Religion and Self-Control

A study by a University of Miami psychology professor found that religion is a significant contributor to health, longevity and achieving goals in life. Findings such as these are not new, as other studies have demonstrated the measurable positive benefits of religion. The author of this particular study, Michael McCullough, suggests that the reason for religion’s benefits is that religion encourages self-control. In another article he's quoted as saying, “The importance of self-control and self-regulation for understanding human behavior are well known to social scientists, but the possibility that the links of religiosity to self-control might explain the links of religiosity to health and behavior has not received much explicit attention.”

Self-control is, of course, an important characteristic in Scripture. It’s listed among the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, and is one of the seven qualities that are highlighted in 2 Peter 1:5-7 as being of integral importance to developing a life that bears fruit. The big question is what is self-control if naturalism is true? For if naturalism is true, then our behavior is determined by the complex inner workings of our brain, completely beyond our control. In fact, under naturalism there is no “we” (or “I”) to control anything. There is no “ghost in the machine” (to cite Gilbert Ryle’s famous put-down of the belief in the soul), there’s just a machine. Whatever self-control is under naturalism, it’s not a self that controls the body’s urges and desires, or chooses to behave in ways other than what those desires dictate.

The classical view is that we are more than just our bodies, and hence we are able to make choices that are contrary to our physical desires and urges. If McCullough is correct that self-control is the essential trait that religion develops and that results in positive benefits to adherents, then one wonders how he would explain what self-control actually is. McCullough’s aim seems to be to study religion from an evolutionary standpoint, which is to say from a naturalistic standpoint. My guess is that he’s simply assumed a commonsensical concept of self-control without asking whether that concept is compatible with a naturalistic view of the world or not. It’s not, but that doesn’t seem to come into his thinking. Self-control only makes sense if there is more to us than our brains and bodies, if there is a ghost in the machine. Otherwise the machine just runs by itself, however its wiring or programming dictates.

So one problem for the naturalist is how we can have self-control if we are nothing more than complex biological machines. But there is another problem. How can something which is (from the naturalistic standpoint) not true be so beneficial? From the naturalistic standpoint it appears that it’s better to have false beliefs than true ones. But if this is so, then how can the naturalist account for an evolutionary development of things like science if we aren’t wired in such a way that true beliefs are advantageous to us? In other words, if evolution has given rise to creatures which survive and thrive better with false beliefs, then how can a naturalist trust his or her own belief-forming faculties with regard to things like evolution? It’s a conundrum from which naturalistic philosophers have been unable to extricate themselves, though many seem blissfully unaware of the problem.

In his book God: The Evidence, former outspoken-atheist-turned-theist Patrick Glynn also pointed out that religion has huge positive health benefits. For Glynn, it became impossible to square this with a naturalistic worldview. The mind and the body appear to be designed to function best with a religious worldview. This is perfectly consistent if the religious worldview is true. But to suggest that homo sapiens has evolved to function best with a religious worldview even though naturalism is true requires a lot of creative explanation that ultimately seems forced and contrived. It also undermines confidence in any of our beliefs, including the naturalist's belief in evolution. And there’s still no way to coherently account for something like self-control, let alone how such a thing can have positive benefits for anyone, if naturalism is true.

In an interesting twist, McCullough found that only people who were outwardly religious (as in being involved with religious institutions and behaviors) showed higher self-control. Just having a “spiritual” view of the world didn’t help promote self-control. It also doesn’t seem to help if one just attends church but isn’t really a believer. It’s only the true believers (what McCullough terms “intrinsically religious”) who show higher self-control, not the “extrinsically religious” who just go to church for perceived social benefits or out of habit or tradition.

McCullough suggests that secular people could get the same results even if they don’t believe, which is a strange suggestion since it seems to contradict his own findings. But he says, “People can have sacred values that aren’t religious values. Self-reliance might be a sacred value to you that’s relevant to saving money. Concern for others might be a sacred value that’s relevant to taking time to do volunteer work. You can spend time thinking about what values are sacred to you and making New Year’s resolutions that are consistent with them.”

Umm, okay. Except this is obviously rubbish. McCullough seems to think that it doesn’t matter what values you pick: just pick anything that’s important to you, call it “sacred” and watch as the self-control magically develops. It’s hard to see how this sort of intentional self-deception would work, especially since McCullough’s own study appears to indicate that it doesn’t. In such a case the person is only substituting his/her own preferences for a divine moral standard. How about if someone’s value is maximizing their physical pleasure or becoming wealthy while doing as little work as possible? Would these values promote self-control? Even in principle how could such a standard help develop self-control when it’s simply the person giving their own desires and interests the status of being sacred? The very idea of self-control presumes that one is denying their own immediate desires for a higher goal or purpose. It seems clear that the person has to believe that value or purpose has come from a higher source, even if their belief is mistaken. But to just make up your own "sacred values" seems pretty useless.

Never mind that McCullough could have discovered the importance of self-control just by reading a New Testament. But modern psychology seems to have a way of demonstrating that what those ancient writers had to say so long ago is a timeless wisdom that occasionally even modern unbelieving scholars are forced to notice when they’re paying attention.

In God We Trust

For many people (I’m thinking of Americans of course) this slogan is nothing more than words written on their currency. God has no bearing on their daily lives, and the idea of trusting in God is a foreign concept. But many of these same people DO trust in the very money on which these words are inscribed. They think if they only had more of it, they could be secure. Talk about trusting in God is cheap. What we really need is a goodly nest-egg for our retirement years, and financial security for today.

Thus, shakeups in the financial world can cause major panic in people. “What if our life savings are wiped out?” “What if our financial institutions fail?” To whom will we turn for help? It seems that many people want to turn to the government for a handout or bailout. The government, after all, has lots of money to spare. Isn’t that right? (Never mind for the moment that the government’s money is actually money that was taken from the people that earned it in the first place). Don’t we just need a bigger social safety net? It’s times like these that are good opportunities for re-evaluating our priorities. Where does our trust really lie? Is it in our currency? In our financial institutions? In our government?

I was interested to see that the New York Times (a rag which I generally disdain for ideological reasons) reported a dramatic increase in evangelical church attendance since the stock market began its sharp decline last September. The article cited a study by David Beckworth that showed that growth in evangelical church attendance spiked by 50 percent during every recession cycle between 1968 and 2004 (note this is the percentage of rate of attendance increase, not the growth in actual attendance). Mainline Protestant churches declined during the recession periods, but not by as much as during the non-recession years. The Times article gives anecdotal evidence that the same pattern is occurring this time around. Interestingly, Gallup released a poll in December that challenges the overall pattern, saying that church attendance showed no discernible increase at all during 2008. But that’s another story.

The idea that too much wealth is a bad thing is certainly biblical. In Proverbs 30:8-9 we read “give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” Likewise the New Testament is not kind towards trusting in riches. James 5:1-3 gives a taste of it: “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.”

During the Methodist revival in England, John Wesley saw the danger of increasing wealth leading to a decrease in spiritual fervor and vitality and warned against it. Many of the Methodist societies consisted of lower class people. After these people were saved their lifestyles changed dramatically. They became more industrious and hard-working while at the same time they gave up vices like drinking, smoking and gambling. As a result, they also became more prosperous. This in turn tended toward spiritual apathy.

This was not only true of the early Methodists, but has been a repeated historical pattern in church history. According to tradition, the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas was once visiting Pope Innocent IV in Rome. The Pope proudly showed him the treasures in the Vatican and said, “no longer can we say, ‘silver or gold have I none.’” To which Aquinas replied, “yes, and neither can we say, ‘rise up and walk.’” The allusion of course is to Peter and John healing the lame beggar outside the temple in Acts 3:6. The repeated cycle of church history has been of God’s people becoming wealthy, drifting from God as a result, and then being brought back to Him after a time of humbling.

In a very real sense the current financial climate might be the best thing for the church in America. American evangelicals have poured countless millions of dollars into big, expensive facilities with attendant maintenance costs and so forth. We’ve become experts at slick fundraising methods, using the same techniques and gimmicks as the world. It’s not hard to see that our priorities have gone awry. Times like these may be the wake-up call that many people need to show them where their trust really lies. As Jesus said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21).

Someone shared with me recently that he had fallen on hard times and that it was possible he would be losing his home. At the same time, he praised God saying that he had never been closer to the Lord and he was happy in Him. What a great testimony! It reminds me of the words of the prophet from Habakkuk 3:17-18:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

These are, I believe, some of the greatest words of faith from the Bible. Regardless of our circumstances, do we still trust in God? Or do we really trust in those pieces of paper on which those words are written?

Predestined to holiness

When I first started studying theology in Bible college as a new Christian almost 20 years ago I was introduced to the Calvinist/Arminian debate over free will and predestination. I was attending a Free Methodist Bible College, so they were of course promoting the Arminian view of free will. That was a good thing as the Calvinist position made no sense to me. If God has already determined who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell in advance without any power to change that on the part of the individual, then what’s the point of all of this? Besides that, Scripture frequently calls people to repent and believe, which certainly seems to strongly imply that they can choose to do that. If they don’t, what’s the point of telling them to? You may as well command someone to swim the ocean.

In the years since then I’ve continued to study this debate. And I can report that the Calvinist position still makes no sense to me! But I do understand that Calvinists sincerely believe that their view is clearly taught in Scripture, and so they are obligated to believe it even if it doesn’t make sense to them. There’s a sense in which I agree with that – sometimes there are things that are difficult to understand that we believe on the basis of reliable authority. This is true not only in matters of theology, but in many areas of life. I don’t believe, however, that this is one of those areas.

Scripture does talk about predestination, or at least of people being predestined. In Ephesians 1:3-5 we read this:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

What does this passage actually mean? Does it say that we who are believers were chosen to be saved while the rest of the world goes to hell? Actually, no. It says nothing about heaven or hell at all or even salvation. What it says is that firstly, we were chosen “that we would be holy and blameless before Him,” and secondly that God predestined us “to adoption as sons”. The emphasis is important here. It does in fact say that we were predestined (more in a minute about who the “we” refers to), but not that we were predestined to be saved or even predestined to believe, which is the Calvinist position. Rather, it says what we were predestined to: namely to be holy and blameless and to adoption as sons. The predestination involved here is just what it means – that the destination or destiny was determined in advance. In other words, God determined that he wanted a people who would be holy and blameless, and who would be his children. But how to do that, especially when you’re starting with people who are naturally stubborn, rebellious, and sinful? So God also determined the process that would produce this result – namely the atoning sacrifice of Jesus that would cleanse and purify a people for himself (Titus 2:14) and the adoption of those who have faith in Christ as children of God (John 1:12). God predestined or predetermined the end result and the process needed to produce that result.

What it doesn’t say is that he predetermined which individuals would end up “buying in” to this process. It says nothing about him arbitrarily deciding before you were born whether or not you would believe. When Paul says “we” were predestined to this or that, who is he talking about? He’s talking about believers – about those who have placed their faith in Christ and repented of their sins. So God predestined that those who have believed in Christ would end up holy and blameless and as the children of God – quite an amazing concept!

But isn’t all of this just about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell? Isn’t that what the Gospel is all about? Actually I don’t think so. Not that that’s not an important question of course, but it’s not the only question or maybe even the most important question. Heaven and hell are simply consequences of our decisions in this life. But salvation is much more than getting a “get out of jail free” card or “fire insurance”, or some other similar analogy. It’s about becoming the children of God – of the Holy One who created us, and who gives us “life, breath and all things” (Acts 17:25). We are predestined to holiness. For many of us it’s high time we started acting like it. But that’s another topic!

What is missions, anyways?

In 2000 I returned to seminary four years after graduating with the Master of Divinity degree to prepare for the mission field. I was there to earn another master’s degree in missions and evangelism. In one of my first classes on "Christian Mission and Global Culture," we watched a video. On saving the whales. No, seriously, it was about how to prevent the extinction of a particular endangered species of whale. I looked around the room, thinking to myself, "is this a joke?" It was no joke, but it does represent a strong trend in contemporary missiology.

If I could summarize this perspective, it basically says that whatever we do to bring "shalom" (or "peace") to the created order is missions. In other words, saving a species of whale from extinction is just as much a part of the mission of the church in this mode of thinking as the more traditional idea of converting sinners. Now, I was aware of the controversy surrounding the so-called "social gospel,” which emphasizes caring for the physical and material needs of people less fortunate than ourselves with not so much emphasis on things like repentance from sin and faith in the redemptive work of Christ as the means to eternal life. Of this Bishop Stephen O’Neill astutely observed that those who start with social needs never seem to get to the Gospel message, whereas those who start with the Gospel end up addressing these other needs of people as well.

But this wasn’t social gospel, it was the gospel of environmentalism. Taken to its greatest extreme, it’s the gospel of fix-everything-ism. Apparently the mission of the church in the eyes of some people is to fix every problem on earth. Eliminate poverty and economic inequality? We’re on it. Get rid of discrimination? We can do that. Solve environmental problems like endangered species, global warming, and all the rest? We can do that, too. Excuse me for saying this, but I really think the biggest problem in the world is the alienation of people from their creator. Everything else, in my humble opinion, is just symptoms of the disease. Even the issue of the alienation of people from each other in all of its many iterations is a symptom of alienation from God. We can try to address some specific problem like, say, racism by means of education and legislation. But we still haven’t changed anyone’s heart. You just can’t force people to love others. Eventually the ugliness that is still lurking in the heart will show itself unless the heart itself is changed. I’m thinking of some well-publicized instances where celebrity figures who say they aren’t racist suddenly and inexplicably start uttering racial epithets under duress. I don’t believe that’s because there’s something called “racism” in their hearts that is revealed in those inopportune moments. Rather, it’s that there is contempt and spite towards others that is manifested as racial slurs. No amount of education or legislation can fix that.

So I don’t really see the proclamation of the Gospel message as one more thing on the church’s “to do” list after finding a solution for poverty and replacing the ozone layer. It’s the one thing that we can offer that nobody else can: reconciliation to God. All of the rest, quite honestly, pales in comparison to this one. To put it another way, even if we solved or greatly alleviated all the rest of these issues without offering eternal life to the world, what have we really accomplished? Jesus’ words come to mind, “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” What does it profit the church if we fix all of these other problems but forfeit the souls of men and women who are perishing without the knowledge of the one True God? At the same time, I think another basic theological problem is the idea that the Gospel message is merely about what happens to you after you die. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the possibility of living an increasingly transformed life in the here-and-now, about biblical holiness. That’s an issue of Christian discipleship (as it’s often misleadingly called), of teaching Christians to obey everything that Jesus commanded. But this presupposes that someone is first a disciple.

Someone may tell me that it doesn’t have to be either/or. It can be both/and. We can evangelize and solve global warming (or whatever). Weeell, maybe. (I won’t even bother to comment whether man-made global warming is as big a problem as many people seem to think but I will say I’m pretty skeptical of that claim). But maybe the latest “-ism” that we’re supposed to fix is just a passing fad that is actually a distraction from our real mission, which seems to me to be much more likely. I would point out that genuine conversion contributes towards addressing many, if not all, of these other problems. It’s noteworthy to me that the world is fixated on solving these other problems but doing so in a humanistic fashion. If we all just come together and work together, we’re told that we can make the world a better place. But supposedly this will happen only if we put aside our differences, like ideas about who God is (or whether God exists or not), and about whether or not there are real objective moral values that we are all obligated to live by. I’m not convinced that Christians jumping on the bandwagon to show how eager we are to do our part really helps matters.

Apologetics and holiness

Apologetics, for those of you who don’t know this about me yet, is my favorite area of theology. Apologetics has to do with defending the truth of the Christian worldview. It’s an essential area for believers to study. What is true and what is not is of fundamental importance in answering the big questions of life.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible related to apologetics is this one from 1 Peter 3:15:

But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

The word for apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which is translated as "defense" in this verse. It's the word that was used for legal defenses in a court of law. So this verse calls us to be prepared to defend the Gospel by giving sound arguments or reasons for our hope. You don't have to be an apologetics expert to do this, but some basic training in this area definitely helps, especially given the skeptical world that we live in.

Often when I use this verse in teaching, I tend to gloss over the first part, "sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts." It means to make Christ the Lord of our lives in our own heart. In other words, it means to make sure that our heart is right with God, and that our spiritual walk is right with Him. This is the essential first part of apologetics. Our words are of little value if our lives do not reflect the lordship of Christ in our behavior and attitudes. This is not a one-time thing, but a daily surrender to Christ's lordship. If we fail at this step we will fail altogether, no matter how good our arguments are.

I've been hearing about some former evangelical Christian scholars and even former apologists who have fallen away from the faith and are now fighting against Christianity. When listening to their stories, I believe they all failed at the first step above. It wasn't that they encountered arguments for atheism that were so irrefutable that they were compelled to lose their faith by force of reason. In fact, the former apologists that I've heard don't have any better arguments against the Gospel than any run-of-the-mill skeptic. But in one case, a former Christian apologist who was the pastor of an evangelical church fell into an adulterous relationship with a woman in his church. When he finally confessed, the church was (understandably I think) quite upset by it. He became bitter because of their response to him and, to make a long story short, he eventually divorced his wife and became an anti-apologist against Christianity. He had failed to live a life that was surrendered to the lordship of Christ even though he may have been good at apologetics.

Good apologetics doesn't start with good arguments, but rather with a surrendered life that is lived under the lordship of Christ. We do need good arguments, and we do need to have some idea of how to respond to skeptics (though I often struggle with being both “gentle” and “respectful”, which is something that we also need to be careful to do). But first and foremost we need to be people of holiness, people who are living in constant, daily communion with Jesus Christ.

The Resurrection and good works

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.

1 Cor. 15:58

One of the easiest rules of Bible interpretation to remember is this one: whenever you see a “therefore” you have to ask what it’s there for. Whatever precedes the word “therefore” justifies whatever comes after it. In this case, Paul has given an extensive discussion of resurrection – first, of Christ’s resurrection, which is the foundation of our faith. He then talks about the future resurrection of believers. Because of this future hope of resurrection he says that we should “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,” knowing that our work is not in vain.

The Resurrection is not simply a nice theoretical doctrine. It has an important practical application in motivating faith and good works. It’s not a “pie-in-the-sky by-and-by” theology, but a theology of a future life in which we will be transformed to be like Christ in his resurrected life. As one of my former seminary professors has said, we will be “bulletproof”. The historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection is the guarantee of our own future resurrection. This is not an imaginary hope; it’s as real as it gets.

Theologian N.T. Wright calls this future hope “life AFTER life after death”. We often talk of “life after death”, by which we mean the immediate state that we enter after death. There is such a state (and I plan to do more blogging on the research into this through the study of “near-death experiences”), but this is not the final state for believers. It is a temporary one in which we await the final resurrected state that Paul talks about.

Some Christian theology is based on a future state of a disembodied existence in heaven. This is not the biblical view. The Resurrection of Jesus happened in the physical world. Our future resurrection will likewise be in the physical world, not in a spiritual world in which we float around on clouds strumming harps. The accusation of Christians as being “too spiritually minded to be of any earthly good” should never be true of us. Just as our future hope is a real hope, our good works should be real and visible to the world. God calls us to live lives characterized by good works, lives that stand out from the world by their quality. If that can’t be said of our lives, then something is wrong.