From Tim's sermon on 6/6/2010: 'Money and the Woes of Jesus'
Luke 6:23: "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets."
Tim's Explanation:
Verse 23, in its context, with all this talk about the poor and all that, is a complete refutation of Karl Marx. Because Karl Marx said, "Oh, you don't want to tell people about they're gonna go to heaven some day, that's the opium of the people. They're not going to work for justice in the world, they're not going to make the world a better place if you tell them they're gonna have pie in the sky by and by." Karl Marx says, "No no no, that idea of heaven means that you're not going to work for justice here," and that's just not true. Somebody wrote it this way years ago: "This text, Luke 6, shows that Karl Marx is wrong, think about this: ...if this world is all there is and all my comfort must be found in this life, then if fighting injustice means I lose my job or lose my reputation or lose my life, I'm not gonna do it, I can't do it because this life and its wealth is the only life and wealth I've got." I'm not gonna fiercely fight injustice if it means I'm gonna get killed, because this is it! This is all I've got! But if this life, this wealth and this material comfort I've got, is not all there is. If I've got something waiting for me guaranteed at the end of time, then I'm free to blow the whistle, I'm free to make waves, I'm free to stand up for injustice, even though it costs me. So the gospel is not the opium of the people, it's more like the smelling salts.
My Question: I've heard non-Christians make the argument that the existence of a heaven 'incentive' actually renders the charitable actions of Christians worthless. They will say something like this: "If you need the idea of a God (plus heaven and hell) to help others and work for justice, then your motivation must have been impure all along."
Tim makes a practical argument that those who can't hope for heaven are too selfish to act charitably. The non-Christian may respond by pointing to actual good works performed by the irreligious and claiming that those works are supported by a morally superior motivation. Whose argument is more compelling?
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I tend to think of it this way: if there truly is nothing when we die, just complete and utter non-existence, then life is meaningless. Help someone, don't help them...what difference does it make? Helping others implies a belief in the future, and if there is no future, if we're all just going to wink out of existence, Hitler and Mother Theresa alike, then there's no point. To anything.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if there is a future, if there is something after this life, then it's possible that our actions here will impact it. It's possible that it matters whether we help someone or not. Not just because it may work to our favor, but because it may work to their favor as well. Because there is favor to be had at all.
In this sense, then, when the irreligious perform good works, they are actually behaving religiously. I think the problem is that in 2010 the word "religion" can seem too complex and emotionally charged to meaningfully describe the belief system that motivates doers of good deeds.
Perhaps "faith" is a better word. Doers of good deeds have faith that it matters whether they act or not. The specifics of that faith may vary from person to person, but, again, it is only when you believe in a future of some sort that charitable deeds can be motivated.
Not because of a selfish concern for your own future, but because of a concern for the future of others. Marx himself would be hard pressed to explain his writing "Das Kapital," if he truly believed we have no future. But I think the religion he described as opium was just a certain type of religion. A widespread and non-gospel type of religion, no question, but a type nonetheless.
All of which is to say, I think Tim's--which is to say, the gospel's--argument is more compelling.
Why is it inferior to want good things? It seems to me that part of what it means for something to be good is for it to be right for one to desire it. It would be very strange if it were wrong to be attracted to the things that are best (most expressive of God's excellency). When seen in this way, wanting what the gospel promises is not inferior but superior. Wanting what the gospel promises is being motivated by the things that God has designed us to be motivated by. Why should we be motivated by something else instead?
ReplyDeleteThe thing the non-christian perspective is right about, however, is that the things that the gospel promises can be desired in the wrong way. See, the fall of Lucifer; over-desires; idolatry.
Peter: we can call Marx's Communist vision for the future "faith" if we want, but the question is whether that "faith" is more virtuous or pure because it (presumably) assumes that the individual's existence is terminated, yet meaningful as part of a class struggle that tends toward a greater future.
ReplyDeleteI guess I hear you saying that you doubt the Communist actually believes his existence will terminate; if he does good deeds, he must be operating with the assumption that he lives on in some way.
MCD: Exactly. Which, I think, is what Tim is saying, too. Or perhaps, the near corner of it. Tim demonstrates how disbelief in an afterlife inevitably leads to selfishness. I agree, but I think you can take it even further. I think disbelief in an afterlife ultimately leads to suicide. For if death leads to neither punishment, nor reward, nor even a continuation of self-awareness...well, not to get all literary, but I think Hamlet said it best:
ReplyDelete"[W]ho would bear the whips and scorns of time,/...When he himself might his own quietus make/With a bare bodkin?" (III, i, l.70-76)
A bodkin is a dagger, and quietus is a term meaning to be released from debt. In this case, the "debt," or obligation, of living in a world filled with hardship and disappointment. A fallen world.
Hamlet answers his question in the next line:
"Who would [burdens] bear,/To grunt and sweat under a weary life,/But that the dread of something after death...puzzles the will,/And makes us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to other that we know not of?" (III, i, l.76-82)
Sorry--I'm a former actor! If you're still with me, you can see that Hamlet comes at it from a rather gloomy perspective. He's basically saying that as bad as this life might seem, the next one could be worse. But we can pivot from his point and say that it is the HOPE of "something after death," rather than the "dread," which makes us "bear those ills we have" in the here and now. And we can do more than "bear" those ills. We can attempt to cure them. By writing "The Communist Manifesto," for example.
So I don't see Communism--or any secular movement--as more virtuous because it finds meaning in a finite individual life given for the cause of a greater future. Christianity does that, too. Christ dying on the cross for our greater future is at the very heart of the faith.
By contrast, if there's no afterlife, a mortal individual in a secular movement is striving for a "greater future" for other mortal individuals who will all eventually pass into non-existence, regardless of whether or not they've thrown off the chains of their oppression. As will their children, and their children's children. The idea of a class struggle--of any struggle--is meaningless if we're all bound for oblivion. It's arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
This is why I think the afterlife which secular movements have a problem with is actually an incomplete picture--painted in part by well-meaning but misinformed Christians--which the gospel itself would object to.