A few thoughts on authority

This past Sunday, the Bible reading that I focused on in preaching to the congregation here was from Mark 1:21-28.  In there, Jesus teaches at a synagogue, and the people are amazed at the authority that He demonstrates as He teaches.  He then backs up that authority by driving out an unclean spirit.  And that word "authority" really got me thinking.

How do you define authority?  A lot of the time, I believe we tend to confuse it with power.  Now, the two are connected.  You have authority because you have power (which is the ability to do something), but you also have responsibility for that power.  Maybe an example will help.

For those of you who travel in a car early in the morning during the school year, one thing you probably encounter are school crossings.  Flashing lights, crosswalk guards, and stop signs.  When the lights are flashing, the guard has the authority to make you stop your car while kids are in the crosswalk.

However, if I grab a stop sign and try to do the same, I may have the power to make a few cars stop, but a policeman would probably give me a ticket for doing that.  Why?  Because I don't have the authority, or responsibility, to do that.  Sure, my sign might get a few people to stop, but that's not what I'm supposed to do.  A few designated people are assigned that authority, at specific times, and in specific locations.

Jesus has not only power, but authority.  And yet, I am constantly amazed at how He asserts His authority.  He doesn't go around telling people to do what He says simply because He says so, or because He has the power to make them do it.  Instead, Jesus serves, and in serving, what we find is that we recognize His authority over us.  We willingly follow Him, not because He has commanded us to do so, but because we see His care, concern, and compassion toward us, and willingly follow Him.  We put ourselves under His authority willingly because of what He has done for us, and not because He insists that He is the God of the universe, who has the authority to judge us and command us what to do.

Imagine what that kind of authority would be like in your life.  What if you served others in such a way that they willingly listened to you and followed your lead?  I believe that's the kind of authority that God desires for His people to practice in this world.

Faith and Technology: Communication

Imagine that you were living back in the B.C. times.  You wanted to find out how a family member was doing in a distant village, let's say about 150 miles away.  What are your options for being in touch with that person?  Pretty much, you have two options.  You can travel there yourself, or you can write a letter (assuming you are one of the literate people of the time).  Those are pretty much your options.

Now contrast that with today.  If you want to get in touch with the person on the floor above you, you can do any of the following: call them on their landline, call them on their cellphone, text message them, email them, facebook them, walk upstairs to see them, or have a memo sent to them.  So many more options to communicate with others today than some 2,000 years ago.

The ability to communicate well and rapidly has changed the world.  Think of it from this perspective.  If you had to write a letter, and that was your only real means of communication with someone far away, you would probably take your time to write out what you are thinking.  You'd make sure that you used appropriate words to convey what you wanted to say, perhaps thinking them through before you put them down on paper (after all, no erasers yet!).  You would probably add anything extra in that you could, since it might be some time before you wrote another one, or when you would hear back from this person.

Again, contrast that with today.  How many times have you sent off an email or a message to someone, and then a few minutes later, realized that you forgot to include something?  So you easily sent off another message.  Or how many times did you quickly write something out, only to have the other person misunderstand what you said because you didn't take a great deal of care in choosing your words? 

I would imagine that most Christians would look at communication technology and say that it is a good thing.  I would heartily agree with them.  One of the things, however, that I see as a weakness with this rapid ability to communicate is that we tend to give less thought and care to the words we use.  And that can have some fairly dramatic impact.

Communications technology is a very useful thing for sharing our faith and growing in our faith.  Just think, you can email your pastor or someone who can help you answer a question about your faith and get an answer back fairly quickly.  That's a good thing.  But then, also think about this.  You get upset at someone who shares your faith with you, and rather than waiting for things to cool down, you zip off an email to them to explain how upset you are and why.  They receive it, perhaps misunderstanding a few things you say, and suddenly the situation is worse.  Now a lot more hurt feelings and matters of forgiveness need to be dealt with.

One other thing that I can see as dangerous with our current communications technology is that it has greatly impacted our ability to actually talk to people face to face.  I see it happen where people get so used to zipping off a brief idea or two that they lose the ability to relate to people beyond a mere idea or two.  Just think about the impact that this can have when we Christians start to lose our ability to talk with and interact with one another.

I am a huge proponent of communications technology.  I do also think that we all would be better served by, at times, slowing ourselves down and thinking about how this technology impacts our lives and our faith.

Faith and Technology: Sound and Sight

If you happen to venture into a larger church facility for worship, you probably expect that the pastor or worship leader will be wearing a microphone.  You'll also have speakers which convey that voice around the sanctuary so that the speaker can be heard throughout, and perhaps those speakers are also wired in to whatever musical instrument is being used for the music of the worship service.

Most of us would hardly blink an eye at this kind of technology.  We see the rationale for making use of it, and, for the most part, adopt it whole-heartedly.  It just makes sense, and it doesn't seem to detract from what happens during our worship times (except for those times when it chooses not to work!).

However, throw up a screen and a projection system, and suddenly, there are many who would say that you have crossed the line.  I've heard some of the arguments against such technology in a worship setting, and I've heard some of the arguments for such technology.  But it seems that, where sound technology is viewed as good and right, sight technology is a much more mixed bag.

I've thought long and hard on this, and I understand a bit of both sides of the argument.  When you have sight technology like screens and projectors, the "entertainment" factor of seeing images that are intended to add meaning to the message can easily slip into the object to which people pay attention.  Images that enhance the message being proclaimed are good.  Images that become the focal point instead of the message are not so good.

And yet, much research has been done to demonstrate that we humans tend to be visual and sound learners.  When you only hear something talked about, you retain a fairly small percentage of what you heard.  When you see something, you retain a higher percentage.  When you both see and hear, you retain almost 80% of what you see and hear!

The reason that this is so controversial to many is that it seems that the technology is taking the place of the Holy Spirit and His work.  If we rely upon the technology to bring about change in the life and faith of those who gather, then we have gone too far.  That is something that the Bible says only the Holy Spirit can do.  Only the Holy Spirit can create and nurture faith. 

At the same time, it's also important that we remember and take to heart the things we see and hear during our worship times.  While the Holy Spirit works as the words are heard, if we leave the worship time and really take nothing away with us, sure, our faith may have been strengthened while we listened, but the Holy Spirit is also about transforming our lives.  If we hear and walk away unchanged, well, the Bible says that is a pretty futile thing.

So I close with this thought today.  When Jesus was speaking many of His parables, it's likely that there were some of those very objects around as He spoke.  For example, as He gave the parable of the sower, one can almost picture a man with his bag of seed, tossing it into the ground.  The listeners could hear Jesus talk about the seed that landed on the path, or among the rocks, and see the sower in the distance, knowing that those same things were happening over there.  That image would help the story and its meaning stick with them even better than if Jesus had just spoken to them in a sterile environment.

I also was reading a book written by one of my seminary professors recently (That I May Be His Own, by Dr. Charles Arand), who talked about the reason that Martin Luther included woodcuts in his catechisms.  The purpose of the woodcuts was to enable people to better remember what they were learning.  Luther basically asserted that we people remember better when we have something to see that ties in with what we are learning, and that we should adopt these kind of things to better enhance our learning. 

It seems that images and teaching/preaching are made to fit together.  Of course, you always have to be cautious that the image doesn't overwhelm the message, but when the image(s) enhance the message and make it more memorable, then, it seems, we have hit upon something that fits with how God made us as humans.

Faith and Technology: Drawing Lines

A lot of medical technology is of the type that causes Christians to wonder where lines need to be drawn.  For example, this morning, I was watching our local news.  They have that little line of constant news at the bottom, and one of the flashes that came across it talked about the supposed successful use of embryonic stem cells to restore some people with a degenerative eye condition.  I would imagine that this is viewed as a great success in the medical community, as one of their theories may seem to be in the process of being proven.

And yet, I still find myself uncomfortable with that.  Really, it boils down to one word in the above paragraph that makes me uncomfortable.  Embryonic stem cells.  In other words, to bring about healing in these people, a life was cut short before it even grew large enough for the mother to know or to feel.  For some reason, the medical community has seized upon the thought that embryonic stem cells are the solution, and not other stem cells, which can be found in the body. 

Here is where I find one line that most Christians will probably agree with.  If the saving or healing of another person comes at the expense of another's life, then I have a serious problem.  This is why so many in the medical community don't look at an embryo as a living being.  It soothes their consciences that they are doing something for the good of mankind, and not at the cost of a living being.

I will admit that there are many lines in terms of medical technology that are difficult to define.  Surgery seems to be a very acceptable use of God's creativeness and healing.  Most treatments don't cross over into us "playing God", but make use of God's creativeness.  And yet, every once in a while, as a Christian, I find myself uneasy when I hear of some new breakthrough.  But in general, one fairly firm line that I draw is that of not taking a life to save or restore another person's life.

I realize that this is not going to be a consistent line among Christians, and then among people who have different faiths and beliefs than we do.  But I also think that failure to discuss it leaves a great deal more confusion out there.

Faith and Technology: Health Concerns

When I started out on this Faith and Technology series, I knew that there was a lot of ground to cover.  What I didn't foresee was that there are so many fairly technical points, which, if I were to take time to spend on each one, would lead to an endless series.  So for the sake of keeping things brief and moving forward, I'm trying to summarize some of these as well as I can.

In previous posts, I have dealt with some issues concerning the beginning of life.  Now, let's move into some of the ways that our faith and technology impact our lives from the time we are born through the time that we age.  Again, I'm not putting these thoughts out here as "this is the right or wrong way", but rather, to cause us to think about how our faith impacts our use of technology.

One thought that I have already raised deals with the proper balance between God's gift of creativeness and taking that creativeness too far.  To start off, I'll simply put before you a couple of circumstances to think about.

A person is born with poor eyesight.  Is it God's design that this person cannot see well, and so is introducing glasses or contacts to this person making use of God's creativeness, or stepping over the boundaries?  To take it to the next step, what about laser surgery to correct their vision?  If someone in the future invented a bionic eye, has that gone too far?

Here's a second type of scenario to think about.  A person has a heart attack.  Has God given us the creativeness and technology to map out the surgical process to restore that person's heart, or even to replace it, or have we stepped beyond God's plan and design for life by artificially adding to that person's life? 

One last one for today: A family declares that they firmly believe that God alone should decide if their child should be healed of a treatable disease.  So they refuse medication for the child under the belief that, if God wants the child to be healed, He will heal the child.  Are they correct or wrong to have such a belief?  Why do you answer that question the way you do?

As you think about these scenarios, I hope it brings a little more clarity to the way you approach the balance of God's creativeness and when we cross over to "playing God" with our technology.

Faith and Technology: Beginnings

I figure that it's time to start moving on toward other places where our faith impacts our view and use of technology, but today we'll wrap up some of my thoughts about reproduction/creation, technology, and faith.  I want to remind everyone that the purpose of these is not so much to say what is right or wrong, but to simply demonstrate how our faith and beliefs do indeed impact the roads that we take in life when it comes to technology.

Today I want to start off with a statement that may not seem that profound, but it really is.  No life begins without God being a part of it.  Whether that life begins in a loving interaction between faithful spouses who engage in the action of love that leads to procreation, or whether that life begins via needles and sterile environments, no life finds its beginning without God.  Even if we may choose technological means that may go beyond the bounds of what God would deem appropriate, no life begins without God being involved.

That demonstrates to us that every single life is a precious gift from God.  Even if we engage in blatantly sinful actions which create life, the life thus created is a gift from God.  And since we each have a sinful nature with us at every moment of every day, that also means that no life is created without the influence of sin (yes, even in the most loving of marriages).

This points us directly to the grace of God.  God gives even when we don't deserve.  We may go beyond His desires and designs of life, but those still do not take us away from the reach of His grace.  We may, regrettably, turn away from His grace, or even think of His gifts of grace as a burden, but even that cannot remove us from the reach of His grace.  That grace is ours because of Jesus' death and resurrection, and our corresponding faith in God's gracious action for us.

There are certain parts of reproductive technology that make me uncomfortable.  There are some parts that I really do not know what God's desire and design is.  I recognize that, no matter what my thoughts are (or what yours might be), not a single one of these thoughts or actions can remove us from God's grace in Jesus.  In Jesus, we are completely forgiven.  Our faith connects that forgiveness to us.  So, while we may go beyond wise boundaries when it comes to this particular component of technology (and really, all the other areas of technology), we never go to a place where God's grace cannot reach us, and where God cannot redeem us.  And this is truly a reason to give thanks.

Faith and Technology: Eggs, Sperm, and Fertilization; Oh my!

As we think about our faith and how it impacts the way we think about reproductive technology, I need to say once again that I firmly believe that life begins when a sperm and an egg come into contact with one another.  At that point, the process of life gets underway and, if not interrupted, leads to a full, living being.  This is why I consider that point the beginning of life.

I realize that there are a number of things that can interfere with this process actually taking place.  A woman's body may not produce eggs, or eggs of sufficient quality to create and sustain life.  A man's sperm may not be properly produced, or may have some kind of defect that prevents life from being formed.  There may even be other factors to take into account beyond these fairly simple ones.

So then, what do we as humans do?  Well, this is where we face a number of different thoughts that our faith has a direct impact on.  For beginners, do we believe that God is the creator and designer of our bodies, which means that they are the way that God intended for them to be, or do we believe that God has also given us our minds in order to figure out how we can "make" our bodies work the way that most typical bodies do?  As a fairly benign example, if God created me with poor eyesight, am I going beyond God's design and desire if I wear glasses or contacts?  While this issue may not have the depth of the fertility issue, the path our thinking takes us down in this example will also be a factor in the reproductive one.

Another consideration we have to ponder is how God may have given us natural "elements" to help bring bodies back into line.  As an example of this, we have penicillin in the world.  We have discovered that it helps to battle infections.  If we make use of penicillin to combat our diseases, are we going against God's design, or are we using our minds in a way that God would approve of?  As this relates to fertility, if there are certain herbs, vitamins, or compounds that can help bring a body back in line, can we do so without damage to our conscience?

Getting a little deeper, we have to ask ourselves how far we can go down this road before we start slipping on the slope and falling over the edge.  Has God given us knowledge of the body and surgical tools to make use of, or are they going against the way He designed us?  If we say that He wants us to make use of these gifts, then just how far do we go before we seem to be taking "life" (and by life, I mean not only life and death, or reproduction, but wholeness and health as well) out of God's hands and putting it into our own?  If surgery to remove a ruptured spleen is okay, how about the removal of a brain tumor that would have led to death?  Or how about the "prodding" of an egg out of the ovary?  Or the insertion of sperm via medical means to optimize the chance of becoming pregnant?

I hope you realize that these answers do not come easily, and it is pretty much impossible to separate our faith life from what we think is acceptable in these practices.  We'll keep talking about this as the series continues.