a podcast in answer to a question regarding a Singerian atheist and his view that an objective morality can exist without God.

Koukl:

When atheists claim an ethical basis for an action, they usually cite something objective that is not morality.

Morality entails obligations. We are obliged to do something by something that is outside of ourselves, that is grounded outside of ourselves. If it is not grounded outside of ourselves it is not objective. If it does not entail ethical obligation it is not morality.

Singer's relies on axioms (Sidgwick's?): fairness, for conscious beings (animals too), least amount of suffering.

Singer here has  given examples of things we are morally obliged to do: fairnes and least suffering. I don't know what 'fairness' is acccording to him. It entails a certain definintion of something as to how goods are distributed (that is, ethical 'goods') but it also smuggles in a moral obligation in trying to defend morality. What is it that makes fairness a moral obligation? And why is it that we have to create the least amount of suffering? Why can't we create the most amount of suffering?

People are going to say that its obvious that less suffering is better than more suffering; but better in what sense? Better in a pleasure sense? Yes, in that way, but in a moral sense? That's another question.

Even if they said it was obvious in a moral sense, they've confused some categories now because I would agree that it's better in a moral sense. I would say it's obviously better in a moral sense. However, that doesn't tell us why it's obligatory for us to do that. It tells us that we know it's better but to whom or to what are we morally obliged?

We are morally obliged to conscious beings according to Singer but who is obliging us regarding conscious beings?

This is called the grounding question.

Objective morality: when I say God is the moral standard of the universe and he creates moral principles [by the nature of who he is and by this what is groundingly real] that I am obliged to him to obey [to be consistent with what is real and who I truly am], I have just grounded and made sense of my moral obligation in an objectives sense, whether you agree or not.

Singer is not grounding his principles in any way, he merely declares fairness as a moral good [asserts them without basis, except for some posited affective inclination, but so what]. But who says? His grandmother? Did he just make it up? Is it his culture's view that we shouldn't have suffering for people? He says it is obvious that we shouldn't. Yes, it might be obvious that we shouldn't cause suffering, but I want to know what causes it to be wrong. That's the grounding issue.

This is what no amount of atheistic thinking can accomplish for morality. It simply cannot ground objective obligation in a godless world [that is, in a closed material system of impersonal cause and effect].

Dostoyevsky on Atheism

 Atheism leads to oppression The Possessed by Dostoyevsky.

Talk by Alister McGrath 2005?

Link: https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/node/739 from 26:46

Kirilov speech: 'If God exists then everything is his will and I can do nothing of my own apart from his will, If there is no Gd, then everything is my will and I am bound to express my self will.'

Dost is asking what is the supreme moral authority. If there is Gd, Gd is the supreme moral authority and my actions are shaped in some way and limited by the way Gd is and the fact Gd is: I am not free to do anything I please. I am in some way beholden to behave in the way Gd wants me to do. Therefore, there are limits placed on human action.

But, if there is no Gd, or I can so persuade people, then the ultimate seat of moral authority comes to us, to me.

And as you can see, the second point he makes is if there is no Gd, I am under a moral obligation to do what I want and there is no moral authority beyond me.

The point Dost. is making in this quotation is that atheism is not liberating, that you might think that the removal of limits was liberating, but, in fact, it simply removes the limits that prevent human beings from oppressing each other.

He anticipates the rise of totalitarianism: take away Gd and you take away the limiting factor that prevents human beings oppressing each other and leads to totalitarianism.

Atheists very often take the view that there is an obvious dimension to atheism that makes it a liberator, a movement that brings people to their true achievement.

But, I want to make the point that in many ways atheism actually prevents that achievement of our destiny by making it possible to oppress each other in ways that Christianity, for example, would never allow.

The jealous God who wants to be worshipped.

Whoa, that's scary!

Frank Turek gave a passable response to the 'jealous' attribute.

But even this saw jealous in human terms: we see it, being selfish and self-obsessed, in a negative, and step past the minor meanings captured in the Shorter Oxford: "devoted, zealous...amorous, fond...protective of, careful in guarding, watchful over,...vigilant, watchful, careful" with a wonderful quote in the latter use from Helen Keller: "I guarded both doll and cradle with the most jealous care."

One is jealous of something important to oneself.

Contrast this in a marriage where the husband couldn't care less it he wife had relations with another man. He clearly wouldn't care much either for his wife or his marriage.

But there's a deeper context to this.

We are made for communion with God. This is our best life.

If we do not put God first in our lives, then we put ourselves...even if we say we put others, or things (our car, the earth...Pluto) first, we are putting the creature ahead of the creator, and the creature has nothing in it other than that which is from the Creator. It is therefore not worthy of our 'worship'. The great deceit of monism is that it merges all into matter and the self as a real person disappears, abusing God's creation and himself.

God's jealousy underlines our best; our worship is us living out our best, and praise flows from that as the excitement of being in the family of the creator and being in real relationship with him, knowing what is truly true.

Fear: the primal result of atheism

In the great land of Oz at the moment, government sees its job as keeping us locked up. The normal and fruitful operation of society is outlawed. Normal life is outlawed because the populace is scared of the SARS-CV-2 virus (the unique corona virus released from the Wuhan viral research lab in 2019).

While atheists/polytheists/pantheists espouse a great freedom in their belief, they do not escape the fear of death.

That's what we are seeing now.

We see that the underlying reflexive atheism of the populace leads to oppression.

Here's a slice of a talk by Alister McGrath 2005 (from about the 26:46 mark)

 

It springs from a passage in The Possessed by Dostoevsky

Kirilov speech: 'If Gd exists then everything is his will and I can do nothing of my own apart from his will, If there is no Gd, then everything is my will and I am bound to express my self will.'

Dost is asking what is the supreme moral authority. If there is Gd, Gd is the supreme moral authority and my actions are shaped in some way and limited by the way Gd is and the fact Gd is: I am not free to do anything I please. I am in some way beholden to behave in the way Gd wants me to do. Therefore, there are limits placed on human action.

But, if there is no Gd, or I can so persuade people, then the ultimate seat of moral authority comes to us, to me.

And as you can see, the second point he makes is if there is no Gd, I am under a moral obligation to do what I want and there is no moral authority beyond me. [This is less a moral obligation, more a moral inevitability - Ed.]

The point Dost. is making in this quotation is that atheism is not liberating, that you might think that the removal of limits was liberating, but, in fact, it simply removes the limits that prevent human beings from oppressing each other.

He anticipates the rise of totalitarianism: take away Gd and you take away the limiting factor that prevents human beings oppressing each other and leads to totalitarianism.

Atheists very often take the view that there is an obvious dimension to atheism that makes it a liberator, a movement that brings people to their true achievement.

But, I want to make the point that in many ways atheism actually prevents that achievement of our destiny by making it possible to oppress each other in ways that Christianity, for example, would never allow.

 

BTW, I think I recall in an essay by Pannenberg, that I read decades ago, the observation that 'all fear is fear of death'. I've not been able to find the quote in recent years.