Guilt is far too rare? Try saying that in a modern church! Modern Christianity is all about acceptance and self-esteem. You will look long and hard to find anybody who still teaches that guilt is too rare. But I remember when this view was prevalent. Lewis was not merely telling us that our actions are bad, but also that our very person is something that God hates. He was saying that God ought not only to hate our sin, but he ought to have wrath on us because at our very core we are worthless. He goes on to explain that we are vermin because of Adam's sin. Can God blame us for Adam's sin? Look at his response:
Theoretically, I suppose, we might say "Yes, we behave like vermin, but then that is because we are vermin. And that, at any rate, is not our fault." But the fact that we are vermin, so far from being felt as an excuse, is a greater shame and grief to us than any of the particular acts which it leads us to commit. [5]
So we find that we are vermin, through no fault of our own, but because of what Adam did. And Lewis says that it is a shame and grief to us that we are vermin, even though we were born that way. What is the Christian to do? Lewis continues,
Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator--to enact intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature... In the world as we know it, the problem is how to recover this self-surrender. We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms. [6]
He concludes,
Hence the necessity to die daily: however often we think we have broken the rebellious self we shall still find it alive...The human spirit will not even begin to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. [7]
Do you get the picture? Lewis describes both Christians and unbelievers as vermin, as nasty rebels who need to stop fighting God. He says suffering is the tool that God uses to accomplish this change. This book was the biggest influence in my philosophy of life at that time. I could have found a number of scripture verses to support this low view of humanity. (E.g. Job 42:6, Is 64:6, Lu.17:10, Rom. 3:10-19).
I look at it now, and do not think that I had a very healthy perspective. But this philosophy was mild compared with the Independent Baptist tradition that I had come out of. And it certainly worked better than apathy. This outlook gave me a reason to live. I assumed that it worked because it was right. (I now think that it worked because it gave me a purpose.) I had found this one great pillar to support my faith--Christianity must be true because it works, at least it works for me.
There was a second great pillar on which I based my faith. This pillar had stood firm even during the days of despair. I was quite familiar with the teachings of Henry Morris and the young earth creationists. I thought that this was the most logical explanation for how the earth began. They argued that the earth was created about 6000 years ago, just as the Bible said. During the time of Noah, a great flood supposedly covered the earth. This flood buried many animals, I was told, and these became the fossils we see today. I listened to this side only, and was convinced. Other things in the Bible may have been difficult to believe, but I had these two great pillars of my faith--a belief that Christianity as I knew it worked, and a belief that Genesis was the best explanation for how we got here.
In 1987 I moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia, and found an exciting Evangelical church. I met many wonderful people and quickly became involved in many aspects of the program. I had found a home, and was happy. I talked to God every day, and developed in my personal relationship with him.
In 1987 I moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia, and found an exciting Evangelical church. I met many wonderful people and quickly became involved in many aspects of the program. I had found a home, and was happy. I talked to God every day, and developed in my personal relationship with him.
Some of the Christians at this church came from a range of religious backgrounds. This was new to me. Some people disagreed with the way I understood Christianity. A few believed in evolution, or at least that the earth was billions of years old. Others told me that my religious philosophy did not work, that other philosophies worked better. There were big differences. I thought that we should despise our evil inner self--they thought that we should love ourselves. I thought that we must work hard to keep the evil anger inside of us from coming out--they thought that evil was there because we had not vented our anger, so we had better just let it all come out. I thought that we were evil on the inside--they thought that we were good on the inside, and were wearing masks that made us look evil. I thought that the big problem was overestimating one's self and overconfidence--they thought that the big problem was low self-esteem and a lack of self-confidence. I thought that we were to die to ourselves--they thought that we need to discover ourselves and self-actualize. I thought that many or our thoughts and desires were evil, and God made us feel guilty about that--they thought that these desires were natural feelings, and that it was the devil, not God, that wanted us to feel guilty about having such feelings. I thought that God allowed people to mistreat us because that was his way of molding our character and causing us to "die to ourselves"--they thought that mistreatment did not always help, but often damaged our psyche, often requiring counseling to overcome the effects. They told me that my philosophy was depressing.
Do you understand why this was a difficult pill for me to swallow? This was the one great pillar of my Christian faith--the belief that my Bible-supported philosophy worked. Now here were Christians telling me that it did not work. What did they mean it didn't work? Of course it worked! It worked far better for me than the depression I had been in. And I had scripture to back it up. It was not easy for me to accept that my way did not work. So I prayed about it and read the Bible. It seemed that God was telling me that I was doing the right thing. Seriously, who was I to go against what God was saying?
My experience and prayers told me that my philosophy worked better; their experience and prayers told them that their philosophy worked better. Who was right?
I met these people of many religions in the CompuServe debate forum. I began to participate in the religion section, and actively debated these issues with anybody that wanted to discuss them. This was to become the focus of my spiritual life.
The biggest lesson I learned during these computer bulletin board debates was how to form an argument. It was not enough for me to state that Jay Adams, C. S. Lewis, or Thomas Szasz had written something that agreed with me on a particular point. After all, one can find somebody who will agree with almost any religious viewpoint that he expresses. I needed a more effective argument. My favorite source was the Psychoheresy Awareness Ministry of Martin and Deidre Bobgan (offsite link). Their philosophy closely matched mine. They referred to psychological experiments to support their arguments, and often quoted scientific journals. I found that when I described experiments people often listened to what I had to say, and were less likely to attack my writings. I developed a love for scientific experiments and the scientific journals that described them. And so began a regular series of trips to the Philadelphia Public Library, and later, to the University of Pennsylvania. I would make lists of articles that favored my positions, and would go to the library to get more ammunition for my side.
These trips became time-consuming, and so, in 1992, I subscribed to my favorite journal, The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . At $247 a year, this represented a major desire to learn the truth. Having made the commitment, I was determined to learn something from each issue. I began to read articles, whether I thought they agreed with my position or not. This was a change for me. I was not merely reading to prove I was right. I was reading to learn. And I read some articles that were disturbing. I read that trying to suppress thoughts can make them stronger. [9] Were my efforts to keep my true thoughts under control making those repressed thoughts stronger? I learned more about the function of self-esteem. Was my viewpoint of myself as an evil sinner harmful? Slowly, microscopic cracks began to develop in the first great pillar of my faith. It was slow and subtle, but the cracks were beginning.
A strange twist of fate put me right into the middle of the creation-evolution debate. That was not where I wanted to be, for these fights were often quite nasty. I couldn't believe that I was there in the middle of it all. But I was not about to leave a good debate. I decided to let people know that evolution was a bad idea. I made some progress arguing that the complexity of genes made evolution difficult, but somebody wanted to know where all of those fossils had come from, if not from hundreds of millions of years of evolution. I suggested they might have been caused by Noah's flood. My argument was defeated in one round. I was asked to explain how it is that we find rocks made of wind-blown sand in the midst of all these rocks under the earth. I had no answer.
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