Weekly Church Sign: Not a church sign, but it could be!

“Real integrity is doing the right thing even without any recognition”—that is a good message. It tells people passing by something about what this school values. Yes it’s a school not a church (French école = school in English). So maybe I shouldn’t review it as a weekly church sign, but I wanted to show that having a good church sign doesn’t have to be difficult. This message is certainly in keeping with our Christian values. I’m sure you could find a Bill Hybels version of it. He wrote a book titled, “Who You Are When No One’s Looking.” In that book he says, “Character is not what we have done, but rather who we are.” That’s a good one. Likewise, “Worry a little less about the darkness, and spend a little more time thinking about what you can do to leverage the light that you’ve been given.” A great quote that speaks to the values of your church can work well on your church sign.

I still like the idea of using a church’s sign to invite people in, but a good quote like the one above could earn 4 out of 5 stars. It’s a good way to bring some variety to the content on the church sign.

The quote on the school sign made me think of former US Vice-President Joe Biden. While at a movie theatre with his granddaughter, when he thought no one was looking, Joe wrote a note, gave it to a reportedly homeless man and talked with him.

As it turns out, this Facebook post went viral and media outlets went crazy reporting the story, but I believe Joe Biden was doing the right thing here by this man and was not seeking any recognition for doing it. That’s integrity. It jumps out at you when you have the concurrent contrast of President Trump paying off a porn star and Joe Biden stopping to get to know a homeless man. Seems pretty clear which one of them has integrity and respects the dignity of every individual.

How facts can make things worse

While reading the Toronto Star last week, this headline caught my attention, "How facts can make things worse." Being a big proponent of "the truth shall set you free," I was alarmed at the notion that getting facts can make it worse. How so? It turns out that the article is about a fascinating research project about how presenting facts to politically conservative people in the U.S. can actually cause them to  solidify their wrong position! (If it's too hard to read in the window below, you can find it here: How facts can make things worse.)

After reading the article, I wondered how it might apply in Christian circles. Is it possible that we who value the truth might also be subject to the "Backfire Phenomenon"? What do you think? I'll comment below, but just to review, here are two salient points from the article:

It is known as the backfire phenomenon: misinformed people who are given correct information not only reject that information, but end up believing the wrong information even more strongly.

Part of this response can be attributed to a common psychological phenomenon known as motivated reasoning — when people encounter discordant information [they] find a way to deal with that information in a way that doesn’t threaten what they already know or believe.

So does the backfire phenomenon happen in Christian circles? By presenting facts to some wayward Christians do we actually make things blow up even worse? I suspect this is exactly what has happened in the last 40 years with regard to the erroneous teaching about an end times "rapture" of believers. Thanks to Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth it became very popular to believe that true Christians would be raptured to heaven before the outpouring of God's wrath in the last days. Now, in reality, the term "rapture" is not biblical nor is the concept supported in the Bible. There's just no way that Bible verses like Revelation 4:1 support the idea of all believers being taken up to heaven before seven years of wrath ("After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this"). But, when we have tried to correct this teaching by presenting evidence from the Scriptures, it has only made things worse and multiplied the false teaching about the rapture. In fact, it exploded into the best-selling series of Left Behind novels. Now it seems almost impossible to present the Biblical truth on this matter and have it heard. Trying to do so with the novel readers only makes things worse.

What do you think? Are there other examples in the Church where presenting the facts only makes things worse?

Another example that came to mind for me is in those circles where the sovereignty of God has been taught in such a way as to promote a deterministic understanding of reality, leaving us to be merely puppets pulled by God's strings. Though it seems abundantly clear that we are radically free event o run wild, presenting the Biblical teaching on free will — the human power to choose only seems to make things worse (I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live" - Deut 30:19; "choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" - Josh 24:15; "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" - John 3:18; "Whoever wills, let him take the water of life freely" - Rev 22:17). Though the Scriptures clearly teach that humans have free will, presenting these facts to some people only makes things worse and they then support even more extreme versions of determinism where nothing happens apart from God willing it which serves to make God the author of evil (theologically, an unacceptable position rejected by the early church).

Anyone want to weigh in? Is it true that sometimes facts make things worse in the church? What do you think?

Just thinking,
Ken Symes

Technorati Tags: Brendan Nyhan,Jason Reifler,backfire phenomenon,motivated reasoning,rapture,free will,sovereignty,biblical interpretationn

What Still Can Be

Wow! What an extraordinary week in U.S. politics! In my previous post, I described the challenge of moving past "what might have been," suggesting that Hilary Clinton might soon need to do this. It is taking me a long time myself to learn this vital life lesson. Sometimes I still catch myself daydreaming about what might have been had my life not taken the turns it did. Hilary Clinton seems to have learned this life lesson much quicker than I have; she said this in her suspension/endorsement speech on Saturday:

So I want to say to my supporters: When you hear people saying or think to yourself "if only" or "what if," I say, please, don't go there. Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward.

Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Sen. Obama is our next president.

And I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort.

Related Sermon

The Transforming Power of Grace
John & Bobby Kennedy made famous the George Bernard Shaw quote: "Most people look at things as they are and say 'Why?" But I dream of things that never were and say 'Why not?'" It is hard for me to accept that Christians can be so lacking in vision when God's grace is such a powerful dynamic producing a vision for the future for each one of us. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory..." (Ephesians 3:20-21a). Because of God's grace, we cannot give up hope! It's not over and there's so much more God can and will do in our lives.

Will Florida Change the Election Outcome (Again)?

Hilary Clinton hopes that the DNC Rules Committee meeting on May 31st will decide to let Florida's primary vote count after all so that she will have a chance to become the Democratic Nominee for President.

Hilary should know that this is not the first time a Democrat candidate hoped that counting votes in Florida would make a difference to an election outcome. In 2000, Al Gore would've become the 43rd President of the United States of America IF Florida had actually recounted their ballots as required by state law (and actually hand-counted the ballots which their counting machines failed to process). We just watched HBO's weekend movie Recount which was all about the Florida Recount which was not completed. Near the end of the movie, Kevin Spacey playing Ron Klain says, "We should have asked for statewide [recounting] from the get-go; that was our biggest mistake." And his friend replies, "And Ralph Nader should've [realized how he was preventing the only viable Left Wing candidate from being elected]. Elian Gonzalez should've never left Miami. And Gore should've campaigned with Clinton.... Katherine Harris should've thought twice from purging 20,000 voters from the rolls. And George Bush Jr. should've never quite drinking. But HE DID. It is what it is, pal."

I've often wondered what goes through Al Gore's mind. He not only could've been the President, the reality is that a media-run recount of Florida ballots in 2001 showed that he should've been the President. Even though he's moved on and has campaigned for the environment and produced An Inconvenient Truth, I'm sure he must have had and probably still has moments of wondering what might have been.

I have found myself having moments like that a lot lately. I think about what might have been had I not fallen from grace and lost my ministry as a pastor. Sure I'm rebuilding my life and there are many very good things in my life, but still, I miss what could've been. It makes me sad. This is not really productive. These thoughts when they become obsessive are actually quite destructive. When we get stuck on what might have been rather than what actually is we are impairing our ability to make the best of the circumstances in which we now find ourselves. After all, it is what it is and wishing for what might have been will change nothing.

It turns out that there's great truth to the Little Texas song "What Might Have Been."

We can sit and talk about this all night long
And wonder why we didn't last
Yes, they might be the best days we will ever know
But we'll have to leave them in the past...
So try not to think about what might have been
Cause that was then
And we have taken different roads
We can't go back again
There's no use givin' in
And there's no way to know
What might have been

Good advice for me, for Al Gore, and perhaps one day soon for Hilary Clinton, but for now I do hope she defies the odds and wins! This time, let Florida's votes count!

Perhaps "The Way I See It" from my last cup (actually my last two cups) of coffee from Starbucks explain why in the last couple weeks I have been switching from my own sadness of what might have been to Hilary Clinton's election drama:

Politics is about getting outside of yourself and your own problems for a little while and fully immersing yourself in the lies and deceit of others.
—Stephen Elliot (author)